Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

To appreciate the long-term benefits of industrialization one does not have to accept its cruelties. One can imagine an alternative history of the Industrial Revolution in which modern sensibilities applied earlier and the factories operated without children and with better working conditions for the adults. Today there are doubtless factories in the developing world that could offer as many jobs and still turn a profit while treating their workers more humanely. Pressure from trade negotiators and consumer protests has measurably improved working conditions in many places, and it is a natural progression as countries get richer and more integrated into the global community (as we will see in chapters 12 and 17 when we look at the history of working conditions in our own society).⁴⁸ Progress consists not in accepting every change as part of an indivisible package—as if we had to make a yes-or-no decision on whether the Industrial Revolution, or globalization, is a good thing or bad thing, exactly as each has unfolded in every detail. Progress consists of unbundling the features of a social process as much as we can to maximize the human benefits while minimizing the harms.

The last, and in many analyses the most important, contributor to the Great Convergence is science and technology.⁴⁹ Life is getting cheaper, in a good way. Thanks to advances in know-how, an hour of labor can buy more food, health, education, clothing, building materials, and small necessities and luxuries than it used to. Not only can people eat cheaper food and take cheaper medicines, but children can wear cheap plastic sandals instead of going barefoot, and adults can hang out together getting their hair done or watching a soccer game using cheap solar panels and appliances. As for good advice on health, farming, and business: it’s better than cheap; it’s free.

Today about half the adults in the world own a smartphone, and there are as many subscriptions as people. In parts of the world without roads, landlines, postal service, newspapers, or banks, mobile phones are more than a way to share gossip and cat photos; they are a major generator of wealth. They allow people to transfer money, order supplies, track the weather and markets, find day labor, get advice on health and farming practices, even obtain a primary education.⁵⁰ An analysis by the economist Robert Jensen subtitled “The Micro and Mackerel Economics of Information” showed how South Indian small fishermen increased their income and lowered the local price of fish by using their mobile phones at sea to find the market which offered the best price that day, sparing them from having to unload their perishable catch on fish-glutted towns while other towns went fishless.⁵¹ In this way mobile phones are allowing hundreds of millions of small farmers and fishers to become the omniscient rational actors in the ideal frictionless markets of economics textbooks. According to one estimate, every cell phone adds $3,000 to the annual GDP of a developing country.⁵²

The beneficent power of knowledge has rewritten the rules of global development. Development experts differ on the wisdom of foreign aid. Some argue that it does more harm than good by enriching corrupt governments and competing with local commerce.⁵³ Others cite recent numbers which suggest that intelligently allocated aid has in fact done tremendous good.⁵⁴ But while they disagree on the effects of donated food and dollars, all agree that donated technology—medicines, electronics, crop varieties, and best practices in agriculture, business, and public health—has been an unalloyed boon. (As Jefferson noted, he who receives an idea from me receives instruction without lessening mine.) And for all the emphasis I’ve placed on GDP per capita, the value of knowledge has made that measure less relevant to what we really care about, quality of life. If I had squeezed a line for Africa into the lower right corner of figure 8-3, it would look unimpressive: the line would curve upward, to be sure, but without the exponential blastoff of the lines for Europe and Asia. Charles Kenny emphasizes that the actual progress of Africa belies the shallow slope, because health, longevity, and education are so much more affordable than they used to be. Though in general people in richer countries live longer (a relationship called the Preston curve, after the economist who discovered it), the whole curve is being pushed upward, as everyone is living longer regardless of income.⁵⁵ In the richest country two centuries ago (the Netherlands), life expectancy was just forty, and in no country was it above forty-five. Today, life expectancy in the poorest country in the world (the Central African Republic) is fifty-four, and in no country is it below forty-five.⁵⁶