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FORBES ASIA FEBRUARY 20 20The War on Prosperity
Will our golden age of global pros-
perity go on, stall or retract?
Looming storm clouds such as
North Korea, Iran, Hong Kong, sover-
eign debt, stock and property bubbles
cannot be ignored. But let’s also tip
our hats to how far prosperity has ad-
vanced since 1950. The global popu-
lation was then 2.5 billion and 60%
of earth’s inhabitants had too little to
eat. Today it’s 7.7 billion, and 20% are
poor. In 1950, Norway was the leader
in life expectancy at 72 years. Today,
global life expectancy is 73.
What bold economist, in the 1960s,
dared risk their professional repu-
tation by predicting a capitalist-led
China renaissance and Singapore’s rise
as the world’s richest city? Who, today,
might dare to predict a thriving sub-
Saharan Africa, or the emergence of capitalist republics in
the Middle East? Who can see India as tomorrow’s manu-
facturing powerhouse?
All of this will happen if we don’t lose our historical view
of how far we’ve come. The long view gives us confidence
that human ingenuity— inspired by the lawful freedom to
create, invest and trade—can be relied on to create wide-
spread prosperity. If we only let it.
In the first paragraph, I mentioned looming storm
clouds. They are real, but they are not the primary threats
to prosperity. The greater threat is that we turn our backs
on the two human inventions most responsible for prosper-
ity. Energy and information.
Let me point out what should be obvious. The world is
only 257 years beyond James Watt’s steam engine, which
birthed the Industrial Revolution. It has been only 160
years since we relied on whale blubber, trees and peat as
primary fuel sources. Just 125 years ago, there was a horse
dung crisis in New York; 60 years ago we were using clunky
computer punch cards, and it was only 25 years ago that the
Internet’s commercialization helped open up China’s capa-
bilities and prices to the world. It has been only 12 years
since the introduction of the smartphone, which has con-
nected global markets for the first time to billions of Indi-
ans, Indonesians, Vietnamese and so on.
Apple and Alibaba, Amazon and Tencent, Grab and Uber
don’t run on whale blubber. The modern economy stillneeds—and our future prosperity will
depend upon for some time—internal
combustion engines. And for as long
as we can foresee, it will require elec-
tricity—more than 90% of which is
still generated by fossil or nuclear fuel.
Cutting that to even 50% will take at
least 20 years.
And so the biggest threat to future
prosperity is the war on electricity’s
conventional fuels, a war disguised
as climate-change concern. No, I’m
not blind to the facts on climate
change. But as a believer in market
signals (which appear instantly on my
iPhone), I also observe that property
prices in climate-threatened coastal
cities like Singapore and New York do
not signal much investor alarm.
Here we come to populism’s danger.
Populism comes in two strains—left-wing and right-wing.
Left-wing populism is waging a generational battle against
oil and gas, the main fuel for transportation and electricity.
In the U.S, the left-wing Twitter mobs have egged on one of
the two major political parties to declare war on fossil fuel.
Even a onetime moderate like Joe Biden has said oil and
gas CEOs should be jailed.
Right-wing populism has a greater fear of information, a
fear that takes many forms. In the U.S., a growing number
of right-wing populists want to regulate big tech companies
like Amazon, Facebook and Google. Too much “fake news”
for the citizenry to handle! In countries like Brazil, China
and Hungary, information is thought to inspire political
dissent. And everywhere, right-wing nationalists know that
information about markets is the handmaiden of free trade
in goods and capital. Can’t have that!
As business leaders, we can’t fight every political battle.
But the war against abundance—in energy and informa-
tion—is worth fighting if we want future prosperity.By Rich KarlgaardTECH CONNECTOR
Rich Karlgaard is editor at large at Forbes.
As an author and global futurist, he has
published several books, the latest of
which is Late Bloomers, a groundbreaking
exploration of what it means to be a late
bloomer in a culture obsessed with SAT
scores and early success. For his past
columns and blogs visit our website at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richkarlgaard. SKODONNELL/GETTYIMAGES