[Dawgmeister]

I had to read The Population Bomb in college. It was wrong back in '72 also. Erlich's a pig!

[ansel12]

An excellent post

[phelanw]

I'll take that bet. My choices are silver, gold, platimun, palladium and copper. Each are at or near 20 year highs, so I don't get the advantage of picking them at lows. Copper is at an all time high I believe. They will be much higher in 2015, barring worldwide recession. Mark my words.

[Lancer_N3502A]

[Mulder]

By 1990, all five metal were below their inflation-adjusted price level in 1980. Ehrlich lost the bet and sent Simon a check for $576.07. Prices of the metals chosen by Ehrlich fell so much that Simon would have won the bet even if the prices hadn't been adjusted for inflation."

That is cited often, but doesn't really prove anything one way or the other.

[Tribune7]

Julian Simon is one of my heroes. His most influential work may have been an article published in Wired which is shaking the global environmentalist movement to the core.

[MediaAnalyst]

What the MSM seems to ignore is the fact that population winds up, in the long run, as being the strongest indicator of a nation's ultimate strength.

Right now the US and Russia hold that title due to our nukes. But China, with its huge population, is gaining so quick that they will likely overtake us by 2020. India is a bit further back, maybe overtaking us by 2050. But population will be the deciding factor, and I dread the day that we're no longer number one.

Given all of that, it's obvious why these academic America-haters would bash having a large population - for if we're populous, we are strong, which cannot be allowed.

[dr_who_2]

The troubles of the world are not caused by people who are trying to improve themselves and working to improve their quality of life. It's caused by people who dream up new excuses and new ways to control everyone else, especially the ones who adhere to various doomsday philosophies. Their cause is aided by people, both apathetic and zealous ones, who think that prosperity and prestige is a zero-sum game. The people who think they can make things better by making personal sacrifices for others deserve respect, but so do the people who want to play with their own bag of marbles the way they see fit. If you think that you're surrounded by the enemy in a war against "global warming", economic growth, George Bush, the latest new plague, Mexico, Islam, China, the devil, or any other fatal disease of civilization, you're dead wrong, you're wasting precious time (your own), and chances are that you're being used by somebody else.

Social criticism is great, but it's precisely because humans for the most part aren't unredeemably evil, aren't emotionally off-balance, aren't stupid, and can't be lead like cattle to the slaughter. It's no accident that people who think differently tend to range from mass murdering tyrants to those who are content to drink themselves to death, never once questioning the nobility and selflessness of their own actions. Humanity has lasted countless lifetimes because quiet optimism trumps loud, often reactionary pessimism.

If this sounds suspiciously like the lyrics to that cheezy Michael Jackson song "Man in the mirror", it's because even Michael Jackson was essentially right on that count.