• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
The Ultimate Resource II: People,Materials, and Environmentby Julian Simon, 1998
INTRODUCTIONWhat are the Real Population and ResourceProblems?Preview of the BookNumbers, Writers, and BelievabilityThe Role of Political EconomyThe State of the ArgumentA Historical AfternoteWHAT ARE THE REAL POPULATION ANDRESOURCE PROBLEMS?Is there a natural-resource problem now?Certainly - just asalways. The problem is that natural resourcesare scarce, in thesense that it costs us labor and capital to getthem, though wewould prefer to get them for free.Are we now "in crisis" and "entering an ageof scarcity"? Youcan see anything you like in a crystal ball. Butalmost withoutexception, the relevant data - the long-runeconomic trends -suggest precisely the opposite. The appropriatemeasures of scarcity - the costs of natural resources inhuman labor, and theirprices relative to wages and to other goods - allsuggest thatnatural resources have been becoming lessscarce over the long run,right up to the present.How about pollution? Is this not a problem?Of coursepollution is a problem. People have always hadto dispose of theirwaste products so as to enjoy a pleasant andhealthy living space.But we now live in a more healthy and lessdirty environment thanin earlier centuries.About population now: Is there a populationproblem? Again,of course there is a population problem, just asalways. When acouple is about to have a baby, they mustprepare a place for thechild to sleep safely. Then, after the birth of thechild, theparents must feed, clothe, protect, and teachit. All this requireseffort and resources, and not from the parentsalone. When a babyis born or a migrant arrives, the communitymust increase itsmunicipal services - schooling, fire and policeprotection, andgarbage collection. None of these are free.For the first decades of its life, an additionalchildcertainly is a burden not only on its parents butalso on others.Brothers and sisters must do with less of everything exceptcompanionship. Taxpayers must cough upadditional funds forschooling and other public services. Neighborshear more noise.During these early years the child producesnothing material, andthe income of the family and the community isspread more thinlythan if the baby had not been born. And whenthe child grows up andfirst goes to work, jobs are squeezed a bit, andthe output and payper working person go down. All this clearly isan economic lossfor other people.Just as surely, however, an additionalperson is also a boon.The child or immigrant will pay taxes later on,contribute energyand resources to the community, producegoods and services for theconsumption of others, and make efforts tobeautify and purify theenvironment. Perhaps most significant for themore-developedcountries is the contribution that the averageperson makes toincreasing the efficiency of production throughnew ideas andimproved methods.The real population problem, then, is notthat there are toomany people or that too many babies are beingborn. The problem isthat others must support each additionalperson before that personcontributes in turn to the well-being of others.Which is more weighty, the burden or theboon? That depends onthe economic conditions and institutions, whichwe shall discuss at
1
 
some length. But also, to a startling degree,the decision aboutwhether the overall effect of a child or migrantis positive ornegative depends on the values of whoever ismaking the judgment -your preference to spend a dollar now ratherthan to wait for adollar-plus-something in twenty or thirty years,your preferencesfor having more or fewer wild animals alive asopposed to more orfewer human beings alive, and so on.Population growth is aproblem, but not just a problem; it is a boon,but not just a boon.So your values are all-important in judging thenet effect of population growth, and deciding whether thereare too many or toofew people.From the economic point of view anadditional child is like alaying chicken, a cacao tree, a computerfactory, or a new house. Ababy is a durable good in which someone mustinvest heavily longbefore the grown adult begins to providereturns on the investment.But whereas "Travel now, pay later" isinherently attractivebecause the pleasure is immediate and thepiper will wait, "Paynow, benefit from the child later" is inherentlyproblematicbecause the sacrifice comes first.You might respond that additional childrenwill never yieldnet benefits, because they use up irreplaceableresources. We shallsee that additional persons produce more thanthey consume in thelong run, and natural resources are not anexception. But we canagree that there is still a population problem, just as there is aproblem with all good investments. Long beforethere are benefits,we must tie up capital that could otherwise beused for immediateconsumption.Please notice that I have limited thediscussion to theeconomic aspect of investing in children - thatis, to a child'seffect on the material standard of living. If wealso consider thenon-material aspects of children - theirmeaning for parents andfor others who enjoy a flourishing of humanity -then the case foradding children to our world becomes evenstronger. And if we alsokeep in mind that most of the costs of childrenare borne by theirparents rather than by the community duringthe child's earlyyears, whereas the community (especially indeveloped countries)gets the lion's share of the benefits later on,the essentialdifferences between children and otherinvestments tend to improverather than weaken the social economics of children.Whether or not there is cause to believethat population,resources, and the environment are worse"problems" than in thepast, the public believes them to be so. It hassurprised me tolearn, when preparing the second edition of thisbook, that thenexus of issues treated here is nowadays seenby the public as byfar the most pressing set of problems facingsociety. (See FigureI-1)Figure I-1 [Roper Reports Feb 1989 "SeriousProblems"]PREVIEW OF THE BOOKHere follow some of the main conclusions of the book. At thetime of the first edition they seemed far-fetched to most readers,and they still shock many. But events sincethen have withoutexception confirmed the forecasts implicit in thetrends andanalyses made here.Food. Contrary to popular impression, foodproduction percapita has been increasing for the half centurysince World War II,the only decades for which we have acceptabledata. We also knowthat famine has progressively diminished for atleast the pastcentury. Average height has increased indeveloped countries in
2
 
recent centuries, a sign of people eating better.And there iscompelling reason to believe that humannutrition will continue toimprove into the indefinite future, even withcontinued populationgrowth.Land. Agricultural land is not a fixedresource. Rather, theamount of agricultural land has been increasingsubstantially, andit is likely to continue to increase whereneeded. Paradoxically,in the countries that are best supplied withfood, such as theU.S., the quantity of land under cultivation hasbeen decreasingbecause it is more economical to raise largeryields on less landthan to increase the total amount of farmland.For this reason,among others, the amount of land used forforests, recreation, andwildlife has been increasing rapidly in the U.S. -hard to believe,but substantiated beyond a doubt.Natural resources. Hold your hat - oursupplies of naturalresources are not finite in any economic sense.Nor does pastexperience give reason to expect naturalresources to become morescarce. Rather, if history is any guide, naturalresources willprogressively become less costly, hence lessscarce, and willconstitute a smaller proportion of our expensesin future years.Population growth is likely to have a long-runbeneficial impact onthe natural-resource situation.Energy. Grab your hat again - the long-runfuture of ourenergy supply is at least as bright as that of other naturalresources, though government intervention cantemporarily boostprices from time to time. Finiteness is noproblem here either. Andthe long-run impact of additional people islikely to speed thedevelopment of cheap energy supplies that arealmost inexhaustible.Pollution. This set of issues is ascomplicated as you wish tomake it. But even many ecologists, as well asthe bulk of economists, agree that population growth is notthe villain in thecreation and reduction of pollution. And the keytrend is that lifeexpectancy, which is the best overall index of the pollution level,has improved markedly as the world'spopulation has grown. Thisreflects the enormous decline during the pastcouple of centuriesin the most important pollutions, diseasesborne by air and water.The standard of living. In the short run,additional childrenimply additional costs, though the costs topersons other than thechildren's parents are relatively small. In thelonger run,however, per capita income is likely to behigher with a growingpopulation than with a stationary one, both inmore-developed andless-developed countries. Whether you wish topay the present costsfor the future benefits depends on how youweigh the futurerelative to the present; this is a value judgment.Human fertility. The contention that poorand uneducatedpeople breed without constraint isdemonstrably wrong, even for thepoorest and most "primitive" societies. Well-off people who believethat the poor do not weigh the consequences of having more childrenare simply arrogant, or ignorant, or both.Future population growth. Populationforecasts are publishedwith confidence and fanfare. Yet the record of even the officialforecasts made by U.S. government agenciesand by the UN is little(if any) better than that of the most naivepredictions.For example, experts in the 1930s foresawthe U.S. populationas declining, perhaps to as little as 100 millionpeople wellbefore the turn of the century. In 1989, theU.S. Census Bureauforecast that U.S. population would peak at 302million in 2038 andthen decline. Just three years later, the CensusBureau forecast383 million in 2050 with no peaking in sight.The science of 
3
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...