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Title: The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon ISBN: 0-691-00381-5 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $42.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.32 (31 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Environmentalists are afraid of this book.
Comment: The current environmental movement operates under three basic ideas. First, the condition of the environment is getting worse. Secondly, capitalism and economic growth are bad for the environment. Third, in order to help the environment, we must have massive increases in the size of government.
In this book, Julian Simon shows that everything the environmentalists have been saying is wrong.
First, in the past century, the quality of the environment has gotten better. For example, the pollution that comes from automobiles today is less dangerous than the infectious disease that was spread by horse waste 100 years ago. Secondly, economic growth and technology make is easier to develop, and pay for, newer, cleaner technologies to keep the environment clean. Third, private property rights, private ownership, free markets, and capitalism are the best way to take care of the environment.
Most environmentalists are left wing socialist types who are in favor of massive increases in the size of government. Of course, these environmentalists comletely ignore the fact that Eastern Europe, after 50 years of having no private property rights whatsoever, became the most polluted area that the world has ever had.
During colonial days in America, buffalo, which were onwed by nobody, were nearly hunted to extinction. But today, cattle, which are privately owned, are not in danger of going extinct. When property is privately owned, the owner will take good care of it.
In a free market economy, prices are constantly changing. This gives consumers, and producers, all of the necessary information that they need, in order to determine how to best use resources. For example, whenever there's a big freeze in Florida, the price or oranges goes up. This is why we never have shortages of oranges. This is an example of the free market in action.
If you are an environmentalist, then you will hate this book.
If you beleive in rational, logical thinking, then you will love this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the great books of the 20th century
Comment: Rarely is a book written that fundamentally changed something about my worldview. Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource 2 (UR2) is such a book. Simon's book shows that man is a born problem-solver--given enough freedom to improvise. I walk the earth today knowing a "secret" that few others know. After reading UR2, I know that humanity can resolve its fundamental problems: energy shortages, overcrowding, environmental degredation.
The only concievable critics of UR2 are the regulators and manipulators of human affairs who use their positions of power to thwart innovation throgh nanny-state governance. Simon's analysis of the realities of environmental crises is the clearest I have read anywhere. Most of what we think we know about the environment is piece-meal: one fact or another, a few anecdotes lumped together into a conclusion. We hear that the Ozone Layer is disintegrating or that acid rain is killing lakes in the Northeast, or about Love Canal or various Superfund sites. Without a larger perspective, it all seems scary. Simon blows all of the hysteria away by stating that there is only one truly valid measure of the overall state of the environment: average life expectancy. By this standard, the environment has been improving for a century. Humans are healthier, and more comfortable than they have ever been.
The Ultimate Resource 2 is itself a valuable resource that should be prominently displayed in every home library. The hours I have invested in reading it have already been paid back in the form of great stimulating conversation with other people. Simon regards human innovation as the ultimate resource, but I think that the truth is actually much more valuable and rare--and in terms of this commodity, Simon's book provides the equivalent of a pot of gold.
Rating: 4
Summary: The world is complicated
Comment: I have not read the full book, but from what I have read Simon has a strong Economist's view.
The main reason I read the sections of the book that I did was that I was evaluating the world3 model that appears in the book Beyond the Limits and Limits to Growth. Simon correctly points out that world3's simulation of nonrenewable resource is unrealistic because it ignores the ability to substitute one resource for another and ignores the information that price can convey. This of course is expected from an economist since any econ 101 class will discuss substitution of one good for another and the fact that demand will decrease if the cost goes up.
On the other hand, he often ignores the complexity of the problems that others do address. For example, he states that the amount of agricultural land is not a problem, since an area the size of downtown Houston could feed the world. What he igores is how many resourses such as energy, fertilizer, etc would be required to do that (hint, more energy than the world produces). World3 got that part right, since it correctly predicted that humanity would still have enough food in 2000, however, it also predicted that substantially more nonland resources would be need to do so.
The world is complicated, and looking at it from just one perspective, such as an economist's, like Julian Simon does will give you a biased view of it. This book is useful if you want that perspective, but if that is the only perspective you have, you will be wrong.
Josh Cogliati
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Title: It's Getting Better All the Time : 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years by Stephen Moore, Julian Lincoln Simon ISBN: 1882577973 Publisher: Cato Institute Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg ISBN: 0521010683 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: Hoodwinking the Nation by Julian Simon ISBN: 1560004347 Publisher: Transaction Publishers Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The State of Humanity by Julian Lincoln Simon, Julian Simon ISBN: 155786585X Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $36.95 |
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Title: FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression by JIM POWELL ISBN: 0761501657 Publisher: Crown Forum Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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