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Julian L. Simon is the world's greatest contrarian. The Ultimate Resource 2--an update, not a sequel, despite the title--skewers the sacred cows of environmentalism, population control, and Paul Ehrlich. In the contest between resource scarcity and human ingenuity, Simon bets the farm on the ability of intelligent people to overcome their problems. Thankfully, he is not a theorist. This book lays out convincing empirical evidence for Simon's prediction of a prosperous future. The key to progress is not state-run conservation programs, he says, but economic and political freedom. Only then can talented minds properly apply themselves to our earthly dilemmas.
Book Description
Arguing that the ultimate resource is the human imagination coupled to the human spirit, Julian Simon 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 confront us, 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.
Customer Reviews:
Simon research is revealing and a joy too study!.......2006-08-02
The engineering process for forecasting scarcity is as follows: 1. Estimate the presently known physical quantity of the 2. Extrapolate the future rate of use from the current use rate; and 3. Subtract the successive estimates of use in from inventory.
The economic process for forecasting is as follows: 1. ask whether there is any convincing reason to think that the period for which you are forecasting will be different from the past, going back as far as the data will allow; 2. if there is no good reason to reject the past trend as representative of the future as well, ask whether there is a reasonable explanation for the observed trend; 3. if there is no reason to believe that the future will be different than from the past, and if you have a solid explanation for the trend-or even if you lack a solid theory, but the data are overwhelming-project the trend into the future.
There is a wide disparity between engineering and economic forecasting. "Prediction is always a leap of faith; there is no scientific guarantee from past to future. The correctness of an assumption that what happened in the past will similarly happen in the future rests on your wise judgment and knowledge of your subject matter." "A prediction based on past data is sound if it is sensible to assume that the past and the future belong to the same statistical universe, that is, if you can expect conditions that held in the past to remain the same in the future. Ask yourself, "have conditions changed in recent years in such manner that the data on natural resources generated over the many past decades are no longer relevant."
The costs of natural resources have been steadily declining. Another way of thinking about costs is the proportion of ones total income to get them. This measure reveals a steady decline. "This trend makes it clear that the cost of minerals-even if it becomes considerably higher, which we have no reason to expect-is almost irrelevant to our standard of living, and hence an increased scarcity of mineral is not a great danger to our peacetime standard of living.
World reserves do not go down they even go up. The anti-intuitive conclusion is that even as we use coal and oil and iron and other natural resources, they are becoming less scarce.
As soon as information about an impending scarcity becomes known and accepted, people begin buying the commodity; they bid up the present market price until it reflects the expected future scarcity. In 1973, Japanese overreacted to OPEC supply manipulation. "The Japanese, and above all Japanese officialdom, were seized by hysteria in 1974 when raw materials shortages were cropping up everywhere. They bought and bought and bought (copper, iron, pulp, sulfur, and coking coal). Now they are frantically trying to get out of commitments to take delivery, and have slashed raw materials imports nearly in half. Even so, industrial inventories are bulging with high-priced raw materials." Japan paid heavy for the blunder. Mineral resources will not rise in real price but only adjust for inflation.
The prophecies of "Limits to Growth" are false. Interestingly, China attempted to control growth resulting in millions starving. The Chinese chose to start having babies. The Chinese government responded with force and implemented a policy of one child per family. A political scientist discussing the relationship of resources to national security refers to the "incontrovertible fact that many crucial resources are nonrenewable". "The assumption of finiteness indubitably misleads many scientific forecasters because their conclusions follow inexorably from that assumption. Limits to Growth gives this false doctrine, "The world model is based on the fundamental assumption that there is an upper limit to the total amount of food that can be produced annually by the world's agricultural system". John Maynard Keynes doctrine of diminishing returns implied an assertion impending scarcity in Europe. "Law of diminishing returns" fails because there is no law that compels cost to rise. Technology advancements mitigate the effects of diminishing returns when applied to costs.
Price is the key. Low prices cause innovation. Innovation reduces inefficiency. Increased efficiency improves discovery of new resources or a substitute process or commodity: Kerosene for oil, electricity for steam, and possibility hydrogen for hydro. Future generations will be better off for the discovery. Heighten scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt investors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. In a free society solutions are eventually found.
Infinite resource. "Even if energy is the relevant constraint for fabricating new kinds of raw materials, on would need to take into account, at the very least, all the mass/energy in the solar system. This amount is so huge relative to our use of energy, even by many multiples of the present population and many multiples of the present rate of individual use, that the end of the solar system in seven billion years or whenever would hardly be affected by our energy use now."
Man has a strong propensity towards creation rather than destruction. We can expect a positive preponderance of creativity over our exploitative activities. We are not at a turning point of destruction. Instead there is a reliable long-term pattern of non-scarcity exists.
The "Population Bomb" is erroneous, "the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death". Food production is so complete that if government subsidies did not artificially hold up the prices then food prices would drop to lower levels. More food is grown on less land and with less labor. Erosion losses are mitigated, as farmers move towards flat land agriculture. Flat land is farmed using large equipment, automated irrigation systems, and better fertilizers. Economy of scale increases supply. Food production in the US could be immediately enlarged if the government stopped paying farmers to keep idle land. The price of wheat has fallen adjusted for inflation even as the world demand for wheat increased. "Food supply increased because of agricultural knowledge resulting from research and development that was induced by the increased demand, together with the improved ability of farmers to get their produce to market on better transportation." All-important historical trends point towards cheaper food. Famines were caused by government policies: 1958 Chinese famine (30 million died) and 1930s Ukranians (7 million died), and Africa and Somolia distribution breakdowns and warlord profiteering. In 1991, China had reversed its scarcity problems and was shipping grain and meat to the Soviets. India can vastly improve its food production and seek to match Japan and Taiwan food production levels. Better storage would reduce waste to pests by 15-20 percent. In short run costs increase, but in the long run population pressures reduce costs.
Hydroponics is sufficiently practical that one supermarket has built a 10,000 sq ft vegetable garden. Phytofarm in Dekalb, Illinois produces mainly lettuce and other garden vegetables in a factory measuring 200 by 250 feet, at a rate of a ton of food per day, enough to completely feed 500 to 1000 people. Energy from artifical light is the key raw material in state-of-the-art hydroponics. Even at present electricity costs, PhytoFarm is profitable, and its food prices are affordable at ordinary American incomes. The entire present population of the world could be supplied with a square area about 140 miles on a side. Phytofarm techniques could feed a hundred times the world present population, say 500 billion people, on 1 percent of present farmland.
Fish farms have begun to produce at or near competitive prices. The main obstacle to a rapid increase in aquaculture costs and hence is that wild fish are too cheap to invite competition. Aquaculture capacity can be expanded almost indefinitely.
We believe too much bad news. We need to have more faith in free markets and innovation. Land is almost irrelevant to food production.
The sharp rise in the 1970s provides an illustrative case history of government intervention in the energy market. Conventional experts predicted a continued rise to say $3 a barrel by 1990s. The 1979 OPEC prices rise were the result of cartel agreements and not extraction cost increases. If one wants to know about he world's capacity to produce oil, the appropriate indicator is the cost of production and transportation and for oil the cost remains a small portion of the production costs. During the energy crisis the cost of oil did not raise at all and it remain 1 percent of the selling price of crude. The energy prices to the consumer had been falling continually. In the face of world-wide surplus of oil, Saudi Arabia and several other OPEC nations cut their oil production by 10 percent. "Still another waste due to false energy scares was the $15 billion thrown away on the development of synthetic fuels." "Government price-regulation system had the effect of supporting the OPEC cartel's price-fixing power and subsidizing member countries operations". The government measures harmed the consumer causing short-run shortages and long-run diminishing supply.
When OPEC boosted the price of oil in 1973, the price of uranium began to jump from $8 to $53 a ton within three years. This meant that Westinghouse might accrue losses of perhaps $2 billion. At the same time Gulf Oil together with the Canadian government and other producers of uranium got together to keep the price of uranium high.
Stick to the arguments.......2006-03-26
One reviewer below, apparently without any pause to shift gears manages to write:
"The poor quality of the critics' arguments, along with their ad hominem attacks, reveals why environmentalist doomsaying is a sad, pathetic, quasi-religion that bitterly opposes examining the facts."
Assuming he or she knows what 'ad hominem' means, this shows just how hard it is to stay objective when the stakes are so high.
Sebb
What would Simon say now?.......2005-11-06
Julian Simon won a famous ten-year-long bet with Paul Erlich regarding the prices of certain resources in the 1980's, which Simon predicted would decline in real terms. If Simon hadn't died a few years ago and he had made a similar set of bets with someone starting in 1995 for resources like Atlantic cod, copper, nickel, natural gas in North America and petroleum, by 2005 he would have lost, and spectacularly so. Apparently Simon's model for "unlimited" resources has begun to break down. The increasingly strained world oil supply shows that throwing more ingenuity and money at a resource problem can't always solve it. For example, despite having access to petroleum and natural gas from the North Sea, with the double-digit decline in North Sea output the British government has plans for _rationing_ fossil fuels this winter (2005-06) in the event of prolonged frigid weather.
And why do people keep referring to the Simon/Ehrlich bet any way? It doesn't follow from that contest that things haven't gone awry now.
As for the reviewer who blames government regulations and environmentalists for our current resource constraints, consider the following:
1. The world consumes a billion barrels of oil every 12 days or so at the current rate, up by 20 percent from a decade ago. If environmentalists and government regulators have tried to interfere with the growth of this flow of petroleum, they have clearly failed.
2. Much of our oil comes from parts of the world with few or no environmental restrictions. Even within the U.S., people along the Gulf Coast live with a level of petroleum-derived pollution and environmental damage that the rest of the country wouldn't tolerate.
3. Evolutionary psychologists will tell you that when people experience economic anxiety, they often blame other tribes for the resource problems they helped to cause themselves. If you feel anxious about having to pay twice as much for natural gas or gasoline as you did a couple years ago, look in the mirror for the reason instead of blaming caricatures from the Right's demonology.
Simon would still win today.......2005-10-16
If you examine the history of all "resources" you discover that they do become cheaper and more abundant over time. Why? In the better book, The Unltimate Resource, Simon goes into much more in depth research and analysis. The human mind is the "Ultimate Resource."
Lets take one example, copper. Copper was heavily used in the telecommunictions industry as well as in electronics. But the heavier user was in telecommunications. All of the scare about copper running out was nonsense in many ways. But the way that no ideologically driven socialist/environmentalist ever considers is through invention and innovation. The invention of fiber optical cable eliminated millions of tons worth of copper phone lines. Optical cable is made out of sand, the most abundant resource on the planet. We will never run out. Then consider that nano-technology is already working on making a nano fiber that will conduct electricity. Nano fibers are made out of carbon, THE most abundant resource in the universe! As soon as that work is finished, millions of tons of copper overhead electrical and underground cable will be recycled. Coppers price will go down again, and its abundance will increase. Humans continue to do this, create something that has never existed before and increase the abundance of all resources.
Lets also recognize that it was the discovery of petroleum oil and its production that saved the whales, as it made the whaling fleets obsolete. Wihtin a few years the whaling towns of boston and maine went mostly bust. Whaling was expensive and dangerous. Petroleum oil, not whale oil then became the lubricant of the industrial revolution. Lets think about photography and silver. All film was silver intensive. With the advent of digital photography, now including digital x-rays! All of the silver and all of the chemicals once needed are not needed any longer. This now frees up that resource! Every advance in technology eventually replaces the lower, least productive and least efficient technology. It is an ongoing evolutionary process!
The difference between Dr. Simon and the green left is one of basic philosohpy. He and those like him believe in humanity and humanities incredible capabilities and the detractors do not. Is the glass half empty or half full is not a cogent arguement as long as one side [the green communists] stops up the mouth of the glass and allows no new water into the glass.
If you can stop all invovation and sustain humanity then yes, all resources will eventually run out! That is the main point.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
M. A. Plus "Advanced Atheist"
<
<"Apparently Simon's model for "unlimited" resources has begun to break down. The increasingly strained world oil supply shows that throwing more ingenuity and money at a resource problem can't always solve it." >>
what bunk!
What Simon's critics never include in their "devanced" calculus is the factor of government interference in the markets through burdensome regulation. Environmental regulations, prohibitions on drilling, mining etc has caused an artificial shortage in these resources. These Enviro-morons have missed Simon et al's arguement. That given a free market and indivudals left alone to persue their "self" interesst all resources would drop in price and increase in abundance. Simon would win again if "environmentlaly safe" mining, drilling and exploration was allowed in and around the continental united states and throughout the world.
It is the artifical shortages cuased by enviro-socialism that makes it apear to the intellectually shallow, as if resources are increasing in scarcity and are going up in price.
Are you kidding me?.......2005-09-23
More frightening than Simon's non-sensical conclusions are the number of other reviewers who actually buy what Simon says. Here's one example of Simon's gross mischaracterization of scientifically accepted limits to our planet.
Simon suggests that we have infinite material and energy resources because the earth is an open system. Wrong! The earth scientifically accepted to be a closed system materially (save the odd meteor). This means that matter on earth is finite (a word Simon hates), and that it cycles through our ecological and geological systems.
The earth is an open system in terms of energy, because it receives a steady stream of energy from the sun. However, this in not infinite either, in a practical sense. Sure, we can consider it infinite in the sense that the flow will last billions of years, but the level of the flow is finite. If someone promised you $1000 a month for a million years, you wouldn't be a millionaire. You'd still have to budget that $1000 each month. That's what the earth does with the flow of energy from the sun. Therefore, to achieve sustainability, we must be able to exist with a finite level of material and energy resources.
Simon responds to this scientific reality by quoting Stephen Hawking about the infinite universe. No argument here. The universe may well be infinite, but the fact that we can't quite comprehend the outer limits of our universe has little bearing on our earthly supplies of energy and drinking water, for example. Simon tries to circumvent scientific reality with academic-sounding slight of hand, and he made a lot of money preaching his "good news" to those who don't want to hear anything else. Don't fall for it.
Still, this is worth reading just to be aware of the slop that Simon (and Bjorn Lomborg, Simon's predecessor)are trying to pass off as science.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Geographical Journal, published by Royal Geographical Society on July 1, 1998. The length of the article is 496 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Ultimate Resource 2.(Review)(Brief Article)
Author: Wendy J. Gill
Publication:
The Geographical Journal (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 1998
Publisher: Royal Geographical Society
Volume: 164
Issue: 2
Page: 220
Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
- Ditto (Almost)
- This book seems to be just a ploy to sell author's wares
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Discrimination, Harassment, and the Failure of Diversity Training: What to Do Now
Hellen Hemphill , and
Ray Haines
Manufacturer: Quorum Books
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ASIN: 1567201091 |
Book Description
Billions of dollars have been spent on the wrong solution to the complex, sensitive and emotionally charged issue of discrimination and harassment in the workplace. Companies originally invested in diversity training in order to meet Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity requirements, to reduce litigation costs, and to buy social peace. The result was often more social conflict--divisiveness, hostility, backlash, and an increase in litigation. This book offers a new, simple and effective solution to organizations that include the need to: establish, publish and enforce a zero-tolerance policy against discrimination and harassment; develop standards which define unacceptable professional workplace behaviors; and provide the relationship skills training necessary for all employees to meet the company's behavioral standards. Diversity training failed because of its focus on awareness, understanding and appreciating differences rather than teaching basic skills to help employees relate more effectively with each other regardless of their differences. Companies have the right to require professional behavior from their employees. They do not have the right to ask their employees to change ther personal values and belief systems. This book provides a blueprint for a skills-based solution to the elimination of discrimination and harassment. It emphasizes the development of professional relationship skills to help employees work more effectively with their bosses, their peers, their team members, their customers, and all those individuals different from themselves. For all business executives, leaders, managers, supervisors, human resource specialists, trainers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and employees.
Customer Reviews:
Ditto (Almost).......2002-08-16
The first half of the book was pretty good and pretty accurate. It describes what I have always felt - that most businesses do a very poor job at attempting to tack diversity. While it does have some good tips, the last half of the book is more of a solicitation for their "tool."
This book seems to be just a ploy to sell author's wares.......1998-07-01
I was really disappointed in this book -- especially considering the price and the lack of credible reseach within the book. Instead of exploring the topic fully and providing a solid grounding for the recommendations, chapters are wasted discussing specific tm tools of the authors/consultants. The content of this book has been done before -- usually in shorter magazine articles and often more thoroughly.
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Allelopathy: A Physiological Process with Ecological Implications
Manufacturer: Springer
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This book provides the reader with relevant information about actual knowledge of the process of allelopathy, covering all aspects from the molecular to the ecological level. Special emphasis is given to the physiological and ecophysiological aspects of allelopathy. Several ecosystems are studied and methodological considerations are taken into account in several chapters. The book has been written to be useful both for Ph.D. students and for senior researchers, so the chapters include all necessary information to be read by beginners, but also include a lot of useful information and discussion for the initiated.
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