The Ultimate Resource 2 [Hardcover]

Julian L. Simon (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ultimate Resource | Publication Date: October 14, 1996

Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human spirit, Julian Simon has 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". This new volume is updated and provides theory for the observed trends: population growth and increased income put pressure on supplies of resources. This increases prices, which provides opportunities and incentive for innovation. Eventually the innovative responses are so successful that prices end up below what they were before the shortage 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Julian L. Simon is the world's greatest contrarian. The Ultimate Resource 2--an update, not a sequel, despite the title--skewers the sacred cows of environmentalism, population control, and Paul Ehrlich. In the contest between resource scarcity and human ingenuity, Simon bets the farm on the ability of intelligent people to overcome their problems. Thankfully, he is not a theorist. This book lays out convincing empirical evidence for Simon's prediction of a prosperous future. The key to progress is not state-run conservation programs, he says, but economic and political freedom. Only then can talented minds properly apply themselves to our earthly dilemmas.

Review

"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

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

"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 (on the first edition)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr; Rev Sub edition (October 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691042691
• ISBN-13: 978-0691042695
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #913,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The doomslayer falls, April 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ultimate Resource 2 (Hardcover)

On Sunday, February 8th, psychologist and economist Julian L. Simon succumbed to a heart attack in Maryland. It is difficult to overstate the damage his death will cause the world debate on overpopulation, natural resources, and the environment. Dr. Simon's prolific and energetic mind gave rise to fourteen books and countless papers and lectures, dedicated to overthrowing the dogma that underlies so much of today's environmental discourse.

Simon, still considered a maverick after thirty years of relentless data-gathering, impeccable empirical work, and well-thought out conclusions, questioned the unquestionable. He maintained that the earth is in good shape by every conceivable measure, and that the environmental situation continues to improve each year. Every index of human happiness - food prices, net income, infant mortality, life expectancy, disease rates - has steadily improved. He documented those claims with reams of data, culminating in his 1996 tour de force The State of Humanity. It is absolutely comprehensive, and contains enough obscure data to make the most jaded Trivial Pursuit fan squirm (if you ever want to read about the average lower-class Brazilian's annual starch intake, look no further).

Constantly vilified by his critics, Simon always had a small and devoted following. He was dubbed 'the Doomslayer' by Wired magazine for his repeated skewering of environmental fanatics and 'Birkenstock Puritans.' Perhaps the most memorable episode happened in 1980. Simon wrote exasperatedly in an article that he was sick and tired of environmentalists' insistence that large-scale natural starvation was right around the corner. He invited them to put their money where their mouths were. Paul Ehrlich, the influential author of The Population Bomb and predictor of worldwide famine and resource scarcity for the 1980s, stepped up to the plate. Simon invited Ehrlich and any of his colleagues to choose any five non-government-controlled resources, purchase $1000 worth in any combination, and specify a later date. If the resource bundle went up in price (implicating that they had become more scarce), then Simon would have to pay the difference. If they went down in price, signifying greater abundance, then Simon would receive the difference. Ehrlich and company jumped at this proposition, writing that they were looking forward to cashing in 'before other greedy people see this opportunity.' They chose five heavy metals used as inputs for industry, and specified ten years as the time to wait. And thus it occurred that Ehrlich and his colleagues wrote a check to Julian Simon for $576.80 in 1990. When Ehrlich claimed that it was a fluke, Simon offered to repeat the bet on the same terms, with a new bundle and a new time period. Ehrlich refused, and no one ever stepped up to take his place.

In 1996 Simon updated his classic The Ultimate Resource, in which he claimed that the human mind and human creativity are our best bet to overcome the world's problems. Thus, it's not possible to have too many people. Doomsayers, Simon argues, think of people as merely mouths to feed, rather than individuals with lives, dreams, and ideas. They lament population growth, never once thinking that one of those children might grow up to invent a more advanced farming technique, a cure for AIDS, or a way to construct cheap, safe housing. For the same reasons, Simon argues passionately against immigration restrictions. The only way immigrants can harm their new home countries is by imposing a new drain on the welfare state, and the data show that natives almost always take greater advantage of social programs than immigrants do.

Today, the Unabomber's atrocities find an excuse in his radical environmentalism. Children learn in school that the world would have been better off without them, and that ecological Armageddon is right around the corner. Al Gore writes of a grim future and the need for a 'wrenching' social re-organization to cope with the coming age of scarcity. Julian Simon, conversely, spent his life providing an accessible and empirically sound body of work that challenges the environmentalist agenda. Environmentalists should read his work, to see numerous examples of good science as well as to think long and hard about some of their most cherished and reliable beliefs. Teachers should read it, since they handle and assist the ultimate resource in its earliest stages. But all of us should, at the very least, recognize that the environmental debate has two sides, and that Julian Simon spent his life fighting long, hard, and nobly for his.

55 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent--a tribute to humanity; a rubuke to Malthusians, October 20, 1999

By 

Craig Kenneth Bryant (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ultimate Resource 2 (Paperback)

Now in a second edition, and what a treat that is, because now the unquenchable optimism and sound forcasting of the first volume is backed up by decades of confirmatory data. Resources of all kinds--foods, metals, energy--are more abundant and cheaper, life expectancy is up, and so is the worldwide standard of living. Why is this so, in spite of the dire warnings (The Population Bomb, Famine: 1975!) of the latest crop of doomsayers? Read the book and find out. Find out also, why these trends show no signs of turning around--why the world will be even richer and more prosperous in the next century.

A reader, in an earlier review, suggests that Simon's ideas are "ridiculous" (in spite of the fact that he has been proven right, time and time again, and the doomsayers have to come out with new books every few years, adjusting forward their predictions of a doomsday that never comes), and goes on to say some very stupid things about "limits to the food supply." Go read them, then consider--that review, like most doomsayers, admits startling progress in increasing food yields, then assumes that such progress is over, or nearly so (six millennia of agricultural advance to the contrary). Why? In the first hundred pages of this book, Simon details cutting-edge technologies being employed commercially _today_ that could raise worldwide food production by orders of magnitude. But the eco-tastrophe crowd keeps talking about "closed systems," in spite of the fact that every new technological innovation keeps making the "system" effectively larger and larger.

33 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accessible, brilliant magnum opus on population economics, April 11, 2001

By 

Ross Nordeen (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ultimate Resource 2 (Paperback)

Simon's premise is simple: direct measures of material, human well-being correlate positively with population growth and there is no theoretical upper limit. Simply put, things are getting better and better, not in spite of population growth, but because of it! The reason is simple as well: the "ultimate resource" is human imagination and we will not only never run out of it, but we will get more of it as population increases.

This sounds crazy (and I thought Simon was a kook the first time I heard of him), but Simon lays out his theory in detail and shows the overwhelming empirical evidence in favor of it. Simon is not a lone nut, either. The scholarly work in the field of population economics solidly supports his view, even if he may overstate his case sometimes.

This is an update of the original book, so Simon has a chance to answer the critics of the first edition. The poor quality of the critics' arguments, along with their ad hominem attacks, reveals why environmentalist doomsaying is a sad, pathetic, quasi-religion that bitterly opposes examining the facts.