Biofuel subsidies have had one of the largest negative environmental impacts of any initiative worldwide.But governments that are too strong tend to stifle innovation and business.

Property rights, making it easier to do business, and safety are all things government can do to help trade.

Free trade causes prosperity protectionism causes poverty.

The point of agriculture: diverting labour of other species to provide services for human beings.

“Liberty and welfare march hand-in-hand with prosperity and trade.”.

The definition of a high standard of living: diverse consumption, simplified production.

But social and political liberation is far more effective at increasing happiness.

On average, all other things being equal, more money does make you happier.

The world is as good a place as it has ever been for the average human being, and it will continue to get better.

Human intelligence is collective it is rare that one person knows how to make something.

This view of Intelligence is treated at length in Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2001). Human intelligence, he suggests, is used primarily to attract mates through prodigious displays of wit, charm, inventiveness, and individuality.

He argues that human intelligence far outstrips any survivalist demands that would have been placed on our hominid ancestors, and analogizes human intelligence to the peacock's tail, a trait widely believed to be the result of sexual selection. Toward the end of the book Ridley argues that human intelligence is largely a result of sexual selection. The book begins with an evolutionary account of sex itself, defending the theory that sex flourishes, despite its energetic costs, primarily because a sexually mixed heritage confers to offspring a defensive ' head start' against parasites received from and originally adapted to the maternal host environment. Ridley argues that few, if any, aspects of human nature can be understood apart from sex, since human nature is a product of evolution, driven by sexual reproduction in the case of sexual selection in human evolution. The title is in reference to the Red Queen hypothesis in evolutionary biology. The Red Queen was one of seven books shortlisted for the 1994 Rhône-Poulenc Prize (now known as the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books), that was eventually won by Steve Jones' The Language of the Genes. The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature is a popular science book by Matt Ridley exploring the evolutionary psychology of sexual selection.

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley