This reprint from a collection of essays at Julian Simon.com is published in connection with the recent death of Paul R. Ehrlich (1932–2026). This piece was finalized in Simon’s treatise, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), pp. 604–607. Simon’s relative politeness to his adversary is a tribute to open, honest, and respectful debate (versus the infamous Ehrlich approach).
“When you launch a space shuttle you don’t trot out the flat-earthers to be commentators. They’re outside the bounds of what ought to be discourse in the media. In the field of ecology, Simon is the absolute equivalent of the flat-earthers.” (Paul Ehrlich, quoted below)
For economy of treatment of the matter of attack rhetoric, let’s focus on just one critic, Paul Ehrlich, who has directed a great deal of colorful language in my direction (see also his comments in the Afternote to Chapter 15, and my interchange with him in Simon, 1990, Selection 43).…
[Ed. Note: This post, pays tribute to William Niskanen, a principled classical liberal born on this day ninety-one years ago. His view on climate change, in particular, refute the current views of the Niskanen Center, funded by foes of classical liberalism. (The peculiar, revengeful story of founder Jerry Taylor is told here and here.)
The longtime chairman of the Cato Institute, William N. Niskanen (1933–2011), was an academic at the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA; chief economist at Ford Motor Company; noted Public Choice economist; an influential member of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors (1981–85), and chair of the Cato Institute (1985–2008).
Bill and I shared the podium a few times on energy issues, and I admired his Enron project at Cato that resulted in two books, Corporate Aftershock: Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations (2003) and After Enron: Lessons for Public Policy (2005).…
Ed note: The extract below from a Joint Economic Committee Staff Report briefly describes the end of oil price and allocation regulation in 1981, righting one of the worst energy fiascos in U.S. history. This experience has taken price controls off the political table ever since with petroleum, including today with the Iran War. [“President Reagan’s Economic Legacy,” Section C: Energy Shortages and Regulatory Failures]
In the 1970s, OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) was temporarily successful in driving up energy prices and hitting consumer wallets worldwide. OPEC’s manipulations of oil supplies were turned into a full-scale energy crisis in the United States because of price controls in energy markets.
Rising oil prices hurt consumers, but long lines at gas stations and shortages of heating oil were the work of bad policy, not of markets.…