3. Poverty is nose-diving
The rich get richer, but the poor do even better. Between 1980 and 2000, the poor doubled their consumption. The Chinese are ten times richer and live about 25 years longer than they did 50 years ago. Nigerians are twice as rich and live nine more years. The percentage of the world's people living in absolute poverty has dropped by over half. The United Nations estimates that poverty was reduced more in the past 50 years than in the previous 500.

5. The environment is better than you think
In the United States, rivers, lakes, seas, and air are getting cleaner all the time. A car today emits less pollution traveling at full speed than a parked car did from leaks in 1970.

7. Global trade enriches our lives
By 9 a.m., I have shaved with an American razor, eaten bread made with French wheat and spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, brewed tea from Sri Lanka, dressed in clothes made from Indian cotton and Australian wool, put on shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber, and read a newspaper printed on Finnish paper with Chinese ink. I have consumed minuscule fractions of the productive labor of hundreds of people. This is the magic of trade and specialization. Self-sufficiency is poverty.

14. Great ideas keep coming
The more we prosper, the more we can prosper. The more we invent, the more inventions become possible. The world of things is often subject to diminishing returns. The world of ideas is not: The ever-increasing exchange of ideas causes the ever-increasing rate of innovation in the modern world. There isn't even a theoretical possibility of exhausting our supply of ideas, discoveries, and inventions.

15. We can solve all our problems
If you say the world will go on getting better, you are considered mad. If you say catastrophe is imminent, you may expect the Nobel Peace Prize. Bookshops groan with pessimism; airwaves are crammed with doom. I cannot recall a time when I was not being told by somebody that the world could survive only if it abandoned economic growth. But the world will not continue as it is. The human race has become a problem-solving machine: It solves those problems by changing its ways. The real danger comes from slowing change.

17. Optimists are right
For 200 years, pessimists have had all the headlines-even though optimists have far more often been right. There is immense vested interest in pessimism. No charity ever raised money by saying things are getting better. No journalist ever got the front page writing a story about how disaster was now less likely. Pressure groups and their customers in the media search even the most cheerful statistics for glimmers of doom. Don't be browbeaten-dare to be an optimist!

David Fuller's view Veteran subscribers may recall some of my earlier comments on gratuitous gloom and that fear sells. There is a widespread perception that congenital pessimists - I am sure you can think of a few - are realists, imbued with superior intellect, historical insight and prescience. Conversely, optimists are often perceived as Pollyannaish, naïve, ignorant of the facts, indulging in wishful thinking or trying to sell you something.


You will have your own perceptions as to whether it is the market pessimists or optimists who have been more right than wrong. Throughout my 45-year financial career the optimists win, evidenced by historic trends for stock markets. Given bubbles and the random cyclicality of behaviourally driven markets the pessimists will have their moments, so we should strive to be objective. This is not easy when everyone else is screaming, so as herd animals we need to be contrarians at the emotional extremes. This will feel counterintuitive but it is analytically and behaviourally logical. In other words, people talk their book.

Some pessimists will counter that optimists were right for the wrong reasons, whatever that means, or that they were only right in fiat money terms. This is the 'sour grapes' argument. Those were the terms that were available. Are they saying that we should not have been long because the market was appreciating in fiat money terms?

One could write weighty tomes about why some people appear to be born pessimists while others are congenital optimists. I have my own ideas but I am not going down that track in Fullermoney. However, I will add that there is a life enhancing or diminishing dimension to our personalities, caused by our inclination towards optimism or pessimism.

Have you ever met a happy pessimist? They will have their moments of mostly acerbic humour but clinical depression is a disease of the mind, and a killer. Optimists tend to live longer, provided their optimism is not a mask for fear and denial over conditions that genuinely require medical attention.

As a father and grandfather I have encountered people who are sincerely worried about the future that their offspring will inherit. My view: we do not know what the future holds so do not depress yourself, or more importantly stunt them by fretting about the unknown. Follow your better instincts in nurturing and educating them so that they can contribute to our civilization.