Thanks to the new Oxfam report, this month we learned that eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity. The report also emphasizes that “The very design of our economies and the principles of our economics have taken us to this extreme, unsustainable and unjust point.” The latter idea is not only espoused by a large number of politicians but is also prominent in the media.
Numerous scholars have shown the methodological flaws in Oxfam’s report, how it focuses on the wrong things and thus tells the wrong story. We do not live in a world where an increasing number of people are being left behind. Actually, the world has never been better. As Johan Norberg documents in his new book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, never before have levels of extreme poverty been as low as they currently are. Never before has there been less hunger. Per capita income, average life expectancy, and literacy rates have never been higher than they are today.
Sources: Johan Norberg: Progress (Oneworld), FAO, World Bank, UNESCO, EPA.
The Oxfam report, and others like it, are ill-founded. They promote misconceptions about human progress, and ultimately do more hard than good. These kinds of reports reinforce the tendency to pay more attention to negative events and put much less importance on positive trends and good news.
Various theories explain this apparent human attribute. Humans are genetically predisposed to pay attention to bad news. In his paper Bad Is Stronger than Good, Professor Roy F. Baumeister states: “The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good.” He also adds that bad events tend to have longer lasting effects to the point where having a bad day carries over and influences the next day. Moreover, in The Man Who Lied To His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, Professor Nass argues that “we tend to see people who say negative things as being smarter than those who are positive.” Thus, people are more likely to give greater weight to criticism than praise.
Furthermore, every time we hear about a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or a mass shooting, our body increases its levels of stress hormones to manage or survive a perceived or real threat. As people focus on the most shocking and bizarre accidents, and as stories and headlines are all about bad news, people end up perceiving constant threats and making inaccurate assumptions about the world.
And pessimism can turn into a potent political force. Too many politicians, who share this misconception about the state of the world, will try to “protect” their country from these menaces by any means. They will put an end to international trade, propose punitive taxes to reduce inequality, ban immigration, block technology, etc., if they (or their potential voters) perceive it as necessary to address imminent risk.
In the extreme, if people are convinced that the world is falling apart, there will be an increasing demand for a strongman to solve this perceived chaos. If people get the sense that their lives, other people or their country are being threatened by external forces, they will tend to call for someone to vigorously fight those threats. And too often, they will be willing to sacrifice not only their own liberties but also to restrict others’ liberties in order to be protected from those menaces, real or not.
“Fear is the health of the state” Norberg affirms. Mistaken beliefs, such as the ones presented by Oxfam, can lead to unintended results. We should be weary of calls for giving ever increasing power to politicians and the state based on perceptions that are not grounded in reality. A healthier approach would acknowledge how much the world has improved in the last few decades and how much better it could be if we embraced more, not less, human freedom.