The world is getting better every year

Optimistic Trends and Predictions for 2013

The best business news of 2012 was that CNN is struggling; not because it is not a first class news channel, but because there are no major incidents to broadcast, such as the bombs falling on Baghdad in CNN’s heyday of the nineties.

Countries where hardly anything ever happens, such as Austria, Canada, Finland, New Zealand or Singapore are bad for the broadcasting business. They are however the best places to live and the good news is that the world has an increasing number of them.

The fact that the World is getting to be a better place is the biggest trend of the last decades and this is likely to continue. For the pessimists amongst us believing that the future is bleak, analyse the following good hard facts and use them as the context for your business plans for next year.

1. Hunger is reducing. Until the new millennium, millions of people died of hunger with famines in Ethiopia and Biafra, India and Bangladesh, and notably in China during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Many people still go hungry, but there hasn’t been a large scale famine this millennium.

2. This has a lot to do with the reduction of inter-national War. The 20th century was a century of carnage, with Europe the most savage continent where 80 million died in wars. Europe’s 21st century score: zero.

3. The world is still in the throes of an economic crisis, but compared to the last one in the eighties, the average consumer is much richer today than 30 years ago, according the IMF as in the table below.

4. China is the best example of a better world; 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 30 years and the table below highlights this astonishing performance. (See the graph on the right.)

5. Dying dictatorships. As recently as the 1980’s, Latin America was ruled mainly by dictators, with torture a standard interrogation method. Asia had just a few democracies and Africa was suffering under war, despots and famine. In 2012, totalitarism has almost disappeared, with Cuba, North Korea and Zimbabwe some of the last dictatorships standing, and while China is still communist, it’s a much better country than in Mao’s day.

6. Women are getting more equal chances in the workplace. They enter board rooms more often and birth rates have dramatically reduced, which is good news for them and their families. And hot of the press: male dominated South Korea just elected a new female president.

7. Age. People are living much longer, all over the world, but especially in Asia where the life expectation grew with 16 years over the past 40 decades.

8. Technology continues to enhance people’s lives and the internet and social media are vital in ensuring that economies keep growing, democracies continue to be established and corruption is exposed.

Of course there is still plenty of injustice, poverty and hunger left, but on average, the world is becoming a better place. We may prefer to be pessimists and believe that it is all going downhill, but the facts point in the other direction.

So be realistic and more optimistic in your life and in business, as the world, especially Asia, will continue to get less hungry, more peaceful and democratic and people will become richer, older and more tech savvy.

Happy New Year!