Rating: 
Summary: Simply brilliant
Review: If you read this big-picture work, it will change the view of mankind that you grew up with. It will make you welcome the future and question the hundreds of experts who confidently declare daily that mankind will be the source of its own demise, especially here in the United States.
Simon, who died in Feb. 1998, deserves a Nobel Prize for his work. He elucidates one of the fundamental economic tenets that I have not seen anywhere else much less understood in its importance. His theme that human inventiveness (intelligence) is fundamental to economic progress AND that this quality is inherently environmentally friendly is as unique as it is positive.
Once you have read this, read "The Commanding Heights" by Yergin and Stanislaw. An excellent work on free markets and a good history of how ideas become reality.
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Summary: Another extremist point of view
Review: Julian Simon certainly lets the reader feel better about herself, but his book lacks a true understanding of biological and ecological principles. The 1970's produced many extremist documentation about population explosion, rising pollution, endangered species etc. and SOME of the information was indeed over the top. However, there must be a distinction made between the viewpoints of the well-informed and the average "eco-freak". Readers coming from an economics or social science background might easily believe that all of Simon's impressive graphs and statistics effectively prove his argument; be warned...there is a middle ground in this argument and we would do well to research it. I recommend reading Wallace Kaufman's "No Turning Back: Dismantling the Fantasies of Environmental Thinking". This book has not been quoted much by politicians -or- the average environmentalist. It is a scientific backlash against Ecofreakism, but does not ignore the very real and present environmental problems our world is experiencing.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Julian Simon makes sense. He's influencing a new generation of brilliant writers like Paco Ahlgren. This book is the direction of future thinking.
Rating: 
Summary: A man with a rare gift
Review: Julian Simon was a man with a rare gift: the ability to write books that made other people feel smart when quoting them. Unfortunately, Julian Simon was an idiot who made his reputation by rebuking another idiot, Paul Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame. Simon has since spawned a net cult of idiots who find meaning in their pathetic little lives by writing bad reviews of Ehrlich books they've never read on Amazon.com.Simon's work, in a nutshell, is that technological progress is irreversible and that everything is going to get better and better forever. He has said that overpopulation is a myth - nice to know that traffic jam I sit in every day is a media lie - and that if the world is ever depleted of its resources, we'll simply get in spaceships and fly away to another planetary home. If you like Utopian sci-fi and need another source of it besides Star Trek, then Julian Simon is the man for you. If you like reality, look for more balanced thinkers.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent--a tribute to humanity; a rubuke to Malthusians
Review: Now in a second edition, and what a treat that is, because now the unquenchable optimism and sound forcasting of the first volume is backed up by decades of confirmatory data. Resources of all kinds--foods, metals, energy--are more abundant and cheaper, life expectancy is up, and so is the worldwide standard of living. Why is this so, in spite of the dire warnings (The Population Bomb, Famine: 1975!) of the latest crop of doomsayers? Read the book and find out. Find out also, why these trends show no signs of turning around--why the world will be even richer and more prosperous in the next century. A reader, in an earlier review, suggests that Simon's ideas are "ridiculous" (in spite of the fact that he has been proven right, time and time again, and the doomsayers have to come out with new books every few years, adjusting forward their predictions of a doomsday that never comes), and goes on to say some very stupid things about "limits to the food supply." Go read them, then consider--that review, like most doomsayers, admits startling progress in increasing food yields, then assumes that such progress is over, or nearly so (six millennia of agricultural advance to the contrary). Why? In the first hundred pages of this book, Simon details cutting-edge technologies being employed commercially _today_ that could raise worldwide food production by orders of magnitude. But the eco-tastrophe crowd keeps talking about "closed systems," in spite of the fact that every new technological innovation keeps making the "system" effectively larger and larger.
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Summary: The doomslayer falls
Review: On Sunday, February 8th, psychologist and economist Julian L. Simon succumbed to a heart attack in Maryland. It is difficult to overstate the damage his death will cause the world debate on overpopulation, natural resources, and the environment. Dr. Simon's prolific and energetic mind gave rise to fourteen books and countless papers and lectures, dedicated to overthrowing the dogma that underlies so much of today's environmental discourse. Simon, still considered a maverick after thirty years of relentless data-gathering, impeccable empirical work, and well-thought out conclusions, questioned the unquestionable. He maintained that the earth is in good shape by every conceivable measure, and that the environmental situation continues to improve each year. Every index of human happiness - food prices, net income, infant mortality, life expectancy, disease rates - has steadily improved. He documented those claims with reams of data, culminating in his 1996 tour de force The State of Humanity. It is absolutely comprehensive, and contains enough obscure data to make the most jaded Trivial Pursuit fan squirm (if you ever want to read about the average lower-class Brazilian's annual starch intake, look no further). Constantly vilified by his critics, Simon always had a small and devoted following. He was dubbed 'the Doomslayer' by Wired magazine for his repeated skewering of environmental fanatics and 'Birkenstock Puritans.' Perhaps the most memorable episode happened in 1980. Simon wrote exasperatedly in an article that he was sick and tired of environmentalists' insistence that large-scale natural starvation was right around the corner. He invited them to put their money where their mouths were. Paul Ehrlich, the influential author of The Population Bomb and predictor of worldwide famine and resource scarcity for the 1980s, stepped up to the plate. Simon invited Ehrlich and any of his colleagues to choose any five non-government-controlled resources, purchase $1000 worth in any combination, and specify a later date. If the resource bundle went up in price (implicating that they had become more scarce), then Simon would have to pay the difference. If they went down in price, signifying greater abundance, then Simon would receive the difference. Ehrlich and company jumped at this proposition, writing that they were looking forward to cashing in 'before other greedy people see this opportunity.' They chose five heavy metals used as inputs for industry, and specified ten years as the time to wait. And thus it occurred that Ehrlich and his colleagues wrote a check to Julian Simon for $576.80 in 1990. When Ehrlich claimed that it was a fluke, Simon offered to repeat the bet on the same terms, with a new bundle and a new time period. Ehrlich refused, and no one ever stepped up to take his place. In 1996 Simon updated his classic The Ultimate Resource, in which he claimed that the human mind and human creativity are our best bet to overcome the world's problems. Thus, it's not possible to have too many people. Doomsayers, Simon argues, think of people as merely mouths to feed, rather than individuals with lives, dreams, and ideas. They lament population growth, never once thinking that one of those children might grow up to invent a more advanced farming technique, a cure for AIDS, or a way to construct cheap, safe housing. For the same reasons, Simon argues passionately against immigration restrictions. The only way immigrants can harm their new home countries is by imposing a new drain on the welfare state, and the data show that natives almost always take greater advantage of social programs than immigrants do. Today, the Unabomber's atrocities find an excuse in his radical environmentalism. Children learn in school that the world would have been better off without them, and that ecological Armageddon is right around the corner. Al Gore writes of a grim future and the need for a 'wrenching' social re-organization to cope with the coming age of scarcity. Julian Simon, conversely, spent his life providing an accessible and empirically sound body of work that challenges the environmentalist agenda. Environmentalists should read his work, to see numerous examples of good science as well as to think long and hard about some of their most cherished and reliable beliefs. Teachers should read it, since they handle and assist the ultimate resource in its earliest stages. But all of us should, at the very least, recognize that the environmental debate has two sides, and that Julian Simon spent his life fighting long, hard, and nobly for his.
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Summary: A must-read for anyone interested in population issues.
Review: One reader below states that "Julian Simon is an idiot." The late Mr. Simon was clearly anything but an idiot. This same reader goes on to state that "the simple fact of the matter is that ANY level of growth in a closed system is unsustainable over a long enough period of time." That is true enough, but as Professor Simon points out, it isn't the issue. The issue is whether the limits of the closed system are sufficiently proximate so as to be relevant to policy decisions now. Professor Simon offers copious evidence to prove that whatever the ultimate physical limits of population growth might be (sunlight for photosynthesis striking the earth, land surface available for housing and farming), these limits are so very remote to be of essentially zero value in making policy decisions. Professor Simon illustrates this point by the following analogy: It is a generally-accepted fact that our Sun will burn out billions of years in the future. Thus, our Sun is ultimately a "closed system": only x amount of fuel, and then no more sunlight. While we can assume that this fact as true, it manifestly can have no reasonable bearing on our decisions today, since it is simply too remote. Professor Simon argues that the same is true for the carrying capacity for our Earth: ultimately we can perhaps talk about limits to resources, but it is demostrably true based on objective empirical evidence that these ultimate limits are so remote as to reduce them to irrelevance for any matter of public policy. Professor Simon convincingly argues that this is so for food production, living space, metals, wildlife, the environment, etc. I highly recommend reading this book along with Paul Ehlrich's "The Population Bomb." Professor Simon elsewhere shows the implications for the baby bust (to which books like "The Population Bomb" contributed) will have for solvency of Social Security and Medicare, as well as for the national security interests of the United States. I come away with the strong feeling that a furious hatred for mankind lurks behind the ZPG movement. Read this book, and pass it along to your friends.
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Summary: Who is John Galt
Review: Perhaps the anonymous reader from San Diego should also read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. *smile* Surely the reader from San Diego is a member of academia, home of all the Marxists these days. Isn't it funny how the Marxists and tree huggers all seem to congregate together? Why is that, do we suppose? In any case, the world will not be saved by making everyone as poor as the $10/day laborer whose condition the reader laments, nor by a return to the earth marked by abandoning technology and man's mind, both of which have move the vast majority of Westerners FROM the condition the reader laments to a very high standard of life.
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Summary: F A Hayek was a Julian L. Simon fan...
Review: Professor Simon does state that a large proportion of attacks on his thesis come from biologists, who "...for many decades and centuries - back to Benjamin Franklin...have voiced the strongest fears of population growth...much of what they write...is even outside of ordinary scientific discourse..." This book is a truly great work and has many fans including the late, great, F A Hayek [from The Ultimate Resource p. 614/615].... "Dear Professor Simon, I have never before written a fan letter to a professional colleague, but to discover that you have in your Economics of Population Growth provided the empirical evidence for what with me is the result of a life-time of theoretical speculation, is too exciting an experience not to share it with you... [Freidburg March 22, 1981] ...I have now at last had time to read [The Ultimate Resource] with enthusiastic agreement...Your new book I welcome chiefly for the practical effects I am hoping from it. Though you will be at first much abused, I believe the more intelligent will soon recognize the soundness of your case... [Shimoda Tokyu Nove 6, 1981] With best wishes, Sincerely, F.A. Hayek This is the opinion of a Sovereign Individual, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Laissez Faire City.
Rating:
Summary: F A Hayek was a Julian L. Simon fan...
Review: Professor Simon does state that a large proportion of attacks on his thesis come from biologists, who "...for many decades and centuries - back to Benjamin Franklin...have voiced the strongest fears of population growth...much of what they write...is even outside of ordinary scientific discourse..." This book is a truly great work and has many fans including the late, great, F A Hayek [from The Ultimate Resource p. 614/615].... "Dear Professor Simon, I have never before written a fan letter to a professional colleague, but to discover that you have in your Economics of Population Growth provided the empirical evidence for what with me is the result of a life-time of theoretical speculation, is too exciting an experience not to share it with you... [Freidburg March 22, 1981] ...I have now at last had time to read [The Ultimate Resource] with enthusiastic agreement...Your new book I welcome chiefly for the practical effects I am hoping from it. Though you will be at first much abused, I believe the more intelligent will soon recognize the soundness of your case... [Shimoda Tokyu Nove 6, 1981] With best wishes, Sincerely, F.A. Hayek This is the opinion of a Sovereign Individual, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of Laissez Faire City.
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