Learning the basics about progress

Human material progress is one of the most important trends in history, but few people understand it. What causes progress? When did progress start? Why did it spread across the world?

The following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack in sequential order. For greater context you can read the previous excerpt or start with the first excerpt from this book.

You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.

The Five Keys To Progress

In this book, I introduce the critical concept of the Five Keys to Progress. If there is any one big take-away from this book, it should be these Five Keys to Progress.

I believe that the Five Keys to Progress is an essential unifying concept for understanding progress. The Five Keys to Progress are critical because they are the necessary preconditions for a society changing from a state of poverty to a state of progress, and they are actionable in today’s world. In other words, the concept not only helps one to understand the world but also how to make it better.

The Five Keys to Progress enable us to cut through all of the clutter of history and modern times so that we can focus on what matters most. The Five Keys to Progress enable us to answer some of history’s most difficult questions, as well as to provide policy solutions and practices that can make the world a better place.

Using the concept of the Five Keys to Progress, it is easier to understand:

• The historical origins of progress.

• Why progress took so long to get started.

• How and why progress started in Northwest Europe.

• How and why progress spread to different societies over time.

• Why so many poor nations were left without progress for centuries.

• Which forces threaten progress today.

• What policies and practices wealthy nations should adopt to keep their progress going.

• What policies and practices developing nations should adopt to enjoy greater progress.

So what are the Five Keys to Progress? To transition from poverty to progress, a society needs to acquire:

1.  A highly efficient food production and distribution system. This enables societies to overcome geographical constraints on food production so that large numbers of people can focus on solving problems other than getting enough food to eat.

2.     Trade-based cities packed with a large number of free citizens possessing a wide variety of skills. These people innovate new technologies, skills and social organizations and copy the innovations made by others.

3.     Decentralized political, economic, religious and ideological power. It is of particular importance that elites are forced into transparent, non-violent competition that undermines their ability to forcibly extract wealth from the masses. This also allows citizens to freely choose among institutions based upon what they have to offer to each individual and society in general.

4.     At least one  high-value-added industry that exports to the rest of the world. This injects wealth into the city or region, accelerates economic growth and creates markets for smaller local industries and services.

5.     Widespread use of fossil fuels. The incredible energy density of fossil fuels injects vast amounts of useful energy into society, enabling it to solve a wide variety of problems. Without this energy, life would return to the daily struggle for survival that dominated most of human history.

Each of the Five Keys to Progress is necessary for a society to experience progress, but none are sufficient by themselves.

I believe that the degree to which peoples have enjoyed progress is largely determined by long-term historical factors that go back centuries or even millennia. These factors determined the extent to which societies acquired the Five Keys to Progress. For most of human history, there was no progress, because these five key factors were either completely missing or very underdeveloped.

Progress Has Spread Throughout the Globe

Once a society achieves the Five Keys to Progress, it can escape the poverty trap imposed by geography, demographics and politics. Human history can be viewed as a vast evolutionary process that led to the accidental discovery of the Five Keys to Progress. Once these five keys were discovered, they diffused slowly and unevenly throughout the world.

There were six historical breakthroughs that enabled progress to accelerate and diffuse to new parts of the globe:

1. The emergence of Commercial societies in Northern Italy about 800 years ago, which combined four of the Five Keys to Progress (productive agriculture, trade-based cities, decentralized power and export industries).

2. The diffusion of Commercial societies from Northern Italy to Flanders (modern-day Belgium) and then to the Netherlands and finally to Southeast England.

3. The migration of Europeans to much of the rest of the world. The migration of peoples from England to North America was particularly important.

4. The Industrial Revolution in Britain in the 19^th Century which added the fifth key to progress (widespread use of fossil fuels).

5. The Allied victory in World War II, which ended the totalitarian threats of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy.

6. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Expanding on this list a bit, a specific type of society evolved in the city/states of Northwest Europe between 1200 and 1800. These Commercial societies laid the foundation for our current progress by perfecting four of the Five Keys to Progress.

Because Commercial societies were based upon free peoples with a wide variety of skills living in densely populated cities, they were unusually innovative and willing to copy the innovations of other societies. These societies built more inclusive political, economic and religious institutions that were forced to compete nonviolently against each other to produce benefits for the people.

The Industrial Revolution in the 19^th Century radically broadened and deepened this progress by leveraging the awesome energy density of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels enabled the innovation of extraordinarily productive food, energy, transportation and communication technologies. These technologies radically expanded the overall number and variety of other technologies, skills and social organizations. The fifth Key to Progress had finally evolved.

Industrial technologies, skills and social organizations enable people to overcome many, but not all, of the geographical constraints that previously undermined the possibility of progress. For the first time, people anywhere on the globe had the opportunity to experience progress. They could now escape the trap of geographical constraints.

Creating the first society with progress was humanity’s greatest achievement. It had taken at least 100,000 years of evolution to do so. Once one society made the jump from poverty to progress, other societies could copy the first one. The genie of progress had been let out of the bottle, and there was almost no way to put it back inside.

When contemporary peoples copy the technologies, skills and social organizations of more successful societies on a grand scale, they can dramatically improve the standard of living and happiness of their people. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and India are just a few of the previously poor nations who made a sudden jump to prosperity by copying innovations made in richer nations.

By copying nations who have already achieved the Five Keys to Progress, entire nations can jump from poverty to progress.

Progress Matters to Your Life

Progress is the most uplifting story in human history. It has transformed poverty into prosperity, disease into health, ignorance into education, isolation into connectedness, war and violence into peace and security, slums into housing, and servitude into freedom.

Quite frankly, progress is the single most important force to impact the material existence of humanity. We must protect it in wealthy nations and expand it in developing countries.

Rejecting progress puts serious limitations on people’s lives. If you believe that things are bad and that things are getting worse, what are the chances you can have a successful and happy life?

By accepting the reality of progress and learning from the progress of the past, you can give yourself and your loved ones a better shot at living happy and successful lives.

My hope is that this book helps to ramp down the current level of cynicism and to replace it with a new field of inquiry for understanding which factors promote progress. Just as importantly, I hope to spark interest in identifying which actions people need to take to enjoy the benefits of the progress that surrounds them.

So, let’s get on to the evidence that progress exists…

The above is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. It is part of a series of excerpts that I am publishing on Substack in sequential order. For greater context you can read the previous excerpt or start with the first excerpt from this book.

You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.

Stay turned for more excerpts…