Peace and prosperity. Part 2

In my previous blog, I was talking about how our world is turning better in terms of reduced violence and by reaping peace dividend. In this piece, as a sequel to it, I am trying to prove that in today’s world, how rich, comfortable and prosperous we are, in comparison with our older generation. I will also try to indicate the pathways with which we had progressed and its implication for the future.

Ordinary mortals sincerely believe that the present day generation is unfortunate to inhale polluted air, forced to eat unhealthy food stuffs, drink contaminated water and so on. We keep romantic belief of how our great grand fathers were fortunate to live harmoniously with nature, having good air to breath, had healthy food, did ‘worked’ a lot and hence lived long. We assume that, for them, their village life was much simpler, healthier and pleasant.

 However, contrary to that, for those mortals, life was never been simple and pleasant as we wish to assume.  In reality, they could afford to have far less food, fuel, and fibre than today. Both because of unavailability or un-affordability, they starved, sometimes died, stayed in darkness, died due to unknown diseases and many perished in fury of nature.

300 years back, a British thinker cum Economist called Thomas Robert Malthus infamously predicted that world will soon go over populated and many millions can’t feed themselves  hence will die. He theorised all along that world can tolerate only a certain fixed amount of human population and rest will have to perish if they happened to born.

However, what he underestimated was the human ingenuity to create more out of existing resources through knowledge and technology and find solutions to existing challenges. Contrary to Malthusian predictions, humanity didn’t perish due to famine. It prospered and could feed all.

Instead of Malthusian apocalyptic scenario, what exactly happened?

Poverty – How much poorer are we now? It is surprising to know that just 9% of the world’s population now lives in absolute poverty. In 1809 AD, this figure was almost 83 %. It implies, despite humongous growth in population over last 2 centuries, we pulled billions of people out of poverty in to prosperity.

Cheaper goods -Four basic human needs, ie food, clothing, fuel and shelter, had grown cheaper, (compared to our income), in the last two centuries. Many of us believe that prices of these goods are increasing. But data says otherwise. For most of us, a pair of dress would be costing not more than our two day’s income. Food we consume in a month may not cost more than 25% of our monthly income.  In earlier times, the same food and clothing would have incurred much higher share of our income. So with cheaper goods, more disposable income we have, and more pleasure hunting and more enjoyable our life is.

Less drudgery, more pleasure - We spend far lesser time in doing things which we don’t like. Most of us don’t have to wash our cloths using our hands. We spend much lesser time in our kitchen and inhale much less toxic gases than our grandmothers used to do. We have more leisure, more movies and TV shows to watch, and more time to read and pursue hobbies. We travel a far lot than our grandfathers used to. Life is easy. Is it not?

Machines work for us –Visit any modern factory floor shop and compare it what it was few decades back.  Much of the manufacturing is mechanised now. All dirty and risky jobs are done by soulless machines and humans are sitting in comforts of their Air-conditioned rooms. Yes, our workmen are getting far higher pay by working far lesser than what his grandparents used to have.  

 Are rich people getting richer? – Yes of course. Our Ambanis and Adanis are getting richer, but not by making us poor. They are getting richer by making things cheaper for us, example – data and voice by Reliance Gio. Similar is our innovators, entrepreneurs and scientists. Men who developed LED bulbs helped us to cut our electricity bills substantially. Pharmaceutical company Cipla made HIV drugs less than a $ a day and saved millions of lives.

Again, over the last 20 years, proportion of the world population living in poverty got almost halved.  While 85% of world s population was poor in 1800 AD, it was 50% in 1966. Now it is just 9%. Yes, you heard it right, 91% of the world s population are either rich or middle class.

Not just poverty let us examine few other parameters.

a)      Number of battle death per 10000 populations in a year, is just one today. It was 200 in 1944.

b)      Our world had 64000 nuclear warheads in 1989. Meanwhile, there are just 15000 in today.

c)      1660 thousand tons of Ozone depletion substances were released in 1970. Now it is just 22 thousand.

d)      971000 people died due to natural disaster in a year in 1930 s. In the last decade, only 72000 died in a year.

e)      148 countries had small pox infection 150 years back. Now it is ZERO.

f)       Nearly 15% of the world’s surface area is protected as National parks and forest reserves. It was just 0.03%, a century back.

g)      Yield per hector of cereal production had almost tripled in the last 50 years.  It means we need far less land to feed our mouths, rest of which we can turn either in to forest or to a shopping mall.

h)      In our world, nearly 80% have electricity connection. Most of our grandfathers lived in darkness.

These are not exhaustive but an illustrative example of human progress in the occurred in the last few decades. 

Besides, whether it is number of movies produced, number of Pianos sold, or number of tourists visited, we are at all time high.

Despite this hard facts and figures, why we are still feeling that ‘things are getting bad’? Is it because of our negativity instinct which increases our tendency to notice bad more than good? Possibly. We often tempt to mis-remember and have romantic notions of our past. This romanticism stops us from cool thinking.

We often consume a lot of negative news. Our journalists often do selective reporting. For them, millions of people pulled out of poverty are not news. Stories of gradual improvements are not stories at all. They print stories which are dramatic in nature and hence these ‘boring’ ones are almost never getting reported.  Hence we have an illusion of being in a bad world.

I am not saying that everything is good in this world. there are many thongs which we don't like and want to get it changed.However, many of our problems are actually problems of plenty. Ex, Obesity is there because we have more things to eat, traffic congestion and pollution is there because more people can own a car now. Yes, there are many things which we need to be worried. In due course of time, human ingenuity will help us to find a way out as well.  What I am trying to point out is that despite things which appear to be bad; things are better, better than it was few decades back. It can be bad; still it can be better as well.

 If today is better than yesterday, there is every reason to believe that tomorrow would be even better. This is the message that I would like to convey through above said narratives and facts.

Data references and ideas from-

a) Factfulness-  by Hans Rosling-

b) Rational Optimist- by Matt Ridley