Matt Ridley’s new book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, is garnering rave reviews. Ridley, science writer and popularizer of evolutionary psychology, shows how it was trade and specialization of labor–and the resulting massive growth in technological sophistication–that hauled humanity from its impoverished past to its comparatively rich present. These trends will continue, he argues, and will solve many of today’s most pressing problems, from the spread of disease to the threat of climate change.

The Cato Institute has now presented three different looks at the book, with a review in the Cato Journal, another in Regulation, and an event at Cato with Matt Ridley himself.

Powell on Ridley

My colleague Aaron Powell published the first Cato review of The Rational Optimist with a piece in the Fall 2010 edition of the Cato Journal (pdf).

What The Rational Optimist makes clear, in perspicuous prose and enchanting storytelling, is that, just as biological evolution populated the world with the wondrous variety of life, exchange allowed one of those species to achieve a wondrous standard of living that will only improve and become more uniform as we trade and invent.

Powell doesn’t find the book flawless, however. He identifies two problems that weaken Ridley’s argument, the first dealing with the “circular and unconvincing” nature of his claim that trade caused our human ancestors to achieve humanity. The second concern is broader. Powell writes,

It would be easy to get the impression Ridley is Pollyannaish. If nuclear annihilation, super flus, and starvation are nothing to be worried about, what possibly could be? Unfortunately, Ridley’s response to this critique is less convincing than it could be, for he fails to adequately draw a line between when an anticipated disaster is real and when it’s just pessimism writ large.

Henderson on Ridley

David R. Henderson reviews the book in the latest issue of Regulation (pdf). Like Powell, Henderson enthusiastically endorses the style and substance of Ridley’s book, though without identifying the weaknesses highlighted in the former review. His only point of contention with The Rational Optimist is a “jarring misstatement” regarding trade and value. Henderson writes,

Given the important role of trade in Ridley’s theory, and given his obvious understanding of trade, it is surprising that he makes a jarring misstatement: “For barter to work,” he writes, “two individuals do not need to offer things of equal value. Trade is often unequal, but still benefits both sides.” The correct statement is: “For barter or trade to work, individuals must offer things of unequal value.” If I valued what I give up the same as what I get in return, there would be no point in trading. Trading is always an exchange of unequal values.

Henderson goes on to defend Ridley against the negative appraisal his book received in the New York Times. That review, written by famous foreign-aid critic William Easterly, attacked The Rational Optimist for its take on Africa and for failing to “confront[] honestly all the doubts about the ‘free market.’” “Really?” Henderson responds. “All the doubts? I do not know if such a book could be written with the requisite amount of evidence and have under 3,000 pages.”

Ridley on Ridley

And then, of course, there’s the source himself. In May, Ridley spoke at a Cato Institute book forum about The Rational Optimist. He discussed the core arguments of his book and concluded (optimistically) that technology and trade have now made it possible to stop trying to keep the world from getting worse, and instead focus on making it better.

As with all Cato events, full video and audio are available for download on www.cato.org. Or watch it right here:

We released Cato’s report card on the fiscal policies of the governors today. We calculated data on the taxing and spending habits of 45 of the nation’s 50 governors, between 2008 to August 2010.

The governors are scored from 0 to 100 on seven separate taxing and spending variables. The scores are aggregated and converted to letter grades, A to F.

Four governors earned an “A” this year: Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. You can read the report to find out what these governors did right from our limited-government point of view.

As it turns out, the residents of these four states seem to like the fiscal stance of their winning governors, who favor tax cuts and spending restraint.

Pawlenty has a 52 percent approval rating in quite a liberal state.

Jindal has a 74 percent approval rating.

Manchin has a 69 percent approval rating.

Sanford has a 55 percent approval rating, despite the troubles in his personal life.

Governors shouldn’t just focus on being popular in a superficial sense. These polls tell us that governors who focus on cutting taxes and spending in an honest and intelligent way will be supported by the people.

Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed by John Hopkins’ SAIS professor Eliot Cohen arguing – via a series of fictional statements – that the Obama team’s decision to speak with Bob Woodward is likely to have a devastating impact on our ability to win in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The technique is too cute by half. I could just as easily come up with a series of quotes by people who believe that the costs of the war in Afghanistan far exceed the benefits. (e.g. The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, upon reading the Woodward excerpts, bursts into tears. “Why have we chosen to fight a war that Gen. Petraeus admits we will likely never win, and which our children and grandchildren will be fighting?”)

By the same token, Cohen employs Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Benjamin Netanyahu to make his case that Obama is weak. How hard would it be to make up fictional statements by two other heads of state – say, by allies who have pulled out of Afghanistan, or are preparing to – that they are encouraged to see that someone in the U.S. government recognizes that the war in Afghanistan is a gross misallocation of resources and is looking for ways to refocus counterterrorism efforts, and away from a decades-long nation-building mission that is likely to fail? Not hard.

But I refuse to play Cohen’s game according to his rules. Better to focus on the flaws of his underlying argument – to the extent that there is one – that the reason we aren’t winning this/these war/wars is because the president’s aides are talking out of school. If they just shut up, and did what the generals said (some of whom, by the way, must also be talking to Woodward) we’d be on the road to victory.

Please.

As with an earlier Afghanistan story that began with a few ill-considered remarks to a reporter, we shouldn’t be focused on the fact that people talk off the record. That is the story that Cohen and other war-hawks tell. The more important story is that the Afghan strategy is fatally hamstrung by 1) an unreliable local partner, a necessary ingredient for any successful counterinsurgency campaign; 2) a profound lack of trust between the Afghan people and the American/NATO counterinsurgents; and 3) a complete mismatch between the ends sought and the resources (time, money, troops) available.

I have no idea how Cohen responds to points one and two. Those two problems are not unique to Afghanistan, and the absence of those two conditions has doomed many other counterinsurgency missions.

As for number three, Cohen might believe that talking about victory will convince the American people that they should back the military’s preferred strategy, which OMB said would cost $889 billion over the next 10 years (on top of the $250+ billion already spent), as the best possible use of money that we do not have. Indeed, Cohen has apparently convinced himself that the American people would be anxious to spend another ten or twenty years bogged down in a distant land trying to rebuild roads and schools, if only the president talked about it more often. Cohen might even believe, contrary to all evidence, as well as basic common sense, that the U.S. government is capable of creating a functioning nation state in Afghanistan, and that it constitutes a vital U.S. national interest to make that happen.

In short, Eliot Cohen believes that President Obama shouldn’t question how the Afghan mission aligns with our vital security interests, or even if it is achievable. He’d rather that he just shut up, believe in it – really believe –and back the generals.

I disagree. Where Cohen scorns (via proxies spouting imagined off-the-record quotes) internal administration deliberations as dangerously misguided, I am perversely encouraged that the president seems at least willing to ask hard questions, and that some of his advisers understand the utter futility of the current enterprise.

Of course, I’d be even happier if President Obama did what past presidents have done: determine the strategy, give the order, and expect the military to carry it out. And if the military leaders that he has won’t do it, he can find others. There are lots of them.