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Julian Lincoln Simon

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Julian Lincoln Simon (February 12, 1932–February 8, 1998) was professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He wrote many books and articles, mostly on economic subjects. He is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration. He was the primary proponent of the cornucopian belief in endless resources and unlimited population growth empowered by technological progress. His works are often cited by libertarians in support of their arguments.

Contents

Thought

His 1981 book The Ultimate Resource is a criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth, raw-material scarcity and resource consumption. Simon argues that our notions of increasing resource-scarcity ignore the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices. Viewed economically, he argues, increasing wealth and technology make more resources available; although supplies may be limited physically they may be viewed as economically indefinite as old resources are recycled and new alternatives are developed by the market. Simon challenged the notion of a pending Malthusian catastrophe—that an increase in population has negative economic consequences; that population is a drain on natural resources; and that we stand at risk of running out of resources through over-consumption. Simon argues that population is the solution to resource scarcities and environmental problems, since people and markets innovate. His critique was praised by Nobel Laureate economists Friedrich Hayek & Milton Friedman, the latter in a 1998 foreword to The Ultimate Resource II, but has also attracted many critics, such as Paul R. Ehrlich and Albert Bartlett .

His 1984 book The Resourceful Earth (co-edited by Herman Kahn), is a similar criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption and a direct response to the Global 2000 report.

Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, the latter primarily because of the rapid switch from fears of global cooling and a new ice age (in the mid 1970s) to the later fears of global warming.[link] Simon also listed numerous claims about environmental damage and health dangers from pollution as "definitely disproven". These included claims about lead pollution & IQ, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal (The Ultimate Resource 2, pp260-265).

Vision of the Future

Julian Simon believed in the long term-sustainability of humanity and claimed in a 1995 policy report for the Cato Institute "We have in our hands now—actually in our libraries—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years. Most amazing is that most of this specific body of knowledge was developed within just the past two centuries or so, though it rests, of course, on basic knowledge that had accumulated for millennia. Indeed, the last necessary additions to this body of technology—nuclear fission and space travel—occurred decades ago."[link]

Garrett Hardin addressed the population claim in his book The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia. He noted that when Albert Bartlett, a retired physicist of the University of Colorado, tried to test Simon's statement on a desk calculator, it flashed "Error", indicating that, multiplying steadily at 1 % per year for 7 billion years, the population would soon surpass his calculator's limit of 9.99×1099. Bartlett's calculation assumed exponential population growth, with the population doubling every 43 years. However such assumptions may not be realistic since birth rates are declining in many developed and developing countries. This decline has led United Nations organizations to predict that global population growth will actually level off somewhere between about 9 billion in 2050 and 11 billion in 2100. Malthusian theories, further, do not appear to apply to recent life in the modern world because global prices for food have been falling while population levels have been rising; as Simon predicted.

Julian Simon concluded his Cato Institute report: "Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven, however. My message certainly is not one of complacency. The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well."

Influence

Simon was one of the founders of free-market environmentalism. An article [The Doomslayer] profiling Julian Simon in Wired magazine inspired Bjørn Lomborg to write the book The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Simon was also the first to suggest that airlines should provide rewards for travelers to give up their seats on overbooked flights (a practice popularly known as "bumping"), rather than arbitrarily taking certain passengers off the plane. Although the airline industry initially laughed at him, his plan was later implemented with resounding success, as recounted by Milton Friedman in the foreword to The Ultimate Resource II.

Simon was an omnivorous reader, and took some steps toward writing a memoir, A Life Against the Grain, which was published by his wife after his death.

Wager with

A wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich was made in 1980 over the price of metals a decade later; Simon had been challenging environmental scientists to the bet for some time. Ehrlich, John Harte and John Holdren selected a basket of five metals that they thought would rise in price with increasing scarcity and depletion.

Simon won the bet, with all five metals dropping in price. Supporters of Ehrlich's position suggest that much of this price drop came because of an oil spike driving prices up in 1980 and a recession driving prices down in 1990, pointing out that the price of the basket of metals actually rose from 1950 to 1975. They also suggest that Ehrlich did not consider the prices of these metals to be critical indicators, and that Ehrlich took the bet with great reluctance. On the other hand, Ehrlich selected the metals to be used himself, and at the time of the bet called it an "astonishing offer" that he was accepting "before other greedy people jump in," hardly suggesting reluctance.

Simon's critics claim that none of the actual supplies of these metals increased during this time, but that prices declined during the period of the wager for a variety of reasons:

  • The price of tin went down because of an increased use of aluminium, a much more abundant, useful and inexpensive material.
  • Better mining technologies allowed for the discovery of vast nickel lodes, which ended the near monopoly that was enjoyed on the market.
  • Tungsten fell due to the rise of the use of ceramics in cookware.
  • The price of chrome fell due to better smelting techniques.
  • The price of copper began to fall due to the invention of fiber optic cable (which is derived from sand), which serves a number of the functions once reserved only for copper wire.
In these cases, better technology allowed for either more efficient use of existing resources, or replacement of those resources with something more abundant and less expensive, which is the gist of Simon's theories.

Critics note that with the rapid industrialization of China and India, basic commodities began to rise dramatically in price in 2000. Copper in particular increased five-fold, from around 60 cents a pound in 1999 to over $3 in 2006 [link]. Oil, gold, steel, and other commodities saw similar meteoric rises, strengthening the arguments of critics who find fault with Simon's "perilous optimism."[link] Whether this rise will become a long-term trend only time will tell.

Proposed second wager

In 1995, Simon issued a challenge for a second bet. Ehrlich declined, and proposed instead that they bet on a metric for human welfare. Ehrlich offered Simon a set of 15 metrics over 10 years, victor to be determined by scientists chosen by the president of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. There was no meeting of minds, because Simon felt that too many of the metrics measured attributes of the world not directly related to human welfare, e.g. the amount of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. [link] [link] For such indirect, supposedly bad indicators to be considered "bad", though, they would ultimately have to have some measureable detrimental effect on actual human welfare, and it was these actual measurements that Ehrlich refused to bet on.

Education

Books

References

Books critical of Julian Simon

External links

Critiques

 

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