The World Is Better Than You Think
4min Video
It might not feel like it, but the world is better than you think. Now is the best time to be alive, ever in history.
Video Transcript:
It might not feel like it, but the world is better than you think. Right now is the best time to be alive, ever in history.
A crazy statement, right? Over the last two centuries, the world has been riddled with disease, war, and famine. Yet, as we can see in these couple of visuals from Our World in Data, humanity has progressed; I’ll go through these quickly, so feel free to pause at any time.
To make it simple, each of these is reflected as if the world were comprised of only 100 people. From 200 years ago, poverty has exponentially declined, while those with basic education and literacy have exponentially increased. Over these two centuries, the world population has increased 7-fold from 1.1 billion in 1820 to 1.7 billion in 1990, up to 7.7 billion in 2020. In that time, most of the world has adopted democracy and become vaccinated against various diseases. The child mortality rate has been cut to a 10th of the amount that it was in 1820.
In his book, the rational optimist, Matt Ridley, says it better than I ever could. In 2005, compared to 1955, the average human being on planet earth earned nearly three times as much money (adjusted for inflation), ate one-third more calories, buried one-third as many of her children, and could expect to live one-third longer…. All during a half-century when the world population doubled.
I could drone on about this general topic for hours with all the information I researched, but this is still my fundamental question: with all of this good news, why doesn’t it feel like we are making any progress? I stumbled upon this great quote from Thomas Babington Macaulay, who said it a bit more eloquently, “On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”
This is because of our innate human desire for survival, which is taken advantage of by the news media. Fight or flight kicks in when we see the particular risk du jour flash across our screen. Remember, even a financial news program like CNBC is not in the business of providing sound advice. They are in the business of selling ad slots, and the more eyeballs that view the ads, the more they can sell them.
Let’s not forget the exponential innovation in robotics, healthcare, farming, transportation, etc. We live in a time of science fiction compared to even 50 years ago, let alone 200.
All right – so at this point, you’re probably like, great Ben, I’m excited bout the future; what does that have to do with my financial independence? Well, the short answer is everything! I probably sound like a broken record, but the market only cares about one thing – future expected earnings. There are an estimated 3 billion people in the world without internet access; that will soon be a tidal wave of new consumers with access to high-speed internet, finally entering the world wide web and all that it has to offer.
So take these historical trends and future expected demographics and technological innovation growth. As Peter Mallouk stated, “you have what I believe is one of the best times in history to be a long-term, globally diversified investor…. What you can’t do is allow yourself to be paralyzed by a manufactured fear of the future.”
If you’d like to read more about this topic, I know it gave me an overwhelming sense of optimism and fuel to invest for the future… shoot me a message because I have a few book recommendations for you.
Otherwise, now, more than ever – let’s stay the course and stay on point!
