Are we going to run out of food, resources and green space? Does trade make one party worse off? Is inequality the root of the world's problems? Is the world going to overheat and cause catastrophe?
Matt Ridley answers these questions and more in the best writing on the relationship between resources, markets and well-being since Julian Simon. What's superb about Ridley's work is that he not only slays the doommongers with flair, but he explains the beautiful processes set in motion by people serving each other creatively.
Since having a child -- and since my wife decided to start her own school -- I can't help but be fascinated by education. In fact, I'm always scanning for interesting educational models that you won't find in the government schools, which -- as you know -- enjoy a virtual monopoly that forces people like my wife to compete with "free." The above comes all the way from Israel.
Thomas Sowell argues that formal education is not for everyone. By contrast, President Obama thinks everybody should go to college. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum suggested Obama's proposal* is a species of "elitist snobbery". Santorum wasn't being very tactful. But he was probably right -- at least if we believe Tom Sowell. Indeed, a lot of smart people are starting to see that higher education is the next bubble -- a bubble that any "college for all" policy would only blow up more.
WARNING: The following video breaks the editor's five minute rule. But you know, Dear Reader, sometimes I can't resist. if you're skeptical about centralized government power -- and especially if you're a European -- you'll see that Michael O'Leary speaks for many of us. It's 17 mins of a value creator speaking truth to power.
Some people won't be happy. But there's a film coming out that defends plentiful energy -- including fossil fuels -- as a key ingredient of economic growth. Many overlook the relationship between energy and economic growth. But there is a strong correlation between growth and plentiful energy--one that looks to be connected to thermodynamic law. Consider:
When Julian Simon said we'll never run out of resources, people thought he was crazy. Thomas Malthus had predicted resource depletions and mass starvations back in the 18th century. And this was echoed by the likes of Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome in the 1970s. But the more we began to understand Professor Simon's lessons, the crazier the Malthusians started to sound. And just when we thought we'd put Malthusianism into a grave, it came back -- specter-like -- in different forms. The latest is a fetishistic obsession with recycling.
Note: this is not meant as implied or explicit support for the Libertarian Party. We merely stumbled across an interesting video interview with Bryan Caplan.
Both the Free Cities Institute and the Seasteading Institute are working to give talented people good rules -- that is, elbow room from onerous regulations, heavy taxes and generally bad rules. It's an exciting time for these endeavors, because they will create the spaces to give entrepreneurs around the world more choices and opportunities -- the space they need to create value.
If you're the kind of person who thinks human beings are a plague on the planet, you won't like transhumanists. These folks think we can use technology to improve our world, improve our brains and interface with each other's brains more directly. Human beings will live longer, think faster and perform better at whatever they do. Is there anything wrong with that?
By now readers will have noticed a glass-half-full orientation to Ideas Matter. That's because we take our Julian Simon, our market fundamentals (not fundamentalism) and our facts seriously.
In the video above, Steven Horwitz explains why the cost of living, broadly speaking, is going down. Now, who knows what miseries the market manipulations of central banks and legislatures are likely to bring us in the short term. Printing money may cause our currencies to lose purchasing power. National debts may bring whole nations to their knees -- and soon.
But zooming out from justifiable pessimism in the short-to-medium term, things are looking better all the time on the hundred-year timescale. These data also show that markets work. Competition among firms who want to serve customers better yields continuous improvement. And much of the really big gains are difficult to quantify.
Take Horwitz's calculation of labor hours to buy a good or service today as compared with 50 years ago: that's impressive. But consider that there are millions of goods and services available today that were not available to people fifty years ago. So it's not only cheaper to buy a chicken with your labor, it's possible (and inexpensive) to buy a mobile communications and computing device. Or to read the words on this blog.
Readers of this blog know that Matt Ridley is one of the few people for whom I'll break my five minute length rule. This talk is worth it, I think. It has tons of good stuff: trade and specialization; anti-Malthusian optimism and an evolutionary lens through which to see a world that is getting better all the time.
I was talking to my aunt the other night. She's a bright woman, but she lives in a rural area with relatively high unemployment. I made a passing comment about how importing more talent from abroad is a good thing. She replied: "But what does that do for our country? What about people still without jobs here?" My first response to what I saw as the protectionist instinct was: "That's not my problem." My less tribal, somewhat more cosmopolitan instincts don't see borders when it comes to goods, services, capital and people (with some exceptions).
