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Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future Hardcover – October 11, 2016

by Johan Norberg (Author)

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A Book of the Year for The Economist and the Observer

It’s all over our televisions, newspapers and the internet. Every day we’re bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is – Brexit, financial collapse, unemployment, poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. Indeed, our world now seems to be on the brink of collapse, and yet:

We’ve made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000
285,000 more people have gained access to safe water every day for the last 25 years
In the last 50 years world poverty has fallen more than it did in the preceding 500

Contrary to what most of us believe, our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.

Examining official data from the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, Johan Norberg traces just how far we have come in tackling the issues facing our species. While it’s true that not every problem has been solved, we do now have a good idea of the solutions and we know what it will take to see this progress continue. Counter-intuitive, dramatic and uplifting, Progress is a call for renewed hope in defiance of the doom-mongering of politicians and the media.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Oneworld Publications
Publication date

October 11, 2016
Dimensions

6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

1780749503
ISBN-13

978-1780749501
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Editorial Reviews

Review

‘Reminds us that headlines are misleading and that history and data show that life has been getting radically better in every way’. -- Steven Pinker ― Observer, Books of the Year

‘A blast of good sense.’ ― Economist

‘Norberg has a strong case and he makes it with energy and charm. A pertinent book for grumpy times.’ ― Robbie Millen, The Times

'His unfailing optimism and well-argued points generate powerful good-news vibes’. ― Esquire

‘An exhilarating book. With the combination of arresting stories and striking data, Progress will change your understanding about where we’ve come from and where we may be heading.’ -- Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

‘Norberg entertainingly presents the case for something every expert knows but most newsreaders will find hard to believe: the world is getting richer, healthier, freer, and more peaceful’. ― Observer

‘Johan Norberg chronicles the still largely unknown fact that humanity is now healthier, happier, cleaner, cleverer, freer and more peaceful than ever before. He also explains why in this superb book.’ -- Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything

‘At a time of profound pessimism, Johan Norberg is refreshingly, but not glibly, optimistic. His excellent book documents the dramatic improvements in people’s lives and reminds us of the huge potential for further progress – provided we are open to it.’ -- Philippe Legrain, author of European Spring

‘In this brightly written, upbeat book, the Swedish author blends facts, anecdotes, and official statistics to describe “humanity's triumph” in achieving the present unparalleled level of global living standards...While acknowledging the mayhem, hunger, and poverty still facing much of the world, the author remains optimistic that human ingenuity will prevail in shaping the future. A refreshingly rosy assessment of how far many of us have come from the days when life was uniformly nasty, brutish, and short.’ ― Kirkus

‘Excellent…Norberg’s book comprehensively documents the myriad ways the state of humanity has vastly improved over the past couple of centuries.’ ― Reason

About the Author

Johan Norberg is a lecturer, documentary filmmaker and internationally acclaimed author. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. A frequent commentator in Swedish and international media, he has a weekly column in Sweden’s biggest daily, Metro. He lives in Malmö.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oneworld Publications (October 11, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1780749503
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1780749501
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,107,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,521 in General Anthropology
- #29,801 in World History (Books)
- #39,812 in Politics & Government (Books)

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Johan Norberg

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Johan Norberg is an author, lecturer and documentary filmmaker, born in Sweden. He received his M.A. in the History of Ideas from the University of Stockholm, and is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels.

Norberg's books have been published in more than 25 countries. His Progress (2016) was a book of the year in The Economist and The Guardian. For his work, Norberg has received several awards, including the Distinguished Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award, the Walter Judd Freedom Award, the Julian Simon Memorial Award, and the gold medal from the German Hayek Stiftung, that year shared with Margaret Thatcher.

"A blast of good sense"

The Economist

"A prophet of anti-pessimism"

The Guardian

"Norberg has a strong case and he makes it with energy and charm"

The Times

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4.6 out of 5

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Rob Abiera

Must-read chronicle of historic development

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

Johan Norberg’s "Progress: Ten Reasons To Look Forward To The Future" is a must-read work of such staggering scope in so many ways and on so many levels that I scarcely know where to begin.

So . . . let’s talk Star Trek.

It’s become commonplace to read about many of Star Trek’s technological innovations coming true now, 200 years before the future depicted in the show. But what if some of Star Trek’s cultural predictions started coming true now? What if the fundamental problems of human survival were being solved — not 200 years from now — but today?

What if poverty, for instance — or hunger — or pollution — was being eradicated right now instead of 200 years from now?

“Despite what we hear on the news and from many authorities, the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever to take place.” — Norberg

Today, people like President Trump paint a horrific picture of the world because they want you to be terrified of it. “American carnage”, anyone? But Johan Norberg presents the facts that overwhelmingly support the proposition that the human race is not just surviving but thriving. And not only are we not destroying each other, by and large — violence is actually at an all-time low — but we’re also not destroying the planet.

Tired of the dystopian Malthusian pessimism you’ve been hearing for the past several decades? If Norberg is right, politicians on both left and right will have a harder time finding crises to exploit. Everyone who’s worried about the rise of emotionalism on both the left and the right should read this book.

Beginning with hunger, Norberg takes ten major components of human progress and illuminates every aspect of them, showing just where they come from and the impact they have had — and are continuing to have. It is almost as though Norberg has taken the classic essay, I, Pencil, and expanded it to encompass the whole of human history. The implications of the facts that Norberg leads the reader through are kaleidoscopic and breathtaking. In chapter after chapter, Norberg shows us how the human race is solving its greatest historical challenges — not in some far off future, but right now, before our eyes — not those of our children or grandchilren! And not just in the “privileged”, most technologically advanced societies, but everywhere. The number of people around the world who are now thriving that would have faced certain starvation and death just fifty years ago is stunning. Back then, pundits were predicting widespread famine on a global scale. Since then, the opposite has happened! And instead of being overwhelmed by a population explosion, people everywhere are having less children because more of them actually survive now.

Norberg makes it clear that private property rights have been just as important in motivating farmers to be more productive as advances in agricultural technology have been — even in China, where local farmers defied the Communist Party to work their own land and became so successful that the Party endorsed the farmers’ reforms. Within two years, the communes of the “Great Leap Forward” were gone and productivity skyrocketed. No longer did farmers have to roam the countryside begging for food. It must be noted here that Progress is not for the squeamish — Norberg does not shy away from reminding us of what it was like for past generations to live through times of crop failures and the resulting famines — down to and including cannibalism.

Progress shows that a future free of poverty, hunger and pollution is not only possible, but happening right now — and it’s because of individual rights and economic freedom, not the socialism of Star Trek. Progress makes it clear that the reason why poverty was endemic for so much of human history was the absence of freedom for so much of human history.

Progress is not a call to complacency. The progress we enjoy today comes from a very real expansion of freedom around the world. That didn’t happen by itself and it won’t continue to happen unless we keep working to see that it does continue. The point is, our efforts are paying off and that is why we need to keep working on these issues. People will have better lives if we continue to uphold their right to live their lives as they see fit. It may seem like a Sisyphean effort in a time when authoritarian doomsayers are using emotion in a desperate bid to distract people from the actual facts to try to make us turn away from freedom. But, in Progress, Johan Norberg demonstrates that there may actually be light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, there are real problems in the world. There always have been and always will be. But problems will always have solutions. That is an actual fact.

Progress is concrete evidence that the future is now and it can and will get even better — but only so long as we continue to work to see that it does. Read it!

7 people found this helpful

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Ian Mann

58% of those who voted for Britain to leave the EU said that life is worse today than it was thirty years ago

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2017

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The headline of a Financial Times article ahead of new year 2015 read: ‘Battered, bruised and jumpy – the whole world is on edge’.
58% of those who voted for Britain to leave the EU said that life is worse today than it was thirty years ago.
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the US Congress: “I will personally attest to the fact that . . . [the world] is more dangerous than it has ever been.”
How are we to deal with this? Is this the worst of times, or was Franklin Pierce Adams right when he said, “Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”
When we look at the facts it is difficult to romanticize the good old days: the truth is that the good old days were awful. The great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards… ever.
This book is about humanity’s triumphs over ten scourges including poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labour, infant mortality and violence.
Nobel winning economist, Angus Deaton, the world-leading expert on health and development, explains that in 18th and early 19th century Britain, the lack of calories led to people not being able to work hard enough to produce enough food to be able to work hard. As a result, they were stunted, skinny and short, which required fewer calories and made it possible to work with less food.
Getting enough food for the body and the brain to function properly is the most basic human need, but throughout history most people have not be able to achieve this. The French and English in the eighteenth century consumed fewer calories than the current average in sub-Saharan Africa, the region most tormented by undernourishment. Famine was believed to be the lot of humanity.
This has not happened, and here are some reasons why.
The 20th century invention of artificial, cheap and abundant fertilizer was one of the most powerful weapons against hunger. It was soon used all over the world and resulted in the world population rising from 1.6 billion people in 1900 to 6 billion today.
Norman Borlaug, developed a high-yield hybrid wheat that was parasite resistant and wasn’t sensitive to daylight, so it could be grown in varying climates. It was quickly introduced all over Mexico, and in 1963, the harvest was six times that of 1944. Overnight, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat.
Similarly, India and Pakistan became self-sufficient in the production of cereals and today produce seven times more wheat than they did in 1965. Colleagues of Borlaug developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread around Asia. Borlaug is credited with saving over a billion lives and received the Nobel Peace prize for his ‘Green Revolution’, which has given poor countries better crops and bigger yields, and has alleviated rural poverty.
According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, in 1947 about 50% of the world’s population was chronically malnourished. By 1970 they estimated that 37% of the developing world population was undernourished, and today the figure is about 13%.
In the first decade of the 21st century, 1.7 million children died because of malnutrition (a shockingly high number!) but it is a 60% reduction since the 1950s, despite a doubling of the world population. To put this in a wider perspective, from 1900 to 1909, 27 million people died in famines, and more than fifteen million died every decade from the 1920s to the 1960s.
“Strange as it sounds,” the author Johan Norberg points out, “democracy is one of our most potent weapons against famine.” There have been famines in communist states, absolute monarchies, colonial states and tribal societies, but never in a democracy. This is probably because rulers who are dependent on voters do everything to avoid starvation, and a free press makes the public aware of the problems.
However, food is not enough to sustain life: we also require safe ways getting rid of refuse and waste. Without sanitation life is just as miserable, and potentially as dangerous. The concentration of people in cities makes sanitary problems acute. In 1900 the horses in New York City fouled the streets with more than 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine daily!
In response, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many cities built modern water and sewer systems and began garbage collection. With this advance came the effective filtering and chlorination of water supplies, with the acceptance of the germ theory of disease.
“Since 1990, 2.6 billion people have gained access to an improved water source, which means that 285,000 more people got safe water every day for twenty-five years,” Norberg explains.
Asking why some people are poor, is the wrong question. “We do not need an explanation for poverty, because that is the starting point for everybody. Poverty is what you have until you create wealth.”
The definition of poverty in France used to be the inability to buy bread to survive another day. In the richest countries in Europe in 1820, the per capita GDP was the equivalent of around $1,500 to $2,000. This is less than in present-day Mozambique and Pakistan. The average world citizen was as poor as the average person in Haiti, Liberia and Zimbabwe today.
With violent crime making the headlines every day, and the tragedies of 9/11, Syria, the horrors of Islamic State and terror attacks on major European cities, it is easy to think our era is especially plagued by violence.
Cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, has done exhaustive research on the history of violence. He concluded that the dramatic reduction in violence in our times “may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history”.
The 19th century folktales popular with children were filled with murder, cannibalism, mutilation and sexual abuse. Many nursery rhymes include the same themes. A study comparing violence on British television before 9 p.m., and nursery rhymes, concluded that nursery rhymes are eleven times less safe for children.
Torture and mutilation was normative in all great civilizations. The best minds in the medieval period were occupied with coming up with ways of inflicting as much pain as possible on people before they confessed or died.
According to Steven Pinker’s sources, the average annual rate of violent death for non-state societies – from hunter-gatherer tribes to gold rush societies in California – was 524 per 100,000. The homicide rate in the US, which is much more violent than Europe, is now lower than 5 per 100,000.
With the rise of more humanitarian attitudes, a sharp mind and tongue is now valued more than a sharp sword. The fitness and readiness to strike out is now being replaced by a readiness to control one’s emotions. With families having fewer children, the perceived value of each human life has increased.
There are still those who gladly inflict pain on their victims, but now even sadists and psychopaths have the right to a fair trial.
The number of fatalities from terrorist activity has increased five-fold since 2000, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Terrorism is spectacular, dramatic and frightening which is the whole point. But it kills very few. Since 2000, around 400 people have died from terrorism in the OECD countries annually, and mostly in Turkey and Israel. More Europeans drown in their own bathtubs, and ten times more die falling down the stairs.
“When we don’t see the progress we have made,” says Norberg, “we begin to search for scapegoats for the problems that remain.” This book is not only an intellectual pick-me-up, but was also written as a warning - it would be a terrible mistake to take the progress we have made for granted.
Readability Light ---+- Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High ----+ Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of the recently released The Executive Update.

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Alberto

Ottimo libro

Reviewed in Italy on August 4, 2021

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Molto interessante da leggere, una visione del mondo diversa dal solito. L'unico peccato é che non sia disponibile la traduzione italiana

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J. Drew

Things aren't necessary getting worse

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2017

Verified Purchase

Most of us are not swayed by rationalised argument or fact but we are much more influenced by our personal narratives and how we emotionally or intuitively respond to the information we receive through our senses. And most of us seem to feel that we have never lived in such trouble times and that we've never had it so bad. And this has resulted in us making decisions such as leaving Europe or voting for a president in America who seems closer to narcissistic madness because "things are bad, real bad" - but that's just my story and how I might be feeling, after all bad news is all around us and on a never ending stream of news bites. However, what this book does is present a wide range of factual arguments that draw on history and numbers/ data (and other wonderful works that include Angus Deaton and Steven Pinker) that actually show that we are living in a much better times and that we can only truly realise through perspective and seeing how fortunate we are than those in the past. Violence is a lot less of problem then it is ever been in the past. In 1900 the majority of people lived the same life span of the chimpanzee (of about 40 years) and now we average a life span almost twice as long. We no longer die by the thousands and millions of diseases such as cholera, smallpox, measles and the plague. Sanitation and medication save many more lives along with the ability to grow foods that we now no longer live in worry of starvation and famine and are now more risk of death and amputation through obesity. Did you know that there has never been a famine in any democratic nation, I never knew. Though slavery is prevailing we actually have many more people living under liberty and freedom than serfdom and enslavement. And governments of the world are there are at least trying to stop slavery and see it is been long. In my lifetime I've seen progress in gay rights equality, racial equality, gender equality and disability equality. The book covers a number of themes including poverty, sanitation, education, life expectancy, violence, equality, literacy, The environment and the future. I'm still going to worry about climate change though. A few facts from the beginning of the book include these: We’ve made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000 • 285,000 more people have gained access to safe water every day for the last 25 years • In the last 50 years world poverty has fallen more than it did in the preceding 500. Well worth a read if you think we're living in terrible times that have never been worse. And perspective is a wonderful thing. The problem is that people are more interested in bad news and stories (something that helps explain why people watch "Eastenders") than ideas that might reflect we're living in good times.

One person found this helpful

V. Imedio

Excelente

Reviewed in Spain on November 1, 2017

Verified Purchase

Progress me ha parecido un libro interesantísimo por toda la información tan relevante que contiene. Una información que los medios, siempre interesados en las catástrofes y las malas noticias, ocultan en cierta medida o no dan con la relevancia que merece. Bienvenido sea pues este libro, lleno de buenas noticias. Sólo un pero, da algún dato de víctimas de la inquisición española muy erróneo y sobreestimado por mucho. Una lástima porque si un dato es tan erróneo tiene el lector que ponerlos todos en duda.

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Frederick Ford

This is an excellent book; it dispels the current thought (media information) ...

Reviewed in Canada on March 4, 2017

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This is an excellent book; it dispels the current thought (media information) that the world is getting more dangerous and our future is getting dimmer. Norberg addresses different areas such as sanitation, poverty, and life expectancy (10 altogether) and shows the tremendous progress we have made. He also addresses the media's obsession with what is wrong with the world and why (if it bleeds it leads). I learned a considerable amount, and I found it a very uplifting book. This should be on the reading list of all schools so our students would understand how fortunate we are and that the future is bright!

2 people found this helpful

ManuA

Comprendre le monde autrement que par les médias

Reviewed in France on January 30, 2017

Verified Purchase

Très intéressant. Ce livre bat en brèche de nombreuses croyances pessimistes et défaitistes sans cesse relayées par les médias.
Oui l'humanite va de mieux en mieux, et cela fait du bien de pouvoir apprécier toutes ces évolutions sur la base de nombreux faits et chiffres.

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