what is true progress
Answers
Progress(noun) a moving or going forward; a proceeding onward; an advance. Progress(noun) in actual space, as the progress of a ship, carriage, etc. Progress(noun) in the growth of an animal or plant; increase. Progress(noun) in business of any kind; as, the progress of a negotiation; the progress of art.
Answer:
People often get into arguments about what constitutes progress. Some say that what others regard as progress is not progress at all.
Some people evaluate progress in relation to their notion of an ideal state of the world, i.e. progress is defined as progress towards utopia. As you will see, I am not a utopian.
We bypass these arguments by considering a country or a section of a country to have progressed if people who have a choice move to it and adopt its ways - revealed preference, the economists call it. We give short shrift to arguments that people didn't know what they were doing when they made their choices. According to revealed preference, America is the most progressive country. So far as I know there is no other country that has more immigrants from America than America has immigrants from that country. By the way, many people move back and forth enough between America and the countries where they grew up so that the reasons for where they choose to live are based on a lot of information.
Some people misunderstand the claim that there is progress and there will be more and people will like it with a claim that in the glorious future, everyone will be happy. Nothing now known offers a way of making everyone happy. Kings were often dissatisfied, and the very rich of today have their dissatisfactions.
Revealed preference agrees pretty well with the common notions of progress.
Explanation: