My favorite science and environmental columnist and author of the must read Rational Optimist, the eminent Matthew Ridley propounds 17 reasons why we should be cheerful:
1. We're better off now
2. Urban living is a good thing
3. Poverty is nose-diving
4. The important stuff costs less
5. The environment is better than you think
6. Shopping fuels innovation
7. Global trade enriches our lives
8. More farm production = more wilderness
9. The good old days weren't
10. Population growth is not a threat
11. Oil is not running out
12. We are the luckiest generation
13. Storms are not getting worse
14. Great ideas keep coming
15. We can solve all our problems
16. This depression is not depressing
17. Optimists are right
Read Mr. Ridley’s explanations here.
All the above redounds to a single most important theme: the human being.
Rational optimism is a bet on human capital, or in the context of the Austrian economic school, praxeology or the science of human action—purposeful behavior towards the fulfillment of an end which aims to substitute present unsatisfactory conditions.
Human actions in pursuit of constant improvements is likely to bring about positive changes, despite attendant challenges (especially from politicians, the regulators and cronies).
People are the ultimate resource, as the great author and Professor Julian Simon once wrote,
Only one important resource has shown a trend of increasing scarcity rather than increasing abundance. It is the most important and valuable resource of all—human beings
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