ANANISH CHAUDHURI: Ian Taylor is entitled to his opinion but not his facts

Recently Ian Taylor wrote a column in Stuff taking issue with David Seymour’s rise to Deputy Prime Minister. According to Taylor, Seymour’s rise to the second seat is far beyond Seymour’s mandate.

It is not clear whether Taylor was similarly outraged, when Winston Peters became Deputy Prime Minister since NZ First’s vote share in 2023 was similar to ACT’s; or when Winston Peter crowned Jacinda Ardern Prime Minister in 2017 even though Labour received a much smaller share of votes compared to National in that election.

Taylor, of course, is entitled to his opinion. However, Taylor is not entitled to his own facts.

In his column, Taylor says Seymour is "completely at odds with the world" and "tone deaf" for saying the following.

“At the end of the day, people have never lived this long, this happy, this healthy, this free from violence, this prosperous and well nourished. I think the jury is in, and liberalism won. Our job is to keep expanding those spheres of liberty.”

Data on life expectancy shows that Seymour is correct, Taylor is wrong.

According to our World in Data, at the turn of the 19th century, no country in the world had life expectancy exceeding 40 years.

In 1950, the life expectancy in Europe was 62 years, in Oceania, 61.6 years, in the Americas 56.5 years, in Asia 42 years and in Africa 37.2 years. The average for the whole world was 46.4 years.

In 2023, life expectancy in both Europe and Oceania is 79.1 years. In Americas, 77.3 years, in Asia 74.6 years and in African 63.8 years. The average life expectancy for the World in 2023 was 73.2 years.

According to Max Roser of Our World in Data, this sharp increase in life expectancy “is the result of a wide range of advances in health – in nutrition, clean water, sanitation, neonatal healthcare, antibiotics, vaccines, and other technologies and public health efforts – and improvements in living standards, economic growth, and poverty reduction.”

Roser adds: “Many of us have not updated our worldview. We still tend to think of the world as divided as it was in 1950. But in health — and many other aspects — the world has made rapid progress.”

While life expectancy is only one measure, it is, nevertheless, an excellent proxy for other factors such as freedom from violence, greater prosperity and better nourishment.

Steady decline in violence in society

In his book “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, Steven Pinker documents the dramatic fall in violent crime all over the world. In Western European countries such as Italy, England, Netherlands and Scandinavia, homicide rates dropped from around 100 per 100,000 people to 1 per 100,000 between 1300 and 2000.

Pinker further points out that if we look at battle deaths, then the number of deaths dropped from around 20 per 100,000 per year in the 1950’s to around 2 per 100,000 per year by the turn of the century.

Even a few centuries ago, we were punishing law violators by burning people at the stake, chopping their heads off, drawing and quartering them or using other equally abhorrent methods. The death penalty has pretty much disappeared over much of the world.

The fascinating book “Factfulness”, shows that the vast majority of the world’s population now live, not in low-income countries, but in middle-income countries. 60% of girls finish high school. The population living in abject poverty has halved within the last 2-3 decades. 80% of the world’s children have been vaccinated against one or more diseases, implying that 80% of the world’s children have access to some kind of healthcare.

Seymour is correct in arguing that this has been made possible via the rise of the liberal order as embodied in greater democratization, improved individual rights and liberties and the rise of free markets.

Why don’t the Ian Taylor’s of the world understand this?

Ian Taylor is not alone. Many people do not have the correct perspective.

Much of this has to do with the wiring of our brains. Psychologists often talk about System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is automatic while System 2 is deliberative. System 1 overwhelmingly focuses on the immediate, that we can see in front of our eyes. We read about an outbreak of war and immediately conclude that the world is falling apart. It takes conscious and concerted effort to engage our System 2 and adopt a broader perspective. As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt says: Think of System 1 as the elephant and System 2 as the rider. While System 2 can correct System 1’s mistakes, this is neither easy nor quick.

Accordingly, as Pinker points out, pessimism is “equated with moral seriousness. Journalists believe that by accentuating the negative they are discharging their duty as watchdogs, muckrakers, whistleblowers, and afflicters of the comfortable. And intellectuals know they can attain instant gravitas by pointing to an unsolved problem and theorizing that it is a symptom of a sick society.”

Ananish Chaudhuri, PhD.

Professor of Experimental Economics | University of Auckland; https://ananishchaudhuri.com

Senior Editor, Oxford Open Economics; Oxford Open Economics | Oxford Academic

New book: Economics: A Global Introduction - Ananish Chaudhuri