Lars Karlsson: CapacityNow

If you look at all the data, it’s clear there’s never been a better time to be alive.

Swedish author, historian, thinker – and my Facebook friend, Johan Norberg has published an article in The Spectator. 

Johan Norberg is a historian devoted to promoting economic globalization and classical liberal positions. He is arguably most known as the author of In Defense of Global Capitalism. Since March 15, 2007 he has been a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. In the article – and his new book – he is exploring why we the world different and worse than it is. Here below are some parts of the article.

‘We have fallen upon evil times, politics is corrupt and the social fabric is fraying.’ Who said that? Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders? Nigel Farage or Marine Le Pen? It’s difficult to keep track. They sound so alike, the populists of the left and the right. Everything is awful, so bring on the scapegoats and the knights on white horses.

Pessimism resonates. A YouGov poll found that just 5 per cent of Britons think that the world, all things considered, is getting better. You would think that the chronically cheerful Americans might be more optimistic — well, yes, 6 per cent of them think that the world is improving. More Americans believe in astrology and reincarnation than in progress.

If you think that there has never been a better time to be alive — that humanity has never been safer, healthier, more prosperous or less unequal — then you’re in the minority. But that is what the evidence incontrovertibly shows. Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labour and infant mortality are falling faster than at any other time in human history. The risk of being caught up in a war, subjected to a dictatorship or of dying in a natural disaster is smaller than ever. The golden age is now. 

Johan Norberg, author and historian

We’re hardwired not to believe this. We’ve evolved to be suspicious and fretful: fear and worry are tools for survival. The hunters and gatherers who survived sudden storms and predators were the ones who had a tendency to scan the horizon for new threats, rather than sit back and enjoy the view. They passed their stress genes on to us. That is why we find stories about things going wrong far more interesting than stories about things going right. It’s why bad news sells, and newspapers are full of it.

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The only problem?  It is simply not true, all facts tells another story Norberg concludes in a new book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future.

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In 1981 almost nine in ten Chinese lived in extreme poverty; now just one in ten do. Then, just half of the world’s population had access to safe water. Now, 91 per cent do. On average, that means that 285,000 more people have gained access to safe water every day for the past 25 years.

Global trade has led to an expansion of wealth on a magnitude which is hard to comprehend. During the 25 years since the end of the Cold War, global economic wealth — or GDP per capita — has increased almost as much as it did during the preceding 25,000 years. It’s no coincidence that such growth has occurred alongside a massive expansion of rule by the people for the people. A quarter of a century ago, barely half the world’s countries were democracies. Now, almost two thirds are. To say that freedom is still on the march is an understatement.

Norbergs new book, available shortly

Part of our problem is one of success. As we get richer, our tolerance for global poverty diminishes. So we get angrier about injustices. Charities quite rightly wish to raise funds, so they draw our attention to the plight of the world’s poorest. But since the Cold War ended, extreme poverty has decreased from 37 per cent to 9.6 per cent — in single digits for the first time in history.

So who did say those words at the start of this article, about how we have ‘fallen upon evil times’? It wasn’t Trump. It wasn’t Farage. A century ago, an American professor found them inscribed on a stone in a museum in Constantinople. He dated them from ancient Chaldea, 3,800 BC.

If you want to read the entire excellent article, click here: The Spectator Article

I also recommend you to read all Norbergs books. He writes very well about interesting topics in a provocative and still entertaining way – these are in my mind important books. Even though I don’t subscribe to all the views of Johan, but many, there is however no doubt thst he writes things that needs to be said. 

Johan Norberg’s Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future is published next week. He also appears on this week’s Spectator podcast: spectator.co.uk/podcast

My club, Malmö FF, won today at home 4-1 against Jönköping Södra. 

Goals by Bengtsson, Kjartansson, Christiansson (above) and Jeremejeff. 

We are leading and at the top of the Swedish League after 19 games. One point ahead of last years’ champions Norrköping, six points ahead of AIK Solna from Stockholm and ten points ahead of IFK Gothenburg. 

Champions League here we come. 

The challange to meet the United Nations 17 global sustainability has started and Swedish daily newspaper SvD presents in several articles the views of Swedish leaders working with international development to express their views. This is an inofficial translation of some parts of the interview with UN Deputy Secretary General Joaiim Reiter.

The UN development agenda includes seventeen global goals range from eradicating poverty to peace and justice to be realized by 2030. Pessimists argue that it is not realistic and criticizes sustainability goals to be too broad and vague. However, the optimists believe that the goals are good instruments of mobilization for a better and more sustainable world. 

The UN sustainability is often called Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). SDG replaced the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals which existed between 2000 and 2015 and that were partially achieved. But the seventeen sustainability goals, with 169 targets, is far more comprehensive and complex than the MDGs. The idea is that they will be realized over the next 15 years.

Among the targets are some earlier ambitions e.g. to eradicate poverty and hunger, provide clean water and sanitation to all. Other nee objectives are education for all, greater equality, more equality between countries and a halt for global warming and climate change. More challenging new objectives is to promote jobs for all and sustainable economic growth, develop sustainable communities and to promote peace and justice.

Joakim Reiter is a Swedish diplomat and leader working as Deputy Director General of UNCTAD, United Nations Conference on Trade and Devlopment. 

For UNCTAD SDGs 1 and 8 are particularly important. These goals define the ambition to eliminate all poverty and to create long-term sustainable economic growth up to 2030. Two goals that go hand in hand, according to Joakim Reiter.

You can not fight poverty without growth. Basically, there is no long-term sustainable development with poverty reduction without economic policy delivers and trade functions smoothly, says Joakim Reiter. 

The plan is that no one should live on less than $ 1.90 per day, but still today every five inhabitants in the developing countries live in extreme poverty. This corresponds to 836 million people who in most cases lack both money and jobs. 470 million more jobs are needed in the world by 2030. This is no easy task given that the global unemployment increased from 170 to 202 million people between 2007 and 2012. 

You can not fight poverty without growth. 

The good news is that UN expects that the global labor force will increase by 800 million people over the next 20 years.
The goals of zero poverty, sustainable growth and employment are almost a dream. To achieve this dream developing countries must have higher growth than china had at its best. China grew by an average of 9.4 percent over 15 years, and the poorest countries (LDC) must perform even better, says Joakim Reiter. 

There is a financing gap of 2 500 billion dollars per year in developing countries. Governments can’t manage this on their own. There is no state solution, the private sector must help. But above all we require an “aggressive growth policy” with transformative reforms, primarily in Africa – to create jobs. In Asia and other middle-income countries we beed better allocation of domestic resources for poverty reduction.

Africa must enter a period of fast growth. One possibility could be that the cost of labor in many countries also in Asia, including China, have increased dramatically. This means a potential that manufacturing industries move elsewhere. A population-rich Africa has a chance to attract manufacturing industries, a chance they should take, he says. However first we must reduce the trade costs in Africa. It requires, inter alia, better infrastructure, more opportunities to establish distribution and restart banks and reduced tariffs. Better regional and inter-regional trade integration is needed in parts of Africa, says Reiter.

We must reduce the trade costs in Africa.

In short, Africa needs a concrete vision equivalent to the EU’s single market to get free of growth. Combined with the right distribution policy may be the beginning of what can cause abolished poverty and sustainable growth. But by 2030? It will require an extreme effort.

This is a interering and importsnt article. The SDGs are key to the future of our world.

Africa needs a concrete vision equivalent to the EU’s single market.

I know Joakim Reiter and he is one of the most competent and the best leaders I have seen internstonally in this area. I fully agree with all that he says in the article.

I have also personally worked with UNCTAD and have many friends worklng fornthe organization. UNCTAD , is doing a very good in contributing to a better world. There is hope.

Source: SvD Article 21/8