It's getting better all the time

Matt Ridley hawking his new book, "The Rational Optimist," in the WSJ weekend journal.

The line that got me from the piece, which is good:

Trade was the most momentous innovation of the human species; it led to the invention of invention.

More:

Trade is to culture as sex is to biology.  Exchange makes cultural change collective and cumulative.  It becomes possible to draw upon inventions made throughout society, not just in your neighborhood.  The rate of cultural and economic progress depends on the rate at which ideas are having sex.

Dense populations don't produce innovation in other species. They only do so in human beings, because only human beings indulge in regular exchange of different items among unrelated, unmated individuals and even among strangers. So here is the answer to the puzzle of human takeoff. It was caused by the invention of a collective brain itself made possible by the invention of exchange.

Once human beings started swapping things and thoughts, they stumbled upon divisions of labor, in which specialization led to mutually beneficial collective knowledge. Specialization is the means by which exchange encourages innovation: In getting better at making your product or delivering your service, you come up with new tools. The story of the human race has been a gradual spread of specialization and exchange ever since: Prosperity consists of getting more and more narrow in what you make and more and more diverse in what you buy. Self-sufficiency—subsistence—is poverty.

The fundamental rule-set that underlies all my thinking: connectivity drives code (my security focus) but likewise wealth (my argument that globalization is beneficial).

Strong finish:

The process of cumulative innovation that has doubled life span, cut child mortality by three-quarters and multiplied per capita income ninefold—world-wide—in little more than a century is driven by ideas having sex. And things like the search engine, the mobile phone and container shipping just made ideas a whole lot more promiscuous still.

Again, so much for the myth that we now enter a great period of deglobalization just because of the financial crisis of the past year-and-a-half.  Also, you realize what BS it is to declare globalization some top-down-driven, elite conspiracy.

People connect because they instinctively know it brings them a better, safer, more prosperous life.

Dream all you want about communitarian enclavism as the great alternative salvation, and then realize that it too will be accommodated under globalization--not as a solution but as a means of exploring and retaining individual identity.

Comments

[Ted O'Connor]

Tom: Just saw a few photos from the President's attempt to honor war dead at a cemetery near Chicago. A mid western thunder storm swept over the event with thunder and lightning. The President prudently decided to ask folks who were out in the open to disperse for their safety.

In the photos you can see that some of the people...cue flash of lightning and loud thunder clap...are holding METAL folding chairs over their heads to stay dry.

I know you believe we are capable of great things Tom...just remember that some of us are not that far removed from the caves.