The Rational Optimist
How Prosperity Evolves
By Matt Ridley
Fourth Estate, 438pp.
Reviewed: 26 June, 2010
I opened this book with some hope. The title offered a chance to be both optimistic and rational.
By the end of the book the gloom had been stirred, but not shaken. The welcome stir was Matt Ridley’s catalogue of our remarkable human history of adapting to great and unforeseeable problems, on every scale from the microbial to the global. We have also generated almost continuous growth in overall quality of life, across most of a multiplying global population.
Regrettably, Ridley’s arguments did not shake this reader’s view that the individuals of our species, given freedom of choice, too often choose to avoid the measurable, individual short-term pain that is needed for an immeasurable, collective long-term gain.
Ridley presents himself as a true believer that private enterprise and market forces are the only reliable engine of prosperity. A claim to be rational is always contestable. Ridley is really an optimistic neo-liberal, and his guru is Friedrich Hayek, the father of neo-liberal economics.
Ridley blames society’s failures on a very long list of human villains: chiefs, priests, poll-driven politicians, bureaucrats, financiers, professors, out-of-control militarists, privilege-seeking corporations and monopolists. All are described as “parasites” on the productivity generated by the hard-working makers and traders further down the social tree.
It can be confusing for a reader to work out how, if the role of government should always be minimized, then all these competing stakeholder interests are to be reconciled.
Ridley clearly states that the key to trust in markets lies in stable institutions backed by an accepted rule of law. But he doesn’t seem to trust anyone who might have the responsibility for generating, renovating or administering such institutions and laws.
In the end, Ridley pins his optimism on Hayek’s concept of “catallaxy”. He believes human intelligence will become more collective, and innovation will become more bottom up, thanks to the “dot-communism” of information exchange enabled by the Internet and allied communication ecologies. This will (probably) solve all challenges, if only the human “parasites” can be kept at bay.
This book needs to be read as a polemic. Facts and opinons are marshalled to support a rhetorical purpose rather than pretending to offer a balanced enquiry. I found enough instances of dubious attribution, or casual dismissal of effects on large populations, to stir my skeptical juices.
Richard Thwaites has worked with politicians, public servants and journalists.
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