I am always uh intrigued by when people
make cases for things that go against
what is like common knowledge especially
when you recognize in yourself that you
have like absorbed through osmosis of
the culture or something like some
beliefs that you've never critically
examined and so one of those really
common beliefs that like if you just ask
people on the street 90 of people will
tell you if you ask them well what do
you think about the population people
just say oh well the Earth is
overpopulated like this is just like a
really popular belief that like there's
oh there's all sorts of variations of
this there's too many people we need
less people uh and like this is
something that I used to believe too
it's just something that like you kind
of absorb going through life I don't
know when it's told it's everybody or
when it just kind of happens naturally
yeah K through 12 is probably you know
Earth day when we got our little trees
and the population was mentioned sure uh
and one I I read uh the work of an
economist who's who's now passed away uh
Julian Simon he made he he had this
massive book called The Ultimate
resource where he went through every
possible objection and he pointed out
all the data indicates that the world is
environmentally and resource-wise better
than it's ever been not uh just in spite
of a larger population but in part
because of higher population Simon's
argument is that people's minds are a
resource that have increased the
abundance of everything around us more
than anything else on the planet and so
part of what I look at is uh kind of
researching along that line looking at
how the human mind especially through
things like entrepreneurship can
actually make things more abundant than
they are in the economy now and another
track I take too related to this is uh I
I'm bothered by the fact that especially
in the 20th century but even up to today
there was a lot of resources energies uh
whatever you want to call it invested in
lowering the population because of this
kind of Academia Ivory Tower belief that
the world was overpopulated spring out
of like a lot of ecology departments and
stuff like that and so both within the
U.S and in other countries a lot of
money was spent trying to decrease
populations and when you take the Julian
Simon argument seriously when you uh
look at the data and see people are
actually good for the environment this
is like the worst possible policy not
only are you uh pretty significantly
harming human rights but you're also
making things worse environmentally and
economically when you do it [Music]
