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Johan Norberg

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 x 0.85 x 9.2 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.

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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 x 0.85 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #989,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,166 in General Anthropology
- #38,366 in World History (Books)
- #47,541 in Politics & Government (Books)

Customer Reviews:
277 ratings

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A Case for Global Optimism

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2016

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“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days,” wrote Franklin Pierce Adams, “than a bad memory.” The good old days, in other words, weren’t so good. Indeed, if Johan Norberg is to be believed, the good old days are right now.

Drawing on a variety of social science data, Norberg points to ten ways the world has progressed over the last three centuries:

• Food is plentiful and cheap.
• Clean water and good sanitation are increasingly available.
• Life expectancy is longer.
• Poverty has fallen dramatically.
• War and violence blight fewer lives.
• Increasing wealth has benefited the environment.
• Literacy is widespread.
• People are increasingly free of arbitrary authority.
• Equality is increasingly experienced and demanded.

None of this denies specific counterexamples, of course. Hunger, pollution, terrorism, and poverty are facts of life for many throughout the world. Still, in historical perspective as well as in absolute terms, these ills are on the decline.

Take extreme poverty, for example. Norberg writes:

"…In 1981, fifty-four per cent of the world lived in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. This already marks an historic achievement. According to an ambitious attempt to measure poverty over the long run, with a $2 a day threshold for extreme poverty, adjusted for purchasing power in 1985, ninety-four per cent of the world’s population lived in extreme population in 1820, eighty-two per cent in 1910 and seventy-two percent in 1950.

"But in the last few decades things have really begun to change. Between 1981 and 2015 the proportion of low- and middle-income countries suffering from extreme poverty was reduced from fifty-four percent to twelve per cent….

"…By all our best estimates, global poverty has been reduced by more than one percentage point annually for three decades."

The next time you and your friends debate income inequality, keep that statistic in mind. Yes, there is income inequality in the world, but the floor of that inequality is no longer extreme poverty for the vast majority of the world’s population.

That’s good news, right? Of course it is! And it’s a reason—along with other improvements in the material conditions of humanity—to give thanks at this time of year.

33 people found this helpful

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Alan Cook

These are the Best of Times

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2017

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All pessimists (such as myself) should read this book. Check that. Everybody should read this book. It tells about what few people realize--that we are living in the best of times, and that the human race has made enormous progress in the past few hundred years, and even in the past fifty years. And it is continuing as we speak. Norbert talks about the following topics: food, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, the environment, literacy, freedom and equality. We have made huge advances in all of these areas, even since our grandparents were our age. If you are over a certain age, you wouldn't even want to go back to the living conditions of your youth: no cellphones, no Internet, possibly no television (my parents didn't buy a TV until after I left home). This progress has been made practically everywhere in the world. However, we must make sure it continues. We must guard against superstition and bureaucracy. To quote from the end of the book, we must have "hard-working people, scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs with strange, new ideas, and brave individuals who fought for their freedom to do new things in new ways. If progress is to continue, you and I will have to carry the torch."

13 people found this helpful

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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.

12 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Robert Macdonald

Should be (part of) the national history curriculum.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2016

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Norberg presents a fact-based argument that the world today is a much better place than it was 200 years ago, 70 years ago, or even 30 years ago. Under the headings of food, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, environment, literacy, freedom and equality, Progress unremittingly lays out the evidence for the argument, supported by well-chosen human-scaled illustrations of the big picture. Further, Norberg argues that, as the number of people alive today with luxury to spend their time making the world a better place is at an all-time maximum, we should be optimistic about the future.

This is how history should be taught. That the vast majority of people, especially in the west, might be surprised by Norberg’s case is food for thought. After all, there is nothing controversial here.

All this said, Progress should be read with a critical eye. There are errors. For example, Norberg says that ‘several countries recorded increases of life expectancy of more than one year every year for more than a decade. After having lived through a decade, the average person in those countries could expect to have more years left than they’d had at the beginning of the decade’. Deducing the latter claim from the former is not just badly wrong, it is ludicrously daft. Whoever edited this section was asleep at the wheel. As another example, Norberg implies that the 1918 ‘Hunger Map of Europe’ indicates the state of agriculture in the early twentieth century, rather overlooking the obvious conclusion that it represents the devastating impact of World War I.

Worse though, Progress conveniently ignores evidence that is at odds with its central premise. Within countries, income inequality has been on an increasing trend for the last thirty years in virtually all countries. It’s effect in many western countries has been strong enough to leave large numbers of people left behind by the general improvement in global life conditions. It is known that income equality is positively correlated with happiness. Yet Norberg ignores these well-known facts when considering why his views are not universally shared.

Speaking from within the UK, I’m aware that happiness surveys never identify affluent urban areas as providing the best lives. Indeed, quite the reverse is true. It is always sparsely populated rural areas that come top. I can’t believe this is only true in the UK. But it can’t be true in Norberg’s world – it is at odds with his argument (and he never addresses these well-known sources of evidence).

This is a good book. It presents clear, engaging and wholly believable stories to support its cause. It contains a wealth of fact and argument that should be (but isn’t) common knowledge. The world would be a better place if it was. But I can’t give it five stars because at times it sacrifices honesty for rhetoric.

11 people found this helpful

J. Drew

Things aren't necessary getting worse

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2017

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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

Mandrake

Essential reading for pessimists, socialists and grumpy old curmudgeons

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2017

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This was my choice for my Economics book club, and we all found it enjoyable, informative but slight. We had previously read Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist, and there was a significant overlap between the two. Here are my notes:

Overall
This is a slight but entertaining book that just contents itself with documenting the improvements in all aspects of human life over the past 200 years. Norberg mainly just sticks to the facts, and provides compelling charts, examples and statistics that show how humans have become healthier, wealthier, freer and more tolerant since the Industrial Revolution. He does not really try to explain why these improvements have occurred, nor does it adequately explain why the average person believes that the quality of life is getting worse. As a result the book is lightweight, but should be essential reading for every pessimist, socialist and grumpy old curmudgeon who believes that the current system is failing and that the good old days were better.

Synopsis
In ten short chapters this book documents the enormous improvement in all aspects of human wellbeing that has been achieved since the industrial revolution. Individual chapters deal with Food, Sanitation, Life Expectancy, Poverty, Violence The Environment, Literacy, Freedom and Equality.
“Even though world population grew by more than 2 billion between 1990 and 2015 the number of people who live in extreme poverty was reduced by more than 1.25 billion people. This means that extreme poverty was reduced by more than 50 million every year and almost 138,000 people every day for 25 years. If it takes you 20 minutes to read this chapter, almost another 2,000 people will have risen out of poverty.” P.77-78
Everywhere there has been a steady rise in all aspects of human wellbeing, though in many Western countries people seem to believe the opposite.

Critique
I thought this book was lightweight but enjoyable, with lots of fascinating facts that illuminate how much our quality of life has improved over the past 2 centuries. That said, I would have liked Norberg to express stronger views on how progress has been achieved, what has been good for human development, and what bad. Regimes that have failed to improve human welfare also have much to teach us about the conditions necessary for development, but these are entirely neglected.

• The triumph of capitalism: this is a deeply political book and I felt that the author should have made this much more explicit. The truth is that global capitalism has had a tremendous effect on human development, and this book provides copious and incontrovertible evidence to that effect. An excellent example of how capitalism has transformed people’s welfare is given on pages 68-69, where he documents how embracing economic freedom has transformed the economies of Asia since the 1960s. Yet, despite all this evidence many in the West attempt to argue on moral grounds that globalisation is a “bad thing,” because conditions in Bangladeshi clothing factories do not meet the standards of European ones. Such arguments are misguided, though, because they fail to appreciate that the alternatives are worse, and to the workers jobs in the clothing factories are safer, easier and better paid than back-baking drudgery in the agricultural sector. I would have liked the political message of the book to have been more explicit: economic and political freedom equates to human welfare; socialism, communism, etc, all result in inferior outcomes.

• Organisation of the book: Norberg provides 10 chapters each looking at an individual aspect of welfare; Food; Sanitation; Life Expectancy; Poverty; Violence; The Environment; Literacy; Freedom; Equality, and The next generation. There is some overlap between these topics, resulting in repetition (particularly in the chapter on Equality), while other aspects of human welfare are neglected. Thus Norberg discusses declining poverty rates, but does not otherwise address rising material wealth and how that has transformed people’s lives (I would recommend the Robert J. Gordon book “The Rise and fall of American growth” on how technology has transformed people’s lives over the past 2 centuries). Similarly, the improvement in human knowledge is neglected, presumably because this is relatively difficult to measure. I would argue that the main aspects of human welfare are: Health, Wealth, Freedom, Security and Knowledge, all of which are to some degree inter-related.

• Pessimism: Norberg provides compelling and incontrovertible evidence that humanity is growing healthier and wealthier, which leads to the question why does a large percentage of the population of rich Western democracies believe that life is getting worse? His explanation is that we have an innate bias towards pessimism but I found this rather glib. Instead of relying on evidence gleaned from secondary sources, I would have liked him to do some actual research. Why do people think life is getting worse? When confronted with the evidence do people change their minds? This matters because if people have a false view of the past they may vote to send us back there.
“In 1955, 13% of the Swedish public thought that there were “intolerable conditions” in society. After half a century of expanded human liberties, rising incomes, reduction in poverty and improved healthcare, more than half of all Swedes thought so.” P.2

Conclusion
A good and enjoyable book that documents how we have all become steadily healthier and wealthier, but one which fails to address why we have not become happier.

Roger E. Long

Antidote to Guardian hand wringers doom and despair

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 29, 2018

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Good data on the state of the planet
330,000 more people everyday are given fresh water and separate toilets in the 3rd world
In 1812 12% of the world could read and write, now just 12% are illiterate
Democracies do not declare war on other Democracies, nor do they have famines any more since Agri Science has advanced varieties, crop yeild and increased cropping
Population decreases as food and education increases
Capitalism has brought about prosperity Socialism could never manage with central control mechanisms
All very good news for Earthlings.

sgh100

Very interesting read, and quite uplifting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2018

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This was much more than I had expected. I had expected lots of “futurist” nonsense about new tech, entrepreneurs and inventions. What I got was a quick fire survey of how rapidly society has developed over the last two hundred years which leads, in turn, to a clearer understanding of why it is very wrong to think everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Like many others I read too much news and that makes me think things are getting worse. Not so. Yes, there are many major problems remaining in the world but, as the author makes clear, the world today is a much better and safer place, especially for some groups of people, than the world in which I was born just a short time ago in the 1970s. Very much worth reading.

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