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Julian Lincoln Simon

The Ultimate Resource Hardcover – August 21, 1981

by Julian Lincoln Simon (Author)

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The description for this book, The Ultimate Resource, will be forthcoming.

Print length

418 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Princeton University Press
Publication date

August 21, 1981
ISBN-10

069109389X
ISBN-13

978-0691093895
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Spine Lean edition (August 21, 1981)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 418 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 069109389X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691093895
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #2,144,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,645 in Natural Resources (Books)
- #4,319 in Environmental Economics (Books)

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4.6 out of 5

13 global ratings

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Eric F.

Great book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 19, 2022

Verified Purchase

Everything arrived on time and as advertised

Helpful

MUTTT

Serious and Timeless Perspective

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2010

Verified 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.

10 people found this helpful

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Craig H. Morgan

Julian Simon is excellent

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 18, 2010

Verified Purchase

Julian Simon in very cogent terms brings sanity to the debate over population control snd resource exhaustion It is puzzling that Paul Erhlich's The Population Bomb got so much attention and praise while Simon's The Ultimate Resource is almost ignored.

7 people found this helpful

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david a klein

you may not be ready for this

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

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

One person found this helpful

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Doug Erlandson

A great prognosticator

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 3, 2016

Julian Simon did not live long enough to see many of his predictions in "The Ultimate Resource" (published in 1980) to come to pass. However, looking back on what he wrote three and a half decades ago, he had an uncanny ability to predict the future, particularly when it came to seeing how human inventiveness (people being the ultimate resource) would find ways to use the material given to us on planet earth for our good. In addition to arguing that people are our ultimate resource (and thus it is to our advantage when there are more of them, hence more brain power), Simon argued that we are not in danger of running out of most resources. For example, he went against the then-common belief that we would run out of oil in 30-40 years, for he knew that there was far more oil available for our use, which could be extracted once human inventiveness found a cost-effective way. Well after his untimely death in 1998 the process of hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") unlocked the vast quantities of oil found in shale rock. Thus, Simon was proved to be an excellent prognosticator when it comes to oil, as he has been in other areas as well.

5 people found this helpful

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Pamela Tolbert

Wonderful. Much needed. Now more than ever.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 30, 2006

I was first introduced to the first edition of the book while in college many years ago. I always like to go back and read even now.

Simon pulls apart many radical environmentalist myths in one fell swoop, explaining that beyond oil, fiber, and chemicals, the ultimate resource is the human mind which has always had to adapt. And adapt it will again, not because of some Darwinian survival mechanism set on autopilot to find new ways of living, but rather the true thinking of things through via the human mind's creativity.

His examples are many, but primarily he shows that overpopulation is a Malthusain myth and that rather than a crunch of human flesh in the world, we are far more likely to find birthrates falling with rapid industrialization. That's the first point--see America and Europe on this one, as proof he's correct, in that being a one child producer per family or even no children for marrieds is the hottest trend in many nations, with even negative consequences for issues like societal stability and welfare and pension plans, social security, retirement benefits, labor force needs, etc.

Secondly, for those areas that the Mainstream Media and social science pundits are always pointing to as dire warnings about the dangers of overpopulation and still have cultures that value large families (as in many parts of the Mid East and Asia), it would seem the real problem is lack of liberty, horrid political arrangements, lack of industrialization, and lack of infrastructure and modern farming methods that seem the real culprit in human suffering.

This actually makes sense, unlike what we were probably taught in school (i.e. that "overpopulation" is a generic term that means distress regardless of context).

There is much more, but these are the basic highlights. The book also details several resources and the reality of how continued exploration and replacement of some items actually reduces the prices consumers must pay for the upkeep of industry and other life activities.

A wonderful "resource" to have on one's shelf in any case to counter the incessant propoganda of UN studies and Planned Parenthood and dozens of other groups who purport to care aobut humanity but think limiting it is the key to human happiness. Simon shows just the opposite, to wit, human fecundity and happiness are luckily tied together.

-W.T.

16 people found this helpful

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The Ultimate Resource Hardcover – August 21, 1981

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