The Rational Optimist | Viscount Ridley
Channel: Centre for Independent Studies
Date: 2011-06-18

Author and rational optimist Matt Ridley spoke at The Centre for Independent Studies about the overwhelming evidence that shows life is getting better - despite an abundance of pessimistic counterclaims.
Today there are more than 6 billion people on the planet, 99 per cent of whom are better fed, better sheltered, better entertained and better protected against disease than their Stone Age ancestors. The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going erratically upwards for 10,000 years and has rapidly accelerated over the last 200 years...

Yet, bizarrely, however much things improve from the way they were before, people still cling to the belief that the future will be nothing but disastrous. In this original, optimistic book, Matt Ridley puts forward his surprisingly simple answer to how humans progress, arguing that we progress when we trade and we only really trade productively when we trust each other. The Rational Optimist will do for economics what Genome did for genomics and will show that the answer to our problems, imagined or real, is to keep on doing what we've been doing for 10,000 years -- to keep on changing.

Matt's books have sold over 850,000 copies, been translated into 30 languages, short-listed for six literary prizes and won two awards. His work has appeared in The Economist, Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Guardian, New Scientist, Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, amongst other publications. Matt is Co-founder and President of the International Centre for Life.
 
Matt's book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, provides compelling and positive evidence that life has improved dramatically and continues to do so.

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