From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity's Greatest Achievement - Couverture souple

Magoon, Michael

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1958206024 ISBN 13 : 9781958206027

Editeur : Upward Press, 2022

Synopsis

Steven Pinker: “Magoon has made a valuable contribution in adding to our understanding of the facts and causes of the most important development in human history.”
Tyler Cowen: “Michael Magoon’s new book… will change your thinking about progress and its relevance to your life.”
In the tradition of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, “Enlightenment Now” and “Sapiens”, a work of sweeping scope and imaginative thinking that redefines our view of the past and present.
Progress is humanity’s greatest achievement. It has transformed our lives in so many positive ways, but we take it for granted, refuse to admit its existence, or even claim that it is bad. Far too many of us have become “progress deniers.”
Today it is easy to feel overwhelmed by problems. The media, activists, interest groups and politicians all relentlessly focus on seemingly unsolvable crises that grow in number with every year. But if we step back and compare our current circumstances to previous generations, our problems do not feel so daunting.
Progress is real, and it matters to you.
When one looks at the past compared to today, we can see that humanity actually lives in a world of progress. People living in Western nations today have a level of affluence far surpassing anything ever seen on planet Earth. All across the world nations are being transformed from oppressive poverty to a level of affluence that was once only possible for the rich. Even in some of the poorest nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, levels of income, education, health, literacy, sanitation, safety, longevity, transportation, communication, and housing are rapidly increasing.
Today’s progress is a startling transformation compared to how humans have lived over the past hundred thousand years. For almost our entire history humanity has lived in a stable state where acquiring food took up the bulk of our waking hours. How they could acquire their food was highly constrained by fundamental geographical limits.
Michael Magoon traces the stunning story of how progress came about. He explains how humanity overcame seemingly impossible geographical constraints to innovate the technologies, skills and organizations that make our life better. He shows how progress evolved in Middle Age Italy, accelerated with the Industrial Revolution in Britain and then gradually diffused throughout the world.
Magoon makes the compelling argument that progress evolved when humanity invented the Five Keys to Progress: Highly productive agriculture, trade-based cities, decentralization of power, export industries, and widespread use of fossil fuels. By inventing these five keys, societies turned themselves into vast, decentralized problem-solving networks. Now far more people could solve problems more effectively because they no longer needed to focus all their time on acquiring food. Other societies then copied their example, leading to the gradual diffusion of progress.
While today’s problems seem insurmountable, Magoon reminds us that previous generations solved far bigger problems with far fewer resources and simpler technology. Knowing this, we can look forward to the future with both hope and a time-tested problem-solving attitude.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Upward Press
• Date d'édition: 2022
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1958206024
• ISBN 13: 9781958206027
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 388
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg