In my last two posts, I emphasized the enormous gains in material wealth and life expectancy that humanity has experienced over the past couple of centuries. But those improvements are nothing compared with the monumental gains in what I call moral autonomy and self-determination. Two centuries ago, in 1826, the vast majority of people were far less free and far less able to shape their own futures or their communities’ futures. Let me start with labor. One striking feature of economic history is that, for most of the human past, much labor has not been free but coerced through violence, ranging from the worst forms of chattel slavery to serfdom, peonage, and feudal tenancy. In 1826, for example, around 30% of workers worldwide were subject to some form of violent coercion and to legal limits on the work they may do (this is different from, and more restrictive than, economic limits, such as being a landless laborer with little choice of employer). If you are born in 1826, you stand a strong chance of being born to an enslaved mother in the Americas or to a serf in Russia. Today, the ILO computes that fewer than 1% of workers are coerced in this way. Let me continue with gender. If you are a woman in 1826, your freedom to choose a husband, an education, an occupation, how many children to have, and to own property is severely limited nearly everywhere. If you are an enslaved or coerced woman, you face a very high chance of sexual assault during your lifetime. Free women suffer these attacks too, with next to no recourse. Let me move to religion and ideology. If you belong to the “wrong” religion, denomination, or ideology, or if you simply love someone you “should not love,” you risk severe punishment. Even in the U.S., Massachusetts still has an established church and will keep it until 1833 (the First Amendment applied only to the federal government until Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)). In the U.K., we are three years away from the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829 and forty-five years away from the abolition of religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge. In education and culture, 88% of people are illiterate, and fewer than 2% hold the equivalent of a high school degree. For most, the great works of art and literature play no part in daily life, beyond perhaps a religious image or text seen in the local temple. Finally, almost nobody outside a small elite participates in political life. In 1826, only the U.S. can be called a democracy, and that stretches the word. With very few exceptions, only white adult men can vote, and even among them, several states, such as Virginia, restrict the franchise to about 50% of white adult males. Some Swiss cantons (but not all!) do better, and Norway, then in union with Sweden, has a relatively broad franchise for men. The United Kingdom (before the 1832 reform), France, and the Netherlands have very restricted franchises. And that is pretty much it. Nothing resembling democracy or the rule of law exists in all of Asia and Africa, most of the Americas, and the rest of Europe. In nearly all the world, you could be arrested at the whim of your ruler, and there was little you could do about it. I do not want to paint too rosy a picture of 2026. Workers are still coerced. Gender inequalities remain large. In many parts of the world, you still cannot think what you want to think or choose your own romantic life. Democracy has badly backslid over the last two decades. And I am increasingly forced to remind people that due process is the twin sister of liberty. But if I ask you, behind a veil of ignorance, whether you want to live in 1826 or 2026 (that is, you do not know whether you will be born a king or an enslaved woman, only that the probabilities match the proportions in the global population), you would be crazy to pick 1826. Your life will be short. You will probably be very poor. You will be illiterate, told what to do for a living, who to pray to, and whom to marry, and no one will give a penny for your input into the running of your community. And, you can be arrested at will. And this absence of moral autonomy and self-determination is worth ten, one hundred, or even one thousand times more than all the extra income that modern economic growth has given you. My post on life spans: nitter.cf/JesusFerna7026/status/… My post on prosperity: nitter.cf/JesusFerna7026/status/…

I was thrilled to learn about the brand-new Amartya Sen Economics Prize for the Best Young Latin American and Caribbean Economist: lacea.org/2026/08/01/amartya… A wonderful initiative that will help economics across the region. I am also glad to see the Caribbean included. We all know the remarkable crop of economists from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, and Colombia. We see far fewer from the Caribbean. I have written before about my interest in the area, and nothing would please me more than a new cohort of strong economists from the Dominican Republic, Barbados, or the Bahamas (just to mention a few examples).