… is from pages 291-292 Thomas Sowell’s July 2nd, 1999, letter to UCLA economist William R. Allen, as this letter appears on pages 290-292 of Sowell’s 2007 collection, A Man of Letters (link added):
After the death of Julian Simon, I went to my bookshelf to take another look at one of his books before writing an obituary. As I opened the book, out fell a letter from Simon that I had never seen before. In it, he said that [Nobel-laureate economist Simon] Kuznets had told him that he (Kuznets) believed that a larger world population might be a plus economically, but that voicing such a view would risk undermining his own credibility. Julian Simon said that he understood such prudence, but that he also understood the larger negative implications of such prudence. Perhaps for that reason, I especially value those who are not so prudent….
DBx: Pictured here is the late, great Julian Simon.