John Gray's confusion
I have sent the following letter to the New Statesman
Dear Sir,
John Gray, in his review of my book The Rational Optimist accuses me of being an apologist for social Darwinism. This vile accusation could not be farther from the truth. I have resolutely criticised both eugenics and social Darwinism in several of my books. I have consistently argued that both policies are morally wrong, politically authoritarian and practically foolish. In my new book I make a wholly different and more interesting argument, namely that if evolution occurs among ideas, then it is ideas, not people, that struggle, compete and die. That is to say, culture changes by the mutation and selective survival of tools and rules without people suffering, indeed while people themselves prosper. This is precisely the opposite of social Darwinism in the sense that it is an evolutionary process that enables the least fit people to thrive as much as the fittest.
Gray writes `There is nothing in society that resembles the natural selection of random genetic mutations; even if such a mechanism existed, there is nothing to say its workings would be benign. Bad ideas do not evolve into better ones.’ I refer him to the wok of Robert Boyd, Peter Richerson, Joe Henrich and others on exactly this point, especially their fascinating paper `Five misunderstandings about cultural evolution’. As for the notion that this cultural evolution is not benign, I prefer to live in a world where global child mortality has fallen by two-thirds in my own lifetime, a world where hunger and slavery are slowly disappearing, racial and sexual equality are generally improving, the goods and services that the average person can afford are increasing and many rivers and the air of many cities are rapidly getting cleaner. These things come about through the selective survival of technologies and ways of organizing them. Government plays a role, yes, but so do other human institutions.
Gray writes that `In Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the small Pacific nations, some of the world's poorest societies are already suffering from climate change. Telling them they need more economic growth is not very helpful when they are being destroyed by drought or rising sea levels.’ This remark, worthy of Marie-Antoinette, could not be more wrong. The suffering caused by climate change is (and is predicted by the IPCC for decades to continue to be) minuscule compared with the suffering already being caused by preventable problems: malaria, malnutrition, indoor air pollution, dirty water. Solving those problems through the eradication of poverty (ie, economic growth) would not only save far more lives, it would also enable people to tolerate climate change better without suffering. The World Health Organisation estimated in 2002 that 150,000 people were dying each year as a result of climate change. Even if you ignore the suspect assumptions behind this number (it includes an arbitrary proportion of diarrhoea and malaria deaths, and in a later estimate even inter-clan warfare in Somalia), these deaths represent less than 0.2% of all deaths and are dwarfed by deaths caused by iron deficiency, cholesterol, unsafe sex, tobacco, traffic accidents and other things, not to mention ‘ordinary’ diarrhoea and malaria.
Finally, Gray hilariously writes that `Laissez-faire was…imposed on society through the use of state power.’ Should a slave be grateful to be released or angry at having been enslaved in the first place?
Sincerely
Matt Ridley
Comments (15)
"Should a slave be grateful to be released or angry at having been enslaved in the first place?"
He should drag the former slave master to court, personal feelings aside.
Gray shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution that even the most right wing creation apologist might blush for him. "Bad ideas do not evolve into better ones." Nothing evolves in and of itself. That's like saying that AN ape evolved into A human, which is precisely the fallacy that the most ignorant anti-evolutionist utters. One pictures a Universal Horror movie transformation of a chimp into Henry Kissinger, or something.
A good idea is selected because bad ideas die (natural selection). And that good idea has relations with other good ideas (sexual selection) to produce other ideas, both good and bad (evolution).
Mr. Gray seems to suffer from the same myopic view of history he admonishes in his opening paragraphs. Yes there are exceptions to the general trend of increased prosperity, but over millennium the trend is clear, as you describe in your book. The main force behind your argument derives from it's long view of history, don't let critics forget that.
Thank you for the informative paper, although the link is slightly broken.
I have read _The Rational Optimist_ and there is nothing in the book that could be reasonably interpreted as advocating social darwinism.
Dubbing someone a "social darwinist" in scientific contexts seem similar to dubbing someone a "fascist" in political contexts. In both cases, the goal is a modern version of tarring-and-feathering someone without having to address his/her underlying arguments. Hello ad hominem, nice to meet you.
Matt Ridley is absolutely right. Life for people like he and I is awesome. He is wrong however to assume that it is the sole result of free market capitalism. Democracy, science and technology were just as...even more vital. He is wrong that it couldn't be a lot better. Massive accumulations of wealth from rigged financial markets has created a huge set back from where we could be. He is wrong that unregulated markets are necessarily better then well regulated ones. Our still great standard of living does not negate the recent market failure for which our children will still be paying for decades. Finally he forgets the 1 billion or more people (greater than ALL the people living 150 years ago) living WORSE than the average person of those times. From their perspective quality of life has regressed.
So yeah Matt Ridley has a great life... and we are all very happy for him.
Sorry: link now fixed.
`He is wrong that it couldn't be a lot better'
But I never say that. In fact I say very specifically that it could be a lot better.
``He is wrong...to assume that it is the sole result of free-market capitalism'
But I never say that.
`He is wrong that unregulated markets are necessarily better than well-regulated ones.'
But I never say that.
Do criticise what I say, not what critics say I say.
Actually, Muigeo, you'll note that Matt says *very specifically* in his introduction that financial markets should be tightly and well-regulated.
Matt, suggest you not bother with Mr Muirgeo. He is a familiar and most unwelcome and unreasoned commenter over at Cafe Hayek.
Gray probably hasn't even read the book, just dipped into bits in order to meet a deadline.
As a writer, Gray's ignorance is astounding. Take this paragraph:
"Disdainful or ignorant of the past, Ridley is uninterested in the forces that shape events. He writes hundreds of pages about the wealth-increasing virtues of free markets, but allots post-Mao China only a few lines. This brevity is symptomatic, as China falsifies Ridley's central thesis; the largest burst of continuous economic growth in history has occurred without the benefit of free markets. Wealth has been created as never before, not as a result of evolutionary change, but as a product of revolution and dictatorship."
No free markets in China? Where has Gray been for the last 30 years? He claims that MR is ignorant of the past while he demonstrates jaw-dropping ignorance of the present. Difficult to take the creature seriously.
In 1804 we had a 1 billion people. Today there are 1 billion people living on 1 dollar a day.
I am not so sure those 1 billion people would be easily impressed with your optimism. I'm not so sure when comparing THAT 1 billion to the 1 billion from 1804 that we can say we have had much progress.
I too want to be an optimist but my rational side has a hard time blocking out 1 billion people who would have been better off with their own farm or hunting grounds in 1804.
"muirgeo" is a professional troll. Consider his near-instantaneous self-refutation when he said in one breath that free markets don't work, but moments later acknowledged that the financial markets that have damaged our economy are rigged (hence they're not free).
He will not acknowledge this self-contradiction. He will not comprehend your historical analysis. He will not comprehend the idea of a system. He will cherry-pick anecdotes and regurgitate them in the form of a seamless web of leftist propaganda, impenetrable to reason and evidence.
I say this only because that's all he's ever done.
Gray wrote (re: Gregory Barton), "Wealth has been created as never before, not as a result of evolutionary change, but as a product of revolution and dictatorship."
It's now easier to start a business in China than it is in California. Hong Kong, as always, even easier. In Portland OR, a little girl needs to pay $150 for a license just to set up a little lemonade stand. Who is Gray kidding?
That said, China is a bubble economy using centralized fractional-reserve banking. Yes, they'll continue "growing" but not without the occasional bubble burst, inflation, and a lot of government influenced wealth destruction in the process. When that happens, I suppose a person like Gray will take that opportunity to switch gears - and instead of shamelessly giving dictatorships credit for wealth creation - he'll talk about how bad free exchange is. Nihilism may keep a op-ed writer employed, but it doesn't make for a rational discussion among intelligent company.
The part about "revolution and dictatorship" creating wealth "as never before" is a disgusting statement. Gray is a dangerous person if he really believes this. But it shows how sloppy and how far the left has really fell. Rather than lament markets, they're now taking credit for them! In their own backwards way.
A bad idea can evolve to a better one but it can more commonly spur the evolution of a better idea just like a bacteria or virus can spur the evolution of an antibody or natural antibiotic. If a bad idea happens to spread exponentially a social crisis will result. Then what comes into play is that ideas all have interrelationships because time and space are finite. If you are watching a mystery show on tv you are not also gardening and reading a book and blogging about society probably. Each idea has a pull with us and we feel that pull in the tradeoffs we make between opportunities and if an idea is causing a crisis it is eliminating numerous opportunities which results in a pull from all our other affinities against it. So not only will we often abandon ideas in mass when they result in crisis, we will develop an affinity for ideas that contradict them and therefore support the mass of our other ideas. We as a society wouldn't have morals if we hadn't had bad ideas that caused crises that prevented us from doing things we like to do and sharing those things. Every time a baseball or soccer game was canceled during WWII, some fans thought not just about wishing it was not canceled, but also sometimes about what ideas led to starting the war that caused it to be canceled, and were not just moved to gradually turn against those ideas, but to gradually turn toward morals refuting those ideas, partly because those morals could have protected their ability to play or watch baseball and soccer.
Muirgeo, the problem lies in the implication of your argument and attitude, as there were less people in 1604, and 1404, and 404, and 4004BC, and so on, and they were always less well off on average than today, so even if the percentage in poverty has been decreasing, the absolute number has been increasing. So you would prefer 1604 to 1804, and 4004BC to 1604, and so on, by the same argument, until the point when you would prefer that humans never existed because then zero people would have to be poor. There are only two paths to zero poverty, the forward one that works on decreasing percentages of poverty toward zero, and the backward one that works on decreasing absolute numbers of people toward zero. I would go ahead and stick with the forward one unless you really really like black makeup and piercings and that type of stuff.