Glass Half-Full, Glass Half-Empty, Filling the Glass (The Good Book) (The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and the Uses of Pessimism and the Dangers of False Hopes) (Critical Essay‪)‬

"Five years have seldom passed," Adam Smith observed in 1776, "in which some book or pamphlet has not been published pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast declining" Indeed, dissonant alarms continue to clang from all the familiar bells of dread: population will outpace production, disease will prevail over medicine, war and technology will annihilate humanity, greed and myopia will trash the environment, and the rich will enslave the poor. Critical voices of social concern will play worthy roles as the human drama unfolds--I wouldn't write for this publication in particular if I didn't believe that to be true. And as a moral philosopher above all, Smith was in 1759 quick to recognize "reason, principle, [and] conscience, the inhabitant of the breast" as "the great judge and arbiter of our conduct."