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Julian Lincoln Simon

The Ultimate Resource 2 Paperback – July 1, 1998

by Julian Lincoln Simon (Author)

54 customer reviews

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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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Editorial Reviews

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"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

About the Author

Julian L. Simon, until his death in 1998, was Professor of Business Administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. Among his books are Population and Development in Poor Countries: Selected Essays (Princeton), The Economic Consequences of Immigration to the United States, Population Matters: People, Resources, Environment, and Immigration, and The State of Humanity.

Paperback: 778 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; Revised edition (July 1, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691003815
ISBN-13: 978-0691003818
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 2 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 54 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #919 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural Resources
- #1080 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Theory
- #1385 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Environmental Economics

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Fishbait

The most important book i ever read. Refutes the ...

February 1, 2018

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

The most important book i ever read. Refutes the Malthusian agument that mankind is despoiling the earth and therefore life is destined to be short and brutish.

3 people found this helpful

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Dave

What a joy to read

December 12, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

What a joy to read! Dr. Simon's work is a much needed viewpoint in today's world. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a non-biased look at the state of our world's resources including energy, food, minerals, and a very awesome resource, the wonderful people who inhabit our world (i.e. population). The historical truth presented in this book will astound you! The future actually looks great!

4 people found this helpful

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Tony Meyer

Tony Meyer, Brooklyn, New York

April 16, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

One of the most important books I've ever read.
Wish the naysayers would read it.
Wish every senator would read it.
Wish all the environmentalists read this!

3 people found this helpful

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MUTTT

Serious and Timeless Perspective

August 7, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Mr. Simon was a writer with whom I was familiar primarily through editorials. Because he introduced the idea of airlines paying customers to address overbooking, his practicality caught my eye. This book should be mandatory reading for every young person caught up in the instinctive panic that accompanies "shortages" or apparently unsolvable problems like overpopulation. In this book he demonstrates that most shortages are not unavoidable, were generally complicated in large part by politically generated panic and virtually all of them will be resolved. Had I read this when it was published, the rise of India could easily have been foreseen while through the eye of the major books of that era such as Zero Population Growth, we were convinced the country was doomed to starvation and decline.

The most disarming characteristics of his approach is that he began by drawing the same irresistible conclusions but only after thorough investigation did he discover time and time again that these "certainties" were simply false. They were based upon "common sense" not truth.

6 people found this helpful

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Arsell Potasky

A must-read for anyone interested in population issues.

November 4, 1999

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

One reader below states that "Julian Simon is an idiot." The late Mr. Simon was clearly anything but an idiot. This same reader goes on to state that "the simple fact of the matter is that ANY level of growth in a closed system is unsustainable over a long enough period of time." That is true enough, but as Professor Simon points out, it isn't the issue. The issue is whether the limits of the closed system are sufficiently proximate so as to be relevant to policy decisions now. Professor Simon offers copious evidence to prove that whatever the ultimate physical limits of population growth might be (sunlight for photosynthesis striking the earth, land surface available for housing and farming), these limits are so very remote to be of essentially zero value in making policy decisions. Professor Simon illustrates this point by the following analogy: It is a generally-accepted fact that our Sun will burn out billions of years in the future. Thus, our Sun is ultimately a "closed system": only x amount of fuel, and then no more sunlight. While we can assume that this fact as true, it manifestly can have no reasonable bearing on our decisions today, since it is simply too remote. Professor Simon argues that the same is true for the carrying capacity for our Earth: ultimately we can perhaps talk about limits to resources, but it is demostrably true based on objective empirical evidence that these ultimate limits are so remote as to reduce them to irrelevance for any matter of public policy. Professor Simon convincingly argues that this is so for food production, living space, metals, wildlife, the environment, etc. I highly recommend reading this book along with Paul Ehlrich's "The Population Bomb." Professor Simon elsewhere shows the implications for the baby bust (to which books like "The Population Bomb" contributed) will have for solvency of Social Security and Medicare, as well as for the national security interests of the United States. I come away with the strong feeling that a furious hatred for mankind lurks behind the ZPG movement. Read this book, and pass it along to your friends.

17 people found this helpful

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Brian Holtz

Environmentalists dare not read this book!

September 12, 1997

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

To all Earth Firsters, Sierra Club members, etc:
Reading this book is detrimental to your blissful
ignorance about the economic and scientific
realities of resource use by H. sapiens. If
you preserve your ignorance of Simon's analysis,
you will continue to have the warm fuzzy feeling
of moral superiority over anyone who disagrees with your agenda.

5 people found this helpful

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david a klein

you may not be ready for this

December 13, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

the truth, unvarnished. people trump trees, oil, pets, and amber waves

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Hanna norberg

epic book

May 2, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Hold on to your seat. This book changes your view of the world. For ever. For the better.
There are simply not enough words to praise this epic work by Julian Simon aka the doom slayer.

2 people found this helpful

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