How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World

Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651 that lives in the state of nature, without an all‐​powerful Leviathan in charge, are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” His list fits most of the human experience, both with an effective Leviathan and without. But a century or so after he wrote, the times they really were a‐​changin’. In the words of a British schoolboy, “about 1760 a wave of gadgets swept over England.” That wave soon became a flood of global prosperity. Real income per person has increased since 1800 by at least a factor of 10—even in very poor countries. It’s more like a factor of 30, 50, or 100 in the rapidly expanding list of bourgeois countries in places such as East Asia and Latin America.

What happened? Is the appropriate response to the modern world irritated sorrow or happy celebration? We suggest celebration. The world was and continues to be greatly enriched by adopting the Bourgeois Deal.

Did the government do it? Nope.

Solitary? The revolution in communication makes it easy to play chess with someone on the other side of the world.

Poor? Compare $3 a day worldwide around the year 1800, expressed in 2008 prices, to roughly $30 a day nowadays worldwide (and roughly $100 a day in rich countries).

Nasty? Compare your Roomba‐​swept floor to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s account of 16th‐​century English houses: “The floors are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes; under which lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and everything that is nasty.”

Brutish? As the late Hans Rosling put it, “Hunter‐​gatherer societies often had murder rates above 10 percent, and children were not spared. In today’s graveyards, child graves are rare.”

Short? Life expectancy worldwide was 29 years in 1770. It had risen by 2014 to 71.

More From CATO Institute: