How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

by Matt Ridley

In the ten years since I published The Rational Optimist, arguing unfashionably that the world has been, is, and will go on getting better, not worse, human living standards have grown rapidly higher for nearly everybody. I finished that book as the world was plumbing the depths of a terrible recession, but the years since have been ones of faster economic growth for much of the poor of the world than ever before. The income of the average Ethiopian has doubled in a decade; the number of people living in extreme poverty has dipped below 10 per cent for the first time in history; malaria mortality has plummeted; war has ceased altogether in the western hemisphere and become much rarer in the Old World, too; frugal LED lights have replaced both incandescent and fluorescent bulbs; telephone conversations have essentially become free on Wi-Fi. Some things have got worse, of course, but most trends are positive. All this is due to innovation.