By There’s a common refrain that entrepreneurs are, by nature, optimists. I certainly fit in that classification. I’m optimistic about people, about companies, about technology, about the progress we’ve made as a species in the past 200 years vs. the prior 20,000 and the past 20 years vs. the prior 200.
Reading Foreign Policy’s analysis of the global middle class gave me even more reason to be optimistic about the long term economic and political prospects of the planet.
From the article:
What’s more, the ranks of the global middle class appear poised to swell considerably in the coming years. About 70 developing countries, home to a combined 4 billion people, lie in the per capita annual income range of $3,400 to $10,000 — an income range where car ownership grows much faster than income — meaning that a large share of that population is just on the threshold of affluence. In 2010 alone, the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India, and China — added about 14 million cars to their circulation. That figure implies that about 46 million people were added to the middle class, or roughly the population of Spain. The BRICs also accounted for more than half the global increase in cars in circulation in 2010.
As the planet has more individuals able to afford good and services in a wider array of geographies, I believe we’ll see correlations with lower violence, greater rights for women and minorities, and a phenomenal amount of opportunity for entrepreneurship and economic growth in every country. By the end of my life, humanity’s wealth will be many times what it is today, and that’s an exciting (and, IMO positive) prospect in a vast variety of ways.
Now, I’m going to need to figure out how to do a better job of reaching more internationally with Moz, and find the right time to prioritize it. I suspect that skill will be essential in the long run.