Reprising this from when I read Deirdre McCloskey’s fascinating, intriguing, and wonderfully learned The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (University of Chicago Press, 2006). Early on McCloskey cites three statistics about progress between 1800 and now:
Wealth: “The amount of goods and services produced and consumed by the average person on the planet has risen since 1800 by a factor of about eight and a half” (p. 16). The items consumed include more and better food, cleaner water, education, health care, safer technologies, and so on. Consequently:
Life expectancy: Increased wealth “raised the expectation of life at birth in the world from roughly 26 years in 1820 to 66 years in 2000” (p. 18). So if one is an adult by, say, age 16, the average amount of adult life rose from 10 years in 1820 to 50 years in 2000 — a factor of 5.
Population: “The world’s population increased from 1800 to 2000 by a factor of about six” (p. 15).
So people have 8.5 times more stuff; they have 5 times as much time to enjoy it; and there are 6 times as many people.
8.5 x 5 x 6 = 255. How’s that for Philosophy-Math? : )
Related: “What Business Ethics Can Learn from Entrepreneurship.”