Then and Now Part 3
by Dr. Doug Cardell
In the first two articles of this series, Then & Now Part 1, and Then & Now Part 2, we covered how life has gotten better for individuals, particularly in the US. This article will take a broader look at how free-market capitalism and democracy have affected the world. I think you will be shocked to learn that it does not remotely resemble the doom and gloom touted by the media. A 2021 Bath University study surveyed 10000 16-25-year-olds living in ten countries worldwide (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the USA). Seventy-five percent responded that the "future is frightening." Fifty-six percent believed that "humanity is doomed." More than a third are afraid to have children. Fifty-five percent believe their life will be worse than their parents. Over half think that the things they value most will be destroyed. Eighty-two percent say that "people have failed to take care of the planet." The obvious question is, are these concerns and fears justified? Before we continue, we need to point out two universal truths. First, human beings spent most of humanity's existence in an incredibly hostile world. Humans are constantly alert to threats; it is in our DNA. This high state of alert continues to exist in a world that is safer and more welcoming than ever before. Second, the news media gets far more attention from negative stories than positive ones. The newsroom thesis has always been—"if it bleeds it leads." The media only makes money by getting us to watch, listen, or read. They have learned that reporting stuff that scares us is what gets the job done. When combined, our natural fears, stoked by relentlessly negative media, leave many of us with a picture of the world that is many times more dangerous than reality. Here are just some of what the media mostly ignores. In 1900, the global life expectancy was less than 35 years. By 1960, it had risen to 51 years. Today, global life expectancy is over 73 years. Hunger has dramatically decreased; the world average of calories per person available is 50% more than 80 years ago. We are far safer from natural disasters; of the top ten deadliest natural disasters in the past 400 years, only two, HIV/AIDs and COVID-19, occurred in the last hundred years and were the least deadly. Mortality rates from natural disasters are down 99% since a hundred years ago. Most think the world's population is getting poorer. Not true! The world relies increasingly on free-market capitalism and the resulting industrialization and increased productivity, which results in lifting more people out of poverty. In 1950, 75% of the world lived in extreme poverty, which the World Bank defines as those living on less than $2.15/day; by 1981, it fell to 44 percent. The research suggests that now those in extreme poverty are below 10 percent. At this rate, extreme poverty may be extinct worldwide in a decade. With improving economic conditions comes improved health. Modern medicine is not the only reason for improved health. Rising prosperity and changing living conditions made a more significant difference than medicine. Improvements in housing and sanitation increased our ability to combat infectious diseases. Increased productivity and burgeoning free trade boosted productivity in agriculture, and more extensive trade led to higher disease resistance. Free trade has produced a far more sanitary world. Just a quarter-century ago, fifty-seven percent of the world's population relied on unsafe sanitation. Just 25 years later, that number has fallen to thirty-three percent. More than that, almost a third of humanity now has access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The people of Earth are now eating half a pound of fruit per day compared to less than half that amount in 1960. Furthermore, food scarcity is rapidly diminishing and may soon become a memory. In the last eighty years, calorie consumption has increased by thirty-one percent. This dramatic rise in quality of life and nutrition has increased worldwide intelligence and even made us taller. But modern medicine has played its role as well. It has nearly eliminated polio. Today it affects only .0000004 percent of the population, less than one-tenth the number only forty years ago. One of the natural disasters mentioned earlier, HIV, is coming under control. HIV death rates are dropping; cut in half since 2002. In a similar time frame, the number of children surviving past five years old has more than doubled. Even in the world's poorest countries, ninety-four percent live past age five. In addition, overall child mortality has dropped from ten percent in 1950 to less than two percent today. Life expectancy continues to rise as well. It has risen fifty-four percent since 1950, from 46.5 years to more than seventy-two today. Literacy is at an all-time high. Prior to 1700, just 5% of Europe's population could read or write. Today more than 90% of the world's population under 25 years old can read and write. The overall literacy rate has increased from ten percent in the early 1800s to thirty-three by 1930 to eighty-five percent today. In addition, recent generations are far better educated than older ones. Those with college educations have increased from thirty million seventy-five years ago to over a billion today. The world population is on track to peak and begin declining. Fifty years ago, the global fertility rate was double what it is today. It fell from more than five children per woman in 1960 to below two and a half today. While it may be as much as fifty years before the world population peaks, the population growth rate peaked in 1975. The media leads us to believe wars and conflicts are becoming far more common, but the reverse is true. Wars and conflicts are decreasing. Throughout history, the world has had battles. For more than half of the last 600 years, at least two of the world's major powers were at war with each other. The last 25 years have been the most extended period in which no major powers were at war with each other. Twenty-five years ago, there were twenty-three major conflicts; today, there are seven, and most are civil wars. In addition, the nuclear powers have cut the number of nuclear weapons to one-sixth of the number thirty-five years ago. This reduction in conflict is primarily due to increased freedom. The world's free population has risen from ten percent a century ago to fifty-six percent living in democracies in 2017. Thirty-five years ago, the world had eighty-five autocracies; in 2020, there were fifty-two. This increase in freedom is the most significant driver of world peace. True democracies with relatively free markets and capitalism don't war with each other. Virtually all wars happen when an autocracy attacks another or a democracy. Free-market capitalism in democratic states best guarantees a more peaceful world. The public and social media also lead us to believe we are destroying the environment. However, studies show that the amount of protected land has recently grown to fifteen percent of the surface. The studies also show that now seven percent of the seas are protected areas. Furthermore, global tree cover increased to one hundred-seven percent of the surface covered in 1982. There have been reductions in tropical forests, but those have been more than offset by growth in temperate forests. In addition to that, there has been an increase in privately protected global areas. Since this is good news, the media ignores the market's response, as explained in The Climate Change Cure. The media touts danger, but we are far safer than we were a century ago. We are ninety-six percent less likely to die in auto accidents, eighty-eight percent less likely to be killed on the sidewalk, ninety-nine percent less likely to die in an aircraft accident, and ninety-five percent less likely to be killed in the workplace. There is still more crime in the US than we would like, but contrary to popular belief, it's not much more than in 1950. Homicides peaked in 1980 at 10.4 per hundred thousand; in 2019, it was half that at 5.07, nearly the same as 5.1 in 1950. Property crime and vehicle theft also peaked in 1980, but in 2019 it was back to about the same levels as in 1950. The only increase has been larceny which is half of what it was in 1980 but is still about double the rate in 1950. Freedom is the driver of all of these improvements in the world. Freedom leads to free-market capitalism, the economic engine of the resulting prosperity. In dollars adjusted for inflation, GDP per capita in the developed world has risen from $3,350 in 1950 to $15,200 in 2018. That's an increase of over three hundred fifty percent. These gains haven't been as significant in less developed countries, but those are improving as well, and global inequality is reducing. In fact, today, about half the world's nine billion people are, by international standards, middle class. This economic growth has changed everything. Most of the world, for the first time, is growing economically. This growth is more important than it might seem. In a static, non-growth economy, wealth is a zero-sum game. In a zero-sum game, the only way for one person to gain is to take from others. This truth is so etched into our consciousness that most of us believe it is still valid. It's not! A growth economy is a positive-sum game. That means that instead of all of us sharing a pie that has a fixed size, we all worked together to make a bigger and bigger pie. In a fixed-size economy, the wealthy could only increase their wealth by exploiting the poor. However, in a growth economy like we have today, the wealthy acquire wealth with innovation that grows a bigger economy and delivers a bigger share to everyone. Of the ten most affluent in the world today, only one, a European, inherited wealth. The other nine, all Americans, created wealth. Those nine employ more people than the total population of all but the two largest US cities. It's time for everyone to rejoice in the death of the exploitive zero-sum economy and celebrate the growing positive-sum economy. Public and social media also cause us to view the world more negatively by magnifying our differences. These media are a significant factor in the growing partisanship worldwide. The media convinces us that every election will bring the end of the world if the candidate they oppose wins. But the world doesn't end. It swings back and forth between extremes as it has for all of history. Bob Dylan had it right, "Come writers and critics, Who prophesize with your pen, And keep your eyes wide, The chance won't come again, And don't speak too soon, For the wheel's still in spin, And there's no tellin' who that it's namin', For the loser now will be later to win, For the times they are a-changin'." The times are constantly changing, but it's a back-and-forth oscillation like a yo-yo but the yo-yo is on an escalator going up. The media focuses on the yo-yo and ignores the escalator lifting the state of the world's economic freedom every day. We'd be much happier if we ignored the media and its obsession with the yo-yo and enjoyed the freedom and the free-market growth economy that is making all of us better off day after day. Life in today's world is better than it has ever been, and it will continue to get better in the future as long as freedom and free-market capitalism continue to spread. Nothing else will provide a more peaceful and prosperous world. Addendum: After initially writing this article, I realized it could benefit from some personal observations. As a 'boomer,' I can tell you that life was different back then and not like the Nirvana that later generations believe it was. I guess our family was middle class. I remember my mom spending much time mending clothes and darning socks. She had a thing she called a darning doll that she inserted into socks to allow her to fix holes by somehow reweaving them. She was an expert at invisibly mending clothes and had mended most of my clothes. In addition, almost none of my clothes were new. They were mostly 'hand-me-downs' from older cousins who often had gotten them from cousins older than them. They were second or third-hand by the time I got them. We lived in Chicago. We had no air conditioning, an oil-burning furnace in the basement with a massive oil tank, no clothes dryer or dishwasher, no powered lawn mower, no microwave, and a one-car garage since we only ever had one used car. When I was 11, I got a paper route. On my first payday, I bought a shirt, nothing fancy, but it was the first shirt I ever had that was new and chosen by me. I also purchased a small steak and asked my mom to cook it for me since I had heard about them and had never had one. We had a 14" black-and-white TV which received three stations and required a lot of antenna fiddling to do that. When I was 12 or 13, I wanted to start working out so I could play football. We couldn't afford the equipment, so I attached an old pipe to the rafters in the garage for a pull-up bar and made a set of weights from short pieces of broomstick with a long bolt through the ends and put each end in a coffee can and filled it with concrete left over from a neighbor's construction work. I made a barbell the same way but used a pipe instead of a broomstick and five-gallon paint cans from the same neighbor's project. But here's the thing - we thought we were doing fine. Our parents were raised in the depression and didn't have half of what we had, even though my dad's dad was a doctor and my mom's dad was a county assessor. Besides that, we knew many people who had a good deal less than we did. To help those less well-off, we worked through our church to help them. I also put ten percent of my allowance in the collection plate every Sunday and spent hours going door-to-door collecting for the United Way and other charities. I know a lot of folks in later generations laugh at our "back-in-the-day" stories, but they might do better to listen and take time to appreciate how much better their lives are than they sometimes think they are. This whole Then and Now series has shown that life today is better than ever, and every generation has that to be thankful for.
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