Julian Lincoln Simon (February 12, 1932 – February 8, 1998)
was an American
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
of
business administration
Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
at the
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
and a Senior Fellow at the
Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Indust ...
at the time of his death, after previously serving as a longtime economics and business professor at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
.
Simon wrote many books and articles, mostly on
economic
An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
subjects. He is best known for his work on
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
,
natural resource
Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. O ...
s, and
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
. Simon is sometimes associated with
cornucopian
Cornucopianism is the idea that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by similarly continued advances in technology. It relies on the belief that there is enough matter and energy on the Earth to provide for the ...
views. Rather than focus on the abundance of nature, Simon focused on lasting economic benefits from continuous
population growth
Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to ...
, even despite limited or finite physical resources, empowered primarily by human ingenuity which would create substitutes, and
technological progress
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
.
He is also known for the famous
Simon–Ehrlich wager The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed con ...
, a bet he made with ecologist
Paul R. Ehrlich. Ehrlich bet that the prices for five metals would increase over a decade, while Simon took the opposite stance. Simon won the bet, as the prices for the metals sharply declined during that decade.
Theory
Simon's 1981 book ''
The Ultimate Resource
''The Ultimate Resource'' is a 1981 book written by Julian Lincoln Simon challenging the notion that humanity was running out of natural resources. It was revised in 1996 as ''The Ultimate Resource 2''.
Overview
The overarching thesis on why ther ...
'' is a criticism of what was then the
conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdom or received opinion is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted by the public and/or by experts in a field. In religion, this is known as orthodoxy.
Etymology
The term is often credited to the economist John K ...
on
resource scarcity
Resource depletion is the consumption of a resource faster than it can be replenished. Natural resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources (see also mineral resource classification). Use of either o ...
, published within the context of the cultural background created by the best-selling and highly influential book ''
The Population Bomb'' in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich and ''
The Limits to Growth'' analysis published in 1972. ''The Ultimate Resource'' challenged the conventional wisdom on
population growth
Population growth is the increase in the number of people in a population or dispersed group. Actual global human population growth amounts to around 83 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to ...
, 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 regarded as economically indefinite as old resources are recycled and new alternatives are assumed to be developed by the market. Simon challenged the notion of an impending
Malthusian catastrophe
Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. This event, c ...
—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
Overconsumption describes a situation where a consumer overuses their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this may be described as the point where the marginal cost of a ...
. Simon argues that population is the solution to resource scarcities and environmental problems, since people and markets innovate. His ideas were praised by
Nobel Laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
economists
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...
and
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...
, the latter in a 1998 foreword to ''The Ultimate Resource II'', but they have also attracted critics such as
Paul R. Ehrlich,
Albert Allen Bartlett
Albert Allen Bartlett (March 21, 1923 – September 7, 2013) was an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US. Professor Bartlett had lectured over 1,742 times since September, 1969 on ''Arithmetic, Population, ...
and
Herman Daly
Herman Edward Daly (July 21, 1938 – October 28, 2022) was an American ecological and Georgist economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States, best known for his time as a s ...
.
Simon examined different raw materials, especially metals and their prices in historical times. He assumed that besides temporary shortfalls, in the long run prices for raw materials remain at similar levels or even decrease. E.g.
aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
was never as expensive as before 1886 and
steel
Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant ty ...
used for medieval armor carried a much higher price tag in current dollars than any modern parallel. A recent discussion of commodity index long-term trends supported his positions.
His 1984 book ''
The Resourceful Earth'' (co-edited by
Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was a founder of the Hudson Institute and one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theori ...
), is a similar criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption and a direct response to the
Global 2000 report. For example, it predicted that "There is no compelling reason to believe that world oil prices will rise in the coming decades. In fact, prices may well fall below current levels". Indeed, oil prices trended downward for nearly the next 2 decades, before rising above 1984 levels in about 2003 or 2004. Oil prices have subsequently risen and fallen, and risen again. In 2008, the price of crude oil reached $100 per barrel, a level last attained in the 1860s (inflation adjusted). Later in 2008, the price again sharply fell, to a low of about $40, before rising again to a high around $125. Since mid-2011, prices were slowly trending downward until the middle of 2014, but falling dramatically until the end of 2015 to ca. $30. Since then prices were relatively stable (below $50).
Simon was
skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to
CFCs
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are fully or partly halogenated hydrocarbons that contain carbon (C), hydrogen (H), chlorine (Cl), and fluorine (F), produced as volatile derivatives of methane, ethane, and propan ...
,
ozone depletion
Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone l ...
and
climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
.
Simon also claimed that numerous environmental damage and health dangers from pollution were "definitely disproved". These included
lead pollution
Lead poisoning, also known as plumbism and saturnism, is a type of metal poisoning caused by lead in the body. The brain is the most sensitive. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, constipation, headaches, irritability, memory problems, infertil ...
& IQ,
DDT
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...
,
PCBs,
malathion
Malathion is an organophosphate insecticide which acts as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. In the USSR, it was known as carbophos, in New Zealand and Australia as maldison and in South Africa as mercaptothion.
Pesticide use
Malathion is a pesti ...
,
Agent Orange
Agent Orange is a chemical herbicide and defoliant, one of the "tactical use" Rainbow Herbicides. It was used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. It ...
,
asbestos
Asbestos () is a naturally occurring fibrous silicate mineral. There are six types, all of which are composed of long and thin fibrous crystals, each fibre being composed of many microscopic "fibrils" that can be released into the atmosphere b ...
, and the chemical contamination at
Love Canal
Love Canal is a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, United States, infamous as the location of a landfill that became the site of an enormous environmental disaster in the 1970s. Decades of dumping toxic chemicals harmed the health of hund ...
. He dismissed such concerns as a mere "value judgement."
Influence
Simon was one of the founders of
free-market environmentalism
Free-market environmentalism argues that the free market, property rights, and tort law provide the best means of preserving the environment, internalizing pollution costs, and conserving resources.
Free-market environmentalists therefore arg ...
.
An article entitled "The Doomslayer"
profiling Julian Simon in ''
Wired'' magazine inspired Danish
Bjørn Lomborg to write the book ''
The Skeptical Environmentalist
''The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World'' ( da, Verdens sande tilstand, lit=The True State of the World) is a book by Danish author and statistician Bjørn Lomborg. The book is controversial for outlining Lomborg' ...
''.
Simon was also the first to suggest that
airline
An airline is a company that provides civil aviation, air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or Airline alliance, alliances with other airlines for ...
s should provide incentives for travelers to give up their seats on
overbooked flights, rather than arbitrarily taking random passengers off the plane (a practice known as "bumping").
Although the airline industry initially rejected it, his plan was later implemented with resounding success, as recounted by Milton Friedman in the foreword to ''The Ultimate Resource II''. Economist James Heins said in 2009 that the practice had added $100 billion to the United States economy in the last 30 years.
Simon gave away his idea to federal de-regulators and never received any personal profit from his solution.
Although not all of Simon's arguments were universally accepted, they contributed to a shift in opinion in the literature on
demographic economics from a strongly Malthusian negative view of population growth to a more neutral view. More recent theoretical developments, based on the ideas of the
demographic dividend
Demographic dividend, as defined by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is "the economic growth potential that can result from shifts in a population’s age structure, mainly when the share of the working-age population (15 to 64) is large ...
and
demographic window
The Demographic Window is defined to be that period of time in a nation's demographic evolution when the proportion of population of working age group is particularly prominent. This occurs when the demographic architecture of a population becomes ...
, have contributed to another shift, this time away from the debate viewing population growth as either good or bad.
Simon wrote a memoir, ''A Life Against the Grain'', which was published by his wife after his death.
Wagers with rivals
Paul R. Ehrlich – first wager
Simon challenged Paul R. Ehrlich to a wager in 1980 over the
price
A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...
of
metal
A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...
s 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
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various ...
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."
The total supply in three of these metals (chromium, copper and nickel) increased during this time. Prices also declined for reasons specific to each of the five:
* The price of
tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal.
Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...
went down because of an increased use of
aluminium
Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...
, a much more abundant, useful and inexpensive material.
* Better mining technologies allowed for the discovery of vast
nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...
lodes, which ended the near
monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...
that was enjoyed on the market.
*
Tungsten
Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively as compounds with other elements. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolat ...
fell due to the rise of the use of
ceramic
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...
s in
cookware
Cookware and bakeware is food preparation equipment, such as cooking pots, pans, baking sheets etc. used in kitchens. Cookware is used on a stove or range cooktop, while bakeware is used in an oven. Some utensils are considered both cookware ...
.
* The price of
chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
fell due to better smelting techniques.
* The price of
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
began to fall due to the invention of
fiber optic cable
A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable, but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with ...
(which is derived from
sand
Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...
), which serves a number of the functions once reserved only for copper wire.
In all of these cases, better technology allowed for either more efficient use of existing resources, or substitution with a more abundant and less expensive resource, as Simon predicted.
Paul R. Ehrlich – 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
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specificall ...
. 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
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
in 2005. There was no meeting of minds, because Simon felt that too many of the metric's measured attributes of the world were not directly related to human welfare, e.g. the amount of
nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide (dinitrogen oxide or dinitrogen monoxide), commonly known as laughing gas, nitrous, or nos, is a chemical compound, an oxide of nitrogen with the formula . At room temperature, it is a colourless non-flammable gas, and has a ...
in the
atmosphere
An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
. For such indirect, supposedly bad indicators to be considered "bad", they would ultimately have to have some measurable detrimental effect on actual human welfare. Ehrlich refused to leave out measures considered by Simon to be immaterial.
Simon summarized the bet with the following analogy:
David South
The same year as his second challenge to Ehrlich, Simon also began a wager with David South, professor of the
Auburn University
Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest uni ...
School of Forestry. The Simon / South wager concerned timber prices. Consistent with his cornucopian analysis of this issue in ''The Ultimate Resource'', Simon wagered that at the end of a five-year term the consumer price of pine timber would have decreased; South wagered that it would increase. Before five years had elapsed, Simon saw that market and extra-market forces were driving up the price of timber, and he paid Professor South $1,000. Simon died before the agreed-upon date of the end of the bet, by which time timber prices had risen further.
Simon's reasoning for his early exit out of the bet was due to "the far-reaching quantity and price effects of logging restrictions in the Pacific-northwest." He believed this counted as interference from the U.S. government, which rendered the bet worthless according to his economic principles. Simon's bet only considered the possibility of prices being driven up by Alabama's government; he did not believe anything worthwhile was shown when U.S. logging restrictions drove the prices up.
Criticism
Jared Diamond in his book
''Collapse'',
Albert Bartlett and
Garrett Hardin describe Simon as being too optimistic and some of his assumptions being not in line with natural limitations.
Diamond claims that a continued stable growth rate of earth's population would result in extreme over-population long before the suggested time limit. Regarding the attributed population predictions Simon did not specify that he was assuming a fixed growth rate as Diamond, Bartlett and Hardin have done. Simon argued that people do not become poorer as the population expands; increasing numbers produce what they needed to support themselves, and have and will prosper while
food prices
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices have an impact on producers and consumers of food.
Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing an ...
sink.
Diamond believes, and finds absurd, Simon implies it would be possible to produce metals, e.g.
copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
, from other elements. For Simon, human resource needs are comparably small compared to the wealth of nature. He therefore argued physical limitations play a minor role and shortages of raw materials tend to be local and temporary. The main scarcity pointed out by Simon is the amount of human brain power (i.e. "The Ultimate Resource") which allows for the perpetuation of human activities for practically unlimited time. For example, before copper ore became scarce and prices soared due to global increasing demand for copper wires and cablings, the global data and telecommunication networks have switched to glass fiber backbone networks.
This and other quotations in ''Wired'' are supposed to be the reason for
Bjørn Lomborg's ''
The Skeptical Environmentalist
''The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World'' ( da, Verdens sande tilstand, lit=The True State of the World) is a book by Danish author and statistician Bjørn Lomborg. The book is controversial for outlining Lomborg' ...
''. Lomborg has stated that he began his research as an attempt to counter what he saw as Simons' anti-
ecological arguments but changed his mind after starting to analyze the data.
Herman Daly
Herman Edward Daly (July 21, 1938 – October 28, 2022) was an American ecological and Georgist economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States, best known for his time as a s ...
, an American ecological and Georgist economist, criticized Simon for committing profound mistakes and exaggerations, for denial of resource finitude and for his views that neither ecology nor entropy exists.
Finiteness of natural resources
Simon criticized the notion that natural resources are finite: 'Incredible as it may seem at first, the term "finite" is not only inappropriate but is downright misleading when applied to natural resources, both from the practical and philosophical points of view. As with many important arguments, the finiteness issue is "just semantic." Yes the semantics of resources scarcity muddle public discussion and bring about wrongheaded policy decisions.
..The quantity of the services we obtain from copper that will ever be available to use should not be considered finite because there is no method (even in principle) of making an appropriate count of it, given the problem of the economic definition of "copper," the possibility of using copper more efficiently, the possibility of creating copper or its economic equivalent from other materials, the possibility of recycling copper, or even obtaining copper from sources beyond planet Earth, and thus the lack of boundaries to the sources from which "copper" might be drawn.'
Legacy
The
Institute for the Study of Labor
The IZA - Institute of Labor Economics (german: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit), until 2016 referred to as the Institute of the Study of Labor (IZA), is a private, independent economic research institute and academic network focused o ...
established the annual Julian L. Simon Lecture to honor Simon's work in population economics. The
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
held a symposium discussing Simon's work on April 24, 2002.
The university also established the Julian Simon Memorial Faculty Scholar Endowment to fund an associate faculty member in the business school.
India's Liberty Institute also holds a Julian Simon Memorial Lecture.
The
Competitive Enterprise Institute gives the Julian Simon Memorial Award annually to an economist in the vein of Simon; the first recipient was
Stephen Moore, who had served as a research fellow under Simon in the 1980s.
Personal life
Simon was married to Rita James Simon, who was also a longtime member of the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later became a
public affairs professor at
American University
The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...
.
Simon suffered for a long time from
depression, which allowed him to work only a few productive hours in a day. He also studied psychology of depression and wrote a book
on overcoming it. Simon was Jewish.
He died of a heart attack at his home in Chevy Chase in 1998 at age 65.
Education
* BA,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
experimental psychology
Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
, 1953
*
MBA,
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, 1959
*
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...
, University of Chicago, business economics, 1961
Honors
* Doctor ''honoris causa'',
University of Navarra
, image = UNAV.svg
, latin_name = Universitas Studiorum Navarrensis
, established = 17 October 1952
, type = Private, Roman Catholic
, chancellor = Fernando Ocáriz Braña
, president = María Iraburu Eliz ...
, (Spain), Economics, 1998
Works
*
*
* ''The Resourceful Earth: A Response to "Global 2000"'' (1984), , Julian Simon &
Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was a founder of the Hudson Institute and one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theori ...
, eds
''The Economic Consequences of Immigration into the United States''''Effort, Opportunity, and Wealth: Some Economics of the Human Spirit''''Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression'' (Forewords by
Albert Ellis and
Kenneth Colby)
''The Hoodwinking of a Nation'' (hard), (soft)
* ''A Life Against the Grain: The Autobiography of an Unconventional Economist''
''Scarcity or Abundance? A Debate on the Environment''(1994), (with
Norman Myers),
''The Philosophy and Practice of Resampling Statistics''* ''Basic research methods in social sciences: The art of empirical investigation'',
''Resampling: A Better Way to Teach (and Do) Statistics''(with Peter C. Bruce)
''The Science and Art of Thinking Well in Science, Business, the Arts, and Love''* ''Economics of Population: Key Modern Writings'',
* ''The State of Humanity'',
* ''It's Getting Better All the Time : 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years'' by
Stephen Moore, Julian Lincoln Simon ''manuscript finished posthumously by Stephen Moore''
References
*
* Julian L. Simon & Herman Kahn eds. (1984) "The Resourceful Earth – A Response to ''Global 2000''" Blackwell
* Albert A. Bartlett
Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth, and the Environment(revised version).
Further reading
* Desrochers, Pierre and Vincent Geloso,
Snatching the Wrong Conclusions from the Jaws of Defeat: A Historical/Resourceship Perspective on Paul Sabin's The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (Yale University Press, 2013), Part 2: The Wager: Protagonists and Lessons" ''New Perspectives on Political Economy'', vol. 12, no. 1-2 (2016), pp. 42–64.
* Desrochers, Pierre and Vincent Geloso,
Snatching the Wrong Conclusions from the Jaws of Defeat: A Historical/Resourceship Perspective on Paul Sabin's The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (Yale University Press, 2013). Part 1: The Missing History of Thought: Depletionism vs Resourceship" ''New Perspectives on Political Economy'', vol. 12, no. 1-2 (2016), pp. 5–41.
Books critical of Julian Simon:
*Ehrlich, Paul R. ''Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future'', 1996. (ISBN 1-55963-483-9)
*Grant, Lindsey. ''Elephants in the Volkswagen'', 1992. (ISBN 0-7167-2268-2)
*Hardin, Garrett. ''The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia'', 1998. (ISBN 0-19-512274-7)
External links
Writings by Julian L. Simon juliansimon.org
The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment juliansimon.org
Julian Simon papersat the
University of Maryland libraries
The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library in the Washington, D.C. - Baltimore area. The university's library system includes eight libraries: six are located on the College Park campus, while the Severn Library, an of ...
Liberty Institute First Annual Julian L. Simon Memorial LectureReason Magazine: "David Foreman vs. the Cornucopians"*
MIT Technology Review: Environmental HeresiesThe Julian L. Simon Memorial AwardMercatorNet: PopulationJulian L. Simon papersat the
University of Wyoming
The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...
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American Heritage Center
Critique of 'The Ultimate Resource'by Herman Daly, 1991
* Ernest Partridge,
, 2007, gadfly.igc.org -- a criticism of Simon and Sagoff; "Prof. Simon's ideas have been universally dismissed by environmental scientists as crackpot, and yet he was something of a hero among libertarians, neo-classical economists, and their political disciples."
Simon, Julian L. encyclopedia.com
Simon, Julian (1932-1998) libertarianism.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Simon, Julian Lincoln
1932 births
1998 deaths
American libertarians
20th-century American Jews
American non-fiction environmental writers
Cornucopians
Environmental economists
Harvard University alumni
Libertarian economists
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty
University of Maryland, College Park faculty
University of Chicago Booth School of Business alumni
20th-century American economists
Member of the Mont Pelerin Society