How much progress is enough?
Don't we already have enough?
This article is part of my ongoing series on Progress Studies. You can read more on the topic in the following posts:
When I argue that we need to keep progress going, I sometimes hear rhetorical questions that amount to something like “How much progress is enough?”
Statements typically come from Greens who believe that we should all learn to live with what we have now and not keep expecting more. And like most rhetorical questions, they do not attempt to answer the question, but they imply that we all should be content with what we currently have.
On the one hand, I am very open to such thinking. I am not a big fan of consumerism or status-seeking behavior. Purchasing a flashy new car, clothes or jewelry is not progress. Being able to make visual displays of social status is not a sign of progress. Flaunting social status has been part of human behavior for thousands of years. It will not make you happy or successful.
I am not arguing for consumerism, but I am arguing for materialism. It really does matter whether a person has a flush toilet, clean water, vaccinations, higher levels of education, literacy, access to books or the internet, means of transportation, and a house that protects them from the elements and gives them some personal space. You can read more on the evidence for the benefits of modern progress.
It does matter whether someone can afford to pay for medical treatment that leads to a longer and healthier life. It does matter whether a person can purchase fresh fruit, vegetables, and protein year-round. It does matter whether they have a reliable electric grid that powers lights, appliances, computers, and cell phones. These things really matter to the quality of a person’s life.
I do not make the argument that all ramifications of progress lead to happiness. Rapid change can be disorienting, particularly for older people and those of certain personality types. Humans evolved to survive and reproduce in Hunter-Gatherer bands on the African savanna. Modern society, with all of its progress, is not natural to mankind, so it requires adjustment. And many people find that adjustment uncomfortable.
However, I do argue that, as a whole, progress has led to increased levels of happiness. While some parts of progress may promote unhappiness, progress promotes happiness on the whole. Wealthier nations are happier than poorer nations. More affluent people within societies are happier than less affluent people in those same societies. And people living in societies that experience rapid material progress are happier than people living in similar societies that do not experience progress.
Anyway, let’s get back to answering the question:
How much progress is enough?
My answer is this: When all of humanity lives with roughly the same material standard of living of the current American professional class (i.e. those with a four-year college degree), then that is enough. Until that day occurs, I believe that we have an obligation to preserve the foundations of human material progress.
Continuing human material progress is critical to:
Fund improvements in:
Education
Health
Pensions
Research and development for future breakthroughs in agriculture, energy, our understanding of progress, and mental health (to name just a few domains where we need breakthroughs).
Rewilding natural habitat
And virtually every other goal that requires money
Promote Upward Mobility for the working class and poor in wealthy Western nations.
Promote Upward Mobility for racial minorities and other groups in wealthy Western nations.
Maintain global demand to developing nations can ratchet their way out of poverty by exporting goods to wealthy nations.
Increase overall levels of happiness.
Reduce the likelihood that zero-sum conflicts slide into violence and war.
Ensure that democratic governance and individual rights are not thrown away out of desperation. A lack of economic growth will make us vulnerable to demagogues and radical ideologies.
I do not think that we should be trying to accelerate progress until it reaches the highest possible rate of progress. There are other things that matter as well (for example mitigating the negative effects of progress on the natural environment). But we can more easily achieve those other secondary goals with the wealth, technologies, skills, and organizations that future progress will achieve.
What happens next?
I fully admit that I have no idea what happens when we reach the stage of human development where everyone on Earth has a material standard of living of the current American professional class.
Will we all stop working?
Will our work week gradually shrink in hours as further technological innovation increases productivity?
Will robots and AI be doing all the work?
Will we all get bored and fight amongst ourselves?
Will we spend all our time in virtual-reality fantasies that realize all our most primitive desires?
Will we stop having babies and go extinct?
I have no idea.
You may respond that the American professional class should stop expecting more. If it were only about the United States, then I might agree with that, but developing nations desperately need export markets to make their economies grow.
If the American professional class stopped buying products, then it would seriously hurt developing nations. Declining global demand would trap them in poverty. That is an unacceptable outcome. And the American working class and poor also need jobs that are dependent on spending by the professional class.
Is this an achievable goal?
I do believe that we will eventually reach such an end state. It is not going to happen in my lifetime. Perhaps it might happen in my son’s lifetime. Perhaps we will go extinct due to some asteroid impact or gamma-ray burst before that happens.
But I think that there is a more than 51% chance that we will see sprawling suburbs full of nice houses with two-car garages for most people living in Congo. It is not guaranteed, of course, but it is achievable. No new technologies, skills, or social organizations need to be invented. Sub-Saharan Africa can theoretically just copy what worked for dozens of other societies.
Until that day happens, then I say that we need to keep promoting human material progress.
This article is part of my ongoing series on Progress Studies. You can read more on the topic in the following posts:
"Sub-Saharan Africa can theoretically just copy what worked for dozens of other societies."
There is a lot buried in that word theoretically, as you well know, and you already probably have a better understanding of the dozen plus experts trying to figure out why that has not happened already.
While I appreciate that conducting "specialization and trade" can be the more efficient way to obtain wealth and health, etc., I have often wondered just why a nation of 10 to 80 million people would not or could not have sufficient human capital, mineral resources, etc. to develop internally with minimal import/ export (not necessarily zero). Besides getting that population up to speed via education to best use their human capital, I guess we need to also inculcate the idea from Jefferson that "laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god." Then maybe they would throw off the "big man" rule or chieftain cultural mindset holding too many of them back.
The most optimistic take I can foresee is a future where the global population has shrunk but our technological and economic development continued.
By 2100, the world would be a vibrant and thriving place with clean air, water, and vast stretches of jungle and forests. Interrupted only by the clean, shimmering skyscrapers of urban development where people live their lives using far less material goods than is possible today.
The inhabitants of 2100 would look to the sky and see a Moon dotted with city lights from its own nascent urban development.