Feast your eyes on this load of bullshit, courtesty of Julian L. Simon, a cornucopian economist:
"...the source of our increased economic blessings is the human mind, and, all other things being equal, when there are more people, there are more productive minds. Productivity increases come directly from the additional minds that develop productive new ideas, as well as indirectly from the impact upon industrial productivity of the additional demand for goods. That is, population growth in the form of babies and immigrants helps in the long run to raise the standard of living because it brings increased productivity. Immigrants are the best deal of all because they usually migrate when they are young and strong; in the U.S., they contribute more in taxes to the public coffers than they take out in welfare services."
(emphasis mine)
Wow, if I didn't know any better I'd say the language Mr. Simon uses to describe immigrants was being applied to pack animals. Young and strong? Best deal of all? WTF??!
And oh yeah, environmental degradation isn't a problem because we have productive minds and technology to solve all our problems. Never mind that space itself is a limiting factor, as pointed out by environmentalist Lindsey Grant in a rebuttal, or that most of the growth is occurring in so-called "developing" countries where pursuing basic survival often supersedes such noble pursuits as solving the world's problems. Another of Mr. Simon's brilliant arguments entails an attempt to convince his readers that resources aren't finite because "measured by cost or price, the scarcity of all raw materials except lumber and oil has been decreasing rather than increasing over the long run." And with about 6.6 billion people on Earth today, how many do you think have the resources to make a serious contribution to solving environmental degradation in the forms of fragmentation, loss of biodiversity, global climate change, collapse of fisheries, pollution, the list goes on...? Hey, maybe at 7.7 billion, there will be a few more geniuses!
"The future supply of oil includes what we usually think of as oil, plus the oil that can be produced from shale, tar sands, and coal. It also includes the oil from plants that we grow, whose key input is sunlight. So the measure of the future oil supply must therefore be at least as large as the sun's 7 billion or so years of future life. And it may include other suns whose energy might be exploited in the future."
Count on an economist to look to further our dependence on oil. And look for more solar bodies to exploit! And just what exactly is meant by that third sentence? And wait, oil from plants? Doesn't that take thousands to millions of years?
"...the source of our increased economic blessings is the human mind, and, all other things being equal, when there are more people, there are more productive minds. Productivity increases come directly from the additional minds that develop productive new ideas, as well as indirectly from the impact upon industrial productivity of the additional demand for goods. That is, population growth in the form of babies and immigrants helps in the long run to raise the standard of living because it brings increased productivity. Immigrants are the best deal of all because they usually migrate when they are young and strong; in the U.S., they contribute more in taxes to the public coffers than they take out in welfare services."
(emphasis mine)
Wow, if I didn't know any better I'd say the language Mr. Simon uses to describe immigrants was being applied to pack animals. Young and strong? Best deal of all? WTF??!
And oh yeah, environmental degradation isn't a problem because we have productive minds and technology to solve all our problems. Never mind that space itself is a limiting factor, as pointed out by environmentalist Lindsey Grant in a rebuttal, or that most of the growth is occurring in so-called "developing" countries where pursuing basic survival often supersedes such noble pursuits as solving the world's problems. Another of Mr. Simon's brilliant arguments entails an attempt to convince his readers that resources aren't finite because "measured by cost or price, the scarcity of all raw materials except lumber and oil has been decreasing rather than increasing over the long run." And with about 6.6 billion people on Earth today, how many do you think have the resources to make a serious contribution to solving environmental degradation in the forms of fragmentation, loss of biodiversity, global climate change, collapse of fisheries, pollution, the list goes on...? Hey, maybe at 7.7 billion, there will be a few more geniuses!
"The future supply of oil includes what we usually think of as oil, plus the oil that can be produced from shale, tar sands, and coal. It also includes the oil from plants that we grow, whose key input is sunlight. So the measure of the future oil supply must therefore be at least as large as the sun's 7 billion or so years of future life. And it may include other suns whose energy might be exploited in the future."
Count on an economist to look to further our dependence on oil. And look for more solar bodies to exploit! And just what exactly is meant by that third sentence? And wait, oil from plants? Doesn't that take thousands to millions of years?
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