Comments on: A Bright Future Beckons https://www.isegoria.net/2010/05/a-bright-future-beckons/ From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small Fri, 01 May 2026 21:33:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Isegoria https://www.isegoria.net/2010/05/a-bright-future-beckons/comment-page-1/#comment-2609 Isegoria Mon, 24 May 2010 14:09:41 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=6095#comment-2609 Certainly the economic growth we’ve seen since 1910 has been phenomenal, but any rosy prediction from 1910 would be missing the carnage of World War I, the collapse of global trade that came with it, The Communist Revolution in Russia, the Great Depression, World War II, mass starvations in Communist Russia and newly Communist China, etc.

What would have happened if the US hadn’t served as an off-site back-up for Western Civilization?

]]> By: Frank S. Robinson https://www.isegoria.net/2010/05/a-bright-future-beckons/comment-page-1/#comment-2582 Frank S. Robinson Sun, 23 May 2010 23:14:42 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=6095#comment-2582 Yes, that prediction you quote might indeed have been made in 1910 — and would have been correct. The degree of progress and improvement in the human condition in the last 100 years has been simply phenomenal — off the charts, compared to past eras. Anyone interested in this subject should read my own book, The Case for Rational Optimism (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, 2009), which makes points and arguments quite similar to Ridley’s, but develops the case for optimism over a broader range of subject areas.

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