title: The Pathway to Prosperity
author: David T. Leath
description: David T. Leath is fast becoming one of the worlds most sought after motivational speakers. Passionate about personal development, he enjoys a career as a professional speaker and consultant. Happily married and the proud father of three sons, his family makes their home in Long Island, New York.
zlib_text: TH E
  RATIONAL
  OPTIMIST
  H OW PROSPERITY  EV OL V ES
  MATT RID L EY
  
  For Matthew and Iris
  
   
   
   
   
  This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is
  not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and
  intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the
  necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain
  propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility;
  the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.
  ADAM SMITH
  The Wealth of Nations
  
  Contents
  Epigraph
  Prologue: When Ideas have Sex
  Chapter One - A better today: the unprecedented present
  Chapter Two - The collective brain: exchange and
  specialisation after 200,000 years ago
  Chapter Three - The manufacture of virtue: barter, trust and
  rules after 50,000 years ago
  Chapter Four - The feeding of the nine billion: farming after
  10,000 years ago
  Chapter Five - The triumph of cities: trade after 5,000 years
  ago
  Chapter Six - Escaping Malthus’