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Turning Despair Into Hope
It’s easy to despair when you tune in to 2024’s accounts of the state of our union, but I’d like to suggest that the end is not near.
One of my favorite public intellectuals is the Swedish former anti-industrial activist Johan Norberg, who suggests three “I”s–intolerance, interventionism, and impatience–have led people of all nationalities astray during the past two decades or so. The transition from 11/9 (when, in 1989, Germans started tearing down the Berlin Wall) to 9/11 (when, in 2001, terrorists attacked the US) spawned illiberal authoritarian movements in the world, which the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and Covid accelerated.
Before we dangle signs of hope, it’s important to be realistic: a sampling of our challenges tempers our optimism about the future.
- As the accompanying Human Freedom Index shows, our world’s economic freedom (and economic freedom is at the heart of personal, political, and religious freedom) has declined rather precipitously (from 6.94 to 6.77 on a scale of 1-10: that’s a 3.5% decline in only two years).
And the US is not immune to this worldwide deterioration: the score in the US dropped from 8.84 in 2000 to 8.14 in 2021, a decline of 8% since 9/11’s attacks. The insecurity brought about by that tragedy ushered in this decline: Norberg argues that when we “experience feelings of fear and disgust, we become more willing to seek safety from strongmen and big governments.” “Emergencies,” the economist Frederick Hayek wrote, “have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.” Think not only of the Great Depression, but also 9/11, 2008’s crisis, and 2020’s Covid.
- The share of governments which are liberal democracies has declined from 25% to 18% in the last dozen years, which is a 28% decline.
- Last year you could walk across the continent of Africa (from the Atlantic to the Red Sea) and never be in a state that hadn’t had a coup in the past 36 months.
- In America, our current political system has brought us dysfunction, despair, and disillusionment.
While it’s easy to be negative, we should reflect on hopeful aspects of our situation:
- The chance of your demise resulting from a terrorist attack is one in 50 million, a tiny fraction of your chance of drowning in a bathtub. Granted, bathtubs are not out to get you.
- The middle class is disappearing. Though this sounds like it belongs in the more depressing list above, when you dig a bit, the numbers clearly show that a good chunk of the other two classes has moved on up to the upper class; it’s just our material expectations have grown more than our incomes during the past two decades. We (understandably) complain about high prices in restaurants, while spending just as much on restaurant meals as groceries. As a child, our family went to the A & W drive in a couple times per year, and a sit down restaurant—hmmm. Once per year?
- Despite the recent drop in freedom, the world remains much more free today than in 1980: an “average” country’s freedom score in 1980 would be in the bottom 10% of countries today!
- Poverty continues to collapse: in the world, it has dropped by 130,000 people. And that 130,000 person drop has happened, on average, every day for the last 20 years!
Which has certainly never happened before in human history.
So, what to conclude?
I think we first need to realize that most “new” ideas are really, really old, and many old ideas are actually relatively new.
The idea that a solution to a problem like escalating college debt (approaching $1.8T) needs to involve top down dictates canceling debt is as old as Solon’s debt forgiveness in Athens 2500 years ago. Norberg suggests that we trust the “wisdom and experiments of millions of entrepreneurs, workers, and consumers” to patiently solve problems. Understanding markets and relying on them is what is novel. Patience is not our best virtue in this ADD world. As our world gets increasingly complex, we need to move away from the old controls that tried to solve problems in the past.
Milton and Rose Friedman always argued for the power of good ideas to improve society, even if they have to hibernate for a generation or two.
To channel the wisdom of great ideas, read a good book like Hazlett’s Economics in One Lesson or Bastiat’s The Law; and if economics really is too depressing, read a good account of history–I was enthralled by Will and Ariel Durant’s The Lessons of History in high school. Or read a book that fuses history and economics, like Diedre McCloskey’s Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World For All. Right now, I’m starting Russel Kirk’s, The Roots of American Order.
And while you’re at it, join a local group, volunteer for a local charity, take a fast from social media or cook a good feast for friends. And, since it’s spring, plant a garden.
In 1759, Voltaire’s Candide concluded just that: its happy-ever-after ending involved some battle-scarred individuals cultivating their gardens, both literally and figuratively. Observing or engaging in battles where two people spar in quicksand suffocates good ideas. Find the solid ground, grab it, and cultivate something beautiful.
