Imagineachartthatbeginswhenmanfirstappea
Imagine a chart that begins when man first appeared on the planet and tracks the economic growth of societies from then forwarD、It would be a long, flat line until the late 16th or early 17th century, when it would start trending upwarD、For most of humankind life was as theEnglish philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously described it in 1651—"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."But as Hobbes was writing those words, the world around him was changing. Put simply, human beings were getting smarter.
People have always sought knowledge. The scientific revolution, followed by theEnlightenment, marked a fundamental shift. Humans were no longer searching for ways simply to fit into a natural or divine order; but they were seeking to change it. Once people found ways to harness energy—using steam engines—they were able to build machines that harnessed far more power than any human or horse could ever do.And people could work without ever getting tireD、The rise of these machines drove the Industrial Revolution, and created a whole new system of life. Today the search for knowledge continues to produce an ongoing revolution in the health and wealth of humankinD、
If the rise of science marks the first great trend in this story, the second is its diffusion. What was happening inBritain during the Industrial Revolution was not an isolated phenomenon.A、succession of visitors toBritain would go back to report to their countries on the technological and commercial innovations they saw there. Sometimes societies were able to learn extremely fast, as in the United States. Others, like Germany, was benefited from starting late, leapfrogging the long-drawn-out process thatBritain went through.
This diffusion of knowledge accelerated dramatically in recent decades. Over the last 30 years we have watched countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and nowChina grow at a pace that is three times that ofBritain or the United States at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. They have been able to do this because of their energies and exertions, of course, but also because they cleverly and perhaps luckily adopted certain ideas about development that had worked in the West—reasonably free markets, open trade, a focus on science and technology, among them.
The diffusion of knowledge is the dominant trend of our time and goes well beyond the purely scientifiC、Consider the cases of Turkey andBrazil. If you had asked an economist 20 years ago how to think about these two countries, he would have explained that they were classic basket-case, Third World economies, with triple-digit inflation, soaring debt burdens, a weak private sector and snail’s-pace growth. Today they are both remarkably well managed, with inflation in single digits and growth above 5 percent.And this shift is happening around the worlD、From Thailand to SouthAfrica to Slovakia to Mexico, countries are far better managed economically than they have ever been.Even in cases where political constraints make it difficult to push far-reaching reforms, as inBrazil, Mexico or India, governments still manage their affairs sensibly, observing the Hippocratic oath not to do any harm.
We are sometimes reluctant to believe in progress.But the evidence is unmistakable. The management of major economies has gotten markedly better in the last few years.Careful monetary policy has tempered the boom-and-bust economic cycles of the industrial world, producing milder recessions and fewer shocks.Every day one reads of a new study comparing nations in everything from Internet penetration to inflation.All these studies and lists are symbols of a learning process that is accelerating, reinforcing the lessons of success and failure.Call it a best-practice worlD、
I realize that the world I am describing is the world of the winners. There are billions of people, locked outside global markets, whose lives are still accurately described by H