Course: Overpopulation: Resource Depletion and Human Innovation

To honor the brilliant thinking and courage of Julian Simon we call our work the Simon Abundance Index, or SAI. In this video, Dr. Gale Pooley introduces the SAI. The …

The history of flour prices, GDP per Capita, and population growth in England from 1700 to 1798 provides some specific evidence to evaluate some of the claims of Malthus. Population …

The fear that Malthus, and many of his later followers had, was that of the ‘Malthusian Trap’, which is a catastrophic outcome at the end of unchecked population growth. When …

The growth of knowledge can be measured with time. In this video, Dr. Gale Pooley introduces the Tupy-Pooley Framework which provides a way to measure the growth of knowledge with …

We extend our analysis of resource abundance to the global level by adding population as a factor. In this video, Dr. Gale Pooley uses the analogy of a pizza to …

We buy things with money, but we really pay for them with our time. In this video, Dr. Gale Pooley clarifies that the true price of something is the time …

Malthus’s argument is not a harmless academic exercise. It has wreaked havoc on our planet, psychologically, socially, morally, and economically. In this video, Dr. Gale Pooley discusses the ‘ideology of …

How many keys are there in a piano? Eighty-eight. How many songs are in a piano? Trick question: There are no songs “in” a piano. Songs are created in the …

In earlier weeks, we established that growth in knowledge is the source of progress. How do we measure it? We can do so through a ‘time-prices’. Professor Gale Pooley and …

Strikingly similar to the claims of Thomas Malthus centuries ago were the warnings of Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich in the 20th century. He was the author of a controversial 1968 …

Julian Simon had challenged Paul Ehrlich to a wager over a 10-year period, to judge who was right about resource availability. In 1981, he challenged Ehrlich to a bet about …

Innovation brings about new technologies, which alleviate the strain on resources. Our technological advancements have empowered us in searching for new resource deposits and identifying new methods to harvest more …

Malthus underestimated human ingenuity. It produced new solutions to feed the growing population. The Green Revolution is the prime manifestation. The 1960s to 1980s saw a period of rapid advancement …

Thomas Malthus, was a famous economist, demographer and theorist from England born in 1766 and who died in 1834. He is best known for his theory that population growth will …

Free market prices are a precious source of information for firms as they reflect the relative scarcity of resources. Without any top-down command or control, prices of resources spontaneously inflate …