E22: “Pears grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand and sold in the United States”
Tony Morley, November 25th, 2025
“Yet while getting no respect, free markets – or “capitalism” – have delivered exceptional results over a period spanning more than 200 years and reaching around the globe to every country where they’ve been tried.” — Matthew Lau
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The Golden Age of Humanity? We’re Living in It.
“Would we be better off living in the Middle Ages? Astonishingly, influential voices on the American intellectual right now seem to think so. Rather than affirming the Enlightenment ideals that inspired this country’s founding—reason, rights, markets, liberal democracy, and church-state separation—they are longing for, of all things, rule from the throne and altar.” — Steven Pinker and Marian Tupy
Steven Pinker
“Pears grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand and sold in the United States”
The team at Kite & Key Media explain how “Pears grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand and sold in the United States” makes sense, and improves the living standards of all global citizens.
“Now, the good news about this explosion of international trade is that it’s made us a lot better off. As of 2022, it was estimated that America’s increasing participation in global trade in the years since World War II has made the country about 10 percent wealthier than it otherwise would have been— which sounds like a modest number until you realize that 10 percent comes out to over $2.5 trillion dollars.”
Let Free Markets Reign:
Capitalism erodes racism, protects the environment, and fuels growth and improves material living standards. “It has become widely accepted that capitalism has failed” — That argument is nonsense, and “Matthew Lau isn’t having it.”
“It has become widely accepted that capitalism has failed – that free markets exploit workers, hammer consumers and can’t be trusted as the bedrock of a liberal democracy.”
“Matthew Lau isn’t having it. In this incisive critique, Lau demolishes four myths driving the modern attack on capitalism and explains how it is only free markets that make people richer, happier and more equal.”
Matthew Lau
The Engine of Progress by Big Think
Likely the most significant op-ed drop of progress content in 2025, “The Engine of Progress” has hours of some of the best reading from some of the greatest minds in progress studies. From Chelsea Follett and Jason Crawford to Peter Leyden and Blake Scholl this special edition from Big Think is brilliant.
“Progress depends not only on technology and institutions, but also on our feelings about the future.”
The grim truth about the “good old days”
In this op-ed from the Big Think, “Engine of Progress”, Chelsea Follett sets the record straight on just how miserable the past was for the average global citizen, and the contrast in living standards then and now.
“Rose-tinted nostalgia for the preindustrial era has gone viral — some people now claim that modernity itself was a mistake and that “progress” is an illusion. In this op-ed, Chelsea Follett addresses seven supposed negative effects of the Industrial Revolution. Her conclusion: History bears little resemblance to the sanitized image of preindustrial times in the popular imagination.”
“Preindustrial life wasn’t simple or serene — it was filthy, violent, and short. The Industrial Revolution was imperfect, but it was progress.”
Chelsea Follett
Life satisfaction has a lot to do with freedom and prosperity
Freedom, sound and just institutions, and economic growth and prosperity, are among the most powerful drivers of “life satisfaction;” people in countries with these conditions thrive, while those without report abysmal living conditions.
“Researchers recently compared Afghans’ life satisfaction with international datasets dating back to 1946 and found it was the lowest ever recorded. Two-thirds gave a score of 0 or 1 on the 10-point scale.”
Hannah Ritchie
American Mercantilism won't drive long-term prosperity
American neo-Mercantilism, heavy-handed tariffs, nationalising industry, and engaging in economic populism won't bring prosperity at best, and might harbour disaster at worst.
“If there is a silver lining to this mushrooming Trump-induced economic disaster, it is that it will vindicate, yet again, an economic-policy orthodoxy that today’s GOP has rejected.”
“From Latin America to Turkey, the kind of economic populism US President Donald Trump is embracing has always led to disaster.”
“Since his inauguration, the self-proclaimed “Tariff Man” has raised the average effective tariff rate from less than 3% to about 17.5% – its highest level in nearly a century. Reflecting his simplistic, zero-sum understanding of international trade,”
Desmond Lachman
Inventing the dishwasher, a breakthrough example of how large household appliances helped shape civilization
Dishwashers, refrigerators, clothing washers and dryers and gas and electric stoves all dramatically reshaped homelife, most particularly for the lives of women, and in doing so, had tremendous flow-on effects for the global economy and living standards. In “Inventing the dishwasher,
“The amount of housework a married American woman did fell by 48 percent in 45 years. The dishwasher alone didn't cause this, but it certainly helped.”
Erin Braid
“This is a case where resource efficiency happily goes hand-in-hand with domestic ease: we don’t have to gather horsetail for scouring, we don’t have to heat water over a coal fire, and we don’t even have to rinse our dishes before we load the dishwasher.”
The media is wrong about the main causes of death
The media is significantly skewing our perception of risk when it comes to causes of death, and they're not just a little wrong. Homicides received roughly 42 times more media coverage than their share of deaths, while terrorism received 18,000 times more coverage.
“The actual distribution of deaths is very different from the causes of death that the media talks about. Rare — but dramatic — events such as homicides and terrorism receive much more media coverage, despite being much smaller causes of death.”
Iryna Suprun
How life expectancy has changed over the decades
Between 1800 and 2023, life expectancy in the United States rose from 39.4 years to 79.5 years, but this growth in longevity wasn't exclusive to America, with average global life expectancy climbing from just 30.6 years to 74.1 years.
“Globally, average life expectancy increased from about 51 years in 1960 to 73.3 years in 2023, an average gain of more than 20 years in the space of six decades, despite a temporary setback during the coronavirus pandemic.”
Tristan Gaudiaut
Two Hundred Years to Flatten the Curve
"How generations of meddlesome public health campaigns changed everyday life — and made life twice as long as it used to be"
In 200 short years, civilization transformed healthcare from largely guesswork and superstition to a scientific and logistics breakthrough of unprecedented magnitude, the result, as Charles C. Mann argues, was a doubling of life expectancy and a 98% drop in child mortality.
“In 1875, about one out of every four British children died before the age of five — 248 out of every 1,000, to be exact. Today the equivalent figure is 4 out of every 1,000, a drop of more than 98 percent.”
“1875, the median age of death in Great Britain, then by many measures the world’s most affluent nation, was 45. Today it is 82. The rise is astonishing. For tens of thousands of years, the average human life expectancy hardly changed. Then, in just 150 years, it almost doubled.”
Charles C. Mann
The magic of the world's rarest blood type
Roughly one in six million people have Rh-null type blood, about one in every six million, a so-called universal “golden blood” that lacks all Rh antigens.
Researchers are working to better understand and potentially reproduce Rh-null blood, with the hope of eventually unlocking universal transfusions — presuming they can surmount the technical, ethical, and regulatory roadblocks along the way.
“We worked out if we knocked out five, then that would create an ultra-compatible cell, because it had five of the most problematic blood groups removed,” “The resulting blood cells would be compatible for all the major common blood groups”
Jasmin Fox-Skelly
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