Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future by Johan Norberg (PDF)

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A Book of the Year for The Economist and the Observer Our world seems to be collapsing. The daily news cycle reports the deterioration: divisive politics across the Western world, racism, poverty, war, inequality, hunger. While politicians, journalists and activists from all sides talk about the damage done, Johan Norberg offers an illuminating and heartening analysis of just how far we have come in tackling the greatest problems facing humanity. In the face of fear-mongering, darkness and division, the facts are unequivocal: the golden age is now.

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Editorial Reviews: Review ‘Reminds us that headlines are misleading and that history and data show that life has been getting radically better in every way’. — Steven Pinker ― Observer, Books of the Year‘A blast of good sense.’ ― Economist‘Norberg has a strong case and he makes it with energy and charm. A pertinent book for grumpy times.’ ― Robbie Millen, The Times’His unfailing optimism and well-argued points generate powerful good-news vibes’. ― Esquire‘An exhilarating book. With the combination of arresting stories and striking data, Progress will change your understanding about where we’ve come from and where we may be heading.’ — Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature‘Norberg entertainingly presents the case for something every expert knows but most newsreaders will find hard to believe: the world is getting richer, healthier, freer, and more peaceful’. ― Observer‘Johan Norberg chronicles the still largely unknown fact that humanity is now healthier, happier, cleaner, cleverer, freer and more peaceful than ever before. He also explains why in this superb book.’ — Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything‘At a time of profound pessimism, Johan Norberg is refreshingly, but not glibly, optimistic. His excellent book documents the dramatic improvements in people’s lives and reminds us of the huge potential for further progress – provided we are open to it.’ — Philippe Legrain, author of European Spring‘In this brightly written, upbeat book, the Swedish author blends facts, anecdotes, and official statistics to describe “humanity’s triumph” in achieving the present unparalleled level of global living standards…While acknowledging the mayhem, hunger, and poverty still facing much of the world, the author remains optimistic that human ingenuity will prevail in shaping the future. A refreshingly rosy assessment of how far many of us have come from the days when life was uniformly nasty, brutish, and short.’ ― Kirkus‘Excellent…Norberg’s book comprehensively documents the myriad ways the state of humanity has vastly improved over the past couple of centuries.’ ― Reason About the Author Johan Norberg is a lecturer, documentary filmmaker and internationally acclaimed author. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. A frequent commentator in Swedish and international media, he has a weekly column in Sweden’s biggest daily, Metro. He lives in Malmö.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The headline of a Financial Times article ahead of new year 2015 read: ‘Battered, bruised and jumpy – the whole world is on edge’.58% of those who voted for Britain to leave the EU said that life is worse today than it was thirty years ago.General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the US Congress: “I will personally attest to the fact that . . . [the world] is more dangerous than it has ever been.”How are we to deal with this? Is this the worst of times, or was Franklin Pierce Adams right when he said, “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”When we look at the facts it is difficult to romanticize the good old days: the truth is that the good old days were awful. The great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards… ever.This book is about humanity’s triumphs over ten scourges including poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labour, infant mortality and violence.Nobel winning economist, Angus Deaton, the world-leading expert on health and development, explains that in 18th and early 19th century Britain, the lack of calories led to people not being able to work hard enough to produce enough food to be able to work hard. As a result, they were stunted, skinny and short, which required fewer calories and made it possible to work with less food.Getting enough food for the body and the brain to function properly is the most basic human need, but throughout history most people have not be able to achieve this. The French and English in the eighteenth century consumed fewer calories than the current average in sub-Saharan Africa, the region most tormented by undernourishment. Famine was believed to be the lot of humanity.This has not happened, and here are some reasons why.The 20th century invention of artificial, cheap and abundant fertilizer was one of the most powerful weapons against hunger. It was soon used all over the world and resulted in the world population rising from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 6 billion today.Norman Borlaug, developed a high-yield hybrid wheat that was parasite resistant and wasn’t sensitive to daylight, so it could be grown in varying climates. It was quickly introduced all over Mexico, and in 1963, the harvest was six times that of 1944. Overnight, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat.Similarly, India and Pakistan became self-sufficient in the production of cereals and today produce seven times more wheat than they did in 1965. Colleagues of Borlaug developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread around Asia. Borlaug is credited with saving over a billion lives and received the Nobel Peace prize for his ‘Green Revolution’, which has given poor countries better crops and bigger yields, and has alleviated rural poverty.According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, in 1947 about 50% of the world’s population was chronically malnourished. By 1970 they estimated that 37% of the developing world population was undernourished, and today the figure is about 13%.In the first decade of the 21st century, 1.7 million children died because of malnutrition (a shockingly high number!) but it is a 60% reduction since the 1950s, despite a doubling of the world population. To put this in a wider perspective, from 1900 to 1909, 27 million people died in famines, and more than fifteen million died every decade from the 1920s to the 1960s.“Strange as it sounds,” the author Johan Norberg points out, “democracy is one of our most potent weapons against famine.” There have been famines in communist states, absolute monarchies, colonial states and tribal societies, but never in a democracy. This is probably because rulers who are dependent on voters do everything to avoid starvation, and a free press makes the public aware of the problems.However, food is not enough to sustain life: we also require safe ways getting rid of refuse and waste. Without sanitation life is just as miserable, and potentially as dangerous. The concentration of people in cities makes sanitary problems acute. In 1900 the horses in New York City fouled the streets with more than 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine daily!In response, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many cities built modern water and sewer systems and began garbage collection. With this advance came the effective filtering and chlorination of water supplies, with the acceptance of the germ theory of disease.“Since 1990, 2.6 billion people have gained access to an improved water source, which means that 285,000 more people got safe water every day for twenty-five years,” Norberg explains.Asking why some people are poor, is the wrong question. “We do not need an explanation for poverty, because that is the starting point for everybody. Poverty is what you have until you create wealth.”The definition of poverty in France used to be the inability to buy bread to survive another day. In the richest countries in Europe in 1820, the per capita GDP was the equivalent of around $1,500 to $2,000. This is less than in present-day Mozambique and Pakistan. The average world citizen was as poor as the average person in Haiti, Liberia and Zimbabwe today.With violent crime making the headlines every day, and the tragedies of 9/11, Syria, the horrors of Islamic State and terror attacks on major European cities, it is easy to think our era is especially plagued by violence.Cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, has done exhaustive research on the history of violence. He concluded that the dramatic reduction in violence in our times “may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history”.The 19th century folktales popular with children were filled with murder, cannibalism, mutilation and sexual abuse. Many nursery rhymes include the same themes. A study comparing violence on British television before 9 p.m., and nursery rhymes, concluded that nursery rhymes are eleven times less safe for children.Torture and mutilation was normative in all great civilizations. The best minds in the medieval period were occupied with coming up with ways of inflicting as much pain as possible on people before they confessed or died.According to Steven Pinker’s sources, the average annual rate of violent death for non-state societies – from hunter-gatherer tribes to gold rush societies in California – was 524 per 100,000. The homicide rate in the US, which is much more violent than Europe, is now lower than 5 per 100,000.With the rise of more humanitarian attitudes, a sharp mind and tongue is now valued more than a sharp sword. The fitness and readiness to strike out is now being replaced by a readiness to control one’s emotions. With families having fewer children, the perceived value of each human life has increased.There are still those who gladly inflict pain on their victims, but now even sadists and psychopaths have the right to a fair trial.The number of fatalities from terrorist activity has increased five-fold since 2000, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Terrorism is spectacular, dramatic and frightening which is the whole point. But it kills very few. Since 2000, around 400 people have died from terrorism in the OECD countries annually, and mostly in Turkey and Israel. More Europeans drown in their own bathtubs, and ten times more die falling down the stairs.“When we don’t see the progress we have made,” says Norberg, “we begin to search for scapegoats for the problems that remain.” This book is not only an intellectual pick-me-up, but was also written as a warning – it would be a terrible mistake to take the progress we have made for granted.Readability Light —+- SeriousInsights High +—- LowPractical High —-+ Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the recently released The Executive Update.

⭐Johan Norberg’s “Progress: Ten Reasons To Look Forward To The Future” is a must-read work of such staggering scope in so many ways and on so many levels that I scarcely know where to begin.So . . . let’s talk Star Trek.It’s become commonplace to read about many of Star Trek’s technological innovations coming true now, 200 years before the future depicted in the show. But what if some of Star Trek’s cultural predictions started coming true now? What if the fundamental problems of human survival were being solved — not 200 years from now — but today?What if poverty, for instance — or hunger — or pollution — was being eradicated right now instead of 200 years from now?“Despite what we hear on the news and from many authorities, the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place.” — NorbergToday, people like President Trump paint a horrific picture of the world because they want you to be terrified of it. “American carnage”, anyone? But Johan Norberg presents the facts that overwhelmingly support the proposition that the human race is not just surviving but thriving. And not only are we not destroying each other, by and large — violence is actually at an all-time low — but we’re also not destroying the planet.Tired of the dystopian Malthusian pessimism you’ve been hearing for the past several decades? If Norberg is right, politicians on both left and right will have a harder time finding crises to exploit. Everyone who’s worried about the rise of emotionalism on both the left and the right should read this book.Beginning with hunger, Norberg takes ten major components of human progress and illuminates every aspect of them, showing just where they come from and the impact they have had — and are continuing to have. It is almost as though Norberg has taken the classic essay, I, Pencil, and expanded it to encompass the whole of human history. The implications of the facts that Norberg leads the reader through are kaleidoscopic and breathtaking. In chapter after chapter, Norberg shows us how the human race is solving its greatest historical challenges — not in some far off future, but right now, before our eyes — not those of our children or grandchilren! And not just in the “privileged”, most technologically advanced societies, but everywhere. The number of people around the world who are now thriving that would have faced certain starvation and death just fifty years ago is stunning. Back then, pundits were predicting widespread famine on a global scale. Since then, the opposite has happened! And instead of being overwhelmed by a population explosion, people everywhere are having less children because more of them actually survive now.Norberg makes it clear that private property rights have been just as important in motivating farmers to be more productive as advances in agricultural technology have been — even in China, where local farmers defied the Communist Party to work their own land and became so successful that the Party endorsed the farmers’ reforms. Within two years, the communes of the “Great Leap Forward” were gone and productivity skyrocketed. No longer did farmers have to roam the countryside begging for food. It must be noted here that Progress is not for the squeamish — Norberg does not shy away from reminding us of what it was like for past generations to live through times of crop failures and the resulting famines — down to and including cannibalism.Progress shows that a future free of poverty, hunger and pollution is not only possible, but happening right now — and it’s because of individual rights and economic freedom, not the socialism of Star Trek. Progress makes it clear that the reason why poverty was endemic for so much of human history was the absence of freedom for so much of human history.Progress is not a call to complacency. The progress we enjoy today comes from a very real expansion of freedom around the world. That didn’t happen by itself and it won’t continue to happen unless we keep working to see that it does continue. The point is, our efforts are paying off and that is why we need to keep working on these issues. People will have better lives if we continue to uphold their right to live their lives as they see fit. It may seem like a Sisyphean effort in a time when authoritarian doomsayers are using emotion in a desperate bid to distract people from the actual facts to try to make us turn away from freedom. But, in Progress, Johan Norberg demonstrates that there may actually be light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, there are real problems in the world. There always have been and always will be. But problems will always have solutions. That is an actual fact.Progress is concrete evidence that the future is now and it can and will get even better — but only so long as we continue to work to see that it does. Read it!

⭐Norberg presents a fact-based argument that the world today is a much better place than it was 200 years ago, 70 years ago, or even 30 years ago. Under the headings of food, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, environment, literacy, freedom and equality, Progress unremittingly lays out the evidence for the argument, supported by well-chosen human-scaled illustrations of the big picture. Further, Norberg argues that, as the number of people alive today with luxury to spend their time making the world a better place is at an all-time maximum, we should be optimistic about the future.This is how history should be taught. That the vast majority of people, especially in the west, might be surprised by Norberg’s case is food for thought. After all, there is nothing controversial here.All this said, Progress should be read with a critical eye. There are errors. For example, Norberg says that ‘several countries recorded increases of life expectancy of more than one year every year for more than a decade. After having lived through a decade, the average person in those countries could expect to have more years left than they’d had at the beginning of the decade’. Deducing the latter claim from the former is not just badly wrong, it is ludicrously daft. Whoever edited this section was asleep at the wheel. As another example, Norberg implies that the 1918 ‘Hunger Map of Europe’ indicates the state of agriculture in the early twentieth century, rather overlooking the obvious conclusion that it represents the devastating impact of World War I.Worse though, Progress conveniently ignores evidence that is at odds with its central premise. Within countries, income inequality has been on an increasing trend for the last thirty years in virtually all countries. It’s effect in many western countries has been strong enough to leave large numbers of people left behind by the general improvement in global life conditions. It is known that income equality is positively correlated with happiness. Yet Norberg ignores these well-known facts when considering why his views are not universally shared.Speaking from within the UK, I’m aware that happiness surveys never identify affluent urban areas as providing the best lives. Indeed, quite the reverse is true. It is always sparsely populated rural areas that come top. I can’t believe this is only true in the UK. But it can’t be true in Norberg’s world – it is at odds with his argument (and he never addresses these well-known sources of evidence).This is a good book. It presents clear, engaging and wholly believable stories to support its cause. It contains a wealth of fact and argument that should be (but isn’t) common knowledge. The world would be a better place if it was. But I can’t give it five stars because at times it sacrifices honesty for rhetoric.

⭐Most of us are not swayed by rationalised argument or fact but we are much more influenced by our personal narratives and how we emotionally or intuitively respond to the information we receive through our senses. And most of us seem to feel that we have never lived in such trouble times and that we’ve never had it so bad. And this has resulted in us making decisions such as leaving Europe or voting for a president in America who seems closer to narcissistic madness because “things are bad, real bad” – but that’s just my story and how I might be feeling, after all bad news is all around us and on a never ending stream of news bites. However, what this book does is present a wide range of factual arguments that draw on history and numbers/ data (and other wonderful works that include Angus Deaton and Steven Pinker) that actually show that we are living in a much better times and that we can only truly realise through perspective and seeing how fortunate we are than those in the past. Violence is a lot less of problem then it is ever been in the past. In 1900 the majority of people lived the same life span of the chimpanzee (of about 40 years) and now we average a life span almost twice as long. We no longer die by the thousands and millions of diseases such as cholera, smallpox, measles and the plague. Sanitation and medication save many more lives along with the ability to grow foods that we now no longer live in worry of starvation and famine and are now more risk of death and amputation through obesity. Did you know that there has never been a famine in any democratic nation, I never knew. Though slavery is prevailing we actually have many more people living under liberty and freedom than serfdom and enslavement. And governments of the world are there are at least trying to stop slavery and see it is been long. In my lifetime I’ve seen progress in gay rights equality, racial equality, gender equality and disability equality. The book covers a number of themes including poverty, sanitation, education, life expectancy, violence, equality, literacy, The environment and the future. I’m still going to worry about climate change though. A few facts from the beginning of the book include these: We’ve made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000 • 285,000 more people have gained access to safe water every day for the last 25 years • In the last 50 years world poverty has fallen more than it did in the preceding 500. Well worth a read if you think we’re living in terrible times that have never been worse. And perspective is a wonderful thing. The problem is that people are more interested in bad news and stories (something that helps explain why people watch “Eastenders”) than ideas that might reflect we’re living in good times.

⭐This was my choice for my Economics book club, and we all found it enjoyable, informative but slight. We had previously read Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, and there was a significant overlap between the two. Here are my notes:OverallThis is a slight but entertaining book that just contents itself with documenting the improvements in all aspects of human life over the past 200 years. Norberg mainly just sticks to the facts, and provides compelling charts, examples and statistics that show how humans have become healthier, wealthier, freer and more tolerant since the Industrial Revolution. He does not really try to explain why these improvements have occurred, nor does it adequately explain why the average person believes that the quality of life is getting worse. As a result the book is lightweight, but should be essential reading for every pessimist, socialist and grumpy old curmudgeon who believes that the current system is failing and that the good old days were better.SynopsisIn ten short chapters this book documents the enormous improvement in all aspects of human wellbeing that has been achieved since the industrial revolution. Individual chapters deal with Food, Sanitation, Life Expectancy, Poverty, Violence The Environment, Literacy, Freedom and Equality. “Even though world population grew by more than 2 billion between 1990 and 2015 the number of people who live in extreme poverty was reduced by more than 1.25 billion people. This means that extreme poverty was reduced by more than 50 million every year and almost 138,000 people every day for 25 years. If it takes you 20 minutes to read this chapter, almost another 2,000 people will have risen out of poverty.” P.77-78Everywhere there has been a steady rise in all aspects of human wellbeing, though in many Western countries people seem to believe the opposite.CritiqueI thought this book was lightweight but enjoyable, with lots of fascinating facts that illuminate how much our quality of life has improved over the past 2 centuries. That said, I would have liked Norberg to express stronger views on how progress has been achieved, what has been good for human development, and what bad. Regimes that have failed to improve human welfare also have much to teach us about the conditions necessary for development, but these are entirely neglected.• The triumph of capitalism: this is a deeply political book and I felt that the author should have made this much more explicit. The truth is that global capitalism has had a tremendous effect on human development, and this book provides copious and incontrovertible evidence to that effect. An excellent example of how capitalism has transformed people’s welfare is given on pages 68-69, where he documents how embracing economic freedom has transformed the economies of Asia since the 1960s. Yet, despite all this evidence many in the West attempt to argue on moral grounds that globalisation is a “bad thing,” because conditions in Bangladeshi clothing factories do not meet the standards of European ones. Such arguments are misguided, though, because they fail to appreciate that the alternatives are worse, and to the workers jobs in the clothing factories are safer, easier and better paid than back-baking drudgery in the agricultural sector. I would have liked the political message of the book to have been more explicit: economic and political freedom equates to human welfare; socialism, communism, etc, all result in inferior outcomes.• Organisation of the book: Norberg provides 10 chapters each looking at an individual aspect of welfare; Food; Sanitation; Life Expectancy; Poverty; Violence; The Environment; Literacy; Freedom; Equality, and The next generation. There is some overlap between these topics, resulting in repetition (particularly in the chapter on Equality), while other aspects of human welfare are neglected. Thus Norberg discusses declining poverty rates, but does not otherwise address rising material wealth and how that has transformed people’s lives (I would recommend the Robert J. Gordon book “The Rise and fall of American growth” on how technology has transformed people’s lives over the past 2 centuries). Similarly, the improvement in human knowledge is neglected, presumably because this is relatively difficult to measure. I would argue that the main aspects of human welfare are: Health, Wealth, Freedom, Security and Knowledge, all of which are to some degree inter-related.• Pessimism: Norberg provides compelling and incontrovertible evidence that humanity is growing healthier and wealthier, which leads to the question why does a large percentage of the population of rich Western democracies believe that life is getting worse? His explanation is that we have an innate bias towards pessimism but I found this rather glib. Instead of relying on evidence gleaned from secondary sources, I would have liked him to do some actual research. Why do people think life is getting worse? When confronted with the evidence do people change their minds? This matters because if people have a false view of the past they may vote to send us back there.“In 1955, 13% of the Swedish public thought that there were “intolerable conditions” in society. After half a century of expanded human liberties, rising incomes, reduction in poverty and improved healthcare, more than half of all Swedes thought so.” P.2ConclusionA good and enjoyable book that documents how we have all become steadily healthier and wealthier, but one which fails to address why we have not become happier.

⭐This was much more than I had expected. I had expected lots of “futurist” nonsense about new tech, entrepreneurs and inventions. What I got was a quick fire survey of how rapidly society has developed over the last two hundred years which leads, in turn, to a clearer understanding of why it is very wrong to think everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Like many others I read too much news and that makes me think things are getting worse. Not so. Yes, there are many major problems remaining in the world but, as the author makes clear, the world today is a much better and safer place, especially for some groups of people, than the world in which I was born just a short time ago in the 1970s. Very much worth reading.

⭐I think it was David Deutsch who has said that optimism is the belief that all problems can be solved, given sufficient time. Norberg’s book shows quite clearly that the rate of progress across a number of the most fundamental domains of our life on this search has been so consistent and remarkable that we have every reason to subscribe to this world view. This is not a blind optimism. Both Deutsch and Norberg acknowledge in their different ways that there are risks to progress that left unchecked and unmitigated have the potential to cause huge damage. But the weight of evidence accumulated over the last few centuries is very much on the side of progress and overcoming the gravest challenges. The key is education – accumulating that knowledge, reflecting on it and sharing it. In a world that is more connected in so many ways than it has ever been, this book shows us that we have all the reason and knowledge to hope.

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