This is an outstanding book: erudite, eloquent, and wise. In it, Matt Ridley integrates work from evolutionary biology, history, economics, psychology, and philosophy to combat the pessimism that pervades contemporary discourse. Ridley demonstrates that human well-being has increased vastly over time: 'Food availability, income and life expectancy are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down -all across the globe.' (front flap) And he argues that well-being can continue to increase worldwide, at ever greater rates. It can do so, according to Ridley, because the accelerating improvement results from core human propensities for specialisation and exchange: prosperity is the outcome of the beneficial, cumulative interactions of evolved human capabilities for innovating and trading.
Ridley is well-equipped to argue such an ambitious theme. He has an Oxford doctorate in zoology, and has been both the science editor and the US editor of The Economist, as well as a venture capitalist and a bank chairman. He calls upon work done by, among many others, Ricardo, de Soto, Coase, Simon, Kealey, Hayek, Read, Darwin and Dawkins to explode conventional myths, both those of a golden past and those of a gloomy future. And he displays his personal commitment to rational improvement by undertaking to provide online 'continuously corrected and expanded' (p. 363) versions of the extensive notes.
Ridley considers many explanations of 'the rapid, continuous and incessant