"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)Arguing that the ultimate resource
is the human imagination coupled to 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." 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 confrontus, 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.
