Chapter 11. Conclusion and Implications
There have always been optimists predicting that everyone on earth will someday have the necessities of life. They trust man’s ingenuity to overcome all obstacles. Now the evidence that validates their optimism is at hand. The triumph, however, is only an accidental by-product of man’s ingenuity; it is an achievement of man’s selfishness, greed, and desire for opulent leisure. For that reason the cynics who quote Hobbes can claim to have been right: Man’s baser instincts have prevailed. The cynics can also dismiss as premature this claim of victory.
The darkest time in the struggle for world prosperity, however, was a quarter of a century ago. The world economy really did appear to be floundering, and indicators ...
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