All Posts Tagged With: "prophets of doom"
Paper Tiger
Christopher Mayer, a commercial loan officer, is studying for an MBA at the University of Maryland. Gadflies have long been predicting the exhaustion of critical natural resources—especially oil. Despite the doomsaying, a barrel of oil is cheaper today than a pair of movie tickets. As Daniel Yergin pointed out in a recent editorial in the [...]
1Apr1999 | Christopher Mayer | 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 | ContinuedBillions for a Misconception
The children of David Packard, the late Silicon Valley entrepreneur who co-founded the Hewlett-Packard Company, have a monumental job on their hands. Since their father’s death in 1996, they have been charged with fulfilling his most passionate desire: to spend billions of the family foundation’s dollars on behalf of world population control. If Mr. Packard [...]
1Jul1998 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Paradox of Progress: Can Americans Regain Their Confidence in a Prosperous Future? by Richard B. McKenzie
Oxford University Press • 1997 • ix + 244 pages • $27.50 Paul Heyne teaches economics at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of The Economic Way of Thinking (Prentice-Hall, eighth edition, 1997). Why do so many Americans today believe that the prosperity previous generations have enjoyed will not be available to [...]
1Apr1998 | Paul Heyne | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy Are Austrians Unusually Bearish?
“Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can. . . .Can socialism work? Of course it can.” —Joseph A. Schumpeter[1] When the financial markets went into a tailspin in late October 1997, my doomsday colleagues appeared gleeful. “The bear [market] has begun,” predicted Gary North. “It isn’t going to end for about 10 [...]
1Jan1998 | Mark Skousen | 2 comments | ContinuedBook Review: A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism by Gregg Easterbrook
Viking • 1995 • 745 pages • $27.95 Mr. Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology. Environmentalists have long enjoyed the political high ground. After all, who could be against clean water? As a result, over the [...]
1Feb1997 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedEco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism
Many good books have appeared on the environment and the environmental movement in recent years. Ronald Bailey, Michael Fumento, Lou Guzzo, and Dixy Lee Ray, among others, have produced devastating studies of environmental foolishness. Thoughtful environmentalists like Wallace Kaufman and Martin Lewis have written sharp critiques of the dishonesty and radicalism of movement activists. But [...]
1Mar1995 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Population Bomb: Exploding the Myth
Dr. Livingston is Director of Freeman Services for The Foundation for Economic Education. Doomsday projections made two centuries ago by Thomas Malthus were revived by grim-faced delegates at the U.N. Population Conference in Cairo last year. The consensus of those present was that a population bomb is about to explode unless there is governmental intervention [...]
1Feb1995 | Felix R. Livingston | 1 comment | Continued-
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