Ten years ago today we suffered the terrible loss of Julian Simon. Not only was he a creative and careful scholar, Julian was a remarkably fine person.
A Sad Anniversary
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I'm glad you posted this. I first learned of Julian Simon from a mention you made several years ago. What he said and did really opened my eyes to many new things.
Julian Simon influenced my thinking. It was during the Reagen era and Mr. Simon's ideas struck me as similar to a lot of what I considered annoyingly blind optimism from Mr. Reagen's acolytes. Mr. Simon was a more accessible writer than the guys I was more in agreement with. His utopian certainty kind of scared me but the ideas were fascinating and got me thinking about the distant future too. I came down on the 'anti-cornucopian' side and have remained there to this day.
I always use charts from Simon and Moore's It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years. I thought I had one of few copies, but was delighted to find it on Amazon. It is an absolute gold mine of information, and it's data rich pages are a constant reminder that we are all not doomed!
http://www.amazon.com/Its-Getting-Better-All-Time/dp/1882577965/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202483605&sr=1-1
Hoodwinking the Nation should be in every high school classroom.
The people who want to hoodwink the nation are also hoodwinking people into not wanting to be un-hoodwinked.
If you know what I mean.