It Gets Better All the Time

One of the larger themes of free-market economic thought is that people need to cooperate if they are to prosper. And when they do, wonderful things can happen. Here is an example of just that, from Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis’ new book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Highly recommended:

A horse can lug two hundred pounds more than thirty miles in a day, but a C-130 carries forty-two thousand pounds over eight thousand miles during those same twenty-four hours. This makes for a 56,000-fold improvement in our ability to cooperate with one another. (locations 1504-1506 in the Kindle edition.)

Diamandis runs the X Prize Foundation. He is midwifing the birth of commercial space travel, among other things.The book’s thesis is that exponential improvements in the quality of human life are both taken for granted, and are just the beginning.

Life is good, and it’ll only get better — especially for the bottom billion who still live in grinding poverty. What an amazing time to be alive.