All Posts Tagged With: "Julian Simon"
Remembering Julian Simon
Paul A. Cleveland is a professor of economics at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama. Erin Hagert is studying economics at The King’s College in New York. The late Julian Simon was not a household name, but he left an indelible mark nonetheless by demanding that environmentalists produce evidence for their doomsday predictions. Meanwhile, he produced his [...]
1Jan2007 | and Paul A. Cleveland | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Day the Glue Came Undone
Scenes of the devastation and suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina will long remain in our memories. Equally horrifying were the pictures of New Orleans residentsand policemen helping themselves to goods from stores.
1Jan2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTwisting Economics Against Immigrants
P. Gardner Goldsmith is an independent journalist and screenwriter in New Hampshire. On January 7 President Bush announced what appeared to be a sweeping plan to grant de-facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens working in the United States. In fact, it was little more than a long-term worker-visa program that barely increased the ability [...]
1Sep2004 | P. Gardner Goldsmith | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Economics of Ecology: Angry Planet or Beautiful World?
“The bright promise of a new millennium is now clouded by unprecedented threats to humanity’s future.” -WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE, 20001 “We know that the environment is not in good shape. . . . My claim is that things are improving.” -BJØRN LOMBORG2 Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish professor of statistics who was an environmental activist and [...]
1Sep2002 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Mugging of an Environmental Skeptic
When I read Bjørn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist I felt a sense of déjà vu. As excellent as it is, what Lomborg has to say—that the world is not going to hell—has been said before. But it was ignored because it was said by a brilliant man, the late Julian Simon, who was considered politically [...]
1Jul2002 | James Peron | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Great Breakthrough and Its Cause
Reviewed by Robert Lawson Julian Simon’s final work before his untimely death is perhaps his most ambitious undertaking. He wants to explain why at least some parts of humanity, after millennia of virtual stagnation, suddenly began a rapid increase in living standards around the years 1750-1800. Simon labels this phenomenon Sudden Modern Progress (SMP). His [...]
1Jul2002 | Julian L. Simon edited by Tim | 1 comment | ContinuedIt’s Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends in the Last 100 Years
It’s not for nothing that economics is tagged “the dismal science.” Part of that reputation traces to its realistic no-pie-in-the-sky nature, but another part goes to the ongoing influence of thinkers like Thomas Malthus, who saw population outracing food output; Karl Marx, who saw evil capital crushing the rising working class; and John Maynard Keynes, [...]
1Jan2002 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedTen Years After the Bet: The More Things Change. . .
Michael Mallinger is a research associate at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. The late Julian Simon’s victory in his famous bet with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich was a defining moment in the free-market movement’s victory over Malthusianism. In 1980 Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose five commodities that would become more expensive over the [...]
1Nov2001 | Michael D. Mallinger | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat It Takes to Be an Objective Scholar
“It was the facts that changed my mind.” —Julian Simon1 During the 1990s, we watched the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase fourfold and Nasdaq stocks tenfold. Yet there were well-known investment advisers—some of them my friends—who were bearish during the entire period, missing out on the greatest bull market in history.2 How is this possible? [...]
1Apr2000 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | ContinuedCleaned by Capitalism
I recently spoke in Toronto to students at a public-policy seminar sponsored by the Fraser Institute. The seminar opened with Fraser’s Laura Jones reviewing the many sound reasons why environmental alarmism is inappropriate. Ms. Jones offered superb analysis and boatloads of relevant facts. Her case that the environment is not teetering on the edge of [...]
1Feb2000 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | ContinuedHoodwinking the Nation by Julian Simon
Transaction Publishers • 1999 • 140 pages • $29.95 Julian Simon was an energetic, irrepressible, and effective champion of freedom. His untimely death in 1998 silenced a voice—arguably the foremost voice—of reason on the subjects of population, resources, and the environment. The word “irreplaceable” comes to mind when one thinks back over his career as [...]
1Feb2000 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedIt Just Ain’t So!
Since ancient times people have been fretting about overcrowding the earth. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus was already a latecomer to the alarmist message that mankind would breed itself into extinction. He was far from the first Malthusian. (It’s widely unappreciated that Malthus revised later editions of his Essay on the Principle of Population because [...]
1Nov1998 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedJulian Simon, Lifesaver
The real issue is not whether one cares about nature, but whether one cares about people. Julian L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996) Julian Simon’s unexpected death in February brought a major loss. With the passing of this noted free-market champion, humankind lost a genuine hero; the economics profession lost one of its most [...]
1Apr1998 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 2 comments | ContinuedOur Ultimate Resource Gone
On February 8 Julian Simon died. Difficult words to write, those. We have suffered a terrible loss on many levels. He was, first of all, a wonderful human being—ever positive, smiling, encouraging; a joy to be around. After that, he was one of freedom’s great crusaders. (When Don Boudreaux created FEE’s Council of Scholars last [...]
1Apr1998 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon
Princeton University Press • 1996 • 734 pages • $35.00 E. C. Pasour is professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. In this powerful and unrestrained challenge to environmental doomsayers, Julian Simon has updated and further substantiated the conclusions of his 1981 book The Ultimate Resource. The standard of living [...]
1Apr1998 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedThe State of Humanity
Dr. Block is a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross. If you are one of those persons whose intellectual style can be summarized by the motto. “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” then you won’t like this book one bit. On the other hand, if you think that facts, evidence, and [...]
1Oct1996 | Walter Block | 1 comment | Continued-
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