JulianSimon

Julian Simon was professor of Business Administration at the UniversityofMaryland and a Senior Fellow at the CatoInstitute.

He authored of many books and quite a few articles, mostly on economic subjects. He is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration.

His book 'TheUltimateResource,' later reissued as 'TheUltimateResource2,' is a massive, fact-heavy assault on the conventional wisdom of population growth and resource consumption. In it, Simon challenged the neo-Malthusian notion that an increase in population has negative economic consequences, that population is a drain on natural resources, and that we stand at risk of running out of resources through over-consumption.

This challenge rests on the evidence. The data to date do not support the arguments of the doomsayers. On the contrary, the trends tend in a direction opposite of what they predict.

The theory Simon developed to account for this is a textbook example of truly creative thinking. He cut across the grain of accepted wisdom to produce a strikingly original interpretation of the facts. In this and in other works he exhibits many of t hose characteristics normally associated with genius (not the least of which is a tendency to incite bitter hostility amongst intellectual mediocrities).

Many of the writings of Julian Simon are available online at:

http://www.inform.umd.eduEdResCollegesBMGT/.FacultyJSimon/