On his flight to Los Angeles, Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed, read what he called a scary book. It predicted the imminent decline of the U.S., the takeover of our lives by technology, and major war and disaster.

“Not mine,” he assured the crowd at the Hammer Museum. “I’m an optimist.”

The book turned out to be not a recent bestseller, but rather The Education of Henry Adams, dating back to 1907. No matter how frightening the world seems today, Easterbrook explained, fear about the future is nothing new. And even as the world becomes a better place – with more prosperity, freedom and education across the globe – fear will remain, and possibly get worse, as globalization speeds up at an ever-faster pace.

Getting better all the time

The last several decades have brought a greater quality of life to more people than previously thought possible, Easterbrook said. Life spans have increased and education levels risen, particularly among girls and women. According to the United Nations, 4.2 billion people live at a roughly middle-class level – and about 80 percent of the 2.2 billion people who have been added to the Earth’s population in the last few decades have joined that class. “It’s a tremendous sociological achievement,” Easterbrook said. In decades past, 1.3 billion people lived on less than a dollar a day; today, half a billion people do.

Freedom has spread throughout most countries, though “obviously not all – it’s a halting battle.” Communications grow cheaper and easier, and information is more readily accessible. “Whatever you think of Google,” Easterbrook said, “I think they’re going to succeed in their project of making all public information available to anyone at no cost. That will happen in our lifetimes.”

Butter, not guns

Global international trade likely has much to do with these changes, particularly in the developing world, Easterbrook argued. But it’s also true for the U.S. Without global trade, the U.S. would not have the superpower relationship it does with China, he said. For all China’s problems, it competes with the U.S. in terms of economic power rather than military power – a first for rival superpowers in world history. China’s cities – Easterbrook cited Shenzhen in particular – have experienced skyrocketing growth. Shenzhen “went from a bunch of rocks to one of the greatest cities on Earth in 30 years,” he said, noting that Paris took centuries and even Los Angeles took 80 years.

The deemphasizing of military power is true for other countries as well, in part because of the end of Cold War-era proxy conflicts, but also because of improving economic ties, Easterbrook said. He cited his “favorite fact” – that global arms spending has been declining on a linear basis for 25 years. Per capita, in today’s dollars, the world spends 40 percent less on military expenditures than it did 25 years ago. Combat has declined on an almost linear basis for 25 years, in terms of the number and intensity of wars and casualties inflicted.  “Nations are more concerned with market share than with acquiring territory,” Easterbrook said. “Would you rather possess all the ideas at Google or all the bauxite in a mine?”

More steel, fewer finned Cadillacs

Even indicators that seem negative – like the decline of the manufacturing sector – may be part of a bigger and brighter picture, Easterbrook explained. As the world moves toward more efficient production – to, say, high-yield agriculture and more productive factories – jobs are lost in those sectors. China has lost 28 million manufacturing jobs in the time the U.S. has lost six million. Germany’s car-making center is declining much like Detroit. The U.S. makes more steel than it did 30 years ago, but the workforce is about 80% smaller, and there are fewer emissions and less waste. The American service sector makes up 60 percent of the economy – which is still less than the Scandinavian countries’ 70 to 75 percent.

“Unless you’re willing to live with finned Cadillacs, there’s no way to change this” trend toward efficiency, he said. (He acknowledged in Q&A that there is no guarantee that automation won’t eventually make for too few jobs.) And though the loss of individual jobs is heartbreaking, it frees resources toward industries where productivity can’t be increased. “Teaching,” Easterbrook suggested. “Classical music is just as inefficient as it was 300 years ago.”

A big ‘but’

Easterbrook had one caveat. “I don’t think any of these things are going to make us any happier,” he said. “I think it’s going to do the opposite.” The rapid pace of transformation – from accelerating technology to climate change to economic liberalization – will increase anxiety and insecurity. Countries will look more and more like each other, and primarily like the U.S., which, Easterbrook joked, will mean more freedom and prosperity but also more traffic, litigation, and superficiality. And confidence in institutions is declining everywhere, he said in Q&A.

“I have coined a pop psychological term: ‘collapse anxiety,’” he said. “We fear some imposed calamity – resource collapse, terrorism…. I don’t think that’s going to happen but it is a reasonable fear.”

But if the past is any indication, Easterbrook said, in the long run, everything once frightening will be seen as good. In the last 100 years, he noted, the agricultural workforce in the U.S. declined from 70 percent of Americans to 2 percent – a change that seemed calamitous decades ago. And distrust between countries may ultimately fade, he said, once global population stabilizes and starts to decline around, the U.N. predicts, the 22nd century.

Easing the boom

Meanwhile, although Easterbrook said he “cannot think of any way that any enlightened president could prevent stress from economic change,” American leaders could eliminate stress that comes from poor healthcare and education.  Healthcare reform is, he said, “such a total mess it makes you despondent about the condition of American politics.” Though Easterbrook wasn’t certain what could be accomplished this year –  and noted that the health insurers offered a decent and little-publicized deal last spring-the U.S. could follow either a single-payer-type  model like France, or make catastrophic insurance mandatory and let everything else be purchased privately or not at all, the more libertarian option.

Education is in poor shape as well, with states like California – once a pioneer in public schooling – slashing spending. “We need a future where every single person attends college,” Easterbrook said. Quoting from his book, he added, we’re heading toward a “free, prosperous and well-informed future. Just remember to cover your ears.”

Watch the video here.
See more photos here.
Buy the book here.
Read an excerpt here.
Read Easterbrook’s In The Green Room Q&A here.

*Photos by Aaron Salcido.