Bright Future: Abundance and Progress in the 21st Century

Bright Future offers three reasons for being positive about the 21st century: 1. Human ingenuity and modest growth rates will bring affluence to most of the world by the end of the century. We can double or triple food production by breeding better plants and livestock, and by more effectively managing land and water. And we can increase energy and raw material production more than six fold by exploiting a vast array of old and new resources with continually improving technologies. 2. Environmental catastrophes will continue to not happen. Nature is remarkably resilient. And, as we get richer and smarter we will get better at remedying or adapting to natural adversity. 3. A switch to collective ownership will become the obvious choice as automation eliminates most of the jobs that are not their own reward. Such a change would unleash the creative energies of the individual and free the economy from the distorting effects of sectional interests. This would be real free enterprise.