Julian Lincoln Simon was an American professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute at the time of his death, after previously serving as a longtime economics and business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
29 Facts About Julian Simon
2.
Julian Simon is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration.
3.
Rather than focus on the abundance of nature, Julian Simon focused on lasting economic benefits from continuous population growth, even despite limited or finite physical resources, empowered primarily by human ingenuity which would create substitutes, and technological progress.
4.
Ehrlich bet that the prices for five metals would increase over a decade, while Julian Simon took the opposite stance.
5.
Julian Simon won the bet, as the prices for the metals sharply declined during that decade.
6.
Julian Simon argues that our notions of increasing resource scarcity ignore the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices.
7.
Julian Simon argues that population is the solution to resource scarcities and environmental problems, since people and markets innovate.
8.
Julian Simon's ideas were praised by Nobel Laureate economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter in a 1998 foreword to The Ultimate Resource II, but they have attracted critics such as Paul R Ehrlich, Albert Allen Bartlett and Herman Daly.
9.
Julian Simon examined different raw materials, especially metals and their prices in historical times.
10.
Julian Simon assumed that besides temporary shortfalls, in the long run prices for raw materials remain at similar levels or even decrease.
11.
Julian Simon's 1984 book The Resourceful Earth, is a similar criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption and a direct response to the Global 2000 report.
12.
Julian Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change.
13.
Julian Simon claimed that numerous environmental damage and health dangers from pollution were "definitely disproved".
14.
Julian Simon was the first to suggest that airlines should provide incentives for travelers to give up their seats on overbooked flights, rather than arbitrarily taking random passengers off the plane.
15.
Julian Simon gave away his idea to federal de-regulators and never received any personal profit from his solution.
16.
Julian Simon wrote a memoir, A Life Against the Grain, which was published by his wife after his death.
17.
Simon challenged Paul R Ehrlich to a wager in 1980 over the price of metals a decade later; Simon had been challenging environmental scientists to the bet for some time.
18.
Julian Simon won the bet, with all five metals dropping in price.
19.
In 1995, Julian Simon issued a challenge for a second bet.
20.
Ehrlich offered Julian Simon a set of 15 metrics over 10 years, victor to be determined by scientists chosen by the president of the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
21.
Ehrlich refused to leave out measures considered by Julian Simon to be immaterial.
22.
Consistent with his cornucopian analysis of this issue in The Ultimate Resource, Julian Simon wagered that at the end of a five-year term the consumer price of pine timber would have decreased; South wagered that it would increase.
23.
Julian Simon died before the agreed-upon date of the end of the bet, by which time timber prices had risen further.
24.
Julian Simon argued that people do not become poorer as the population expands; increasing numbers produce what they needed to support themselves, and have and will prosper while food prices sink.
25.
Julian Simon therefore argued physical limitations play a minor role and shortages of raw materials tend to be local and temporary.
26.
Herman Daly, an American ecological and Georgist economist, criticized Julian Simon for committing profound mistakes and exaggerations, for denial of resource finitude and for his views that neither ecology nor entropy exists.
27.
Julian Simon was married to Rita James Julian Simon, who was a longtime member of the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later became a public affairs professor at American University.
28.
Julian Simon studied psychology of depression and wrote a book on overcoming it.
29.
Julian Simon died of a heart attack at his home in Chevy Chase in 1998 at age 65.