I’ve attempted as much as possible to limit the “Doomsday-tarian” style of commentary on this platform, in part because there’s already more than enough of that taking up space on other liberty-oriented websites, but also because, try as I might, I do not see doomsday on the horizon. In fact I see the opposite. The world is getting better. A sustained environment of liberty, spread through greater reaches of the world, is generating a more cultured, better fed, better educated population than has ever existed in the history of the human race. The proto-fascist ravings of Greta Thunberg notwithstanding, the past decade that she has lived through has been the most prosperous ever witnessed in Western nations, and most certainly in her home country. Greater numbers of people are experiencing true progress, despite the process generating it existing below the surface, and despite this real progress being taken for granted by most. Greater numbers of people are recognizing the truth that, when left to their own devices, when left free, the human species is capable of real-world miracles. When left free, the invisible hand, or spontaneous order, or whatever you’d like to call it, goes to work, and the daily actions of each free individual working within a web of hundreds of millions of other free individuals generates unimaginable prosperity. And they are miracles, only ones taken for granted.
Many do not want to hear that the world is getting better. The doomsday tale is far more interesting. ‘Doomsday-ism’ sells. People love to be told to fear something, to be told that war is just over the horizon, to hear reports of various atrocities breathlessly reported on the nightly news. They love the cinematic aspect of world-ending scenarios, of war, terrorism, et cetera. Reality, as channeled and distorted through the news, becomes cinematic, and dramatic. And interesting. “If it bleeds it leads.” People want Armageddon as entertainment, as they always have. It’s human nature I suppose. We all know someone who is addicted to complaining, and appears to inject every new crisis directly into a vein.
Yet despite the reports of humankind’s inevitable demise, contrary facts continue to emerge. For instance. The market prices for this planet’s stock of non-renewable resources continue to fall, contrary to the Ishmael doomsday-ists, and really contrary to what one would expect in the face of a rising global population. CATO’s Simon Abundance Index tracks this miraculous fall in the price of 50 fundamental commodities.
Liberty is the principle that becomes the engine of miraculous progress, but one that gets almost no credit from those who benefit the most. In fact it’ the only means of achieving progress, but because it’s benefits are indirect, voters have a much harder time of seeing those benefits as opposed to the ones stemming from direct government action, even when that action undercuts the progress that they most benefit from.
Marijuana legalization is a perfect example. The rapid cascade of legalization across the United States has unleashed a tidal wave innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation, and widespread access to a risk-free alternative to expensive, dangerous, and addictive pharmaceutical drugs. This has been a true, real-world miracle, and it should be hailed as such. Many do, but too many still fail to see the source of the miracle, a source that could be tapped and channeled to cure other, greater societal ills that far too many people look to government to solve through the magic wand of the legislator.
It’s fairly obvious that we humans are hardwired to seek out a Messiah, and despite the modern world we live in, most of us still look to the sky for miracles or signs of approaching Armageddon. And so we imbue various man-made institutions with divine authority, and demand miracles.
We should be careful of how frequently we indulge our primitive desire for Messiahs, because when they do appear it’ll be too late to get rid of them.
The advocates of liberty must become more than mere chroniclers of the rise of authoritarianism. An imaginative and consistent vision of what a truly free society would look like must be developed. Doomsday-ism does sell well though, which is nothing new. Busybodyism, that ugly Puritan hatred for, and distrust of, anything new and different, also sells well. With every demographic shift or cultural change, the busybodies emerge, columns and books fully-formed, to deride the change. But the change is good, if it is a product of the natural, unforced, purely voluntary process that liberty generates.
So, to the title of this post. Contra the doomsday crowd, the world is getting better. This, of course, is thanks to a sustained, relatively free environment for uncontrolled experimentation and entrepreneurship to flourish. While much of the world is nowhere near to developing an open society that respects the rights of individuals, the entire world is benefiting from what little liberty does exist. It’s vitally important that as many as possible understand the principle underlying this progress, in the hope that greater numbers of people will give up their quest for a government-created Paradise and permit the liberty from which can be the only true environment in which a real-world Paradise can emerge. We must understand why prosperity occurs. It’s not god, nor is it government, nor is it merely accidental. It has a source that we are able to discern. While we cannot use government to force a plan for prosperity upon society, we are able to create the conditions from which it will emerge. If we’re to have another decade of marvelous prosperity, it’s vital that as many people as possible understand how it occurs.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this once I’ve given it time to marinate.
