The Journey of Humanity: And the Keys to Human Progress

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From the Malthusian (hunter-gatherer) epoch to the Neolithic (agricultural) Revolution to the Industrial Revolution and concluding now in the Technological Era, the book looks closely at what drives lifestyle improvements. Has the Demographic Transition, where families have less children due to the cost of training them in advanced skills, promoted prosperity? Did allowing non-native citizens to share in the nation’s wealth increase or decrease growth? Yet his optimism about humanity shines through – prize its diversity, commit to educate its children and they will find their way to innovate and create a culture of growth. It’s a great way to look at the world, but a healthy recognition that power, capitalism, finance, the existence and structure of states and public philosophies – some right, some wrong – are all part of the brew would have made his account more realistic. Sad to say they would also have made it less optimistic. Humanity, as Kant said, is made of crooked timber from which nothing entirely straight can be made. Galor’s book would have been the stronger had he leavened his sunshine with some shadows.

He ends his recapitulation of the same argument here by asserting that “geographical characteristics and population diversity” are “predominantly the deepest factors behind global inequalities”, which sounds rather like we can’t do anything about them. Happily, at least, he does suggest that a country such as Ethiopia, which in his view is too diverse, might be helped by “policies that enabled diverse societies to achieve greater social cohesion”. Meanwhile, Bolivia, which is allegedly too homogeneous, could achieve better economic growth by being more diverse and so benefiting from more “intellectual cross-pollination”. And so, though it has often seemed as if we can do little about his hidden “great cogs” and “fundamental triggers”, it appears cheeringly in the end that politics and ideas might at least sometimes trump their effects on the story of how we got here and where we might go next. If you haven't read Sapiens or books mentioned before, this could be a pretty good read - but if your already familiar with the topic to some extent (and my knowledge is modest), perhaps you should start with Diamond or Fukuyama instead.Galor is unable to move away from his time and his world. When he talks about technology, he does not differentiate between types; when he talks about education he is only thinking of the current (and A very determined) pattern; and a long etcetera. Please, how can you reduce the increase in schooling and the disappearance of the gender gap only to decimononic industrialists? What about the political revolutionary process, what about the weakening of religious power, what about ideologies...? Please, Galor, Marxists advocated the kind of education you say was only defended by industrialists! Obviously you don't know that... And, do you really think that legislation and the New States didn't play a fundamental role? If you aren't lying consciously, you have been driven mad. I understand know why only economists clap their hands. You are saying, basically, that businessmen are the saviors of humanity. If you had said the same about proletarians, kings or peasants, i would have critized it too. A masterful sweep through the human odyssey…. If you liked Sapiens, you’ll love this. ”—Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins A wildly ambitious attempt to do for economics what Newton, Darwin or Einstein did for their fields: develop a theory that explains almost everything. ”— The New Statesman

Gedurende het grootste gedeelte van de menselijke geschiedenis was er niet of nauwelijks (economische) groei. Verbeteringen in de technologie en productie werden al snel weer teniet gedaan door de groei van de bevolking die die veranderingen juist mogelijk hadden gemaakt. Het was Malthus die dit in zijn essay in 1798 beschreef en daarmee beweerde dat de wereld zich nooit uit deze 'Malthusian trap' zou bevrijden. Although some compare this work with Sapiens (Harari) or Jared Diamond's already classic, the differences are immense. While the first proposed a macrocosmic vision of history in an informative but fresh way, and while the second knew how to combine different branches of knowledge with an innovative result, in this book we find none of that. Maybe it might be said that the bests sections of the book are those in which he copy/pastes some interesting (but very well known) facts about geography and history (some of them previously divulged by other popularizers before him, like Peter Watson or Diamond...) Brilliantly weaves the threads of global economic history. A tour de force! ” —Dani Rodrik, author of Straight Talk on Trade The explanation of the takeoff into sustained growth is a little bit less satisfying, but that’s partly what happens when you only have one first sustained takeoff—and it happens at a time when the world is globally connected so you don’t have the (somewhat) independent data points you have for studying other issues. Galor argues was a situation where small changes can lead to a large change—which he analogizes to “bifurcation theory” in mathematics.

A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species ’progress, from one of the world’s preeminent thinkers.

La historia y la sociología sean quizá dos de las disciplinas que más se ajusten al zeitgeist reinante, y este ensayo se ajusta con absoluta precisión a la ortodoxia de nuestros días. No encontraréis ninguna reflexión incómoda que pueda aparecer por la interpretación de unos datos objetivos, como por ejemplo hacía Noah Harari -con el cual, por cierto, discrepo en casi todo, en especial cuando trata el tema que me toca. Galor es superficial y predecible, bastante aburrido por su convencional aproximación al tema. Aunque, eso sí, cumple con lo que se propone, a saber, explicar el crecimiento de la humanidad y la consecuente desigualdad económica. I am in awe of Oded Galor’s attempts to explain inequality today as a consequence of such profound forces. A remarkable contribution to our understanding of this mammoth dilemma.” —Jim O’Neill, author of The Growth Map In lucid, accessible prose, Galor ingeniously traces obscure influences over centuries…. This engrossing history reveals that subtle causes can have astounding effects.” — Publishers Weekly Galor tells this big story while drawing on a range of recent academic research, much of it is his own but also Daron Acemoglu, Melissa Dell, and many other economists who are using modern empirical methods to exploit quasi natural experiments to study how (possibly) random differences in the past cast a shadow centuries or even millennia later. This thorough grounding in research sets it apart from some other more speculative big think books—although some of the research ends up confirming, or at least corroborating, various speculations.An optimist’s guide to the future … Oded Galor’s ‘Sapiens’-like history of civilisation predicts a happy ending for humanity.” ―TheGuardian In a captivating journey from the dawn of human existence to the present, world-renowned economist and thinker Oded Galor offers an intriguing solution to two of humanity's great mysteries. Oded Galor’sattempt to unify economic theory is impressive and insightful. ” —Will Hutton, The Guardian

Written by one of the most influential economists in the field of growth and development, this book is breathtaking in its scope and ambition. Oded Galor’s initial research in the early 1990s highlighted the negative effects of income inequality on economic growth, with the research being published just as the topic was about to become fashionable. Not surprisingly, that paper remains one of the most widely cited in the field. Subsequently, he developed, with peers and doctoral students, a series of progressively more ambitious mathematical models, and rigorous empirical research on the interactions between technological progress, income inequality, and economic growth ultimately leading to a research agenda that went well beyond just encapsulating the 20th century to first, the industrial revolution, then Malthusian epoch, and ultimately covering the entire history of humanity. It would not be an understatement that he is possibly one of the most ambitious thinkers today. This book synthesizes much of his own work complemented by a very active area of quantitative and empirical research in economics, history, and quantitative anthropology, that has benefitted from the data revolution. Galor’s project is breathtakingly ambitious. He proposes a fairly simple, intensely human-capital-oriented model that will accommodate the millennia of Malthusian near-stagnation, the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath of rapid growth, the accompanying demographic transition, and the emergence of modern human-capital-based growth. And the model is supposed to generate endogenously the transitions from one era to the next. The resulting book is a powerful mixture of fact, theory, and interpretation.”— Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics

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In many ways the evidence the book presents, drawing on a lot of peer-reviewed research, is much better than what we had even twenty years ago in thinking about economic growth. In other ways, however, a lot of the relationships between ancient variables and present ones (e.g., when was maize first introduced in Chinese areas and what was there economic status much later) could easily have alternative explanations or miss big points. We have the big civilisations first in water based areas. Homogenous civilisations. Control, stability. Europe for example could only thrive much later with better technology as competition drove growth and sutible differences in political institutions, coupled with fewer though better educated children, allowed for the escape from the poverty trap. Galor is quite often named as potential candidate for the Nobelprize. With this book he got a remarkable and unprecedented deal (for an economist) with his publisher: it was translated at the very same time into almost 30 languages. The stunning advances that have transformed human experience in recent centuries are no accident of history - they are the result of universal and timeless forces, operating since the dawn of our species. Drawing on a lifetime's scientific investigation, Oded Galor's ground-breaking new vision overturns a host of long-held assumptions to reveal the deeper causes that have shaped the journey of humanity: Astounding in scope and insight, The Journey of Humanity provides a captivating and revelatory account of the deepest currents that have shaped human history and the keys to the betterment of our species.”— NourielRoubini, Professor Emeritus, NYU, and authorof Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance