The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [171]
p. 33 ‘Henry David Thoreau asked’. Thoreau, H.D. 1854. Walden: Or Life in the Woods. Ticknor and Fields.
p. 34 ‘In 1900, the average American spent $76 of every $100 on food, clothing and shelter. Today he spends $37’. Cox, W.M. and Alm, R. 1999. Myths of Rich and Poor – Why We Are Better Off Than We Think. Basic Books.
p. 34 ‘To produce implies that the producer desires to consume’ said John Stuart Mill; ‘why else should he give himself useless labour?’. Mill, J.S. 1848. Principles of Political Economy.
p. 34 ‘Thomas Thwaites set out to make his own toaster’. http://www.the toasterproject.org. ‘Kelly Cobb of Drexel University set out to make a man’s suit’. http://www.wired.com/print/culture/design/news/2007/03/100milesuit0330. See also http://www.thebigquestions.com/2009/10/30/the-10000-suit.
p. 37 ‘In civilized society,’ wrote Adam Smith’. Smith, A. 1776. The Wealth of Nations.
p. 38 ‘Leonard Read’s classic 1958 essay “I, Pencil”’. Read, L.E. 1958. I, Pencil. The Freeman, December 1958. For a fine modern rerun of the same subject see the novel by Roberts, R. 2008. The Price of Everything. Princeton University Press.
p. 38 ‘As Friedrich Hayek first clearly saw’. Hayek, F.A. 1945. The use of knowledge in society. American Economic Review 35:519–30.
p. 39 ‘a smaller quantity of labour produce a greater quantity of work’. Smith, A. 1776. The Wealth of Nations.
p. 39 ‘you would have spent your after-tax income in roughly the following way’. Data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics: www.bls.org.
p. 40 ‘An English farm labourer in the 1790s spent his wages roughly as follows’. Clark, G. 2007. A Farewell to Alms. Princeton University Press.
p. 40 ‘A rural peasant woman in modern Malawi spends her time roughly as follows’. Blackden, C.M. and Wodon, Q. 2006. Gender, Time Use and Poverty in SubSaharan Africa. World Bank.
p. 40 ‘the Shire River in Machinga province’. http://allafrica.com/stories/200712260420.html.
p. 41 ‘not just the services you need but also those you crave.’ The distinction between needs and wants, as expressed by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is a mischievous one: people evolved to be ambitious, to start exaggerating their social status or sexual worth, long before they have satisfied their basic needs. See Miller, G. 2009. Spent. Heinemann.
p. 41 ‘the entire concept of food miles is “a profoundly flawed sustainability indicator”’. Bailey, R. 2008. The food miles mistake. Reason, 4 November 2008. http://www.reason.com/news/show/129855.html.
p. 41 ‘Ten times as much carbon’. See https://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/reports/foodmiles/final.pdf.
p. 42 ‘six times the carbon footprint of a Kenyan rose’. Specter, M. 2008. Big foot. The New Yorker, 25 February 2008. http://www.new yorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter. See also http://grown underthesun.com.
p. 42 ‘just as it did in Europe in 1315–18’. Jordan, W.C. 1996. The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century. Princeton University Press.
p. 43 ‘Today, 1 per cent works in agriculture and 24 per cent in industry’. Statistics in this paragraph from Angus Maddison (Phases of Capitalist Development), cited in Kealey, T. 2008. Sex, Science and Profits. Heinemann.
p. 43 ‘the original affluent society’. Sahlins, M. 1968. Notes on the original affluent society. In Man the Hunter (eds R.B. Lee and I. DeVore). Aldine. Pages 85–9.
p. 43 ‘They lived into old age far more frequently than their ancestors had done.’ Caspari, R. and Lee, S.-H. 2006. Is human longevity a consequence of cultural change or modern biology? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 129:512–17.
p. 43 ‘they had largely wiped out the lions and hyenas’. Ofek, H. 2001. Second Nature: Economic Origins of Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
p. 44 ‘Geoffrey Miller, for example, in his excellent book Spent’. Miller, G. 2009. Spent. Heinemann.
p. 44 ‘The warfare death rate of 0.5’. Keeley, L. 1996. War Before Civilization. Oxford University Press.
p. 44 ‘a cemetery uncovered at Jebel Sahaba