"Wealth inequality isn't proof that you're being robbed."

"Wealth inequality isn't proof that you're being robbed. It assumes successful people are partially your property and that their gains should have belonged to you. 

"Other people becoming productive doesn't make you poorer. It is precisely why ordinary people today live better than kings did centuries ago. 

"They don't owe you anything and aren't your property."

~ Rock Chartrand

The natural condition of humanity before capitalism expanded globally: Poverty

 

"In 1820, 94 out of every 100 people lived in extreme poverty. Forty-three children out of every 100 died before the age of five. Eighty-eight adults could not read. Not a single person was vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, or tetanus.

"That was the natural condition of humanity before capitalism expanded globally.

"Two centuries later, those numbers are 10 people in extreme poverty, 4 child deaths per 100, 85 who can read, and 86 vaccinated. The world's population grew nearly eightfold during that period, and the number of people living in misery fell in absolute terms.

"The explanation lies in the mechanisms capitalism introduced at global scale. The price system began allocating resources to where they were most valued. Property rights gave people a reason to innovate, invest, and save. Free trade connected regions that had been isolated from one another, generating mutual gains where precarious self-sufficiency had existed before. Together, these mechanisms made wealth creation a continuous process.

"No other economic system in human history has produced this result. Socialism promised equality and delivered scarcity. Feudalism kept the majority trapped in subsistence for centuries. Capitalism was the only one that raised the floor for everyone."

~ Students for Liberty [Data: OurWorldInData]

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried in the same way that 'Real Capitalism' has never been tried. 

"The difference is 'Almost Socialism' resulted in the impoverishment & death of hundreds of millions of people. 

"While 'Almost Capitalism' has lifted billions from absolute poverty."

~ Mark Antro

"Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our lifetimes — and a graveyard for the companies built to own it."

"Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our lifetimes — and a graveyard for the companies built to own it. 

"That isn't a contradiction. It's economics. The railways remade the world and ruined the people who financed them. Aviation shrank the planet and destroyed investor capital for a century. The pattern is old and the reasons are precise: when a productivity gain becomes available to everyone, it stops being worth anything to anyone who sells it. It becomes a gift to consumers. ...

"AI could deliver staggering welfare gains and barely register in GDP — [because] 'transformative' and 'profitable' are two very different words."

~ Pedro Santa Clara from his article 'The Vanishing Value '

#250YEARS: America's abundance

 

"America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialisation. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance — and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way."

~ Ayn Rand from her essay 'Theory and Practice,' collected in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

How Did The World Get So Ugly?

A fellow is making a show about buildings. A fellow called David Perell, with presenter Sheehan Quirke. Their concept is simple: do for the man-made world what David Attenborough's Planet Earth did for the natural world.

I like the idea.

And it makes a simple argument about 

the carelessness behind so much of what’s built these days. We boast about the triumphs of technology and how advanced we are as a civilisation, but why has our built environment regressed so much? 

    Shouldn’t we use our wealth to make our streets more charming and delightful? 

    There’s lots of talk about how we’ve polluted the natural world, but what about how we’ve polluted the man-made world? We’ve filled our streets with ugly railings, benches, lampposts, and clutter. We assume these things have to be boring, but they don’t. Good design can make everything, even bins and bus stops, charming. New things can be prettier than old things. 

    The first step is believing it’s possible. 

    Something has changed. We’ve taken a dramatic turn, and the majority of people prefer what we used to build to what we build today. Just look at where people take photos. In New York it’s the steps of brownstones in the West Village; in San Francisco it’s the old Victorian homes; in London there’s tourists galore in front of those iconic red phone booths which remain on the streets, even though they don’t work anymore, because they’re so nicely designed that people like having them there. 

    All this is what inspired me to make a TV show. ... 

    It’s our mission to help people see the world more clearly, and in turn, make the world a more charming and delightful place to live in.

Every object contains a worldview. And if you want to understand a society, don’t listen to what it says about itself. Look at what it creates. ... 

Every technology becomes obsolete and outdated. But a good aesthetic, even if fashions change, can never become obsolete. It is definitionally timeless.

The TV show is called The Modern World. 

What will the show be like? 

    Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period: 

        1. Middle Ages 

        2. Renaissance 

        3. Enlightenment 

        4. The Nineteenth Century 

        5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco 

        6. Present Day 

    But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean. 

    So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century. That’s why it’s called The Modern World.

Here's their pilot episode, which they've sent out to funders.

Key quote for Wellingtonians: "If you want to know what any society really believes in, just look at how they design their sewers."

"Commerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another."

"[C]ommerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another. Before, the patriot, unless sufficiently advanced in culture to feel the world his country, wished all countries weak, poor, and ill-governed but his own: he now sees in their wealth and progress a direct source of wealth and progress to his own country. 

    "It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race"

~ John Stuart Mill from his 1848 book Principles of Political Economy, under the heading 'Indirect benefits of Commerce, Economical and Moral; still greater than the Direct'

But how are these things measured?

"New Zealand has just been ranked one of the happiest countries in the world. This is obviously good news. But there is something badly wrong beneath that glossy headline, especially in terms of loneliness and youth.

"The 2026 World Happiness Report, released last month, ranked New Zealand 11th out of 147 countries – up one spot from last year, and the highest-ranked English-speaking nation. On the surface, that sounds pretty good. Better than Australia, better than the United States. Finland, inevitably, came first.

"But buried inside the report was the figure that actually matters. For changes in happiness among 15-to-24-year-olds, New Zealand ranked 126th out of 136 countries. Young people’s happiness over the last decade has been plunging. We sit alongside the United States, Australia, and Canada in what researchers have labelled the 'NANZ' group: affluent nations where youth happiness is in freefall while older generations report world-leading life satisfaction. In contrast, according to the report, 85 of 136 countries saw youth happiness increase."

~ Bryce Edwards from his post 'Are we “bowling alone”?'

NB: How are these things measured? In short, the rankings come entirely from how ordinary people in each country rate their own lives on a 0–10 scale -- it's self-reported wellbeing, not a composite of economic or social statistics.

Super-abundant economic progress

EVER SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION in the nineteenth century and ever-increasing global freedom in this one, human progress has been on a roll -- so says author and rational optimist Marian Tupy. He outlined his arguments and data a few nights ago at an enjoyable NZ Initiative presentation.

Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, the world's most comprehensive database tracking improvements in human wellbeing, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and co-author of the acclaimed book Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.

He's one of the good guys.

Miserabilist Thomas Malthus famously expressed the idea that while resources would only expand at a linear rate, population will expand exponentially -- a disaster waiting to happen. But Malthus was writing about rabbits, or animals without the brain that humans have; and he was writing before the industrial revolution, when that brain was put to powerful practical use. Malthus was not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong, as Tupy's data abundantly proves.

Take that Malthus!

In just the last four decades alone, commodities across the board have become more abundant thanks to globalisation and increasing freedom. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, long a source of concern, the average calorie intake is now ticking up to 2,500!

Take that Paul Erlich!

THAT FAMOUS PANGLOSSIAN THOMAS BABINGTON Macaulay talked in the nineteenth century about the inevitability of progress: “In every age," said Macaulay, "everybody knows that up to his own time, progressive improvement has been taking place; ... On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” It's still possible to remain optimistic even with the many steps backwards anti-freedom forces insist we take.

I was reminded of Peter Boettke's analogy of the horse race between Smith, Schumpeter, and Stupidity -- the progress of Smith's Division of Labour and Schumpeter's progress in technology (well explained by our presenter) has to continually stay ahead of the various degrees of Stupidity inflicted on us all. It's a tribute to human reason and the power of human freedom to wield it that we have to thank for continuing and ongoing progress.

OUR PRESENTER DID GET A LITTLE  pushback from a questioner who interrogated his concept of abundance. Is abundance always good, asked his questioner? A super-abundance of nuclear weapons, for example, or opioids, is hardly a good thing for human progress, he maintained.

It's a fair point, and it resonates with those who argue that to expect infinite growth on a finite planet you must be either insane or an economist. For both points, I think, economist George Reisman makes a profound point in response: the loss of the concept of economic progress.

Tupy still talks of human progress but of economic growth. Reisman (a student of Von Mises) would suggest he'd be better to combine the two to answer both objections: i.e. to talk of economic progress rather than economic growth.

Growth is a concept that applies to individual living organisms. An organism grows until it reaches maturity. then it declines, and sooner or later dies. The concept of growth is also morally neutral [the point made by our questioner], equally capable of describing a negative as a positive: tumours and cancers can grow. Thus the concept of growth both necessarily implies limits and can easily be applied negatively.

In contrast, the concept of progress applies across succeeding generations of human beings. The individual human beings reach maturity and die. But because they possess the faculty of reason, they can both discover new and additional knowledge and transmit it to the rising generation ... with each succeeding generation receiving a greater inheritance of knowledge than the one before it and making its own fresh contribution to knowledge. This continuously expanding body of knowledge, insofar as it takes the form of continuously increasing scientific and technological knowledge and correspondingly improved capital equipment, is the foundation of continuous economic progress.

Progress is a concept unique to man: it is founded on his possession of reason and thus his ability to accumulate and transmit a growing body of knowledge across the generations. Totally unlike growth, whose essential confines are the limits of a single organism, progress has no practical limit. Only if man could achieve omniscience would progress have to end. But the actual effect of the acquisition of knowledge is always to lay the foundation for the acquisition of still more knowledge. Through applying his reason, man enlarges all of his capacities, and the more he enlarges them, the more he enlarges his capacity to enlarge them.

He notes here that it Ludwig Von Mises who had first alerted him to this vital distinction.

The concept of progress differs radically from the concept of growth in that it also has built into it a positive evaluation: progress is movement in the direction of a higher, better, and more desirable state of affairs. This improving state of affairs is founded on the growing body of knowledge that the possession and application of human reason makes possible. Its foundation is the rising potential for human achievement that is based on growing knowledge.

While it is possible to utter denunciations of too rapid "growth" as being harmful, it would be a contradiction in terms even to utter the thought of too rapid progress, let alone denounce it. The meaning would be that things can get better too quickly -- that things getting better meant they were getting worse. [Capitalism, p.106]

FYI, Professor Reisman has kindly made his book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (in which you can read all his arguments) freely available for reading, saving, and printing. Download the link here.

"The real battle of our time is a cultural one, is a philosophical one, is a moral one."

"There are moments in history when a civilisation must choose its future.

"We have been told that the State is our protector; that bureaucrats are our saviour, and that politicians know more than the free man. That we must obey, that we must depend. 

"But the truth is different. 

"The world only has two types of people: those who live off what others produce, and those who produce everything that makes modern life possible. 

"The former draft regulations, the latter create wealth. The former promise [to equalise everyone], the latter generate prosperity. The former spread poverty, the latter multiply abundance. 

"The real battle of our time is a cultural one, is a philosophical one, is a moral one. 

"That's why we chose the system that lifted millions out of extreme poverty: free-market capitalism. 

"Because you don’t negotiate freedom, you defend freedom." 

~ Argentine President Javier Milei from his inauguration speech 'Moral Values as State Policy'

"Since then, poverty has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded."

 

"While the share of people in extreme poverty has been falling since the 19th century, the total number didn’t begin to decline [at scale] until the late 20th century, when [communism collapsed and] rapid economic growth spread worldwide.

"Since then, poverty has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded."

~ post by Human Progress

"Neo-Aristotelian ethics offers a powerful alternative to modern moral theories that struggle to explain why morality has the authority it does."

"In much of twentieth-century moral philosophy, ethics was rebuilt ... [Once p]hilosophers ... abandoned the idea that things have natures or essences that determine what counts as their flourishing. ... morality [instead] had to be reconstructed in other ways: by appealing either to outcomes (consequentialism), or to rules (deontology), or to agreements (contractualism), or to sentiments (expressivism). The result was an ethics often detached from the way we ordinarily evaluate living things in the world.

"Neo-Aristotelian ethics [by contrast] is a deliberate return to an older starting point. ... [that] revives Aristotle’s central insight: that moral evaluation is a species of natural evaluation. To call a human being good is, in a deep sense, analogous to calling a wolf healthy, an oak tree flourishing, or a heart sound. Morality is not imposed from outside human life by rules or calculations; it arises from the kind of beings we are.

"This approach does not represent a nostalgic return to antiquity. It is a highly contemporary, analytically precise attempt to restore a metaphysical foundation that many modern ethical theories quietly lack. ...

"* Rights, dignity, and human nature

"Modern moral discourse frequently appeals to human rights and dignity, but often without explaining why humans possess them. Neo-Aristotelian ethics provides a grounding: humans have rights because of the kind of beings they are. Their rationality, sociability, and capacity for flourishing make certain forms of treatment incompatible with their nature.

"Thus rights are not abstract moral inventions, but discoveries about what respect for human life requires.

"* A return to realism

"Perhaps the most striking feature of neo-Aristotelian ethics is its realism. Moral judgements are not expressions of emotion or social convention. They are claims about how a certain kind of being ought to live in order to flourish.

"To say that cruelty is wrong is, on this view, as objective as saying that a plant deprived of sunlight is unhealthy. Both are evaluations grounded in the nature of the organism.

"This realism reconnects ethics with biology, psychology, and anthropology. It restores continuity between our understanding of life and our understanding of morality.

"* Conclusion: ethics restored to its natural home

"Neo-Aristotelian ethics offers a powerful alternative to modern moral theories that struggle to explain why morality has the authority it does. By returning to the idea that humans have a nature and that flourishing is measured against it, it makes moral evaluation intelligible in the same way that natural evaluation is.

"Ethics becomes neither rule-worship nor outcome-calculation, but a reflection on what it means to live well as the kind of creature we are.

"In doing so, neo-Aristotelian ethics does not merely revive Aristotle. It restores to moral philosophy a metaphysical foundation that allows morality to be seen, once again, as part of the natural order of things."

~ Tim Harding from his post on 'Neo-Aristotelian Ethics'

Checking in on human progress

 The start of a year is a good time to do a stocktake. An update. A check-in on how well we're all getting on. Energy maven Alex Epstein offers an important data point...

Anti-growth (and anti-energy) catastrophists like Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome were wrong. Today's humans are the best-fed humans in history.

And things will keep improving—unless we fall for new catastrophist propaganda like civilisation-crippling “net zero” plans.

 

Yes, let's keep piling on Anne Salmond.

"Salmond claims to have been guided by a list that reads like a Who's Who in 

Postmodernity... What she does not discuss is whether these thinkers are sound guides."

Anne Salmond, who recently called for thinkers to engage with open rather than closed minds—arguing that "other cultures may have insights that elude us" —was recently called out by Dane Giraud for the very same reason: specifically, for ignoring the insights of Enlightenment culture. The only position that actively suppresses inquiry, pointed out Giraud, is her own. "What is more antithetical to free thought'" he asked rhetorically, "than declaring whole categories of knowledge off-limits to criticism because they belong to the wrong culture."

Salmond, of course, has form. Her own favourite cultural whipping person is Western. Her writing, said Michael King of her 2003 book Two Worlds, gives "a strong impression that, rather than attempting to represent both cultures dispassionately, Salmond [is] straining to case every feature of Māori behaviour in a favourable light and many features of European in an unfavourable one.” 

But in doing so, she fails to learn there either. Reviewing Salmond's work, historian and former Waitangi Tribunal director Buddy Mikaere reckons Salmond's work "turns  our tipuna into cardboard caricatures." Rather than learning deeply from other cultures, he says, she offers only a "one-dimensional characterisation." For her and several other Pākeha historians, he says, "Māori [are] invariably depicted as deeply spiritual beings who only ever acted on the basis of high-minded principles. Pākehā, on the other hand, [are] mostly unprincipled rogues or fools whose behaviour was always motivated by racial arrogance, greed and self-interest."

Such is the accusation, it will be remembered, Salmond throws at the Pākehas of the Free Speech Union. It apparently never gets old.

It begins to look as if Salmond is unable to learn much from either of the Two Worlds of which she writes.

What also never gets old is re-reading the demolition of Salmond's work by the grand old man of New Zealand history Peter Munz, who destroyed her whole platform of post-modern posturing and epistemic duplicity in his 1994 review of her first major book. In her work she is guilty, he says, of not just "disinformation, but of actual misrepresentation."

Salmond claims to have been "guided by 'Heidegger, Foucault, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas, [Mary] Hesse, Derrida, Eco and others.' ... [a] list [that] reads like a Who's Who in Postmodernity ...  all of whom would have helped to confirm her in her prejudices and methods."

What she does not discuss ... [is] whether [these thinkers] are sound guides. It appears that she is under the impression that these postmodern thinkers have solved the problem as to how different systems of knowledge or belief are related or, rather, not related to one another. Could it be that she is simply ignorant of the fact that there is much modern thought which rejects these facile, politically motivated doctrines of Foucault and Derrida, of Eco and Ricoeur? If she takes her stand with these people, she ought, to say the least, have produced some evidence that she has also examined the counter-arguments and, perhaps, found them wanting. But as things stand, she appears simply as an  uncritical camp-follower — which is a poor show for a professional anthropologist.

Furthermore, 

the explanations of the differences in systems of knowledge that these thinkers provide should not, I trust, be considered final. In the pre-postmodern world of good sense, belief or knowledge systems are distinguished according to whether they are true or false. ... What is really at issue and what she is trying hard to disguise by her way of constructing the past, is the brute reality of cultural evolution. ... 

[I]nstead of jumping on the postmodern bandwagon which is nothing more than a belated overreaction to the Victorian age, it is time scholars like Salmond caught up with modern thought and revised their view of evolution.

The limitations of the early mind are the result of isolation and of absence of the kind of contact which would expose beliefs and taboos to criticism. Societies and cultures, which for demographic and political reasons are exposed to contact with others, are more likely to question their own traditions, change their taboos and develop eventually a more universal system of knowledge — that is, beliefs which are more than validations or legitimizations of their own parochial cultures. In a nutshell, this is the heart of cultural evolution.

An evolution — a progress — only made possible by being open to new ideas. Says Munz:

Darwin or no Darwin, we are all descended from black Eve, and every single culture which has ever existed is a departure from the culture of black Eve, whoever she was. [I am using the notion 'black Eve' metaphorically to indicate that all existing cultures are descended or transmuted from a common stock.] ...

I would suggest ...  that one can rank the distance of societies from black Eve according to their exclusiveness. The earliest societies were totally exclusive and would not admit people other than those who belonged to their descent group. Next came societies which would admit people through marriage; and at the other end of the scale, farthest removed from black Eve, there are societies which potentially include anybody who wants to be included. Ranking in these terms is completely neutral and value-free. All it says is that while one cannot 'become' a Maori, one can 'become' a New Zealander, and that, for that reason, there is a structural difference between these two kinds of societies, and that that difference defines the distance of these societies from black Eve and that the actually exclusive structures are earlier than the potentially inclusive structures. Since this criterion is neutral, there can be no question of 'progress', only of progression. ...

[W]hatever criteria one likes to choose, the distances from black Eve can be ascertained because evolution, including cultural evolution, is a reality of life. 

If one wants to understand the coming together of two different cultures, as Salmond does, one must take into account, as Salmond does not, the different distances they have moved away from the earlier forms. Salmond has explicitly rejected evolution. 'Contemporary literature on traditional thought is still bedevilled", she writes, 'with implicit sometimes explicit evolutionism.' If she had her way, it would soon cease to be so bedevilled! I suppose she rejects cultural evolution in the face of overwhelming evidence because by making all cultures more or less equal she thinks she can heal wounds and pour oil on troubled waters and be 'politically correct'. But in the long run, there is no point in burying one's head in the sand: a distortion of reality brings about its own nemesis even if one does not quite yet know what shape that nemesis will take.

Can one say 'Ouch!'? 

The open society is the successful society

"The most secure and prosperous societies did not hide from the world. They were confident enough to remain open to trade and ideas, allowing the new to challenge the known. Progress emerges when people experiment, borrow, and combine ideas in ways no planner could ever foresee; decline happens when fear overcomes curiosity."

~ Johan Norberg from his article 'From Athens to the Abbasids to today’s Anglosphere, creativity and commerce drive greatness.' in which he explores the central lessons of history’s real golden ages in his new book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages.

Thanksgiving isn't a New Zealand holiday, but giving thanks should be a universal trait.

Robert Green Ingersoll was the nineteenth-century's Christopher Hitchens—a famous and crusading atheist—like Hitchens except Ingersoll was kinder, and not a Trotskyite. And he was full of gratitude. This, here, was just a portion (the final part, starting page 58) ) of his famous 1897 Thanksgiving Sermon [hat tip Jerry Coyne] ...

A Thanksgiving Sermon

by Robert Green Ingersoll

Whom shall we thank? 

Standing here at the close of the 19th century — amid the trophies of thought — the triumphs of genius — here under the flag of the Great Republic — knowing something of the history of man — here on this day that has been set apart for thanksgiving, I most reverently thank the good me,. the good women of the past, I thank the kind fathers, the loving mothers of the savage days.  I thank the father who spoke the first gentle word, the mother who first smiled upon her babe. I thank the first true friend.

I thank the savages who hunted and fished that they and their babes might live. I thank those who cultivated the ground and changed the forests into farms — those who built rude homes and watched the faces of their happy children in the glow of fireside flames — those who domesticated horses, cattle and sheep — those who invented wheels and looms and taught us to spin and weave — those who by cultivation changed wild grasses into wheat and corn, changed bitter things to fruit, and worthless weeds to flowers, that sowed within our souls the seeds of art. 

I thank the poets of the dawn — the tellers of legends — the makers of myths — the singers of joy and grief, of hope and love. I thank the artists who chiseled forms in stone and wrought with light and shade the face of man. I thank the philosophers, the thinkers, who taught us how to use our minds in the great search for truth. 

I thank the astronomers who explored the heavens, told us the secrets of the stars, the glories of the constellations — the geologists who found the story of the world in fossil forms, in memoranda kept in ancient rocks, in lines written by waves, by frost and fire — the anatomists who sought in muscle, nerve and bone for all the mysteries of life — the chemists who unraveled Nature’s work that they might learn her art — the physicians who have laid the hand of science on the brow of pain, the hand whose magic touch restores — the surgeons who have defeated Nature’s self and forced her to preserve the lives of those she laboured to destroy. I thank the discoverers of chloroform and ether, the two angels who give to their beloved sleep, and wrap the throbbing brain in the soft robes of dreams. 

I thank the great inventors — those who gave us movable type and the press, by means of which great thoughts and all discovered facts are made immortal — the inventors of engines, of the great ships, of the railways, the cables and telegraphs. I thank the great mechanics, the workers in iron and steel, in wood and stone. I thank the inventors and makers of the numberless things of use and luxury.

I thank the industrious men, the loving mothers, the useful women. They are the benefactors of our race. The inventor of pins did a thousand times more good than all the popes and cardinals, the bishops and priests — than all the clergymen and parsons, exhorters and theologians that ever lived. The inventor of matches did more for the comfort and convenience of mankind than all the founders of religions and the makers of all creeds — than all malicious monks and selfish saints.

I thank the honest men and women who have expressed their sincere thoughts, who have been true to themselves and have preserved the veracity of their souls.

I thank the thinkers of Greece and Rome. Zeno and Epicurus, Cicero and Lucretius. I thank Bruno, the bravest, and Spinoza, the subtlest of men.

I thank Voltaire, whose thought lighted a flame in the brain of man, unlocked the doors of superstition’s cells and gave liberty to many millions of his fellow-men. Voltaire — a name that sheds light. Voltaire — a star that superstition’s darkness cannot quench.

I thank the great poets — the dramatists. I thank Homer and Aeschylus, and I thank Shakespeare above them all. I thank Burns for the heart-throbs he changed into songs. for his lyrics of flame. I thank Shelley for his Skylark, Keats for his Grecian Urn and Byron for his Prisoner of Chillon. I thank the great novelists. I thank the great sculptors. I thank the unknown man who moulded and chiseled the Venus de Milo. I thank the great painters. I thank Rembrandt and Corot. I thank all who have adorned, enriched and ennobled life — all who have created the great, the noble, the heroic and artistic ideals.

I thank the statesmen who have preserved the rights of man. I thank Paine whose genius sowed the seeds of independence in the hearts of ’76. I thank Jefferson whose mighty words for liberty have made the circuit of the globe. I thank the founders, the defenders, the saviors of the Republic. I thank Ericsson, the greatest mechanic of his century, for the monitor. I thank Lincoln for the Proclamation. I thank Grant for his victories and the vast host that fought for the right, — for the freedom of man. I thank them all — the living and the dead.

I thank the great scientists — those who have reached the foundation, the bed-rock — who have built upon facts — the great scientists, in whose presence theologians look silly and feel malicious.

The scientists never persecuted, never imprisoned their fellow-men. They forged no chains, built no dungeons, erected no scaffolds — tore no flesh with red hot pincers — dislocated no joints on racks, crushed no hones in iron boots — extinguished no eyes — tore out no tongues and lighted no fagots. They did not pretend to be inspired — did not claim to be prophets or saints or to have been born again. They were only intelligent and honest men. They did not appeal to force or fear. They did not regard men as slaves to be ruled by torture, by lash and chain, nor as children to be cheated with illusions, rocked in the cradle of an idiot creed and soothed by a lullaby of lies.

They did not wound — they healed. They did not kill — they lengthened life. They did not enslave — they broke the chains and made men free. They sowed the seeds of knowledge, and many millions have reaped, are reaping, and will reap the harvest: of joy.

I thank Humboldt and Helmholtz and Haeckel and Buchner. I thank Lamarck and Darwin — Darwin who revolutionized the thought of the intellectual world. I thank Huxley and Spencer. I thank the scientists one and all.

I thank the heroes, the destroyers of prejudice and fear — the dethroners of savage gods — the extinguishers of hate’s eternal fire — the heroes, the breakers of chains — the founders of free states — the makers of just laws — the heroes who fought and fell on countless fields — the heroes whose dungeons became shrines — the heroes whose blood made scaffolds sacred — the heroes, the apostles of reason, the disciples of truth, the soldiers of freedom — the heroes who held high the holy torch and filled the world with light.

With all my heart I thank them all.

* * * * 

If you're complaining about the price of butter, here's a data point to keep in mind ...

If you're complaining about the price of butter, here's a data point to keep in mind as you butter your croissant: "All dairy products have become much more abundant, especially since the mid-1800s, and chiefly for unskilled workers."

The same hours of unskilled work that bought 1 pound of butter in England in the 1200s bought 15.6 pounds of butter in 2022.
Instead of 1 pound of cheese, an unskilled worker got 10.6 pounds.
1 gallon of milk became 15.1 gallons.

Read more here at Human Progress. 

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried..."

"'Real Socialism' has never been tried in the same way that 'Real Capitalism' has never been tried.

"The difference is 'Almost Socialism' resulted in the impoverishment & death of hundreds of millions of people.

"While 'Almost Capitalism' has lifted billions from absolute poverty."

~ Mark Antro

"Ideas, especially philosophical ones, are fundamental to economic growth."

“The weaker the government, the better it is for innovation.”

~ Joel Mokyr

"Today, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University), Philippe Aghion (London School of Economics), and Peter Howitt (Brown University) “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”1 This follows a recent trend for the Committee to award to economics focused on economic growth, following Acemoglou, Johnson, and Robinson in 2024 and Kremer, Duflo, and Banerjee in 2019...

"One of the big mysteries of human history is the so-called 'hockey-stick of prosperity.' That is, the fact that, for much of human history, standards of living were virtually unchanged. Very little separated the Roman citizen in 1AD from the British citizen in 1700. But, starting in the 1700s, standards of living skyrocketed. ...

"Enter Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt. Collectively, their work helped explain why this growth happened, why it happened where it did, and how it is sustainable. ...

"All three winners explain economic growth through technology and culture (broadly defined). ... I highly recommend the Nobel Committee’s overview of their contributions."

~ Jon Murphy from his post '2025 Nobel: Growth Through Technology and Culture'

"Hurrah! Joel Mokyr has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. One of the greatest economic historians of our time. If you haven’t read him yet, start with 'The Lever of Riches,' 'The Gifts of Athena,' 'A Culture of Growth,' and 'An Enlightened Economy'."

~ Johan Norberg

"Mokyr's key insight is that one needs more than inventions that work—one needs a culture of knowledge-seeking, innovation, progress.

"Note the abstract from his now-classic 2005 paper [below], pointing us from the Industrial Revolution to the broader Enlightenment culture within which it arose—and to the earlier Baconian philosophical revolution.

"Ideas, especially philosophical ones, are fundamental to economic growth."

~ Stephen Hicks on the Nobel award

"Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of the American economy. Mokyr rejects the claims that the we are entering an area of stagnation or permanently lower economic growth. He argues that measured growth understates the impact on human welfare. Many of the most important discoveries are new products that are often poorly measured and not reflected in measures such as gross domestic product or income.

"The conversation closes with a discussion of the downsides of technology and why Mokyr remains optimistic about the future."

~ conversation with Joel Mokyr at EconLog

'Degrowth' says we're running out of land to feed everyone.

 Norman Borlaug says "no."

"Thanks to improved farming techniques, fertiliser, irrigation, genetic modification, and innovators like Norman Borlaug, humanity has massively reduced the amount of land required to feed a person."

More life-giving trends here.

Greed is good

"Call it 'greed' if you want. But greed built the light bulb, the skyscraper, the airplane, and the vaccine. Envy never built a thing."

~ Rock Chartrand