How to Build a Golden Age — And Destroy One
May 26, 2025
Recently, talking with my daughter Elizabeth in London, we discussed Britain’s public amenities and services crumbling. A similar syndrome afflicts America. But then, to put such modern malaise in perspective, I remarked that life overall was far worse in past epochs. A theme of my 2009 book, The Case for Rational Optimism.
Right afterwards, I happened to read The Economist’s review of another book, Peak Human, by Swedish historian Johan Norberg. Charting civilizations rising and falling, he found a common story.
Those “that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. When they closed up again, they lost their shine.”
China was a prime example. The Song Dynasty (960–1279) introduced “the unconventional policy reform” of not killing officials who disagreed with the emperor. With some rule of law; a civil service; expanded freedoms for peasants; and opening up to trade. Resulting in vast innovation and burgeoning wealth.
But this scared a Ming emperor, who outlawed shipbuilding and made foreign trade subject not to tariffs but the death penalty. Incomes fell by half, not recovering for six centuries.
Arguably the greatest and most successful civilization was the Roman Empire. “Rome grew strong by cultivating alliances and granting citizenship to conquered peoples.” (My emphases) With unhampered free trade, and roads speeding transport of goods, “Augustan Rome grew as rich as Britain and France were 1,500 years later.”
So what caused Rome’s fall? Not “rampant homosexual behavior,” as Speaker Mike Johnson has cringely said. Rather, plagues and barbarian attacks “compounded by policy blunders” — coinage debasement, causing inflation, leading to price controls, then atrophied trade; while intellectual freedom gave way to oppressive religious dogma.
No history book could be more timely than Norberg’s, says The Economist. And (echoing my conversation with Elizabeth) “of all the golden ages, the greatest is here and now.” Half our progress in raising living standards, over 10,000 years, has occurred since 1990. “Openness went global after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But now it is in rapid retreat.”
Why is it so hard to understand free trade’s win-win logic? Buying from others what they can produce better and cheaper, selling them what we’re best at producing, makes both richer. It’s really just that simple. “Protectionism” protects a few at the expense of the many.
Norberg’s book doesn’t mention Trump. Whose course couldn’t be better designed to destroy our own golden age.
When the book burnings begin, toss in my Rational Optimism one.