This book is about how to reduce poverty and improve global living standards. Topics include economic growth, income inequality, corruption, sustainable development, the future of technology, and much more.
Below is a sample of questions answered th...
The late 1990s and early 2000s marked the beginning of the Internet Revolution. The World Wide Web gave us access to the sum of human knowledge and brought a voice to those who had none before. It brought e-commerce, email, wikis, blogs, social networking, apps, video sharing, free education, and free software. All these things formed an emergent property that was greater than the sum of its parts. The internet now affects our lives in countless ways.
Combined with cheaper, better computers, the internet has improved living standards for billions of people. In 1999, the GDP per capita of the world was $6,800 [1]. Today, it's twice that. Much of that growth was because of continued improvement and dissemination of information technology. Half of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world are part of the IT industry.
Figure 51 shows the percentage of regular internet users in each country, compared with their scores on the Standard of Living Index. The percentage of internet users is determined by the United Nation's International Telecommunications Union. It looks at the prevalence of household internet connections, as well as internet from mobile phones.
Figure 51
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Sources: International Telecommunications Union | Standard of Living Index
Every 1% increase in internet users correlates with a 0.81% improved quality of life. Countries that have twice as many internet users have 81% better living standards.
Does having more internet users improve living standards? Or does improving a country's quality of life result in more internet users?
Both. They are contributing factors to each other. If a nation ups the rate of internet users, standard of living will improve. If a country's quality of life rises, internet access will go up.
A nation with more internet users is more likely to be democratic, have greater market freedom, a fairer distribution of income, a lower rate of inflation, greater gender equality, and more. All these variables influence each other.
Aside from being democratic and capitalistic, countries can expedite progress by declaring internet access a basic human right. Nations could create programs that provide internet access to the poor.
A better approach would be for each country to establish a universal basic income funded by an inequality-based tax system. Combined with a free market, a basic income would give everyone the opportunity to get internet access without the bureaucracy.
If you happen to be a billionaire, and you're not sure where to put your charity money, providing internet access to the poor is a good choice.
We're making rapid progress. In 2007, 20% of the global population had internet access [2]. Today, 46% do. (This number includes non-regular users.)
A similar transformation is happening with smartphones. In 2006, hardly anyone had a smartphone. Devices with touchscreen capabilities were virtually nonexistent. According to TechCrunch, three billion people own smartphones today [3]. That's 40% of the global population. In a few years, it will be 80%.
Internet access is strongly correlated with improved quality of life, and people are rapidly coming online. Considering these two facts, we can expect living standards to improve markedly in the poorest countries over the next decade.
If you've ever wondered how much cheap computers and the internet have benefited humanity, now you know. We have the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips and the computational capacity to solve almost any problem. Anyone anywhere can use these tools to make him or herself heard by millions, start a business, create something revolutionary, or explore other possibilities at low cost.
Notes
1. IndexMundi. June 30, 2015. Accessed March 24, 2016. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=xx.
2. "Internet Users." InternetLiveStats.com. Accessed March 24, 2016. http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/.
3. Lunden, Ingrid. "6.1B Smartphone Users Globally By 2020, Overtaking Basic Fixed Phone Subscriptions." TechCrunch. June 2, 2015. Accessed March 24, 2016. http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/02/6-1b-smartphone-users-globally-by-2020-overtaking-basic-fixed-phone-subscriptions/.
