What Makes a Society Free and Prosperous?

Today, Australians are safer, wealthier and live longer than ever before.

In the last hundred years,

homicide rates per 100,000 have fallen from 2.6 to 1.0;
GDP per capita has risen from $7,336 to $52,059;
life expectancy has risen from 61.0 years to 83.4;
population has increased from 5.4 million to 26.6.

Similar changes have occurred in other countries. Throughout the world millions of people are better off than ever. For centuries, most people lived on $3 per day. Today the world average is $45 per day; $16,667 per annum. More people were lifted out of poverty in the past one hundred years than in the entire history of mankind.

What changed to give us this delightful, comfortable, and more civil modern life?

My thesis is that there are two reasons for the change.

Firstly, readily available cheap power.

Coal, and later oil and gas, replaced human labour and the ox.

Secondly, there was a change in attitudes.

We began to honour the entrepreneur.

It became socially acceptable to be in business.

Here’s the secret.

In a free market, every trade benefits both parties.

The more we diversify as consumers and specialise as producers,

the more prosperous we become as individuals and nations.

It is the entrepreneurs who drive this economic process.

They back their judgement and risk their time and their capital

to create the goods and services that they perceive consumers want.

My books and my blogs are based on the tenets of Libertarian Philosophy and Austrian Economics.

The Fragility of Freedom provides a basic understanding of the cultural heritage of Western Civilisation and proposes a moral society based on the principle of subsidiarity.

The Fortunate explores the ideas which have created the free and affluent societies that we enjoy.

My books are published by Connor Court. CLICK HERE TO ORDER

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