Matt Ridley

Speculation, herd exuberance, irrational optimism,

Self-sufficiency is therefore not the route to prosperity.

Prosperity, or growth, has been synonymous with moving from self-sufficiency to interdependence, transforming the family from a unit of laborious, slow and diverse production to a unit of easy, fast and diverse consumption paid for by a burst of specialised production.

Self-sufficiency is poverty

According to the anthropologist Joe Henrich, human beings learn skills from each other by copying prestigious individuals, and they innovate by making mistakes that are very occasionally improvements – that is how culture evolves. The

the notion of comparative advantage as defined by the stockbroker David Ricardo in 1817

The lesson of this study is that, on the whole, having to deal with strangers teaches you to be polite to them, and that in order for such generosity to emerge, costly punishment of selfishness may be necessary.

There is no known human tribe that does not trade

In other classes of animals, the individual advances from infancy to age or maturity; and he attains, in the compass of a single life, to all the perfection his nature can reach: but, in the human kind, the species has a progress as well as the individual; they build in every subsequent age on foundations formerly laid.

ADAM FERGUSON
An Essay on the History of Civil Society

It is not as if human nature changes. Just as the hand that held the hand axe was the same shape as the hand that holds the mouse, so people always have and always will seek food, desire sex, care for offspring, compete for status and avoid pain just like any other animal. Many of the idiosyncrasies of the human species are unchanging, too. You can travel to the farthest corner of the earth and still expect to encounter singing, smiling, speech, sexual jealousy and a sense of humour – none of which you would find to be the same in a chimpanzee.