X-Message-Number: 21982 From: "michaelprice" <> References: <> Subject: Malthus vs Simon Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 06:05:32 +0100 Ron Havelock writes: >> Once we've squandered what's left of the planet's fossil >> thermodynamic capital, the human race faces a massive >> die-off and a PERMANENT dark age, no matter how >> much technological knowledge we might have acquired by >> then > > Pardon me, Mark Plus, but this is doomsday nonsense. I > suggest that you consult the very well documented writings > of the late Julian L. Simon, e.g. > The Ultimate Resource-2, Princeton Univ Press, 1996 I second that Ron. A much under-appreciated book. Malthus' doomsday predictions of the human population explosion being limited by resources have always failed to materialise in the past, and I expect this to continue into the future, forever. Have a look at The Ultimate Resource by Julian L. Simon to see why resources are economically unlimited. Simon presents many reasons why we should sceptical about the claims of doomsayers that we are running out of resources, living on borrowed time, etc etc The most powerful message that I took away from this book was about raw-material scarcity. Most people accept without further thought that it is axiomatic that resources are being depleted. I was one of those people until I read Simon's book. Simon poses the question, how can we objectively measure raw-material scarcity? His answer is to examine the wage-inflation-adjusted price of raw-materials. (Not relative to retail-price inflation, which only measures *relative* scarcity/availablity.) Wage inflation adjusted prices measure how long an average worker must work to buy a unit some commodity, including raw-materials. The wage-adjusted prices of most (perhaps all) raw-materials (oil, electricity, coal, aluminium, iron etc) are presented and they all show an exponential decline with time, averaged over decades. By this objective measure, then, we arrive at the astounding conclusion that raw-materials are growing less scarce with time, as new technologies evolve to improve extraction and recycling techniques, along with the development of alternatives (e.g. for oil read solar and thermonuclear energy). Cheers, Michael C Price ---------------------------------------- http://mcp.longevity-report.com http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21982