The Ultimate Resource 2: No. 2: Amazon.co.uk: Julian Lincoln Simon: Books

Review

Julian Simon's 1981 book The Ultimate Resource excoriated prominent environmentalists for resorting to scare tactics and data-bending.... As Simon notes, the past sixteen years have been kind to many of his ideas.... Much as Simon had predicted, global per capita food production edged upward steadily while population rose and air quality improved in many places and ways. -- Kathleen Courrier, The Washington Post

With a full understanding of the opposition and smears he would encounter, Simon nevertheless wrote The Economics of Population Growth, Population Matters, and his best-known book, The Ultimate Resource. To him, the ultimate resource was human intelligence. We should also add, in honor of Simon, the courage to use that intelligence. -- Thomas Sowell, Chicago Sun-Times

The most powerful challenge to be mounted against the principles of popular environmentalism in the last fifteen years. -- "The Washington Post Book World

Compelling and often brilliantly original. . . . [Simon's] economic analysis will leave a lot of readers heavily revising their thinking about the world around them. -- "Fortune

The Ultimate Resource is the most powerful challenge to be mounted against the principles of popular environmentalism in the last 15 years. . . . What is most startling is its deep-rooted optimism about the human condition. . . . [A] landmark book. -- "Washington Post Book World

The truly delightful aspect of the book is its persistent iconoclasm. Page after page, Simon punctures myths of scarcity and offers instead the counsels of optimism. -- "The American Spectator

Julian Simon, an economics professor, systematically, shockingly, irresponsibly explodes each and every foundation of the whole environmental movement. And he does so with so many facts, graphs and examples that it would be a strange person who could walk away from reading this book without his or her faith in the assumptions of the environmental movement being just a little bit shaken up. . . . This is a magnificent book with the power to change minds. -- Matt Ridley, The Sunday Telegraph

Product Description

Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human imagination coupled to the human spirit, Julian Simon led a vigorous challenge to conventional beliefs about scarcity of energy and natural resources, pollution of the environment, the effects of immigration, and the "perils of overpopulation." The comprehensive data, careful quantitative research, and economic logic contained in the first edition of The Ultimate Resource questioned widely held professional judgments about the threat of overpopulation, and Simon's celebrated bet with Paul Ehrlich about resource prices in the 1980s enhanced the public attention--both pro and con--that greeted this controversial book.

Now Princeton University Press presents a revised and expanded edition of The Ultimate Resource. The new volume is thoroughly updated and provides a concise theory for the observed trends: Population growth and increased income put pressure on supplies of resources. This increases prices, which provides opportunity and incentive for innovation. Eventually the innovative responses are so successful that prices end up below what they were before the shortages occurred. The book also tackles timely issues such as the supposed rate of species extinction, the "vanishing farmland crisis," and the wastefulness of coercive recycling.

In Simon's view, the key factor in natural and world economic growth is our capacity for the creation of new ideas and contributions to knowledge. The more people alive who can be trained to help solve the problems that confront us, the faster we can remove obstacles, and the greater the economic inheritance we shall bequeath to our descendants. In conjunction with the size of the educated population, the key constraint on human progress is the nature of the economic-political system: talented people need economic freedom and security to bring their talents to fruition.

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

Clear environmental thinking, and lots of relevant facts. 19 Sep 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Julian Simon takes a huge and effective swipe at the sloppy thinking and willful blindness to facts that characterise so much of the environmental movement.

He hammers home his main argument again and again, so much so that the book is at times a little repetitive (hence the 4-crown (rather than 5-crown) rating). But the argument does need repeating because it is counter-intuitive:- an increasing population ultimately means a higher standard of living for everybody, so long as people are free to manage their lives as they wish, in peace, and under just and democratic government.

Fortunately, he presents mountains of facts to back up his case; in so doing, he demonstrates that the environmental "doomsters", or "doomsayers" (as he calls them), have been consistently wrong in their predictions, over any time-scale longer than a decade. For example, India is now self-sufficient in food; yet Erlich, in The Population Bomb, predicted that it would become so hopeless to try to feed India that the country should just be left to perish unaided.

Do read this book; you will be jolted out of conformist thinking, and pleasantly surprised into the bargain.

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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

Environmentalists are afraid of this book. 11 May 1999

The current environmental movement operates under three basic ideas. First, the condition of the environment is getting worse. Secondly, capitalism and economic growth are bad for the environment. Third, in order to help the environment, we must have massive increases in the size of government.

In this book, Julian Simon shows that everything the environmentalists have been saying is wrong.

First, in the past century, the quality of the environment has gotten better. For example, the pollution that comes from automobiles today is less dangerous than the infectious disease that was spread by horse waste 100 years ago. Secondly, economic growth and technology make is easier to develop, and pay for, newer, cleaner technologies to keep the environment clean. Third, private property rights, private ownership, free markets, and capitalism are the best way to take care of the environment.

Most environmentalists are left wing socialist types who are in favor of massive increases in the size of government. Of course, these environmentalists comletely ignore the fact that Eastern Europe, after 50 years of having no private property rights whatsoever, became the most polluted area that the world has ever had.

During colonial days in America, buffalo, which were onwed by nobody, were nearly hunted to extinction. But today, cattle, which are privately owned, are not in danger of going extinct. When property is privately owned, the owner will take good care of it.

In a free market economy, prices are constantly changing. This gives consumers, and producers, all of the necessary information that they need, in order to determine how to best use resources. For example, whenever there's a big freeze in Florida, the price or oranges goes up. This is why we never have shortages of oranges. This is an example of the free market in action.

If you are an environmentalist, then you will hate this book.

If you beleive in rational, logical thinking, then you will love this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

If you are concerned about the environment, read this book! 3 Jan 1999

This book dispels some of the myths propagated in the media about population growth, famine, resource depletion, loss of farmland, wetlands, and forests, and numerous other environmental scares. Julian Simon does an excellent job of presenting and documenting his case that most of these problems are not real, or have been exaggerated, and that there are many reasons to be optimistic about our future.