Dreaming of a future utopia

In 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations, which has guided economists and political thinkers ever since. It marked the start of the Industrial Revolution that began in England and then spread throughout most of the world. That was 237 years ago.

It is not that long ago - only four life spans or so. Where will we be 237 years hence? Presumably, just as today, we will listen to Mozart and read Shakespeare - they have survived all changing tastes and spread well outside their original orbit of European culture. In all likelihood, we will probably still enjoy tastes picked up from the late 20th and early 21st centuries, but we won't have better artists - who can ever rival Tchaikovsky, da Vinci or Tolstoy?

In 2250, the great world wars of the 20th century, the holocaust, the rise and fall of communism, the first black president of the US, the dominance of America, mankind's early exploration of the solar system, the great recessions of today and the century before, and the poverty and underdevelopment in Africa will have become faded memories.

Instead, for most, all possible economic and material needs will be satisfied. People will be satiated by progress on this front. Some will be living until they are 200, bored by prolonged retirement and wishing they had died 100 years before. But there will also be a flowering of the arts. Space travel will have made mining on the moon an everyday practice and unmanned spaceships will have explored the distant reaches of our galaxy.

As today, the means and future of economic progress will be a topic of intense conversation. The "limits of growth" will no longer be discussed. The world will have abundant energy, food and minerals because science will have brought us fusion power feeding on sea water, crops that produce unimaginable yields and ways of transportation that require only small amounts of energy.

John Maynard Keynes' thoughts - written in the 1930s - will still dominate the thinking of future economists. His ideas on demand management will be in vogue and the ideas on austerity to balance the books will have been long declared null and void.