Tomorrow's world: Comforting incrementalism

Journalist Hamish McRae's book predicting future events lacks novelty in the projections compared to some other publications

The World in 2050: How to think about the future

Author: Hamish McRae

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: xvi+372

Price: Rs 599

One could describe English journalist Hamish McRae’s book under review (first published in 2022, now in paperback) in many ways.  It could be compared to a detective novel (which has no surprises and whodunnit is known long before the end) a country gentleman might read sitting by the fireside with a goblet of brandy handy. Or to one of those old black-and-white films where the well-behaved lovers overcome some predictable roadblocks to live happily ever after. Or, stretching one’s imagination a bit, a travel agency brochure welcoming alien visitors to good old Mother Earth. But to call it a guide to thinking about the future (the book’s subtitle) or as “dazzling history of the future,” a blurb by the Financial Times columnist Tim Harford, would be exercises in hyperbole.

The author says at the outset, “I have done this [prognosticating the future] before.”  He has, indeed.  He wrote The World in 2020  in 1994.  “That book envisaged a world that was more prosperous, better educated and informed, healthier, more peaceful than in …any ... period of …history.”  That is almost verbatim what Barack Obama said in 2016.  The author cites Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s 2011 masterwork, The Better Angels of Our Nature,  as further  post facto confirmation of his prophecies.  He notes that neither wars nor cultural conflicts had any significant influence on global conditions.  He does not mention the Black Swan event of the sub-prime crisis, which shook the foundations of the global financial system.  But he does refer to pandemics — in his case, HIV/AIDS.  It is another matter that the Covid-19 pandemic was infinitely more widespread, which nearly crippled the world economy immediately after 2020 from which it has still not fully recovered.

Mr McRae says that people have come up to him and said that The World in 2020 “changed their life”.  That would be the headiest compliment at any time and for anyone.  Obviously buoyed by it, the author embarked upon a generational sequel to it, resulting in the book under review.  I have dwelt on this background at length so that the book and its critique can be seen in the proper perspective.

The author uses the economic database Angus Maddison created (updated by Maddison’s colleagues after his death in 2010).  He also makes generous use of the periodic reports and bulletins published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (chiefly) and other international agencies (when needed).  He interprets the data in the context of ground realities and challenges posed by factors such as institutions, politics, poverty and environment.  This is the standard template most such analyses use.  It is not controversial, but it is not path-breaking either.

The first half of the book recapitulates the contents of the earlier volume, to lay the base, under the heading, “Where the world is now.”  The rest deals with projections to 2050.  There are some striking changes in store for the future, such as China overtaking the United States as the world’s leading economy and India emerging as a somewhat distant third.  Mr McRae duly acknowledges these; only a complete ignoramus would not do so.  But as for the rest, it is much the same as before, only more so.

This becomes evident when we see the titles of sections dealing with various geographies in the pre-2020 period and the next.  Here is a sampler.  I list first the subtitles for the pre-2020 period and place in parenthesis the one used for the period ending in 2050.  The Americas  —  still the future (The United States — still the great global leader); Europe  — the oldest continent (Europe — the dream fades away); The great rising giants of Asia — China and India (Greater China — back to its proper place in the world and India — exciting but bumpy ride ahead).

Nothing wrong in this, but nothing new either.  Many scores of articles, pamphlets and books published in the last five years or so by institutions, economic journalists and scholars have made very similar projections as well.

That is to be expected.  Even the author himself says, “If one is looking one generation ahead,… many of the broad economic trends that will dominate this period are already evident.”  What he does not say, however, is that incrementalism is inevitable if we see trends over 25 to 30 years and in regions large enough to be considered continental.  Spikes caused even by Black Swan events will be averaged out and we can expect rather smooth curves, much as those presented in the many graphics that adorn the book.  That is how the India Meteorological Department (IMD)  gets its “forecasts” right — they are averaged over the entire country and for the entire monsoon, which evens out temporal and regional aberrations and proves the IMD right all the time.  It is another question altogether if these “forecasts” presented with great fanfare serve any practical purpose.

One needs to recall Ruchir Sharma’s body of work in this context.  He also undertakes cross-section and time series comparisons and projections of economies.  His conclusions are far more incisive and useful for policy analysts because they deal in specifics.  Compare that to Mr McRae’s final observation: “Humankind will manage to navigate its way through a difficult period without some catastrophe that would make everything in this book quite irrelevant.”  That statement covering both A and non-A is a prime example of feel-good incrementalism.