Julian Simon on This Day in History

This Day in History: Economist Julian Simon died on this day in 1998. Known as the Doomslayer, Simon argued that "over-population" was actually a good thing. More people means more brains to help solve our problems. To prove this he entered into a famous wager with Dr Doom Paul Ehrlich who wrote the Population Bomb. The bet was that with more people commodities would become rarer and thus more expensive. That didn't happen and Julian Simon won the bet. You can read Simon's great work "The Ultimate Resource" online at
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

Another scientist, Bjorn Lomborg, set out 20 years ago to debunk Julian Simon who he viewed as a "simple American right-wing" nutjob: "Three months into the project, we were convinced that we were being debunked instead," Dr. Lomborg said. "Not everything he said is right. He has a definite right-wing slant. But most of the important things were actually correct." As a result, Lomborg went on to write "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

"The increase in the world's population represents our victory over death." JS

Julian Simon Was Right: A Half-Century of Population Growth, Increasing Prosperity, and Falling Commodity Prices

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This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today's Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.~Julian Simon

The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endued with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning.~  David Hume, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations"

By a process of contraction, distance in space makes things look small, and therefore free from defect. This is why a landscape looks so much better in a contracting mirror or in a camera obscura than it is in reality. The same effect is produced by distance in time. The scenes and events of long ago and the persons who took part in them wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and it always seems defective. ~Schopenhauer