Reasons for Optimism XI

Civil Rights
1. There is quite a bit of good news for civil rights. First, National Security Letters--which the federal government uses to get personal information on thousands of Americans from companies like Google--have been ruled unconstitutional. What made NSLs particularly disturbing was that the recipient companies were forbidden from ever acknowledging that they had given the government any information. Thankfully, these gag orders have also been ruled unconstitutional.

2. Second, the Supreme Court limited the use of sniffer dogs and expanded the Fourth Amendment's protection of the home by declaring that porches count as part of the home.

3. There's good news for civil rights in Canada as well. The Supreme Court there recently ruled that police need special wiretapping orders, not just ordinary search warrants, to intercept text messages.

Deficit & Spending
4. Via PostLibertarian, the federal deficit for the first six months of fiscal 2013 is 23% lower than the deficit for the same period in fiscal 2012. Government spending in March 2013 was more than 20% lower than in March 2012, a $76 billion fall from $369 to $293 billion. Moreover, an analysis of four major budget plans (President Obama's, Senate Democrats', House Republicans' and Senator Rand Paul's) shows that all four cut spending over the next ten years relative to the current-law baseline. The coming debate won't be whether or not to cut spending, it will be how much.

Energy & Climate
5. In November 2012, U.S. oil production surpassed that of Saudi Arabia! U.S. oil production also remained higher than Saudi Arabia's in December 2012. While month-to-month production fluctuates, and there may again be months where the Saudis produce more oil than we do, for at least two months in 2012, the United States was the largest oil producer in the world. U.S. oil production has continued to grow since then, and is now more than 7.2 million barrels per day, a level not seen since July 1992. Also in December, another country (China) imported more oil than the U.S. for the first time in four decades (ht).

6. Coral reefs are more resilient than we thought. Reefs damaged in super-hot 1998 were presumed to have little chance of recovery, yet they're recovering nonetheless.

Health
7. A new Bluetooth-enabled implant (ht) can monitor blood levels of up to five chemicals and transmit that data to a smartphone or tablet (and from there to the internet) in realtime. It can currently detect glucose (useful for diabetics), troponin (which is released during a heart attack) and a few other substances, but the device has been designed to accommodate sensors for substances not yet covered.

8. Functioning kidneys can now be grown in a lab, at least for rats. Doing the same with human kidneys will take some time, and even then the lab-grown versions are only 5% as efficient as natural, healthy kidneys. But if your natural kidneys aren't healthy, 5% could be enough of an improvement to be worth the transplant. No doubt researchers will also be working on improving that efficiency as well.

Poverty
9. Two recent studies, one from Oxford University and the other from the UN, highlight the improving conditions of the world's poor (ht via @LDoren). Many of the world's poorest nations are on track to eliminate acute poverty and growth is lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. From the UN report: "Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast."

Other Optimists
10. Ezra Klein (ht MR) has his own list of reasons for optimism. Among others, he lists the slowing rise of health care costs, a turnaround in housing, corporate profits, natural gas and technological advances.

11. Stephan Kinsella (ht Bob Murphy) says, "The Golden Age of America is Now." Kinsella writes from a libertarian viewpoint, and therefore includes items like imminent marijuana legalization that some might not agree are actually good things. But many of his points cut across ideologies--there is no draft, air travel is safer and cheaper than ever and technology is amazing, from cell phones to the internet to 3D printing to private spaceflight. He also cites increased diversity and tolerance, saying, "some people are vegetarians, vegans; no big deal... Some people have nose rings, multiple earrings. Tattoos. Nobody cares... Mixed-race couples? Nobody bats an eye."

Abundance and Overpopulation

I've finally gotten around to reading Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. The book is divided into six parts, and so far, I've only read the first. What follows is, therefore, only my preliminary reflections.

You might expect a blog with "optimism" in the title to have a certain amount of mood affiliation for a book like Abundance, and it's true. Nevertheless, I have a few points of contention with the opening chapters. The first is overpopulation.

Overpopulation
In the first chapter, the authors approvingly cite Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome. They say that among "scientists who study the carrying capacity of the Earth," the "wild-eyed optimists" think the carrying capacity is two billion, with the "dour pessimists" saying 300 million. Call me crazy, but I don't think someone counts as a wild-eyed optimist if they believe 5/7ths of the world's humans are doomed to die.

There is one simple reason I am not concerned about drastic overpopulation. With some exceptions, food is generally produced on an annual basis. Crops are planted in the spring and harvested in the fall. Some crops take longer, especially animal crops, but food production generally takes place on annual time scales. By contrast, food demand is daily for the vast majority of the population. Hunger strikes or religious fasts may put off food demand for short periods, but not for most people, and even then not for very long. (Although this guy may be an exception.)

If our population is really so much larger than the carrying capacity of the planet, why haven't we already died? Food is produced very slowly compared to our demand for it, so if we're really going to run out, it would happen quite quickly. We should start dying out when our population is just slightly larger than the carrying capacity, not when we're 3-20 times larger than the carrying capacity! There are more than 7 billion of us right now, most of us eating every day. The carrying capacity of the planet therefore has to be at least 7 billion!

Of course, the central premise of the book is abundance, and it's possible that the section on overpopulation is just a fluff tactic to get the majority who are (sadly) overpopulationists to lower their guard and be receptive to abundance. I will have to read the rest of the book to find out. But so far at least, the possibility of lower population through birth control is considered a good thing, and a static future population is cited as a reason for abundance. Diamandis and Kotler also don't seem to be the kind of authors to use fluff tactics in that way. Indeed, the third chapter explains that people often don't agree with abundance because they have cognitive biases preventing them from agreeing, which is not exactly a claim that would make someone lower their guard.

Reasons for Optimism VIII

1. The number of people imprisoned in the US has been falling since 2008.

2. More cars were sold in 2012 than any other year since the recession began, and sales grew 13% over 2011, more than in any year since 1984.

3. Audi is showing off technology that would allow a car to autonomously find a parking spot within a parking garage and park itself. No word yet on when this will be available for consumers, but a garage-only feature like this might circumvent some of the legal grey areas with autonomous cars, at least in privately-owned garages.

4. The Earth is getting greener. And I don't mean humans are becoming more environmentally-conscious; I mean the physical Earth is literally greener, as measured by satellites, because there's more plants. There are two reasons plants are growing more: higher temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels. This is a another piece of evidence that climate tends to have stable equilibria.

5. Fully 64 new supplies of energy have been discovered in Africa in the past five years, and the pace seems to be picking up (ht). When combined with the previously-featured GravityLight, Africa is on track to save millions of lives in the coming years.

6. The incredible exponential growth of US oil production continues. We are now producing seven million barrels per day for the first time since March 1993.

7. More than two-thirds of Americans are optimistic about their own economic situation in 2013. On the other hand, nearly two-thirds are pessimistic about the economy as a whole. If you believe in Hayek's local knowledge, this is a great reason to feel optimistic about the economy as a whole (though perhaps pessimistic about the media's portrayal of it).

8. Herbert E. Meyer, who is called "the official who predicted communism's demise," says the good news that nobody is noticing is the global rise of the middle class (ht). In a recent interview [mp3] with Jerry Bowyer, Meyer says, "When you stand back from all the yelling and the screaming…you can see what I believe is the most important trend in the word…the world is emerging from poverty fast. ... Each year between fifty and one hundred million human beings are leaving poverty behind. ... By the way, it’s going to be a five billion-person middle class. This will become the most powerful force in the world. Their demand for our goods and services will set off an economic boom…I believe that we’re heading for not just a sonic boom, but maybe a supersonic boom."

Recent Reasons for Optimism Redux

Some more good news from this week:

1) Child mortality rates in Africa are falling rapidly, and the decline appears to be speeding up. Twelve African countries are seeing declines rapid enough to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of cutting child mortality by two-thirds from 1990 to 2015. Child mortality in three countries, Senegal, Rwanda and Kenya, is falling twice as fast as needed to meet the MDG.

2) In Israel, human skin cells from patients suffering from heart failure have been turned into functionally young, beating heart cells which were "equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born." The cells were successfully grafted onto rat hearts; human tests are still a ways off.

3) A telomerase gene therapy, when applied to adult mice, extended their lifespans by 24%. Telomerase encourages the regrowth of telomeres, the DNA equivalent of the plastic nub at the end of shoelaces. Telomerase has been shown to increase cultured human cell lifespans; the successful tests on mice have taken the treatment to the next step.

4) In non-health news, a British company is building robotic fish that can automatically test the seas for pollution. The latest buzzphrase seems to be "the internet of things," but the Brits are pushing past that to bring nature itself online.

5) MIT has developed a more life-changing technology for some of us: a nanotech coating for the insides of glass and plastic bottles that lets you get all of the ketchup out of the bottle. And it's not just for fun-- they estimate their coating could help save one million tons of food from being thrown out every year.

6) This morning, the SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully berthed with the International Space Station, becoming the first privately-built spaceship to do so. In the images below, which I captured from NASA's live stream, you can see both the Dragon capsule and the CanadArm used to catch it.

7) It's not quite space, but two California men launched a balloon to about 27 km and took the picture below of the recent solar eclipse (ht). As technology and living standards improve, everyday people are now accomplishing feats for hobbies and even school projects that were once the sole domain of governments and well-funded academics.

8) Earth is often thought of as the solar system's watery planet, but Jupiter's moon Europa has 2-3 times more water than we do. On the surface it's all ice, but geothermal heat could mean liquid oceans under the ice dozens of miles deep. That's good news for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

9) The provincial government of British Columbia decided this week that its mandatory vehicle emissions inspections had been successful. With the objective of cleaner vehicle emissions achieved, the government is now phasing out the program for non-diesel vehicles, which will save drivers $23 per year per vehicle, not to mention the hassle of the inspections themselves. That may not sound like much, but any time a government actually ends a program because it achieved its objective deserves celebration.

10) Finally, not really news per se, but a nice reminder in the form of Canadian graffiti. Photo courtesy of the Expected Optimist's better half on a trip to Tsawassen, BC.

17 Reasons to be a Rational Optimist

Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, was recently interviewed by Reader's Digest, leading to an article listing "17 reasons it's a great time to be alive" or "17 reasons to be cheerful." (The first link leads to the Reader's Digest article, the second to Ridley's blog about the article.)

The list includes a couple points I've made here, and lots more. He says the environment is better than we think, partly thanks to urbanization, partly thanks to technology, especially in agriculture. Also, despite inflation, many things cost far less than they used to. In 1800, an hour's light cost the average person six hours' worth of wages, while today it costs half a second.

By all means, read the full list. As Ridley says, "The world has never been a better place to live in, and it will keep on getting better."

Some other choice quotes:

• "Self-sufficiency is poverty."
• "It's easier to wax elegiac for the life of a pioneer when you don't have to use an outhouse. The biggest-ever experiment in back-to-the-land hippie lifestyle is now known as the Dark Ages."
• "The more we prosper, the more we can prosper. The more we invent, the more inventions become possible. The world of things is often subject to diminishing returns. The world of ideas is not: The ever-increasing exchange of ideas causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world. There isn't even a theoretical possibility of exhausting our supply of ideas, discoveries, and inventions."