On Capitalism and Humane True Liberalism

Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century founder of economics, and Milton Friedman, two centuries later, promoted the idea that capitalism improves humanity in a way that cannot be accomplished through any other means. Deirdre McCloskey, the great modern economist, historian, and philosopher, wrote a book that was at first called Humane True Liberalism. (It is now in print under the more prosaic, but still admirable, title of Why Liberalism Works.) It connects capitalism to the ideals of freedom and human autonomy. Rajendra Sisodia and I have written about conscious capitalism in much the same vein.

In this spirit, Larry Siegel, an author trained in finance and economics but now branching out into demography and environmentalism, has written the optimistic book you now hold in your hands. Observing that the end of the population explosion is relatively close at hand, Siegel argues that the whole world (and especially the developing world) has been getting richer and will continue to do so, and that the future will be greener as more resources can be devoted to preserving our precious natural heritage. I think he is right. The future will be better than the present, just as the present is better than the past.

Apocalypse Now . . . or Apocalypse Not?

This is deeply contrarian stuff. People just love to be told that the world is coming to an end. And they often believe it. Apocalyptic thinking has been a feature of every religion since recorded history began, and that habit of mind persists even in these irreligious times. As a result, a book arguing, as this one does, that economic and living conditions have been steadily improving for hundreds of years and will continue to do so if we don’t foul things up, swims against the current. Optimists sound like they are trying to sell you something, while pessimists sound wise and well intentioned.

But Fewer, Richer, Greener is not a statement of blind optimism. It treats challenges like overpopulation, economic stagnation, and climate change as risks to be managed and problems to be solved, rather than existential threats that we can’t do anything about. It proposes solutions that may be uncomfortable—urbanism, nuclear power, and environmental engineering among them—but will work. Panicking and saying “we’re all going to die” will not.

Free Markets and Free Minds

Perhaps the most important fact of which Siegel reminds us is that free markets and free minds are the key to solving the most fundamental problem of human life, which is allocating scarce resources to unlimited wants. This is usually called the economic problem. As the great economist Gary Becker showed, however, this challenge extends far beyond ordinary economic considerations to infiltrate almost every aspect of life. Applying economic thinking to a wide variety of problems opens the mind to insights that cannot be obtained in any other way.

Here are some questions that are amenable to economic thinking although they do not appear to be at first blush: Why do some animals (say, rabbits) have a lot of offspring and devote few resources to each, while others (say, whales) do the opposite? Which kind of animal are we, and is that equilibrium changing? What are the unintended consequences of zoning laws, of gas mileage regulations, of government transfer payments to individuals? Were the Germans who invaded Rome in the fifth century climate refugees? How about the Europeans, from whom I’m descended, who invaded the Americas a little over a millennium later?

These are the kinds of questions Siegel raises in a book that asks the reader to remove the constraints on his or her reasoning that come from a lifetime of mainstream thinking and uninspired education. He asks you to engage, instead, in the opposite: unconventional thinking—bolstered by quotes from adventurous philosophers, scientists, and humanists through the millennia—and passionate self-education.

A Big and Rich Africa?

His chapter on education, for example, proposes that “we could be on the cusp of a worldwide golden age of education,” spurred by access, through the Internet, to books, teachers, and ideas that will reach those previously barred from such knowledge by custom and geography. Siegel quotes Deirdre McCloskey as saying that “a big and rich Africa will yield a crop of geniuses unprecedented in world history. In a century or so the leading scientists and artists in the world will be black.”

Have you thought about that? You might want to contemplate such an outcome, because it’s very likely if what we’ve observed about genetic diversity on that huge continent is correct.

Conscious Capitalism

I’ve written extensively about free markets. While I believe that the single-minded pursuit of profit by businesses is misguided and should be tempered with (or replaced by) concern for all the stakeholders, the first lesson that Rajendra Sisodia and I teach in Conscious Capitalism is that capitalism is “marvelous, misunderstood, [and] maligned.” From a starting point 200 years ago of more than 90 percent of the world living in desperate poverty, how did we get to be as rich as we are?

We wrote,

In a mere 200 years, business and capitalism have transformed the face of the planet and the complexion of daily life for the vast majority of people. The extraordinary innovations that have sprung from this system have freed so many of us from much of the mindless drudgery that has long accompanied ordinary existence and enabled us to lead more vibrant and fulfilling lives. Wondrous technologies have shrunk time and distance, weaving us together into a seamless fabric of humankind extending to the remotest corners of the planet.

Siegel’s narrative fills in the details of this transformation, drawing on modern authors as varied as Matt Ridley, Stewart Brand, Hans Rosling, Johan Norberg, and of course McCloskey—but also a zoo of historical characters, including Charles Dickens (who, it turns out, appears to have been a capitalist free trader, entirely consistent with his Victorian liberalism and compassion for the poor); the Flemish priest Ferdinand Verbiest, who developed a self-propelled “car” in the 1600s as a gift to the emperor of China; the anonymous builders of the great French cathedrals in the Middle Ages; and the wonderfully named Isambard Kingdom Brunel, England’s greatest engineer.

Perils and Promise of the Future

But the last 200 years were not a straightforward march from the benighted past into the sunlit meadows of liberal capitalist prosperity. Nor will the future be free of problems—far from it! In Conscious Capitalism, we cautioned:

So much has been accomplished, yet much remains to be done. The promise of this marvelous system for human cooperation is far from being completely fulfilled. . . . [A]s a result, we are collectively far less prosperous and less fulfilled than we could be.

And, at this time, we are experiencing a reaction against classical liberal principles in pursuit of the security of borders and trade restrictions, and autocratic rule is in a bit of a revival. These tendencies are almost worldwide and concern me. But, in the long term, I do not think they will be more than a blip on the path to greater productivity, exchange, and freedom.

Population and the Environment

We also face environmental challenges (not just climate change) and demographic patterns to which we are unaccustomed. Among the demographic patterns are low birth rates, not only in the rich world but in most of the rest of the world; longer and longer lives, due to medical technology and better public health practices; and the aging of the population due to both causes. Only in Africa are birth rates anywhere near their traditionally high levels, and they, too, are falling, although perhaps not fast enough.

At any rate, the world’s population will peak around 11 billion later in this century, about a 50 percent increase from the current level. That is, in percentage terms, no more than the increase from 1950 to 1970! And then the population will begin to decline.

Thus we are, finally, getting our population under control. This is wonderful news for the human race and for the environment. We just have to take advantage of this circumstance and use the opportunity to preserve the natural environment and avoid further degradation of it.

Rational Optimism

Larry Siegel is, of course, not alone in making his contrarian case—although few of his peers have used art, architecture, poetry, philosophy, and humor as extensively as he has, making this book an exceptionally fun read. The genre that I’d call rational optimism (after Matt Ridley’s 2012 book, The Rational Optimist) has been flourishing. In addition to the books that Larry’s volume refers to, I recommend the works of Robert Bryce, Byron Reese, and Thomas Sowell. To gather the courage and resources needed to solve the problems of the future, we need to wash away the hopelessness and alarmism that has permeated public discourse and the world of education. These books, in addition to Larry’s, will provide the desperately needed restorative.

To sum up, don’t fear the future. Embrace it with all your heart and mind, and work to improve it.

John P. Mackey

Founder and CEO, Whole Foods Market, Inc.

How I Came to Write This Book¹

Thirteen years ago, I read Ben Wattenberg’s book, Fewer, his elegy for the population explosion. Showing that the explosion was effectively finished in the developed world and quickly coming to an end in the rest of the world, Wattenberg wrote in funereal tones, lamenting the end of an age of youth, exuberance, and innovation.

I thought it was the best news I had ever heard.

(And I’m not one of those antipeople people. Some such folks exist. More about that later.)

For decades we had heard that the population explosion would impoverish and perhaps kill us all. Now that it’s almost finished, it’s time to reexamine our outlook: we will have fewer people than we were expecting, we will become richer, and the planet will become greener.

This betterment will take place not just in the advanced industrial societies, where self-perpetuating economic growth has been taking place for more than two centuries, but in China, India, and the rest of the developing world. It is the first decent break that three-quarters of the world’s population has ever gotten. I don’t want it to stop.

Yet many people are afraid. We have been told, consistently and repeatedly by people who seem to be well informed, that the world is running out of resources; that the economy used to be kinder and more humane; that the costs of advanced technology are greater than the benefits.

These concerns, although mostly misplaced, should not be dismissed as the foolish thinking of Luddites who romanticize the past. Change always produces winners and losers, and we need to understand and respect the concerns of people who believe they are likely to suffer rather than benefit from it. Progress is not a military march from debased to elevated ways of living. It is confusing and messy.

Life has improved tremendously in the last 250 years; this book argues that it will continue to improve in almost every dimension: health, wealth, longevity, nutrition, literacy, peace, freedom, and so forth. Without overlooking the many obstacles on the path of progress, my aim is to reinforce and help restore people’s faith in the future—and help them understand why optimism is amply justified.

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But this is not a book about population, and I am not a demographer. I’ve spent my adult life studying the economy, businesses, and investments, so that is the lens through which I tend to observe human action. As a result, economic progress is my principal focus, although it’s tempting—and I’ve succumbed to the temptation—to write about closely related noneconomic topics such as population and the environment.

This book, then, is mostly about “richer.” More food, better food, less hunger. Longer lives, healthier lives, happier lives. Less work, easier work. Technology that satisfies and makes life more pleasant and interesting. A culture worth enjoying.

The amount of betterment that has taken place over the last 250 years—the Great Enrichment—in what we call the developed world, and which is rapidly spreading to the rest of the world, is almost unbelievable. Humans have lived on Earth for many tens of thousands of years, but only in the last quarter-millennium has any large number of them enjoyed the fruits of economic growth and technology on a sustained basis. There were exceptions—Leonardo’s Florence and Mozart’s Vienna come to mind—but most human lives until the Great Enrichment were lived under conditions of deprivation that are almost unimaginable today.²

How we got out of that morass and how the whole world can and will enjoy the fruits of the Great Enrichment is the real topic of this book.

Of course, like anything else, economic output cannot grow forever—if, by output, we mean piles of stuff. But economic growth can, and will, mean other things too: products that are more useful or economical, services and experiences that did not exist before, methods of delivery and disposal that improve upon existing practices. That kind of progress can proceed as far as human ingenuity takes it.

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I am also not a naturalist, but I care about nature. I’d better, since we’re an essential part of it.

It is possible to imagine a future in which humans appear to prosper at the expense of other living species and the rest of the physical world; this is unacceptable and, in the long run, self-defeating. I am old enough to remember filthy air and water in the United States. Through new and necessary laws, but more importantly through economic growth and improvements in technology, we’ve largely resolved that problem. The air and water are still filthy in some other places.

There are many environmental dragons to slay, and to do that we need an abundance of fiscal and intellectual resources. Continued economic growth is the key to the solution. It will not be cheap or easy, but we will largely prevail.

Fewer, richer, greener.

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This book is a guide to the past and the likely (but not guaranteed) future of human betterment, but it is also a reader’s guide. In the reader’s guide, I briefly describe the 20 or so books that have most directly influenced my thinking on these topics, plus data sources.

Luck is the most important factor in life, and I’ve been blessed with it. I dedicate this book to Connie O’Hara, who, on account of my inexplicable good fortune, became my wife almost four decades ago and is sitting right next to me at this moment.

This book literally could not have been written without the efforts of David L. Stanwick and Joanne Needham. Dave Stanwick, research assistant extraordinaire, is the kind of colleague who knows the answers to a question before I’ve finished asking it. He is also a skilled web designer, digital marketer, literary editor, and food vendor (Blazing Bella oil and vinegar). Joanne Needham, my permissions editor, solved some of the most difficult permissions riddles I could dream up, investigating sources behind sources and so on ad infinitum. She even commissioned artists and photographers to create a number of illustrations. Thanks!

I want to express deep appreciation to John Mackey, who graciously volunteered to write the foreword to this book, and who founded what I think is the world’s finest chain of grocery stores, Whole Foods Market, Inc.

My delightful literary agent, Lucinda Karter, is someone else without whom this book would not have been written. She persuaded me to turn my old (2012) magazine article on this topic into a full-length book. I also want to thank my publisher, Bill Falloon at Wiley, and his excellent staff, for their help and support.

Lavish thanks are due to those who made helpful comments, including Stephen C. Sexauer and M. Barton Waring—both frequent co-authors of mine whose ideas made it into the book in various ways—as well as David E. Adler, Ted Aronson, the late Peter Bernstein, Erik Brynjolfsson, Thomas Coleman, Elizabeth Hilpman, Michael Falk, Michael Gibbs, William Goetzmann, Walter (Bud) Haslett, Gary Hoover, Bob Huebscher, Lee Kaplan, Robert Kiernan, Marty Leibowitz, Deirdre McCloskey, John O’Brien, Ben Rudd, Thomas Totten, and Wayne Wagner. Roger Ibbotson introduced me to the nascent New Optimism genre a very long time ago, pointing me to the works of Julian Simon and Petr Beckmann. He and I have had a long and fruitful collaboration, and I look forward to further efforts with him.

I am of course deeply indebted to all the people whose research and writing I referred to, and to those who gave permission for their work to be cited or illustrations reproduced. They are noted in the footnotes, illustration credits, and the reader’s guide.

Finally, I wish to thank my family for putting up with me during this time-intensive wild adventure. My wife, Connie, turns up in the preface with a fuller expression of my appreciation of her.