Thread by @Altimor

A thread of beliefs I’ve always thought were obvious and important, but have found out over the last few years were a lot less widely held than I thought
1/ progress benefitting everyone is possible and desirable (like I said, obvious, and shocking that so many people disagree)

2/ the most important and almost only kind of progress is technological. Social progress depends on technological progress.

3/ GDP and productivity growth are not exact measures of progress, but they’re excellent proxies for it. One should obsess over every 0.1% of growth — over the long term, it makes the difference between the dark ages and a sci fi utopia

4/ technological progress is positive sum. It means one person can win without anybody else losing. Over the long term, tech progress is a game where everybody wins — especially the less well off.

5/ by and large, getting wealthier has a huge, positive impact on people’s lives, health, education, safety, and happiness.

6/ we are much wealthier today than we were 50 to 100 years ago (you would not believe how many Europeans believe that standards of living have gone down in that time span). This is almost entirely due to technological progress.

7/ (unfortunately this one is more controversial) progress and growth need not be at the expense of the environment. In fact, the wealthiest countries are the fastest ones to reforest and decouple their CO2 emissions from growth

7b/ solving global warming and stopping deforestation and the extinction of species goes through *more* economic growth and technological progress. “Degrowth” is our era’s most toxic idea, and it would achieve the opposite of its own stated objectives

8/ (I tend to be bearish China, and dislike its economic and political systems, but if there is one reason to be optimistic about it, it is that it holds these beliefs on growth and tech a lot more universally than anyone else — everybody should read @danwwang this)