“Material insufficiency and environmental problems have their benefits, over and beyond the improvement which they invoke. They focus the attention of individuals and communities, and constitute a set of challenges which can bring out the best in people.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), p. 587.
“We need our problems, though this does not imply that we should purposely create additional problems for ourselves.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (1996), p. 588.
The rains from Hurricane Harvey presented a worst-case event for Houston, Texas, and the petroleum/petrochemical capital of the United States. As such, a lesser known part of the Julian Simon (1932–1998) worldview of human progress comes into play.
Simon argued that there was a driving force or condition for human improvement beyond the institutional framework (private property, voluntary exchange, the rule of law), based on the human potential of motivation, effective use of knowledge, trial and error feedback, etc.…
Continue ReadingEditor Note: Earlier this summer, Pierre Desrochers received the 2017 Julian L. Simon Memorial Award at the annual dinner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. For the community of scholars, it was a great choice. “Dr. Desrochers has carried the torch for Julian Simon’s legacy for more than two decades,” noted CEI President Kent Lassman. “His defense of modern large-scale agriculture and critique of the concept of ‘food miles,’ in The Locavore’s Dilemma informs any reasoned discussion on how to improve the health and wealth of people everywhere.”
Professor Desrochers extemporaneous remarks have been revised for publication.
Thank you all and particularly to CEI for this award.
Those of us in the tradition of Julian Simon try to produce work that is based on logic and facts and come up with a compelling narrative.
“I think [Julian Simon] probably should have been considered for a Nobel Prize. He took a very independent position with little backing, dug deep and provided very good evidence for his predictions and expectations.”
“I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.”
- Milton Friedman (below)
Editor note: Milton Friedman would be 105 this day. Born July 31, 1912, in New York City, he died on November 16, 2006, in San Francisco, age 94.
Reprinted below is an exchange between Robert Bradley Jr. and the Milton Friedman when the Nobel Laureate was 91 years old–a testament to the patience, scholarship, and longevity of one of the greatest social thinkers of modern time.
Friedman had not met Bradley but was in the habit of actively communicating with scholars until his final illness.
Editor note: This responds to Professor Dolan’s post yesterday, “Hayek and a Carbon Tax: Response to Bradley, which answered Bradley’s post two days ago, “Hayek was not a Malthusian or Global Tariff Advocate (link to a carbon tax peculiar, errant).” The debate began with Dolan’s original piece, “Friedrich Hayek on Carbon Taxes.”
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… Continue Reading“… let’s add the ‘fat tail’ of the global CO2 blanket protecting against a little ice age or an ice age in the next several hundred years. Why not think of global lukewarming as a short-term positive, and the CO2 blanket as a long-term positive?”
“Classical liberals should be focused on adaptation to climate change, natural or anthropogenic, which is wealth-as-health and free movements of goods and services and people.