How common was it for parents to lose a child?

200 years ago, if you lived in Sweden one and four of the children you had were likely to die before the age of five.

Globally, at the time, that was actually low. In fact, 43% of the world’s newborns died before their fifth birthday.

Fast forward to today, having a child die before the age of five is very rare.

This is just one of the great byproducts that industrialism has brought to the table—massive amounts of technology, innovation and wealth that has created prosperity.

We are all benefitting from it. So much so, we forget how harsh this world really was before it.

Industrialism is the closest shot we have to tame this world.

Despite the problems that industrialism has created in our time, I wouldn’t trade them for any other time period. If we are virtually going to rid of fatalities before the age of five in our lifetime, what else could we do?

We have all the tools and we are quite capable of solving complex challenges going forward.