Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 16:03:54 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-TH: LM favorite croaks


February 12, 1998

Julian L. Simon, 65, Economist and Professor 

By Kenneth N. Gilpin

Julian L. Simon, an economist and professor who spent much of his
professional life taking on scientists, demographers and other academics
who argued that mankind was stretching the resources of the earth to the
breaking point, died at his home in Chevy Chase, Md., on Sunday. 

The cause of death was a heart attack, his son, David, said. Simon was 65. 

At the time of his death, Simon was a professor of business administration
at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a
conservative Washington research organization. And his views, generally
optimistic about the benefits humans bring to the planet and about man's
prospects for the future, were widely debated. 

The essence of Simon's view of man and the future is contained in two
predictions for the next century and any century thereafter that are in
"The State of Humanity," a book he edited for the Cato Institute. 

"First," he wrote, "humanity's condition will improve in just about every
material way. Second, humans will continue to sit around complaining about
everything getting worse." 

He argued that mankind would rise to any challenges and problems by
devising new technologies to not only cope, but thrive. "Whatever the rate
of population growth is, historically it has been that the food supply
increases at least as fast, if not faster," he said in a profile published
in Wired magazine last year. 

Simon's views were widely contested by a large coterie of the academic and
scientific community, many of whose members believe that more people create
more problems, straining the earth and its resources in the process. 

"Most biologists and ecologists look at population growth in terms of the
carrying capacity of natural systems," said Lester R. Brown, president of
the Worldwatch Institute in Washington. "Julian was not handicapped by
being either. As an economist, he could see population growth in a much
more optimistic light." 

In 1980, for example, Simon and Herman Kahn, the futurist, headed a panel
organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation that took sharp issue
with findings of the Global 2000 Report, a study issued by the Carter
administration. 

Among other things, the report said that "if present trends continue, the
world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically
and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now." 

At the time Simon was an economics professor at the University of Illinois.
But he had been researching and writing about the positive effects of
population growth since 1965, when he saw a headline in The New York Times
warning of a population doomsday. 

"Fortunately for this planet," Simon said in response to the Global 2000
Report, "these gloomy assertions about resources and environment are
baseless." 

Simon's sunny view of the future became the basis for a highly publicized
bet in 1980 with Paul R. Ehrlich, the Stanford University ecologist whose
1968 book, "The Population Bomb," predicted that one-fifth of humanity
would starve to death by 1985.

Ehrlich and two colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley
were piqued by an article Simon wrote for Science magazine titled
"Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of False Bad News." They
responded to a challenge by Simon to Malthusians that the price of any
natural resource would be lower by a mutually agreed-upon date, not higher. 

Ehrlich and his colleagues took the bet on the belief that rising demand
for raw materials by an exploding global populace would pare supplies of
nonrenewable resources, driving up prices. Ehrlich said he had accepted
Simon's "astonishing offer before other greedy people jump in." 

The Ehrlich group bet $1,000 on five metals -- chrome, copper, nickel, tin
and tungsten -- in quantities that each cost $200 in October 1980, when the
bet was made. Simon agreed that he would sell the agreed-upon quantities of
the metals to the Ehrlich group 10 years later at 1980 prices. If the
combined prices of acquiring the metals in 1990 turned out to be higher
than $1,000, Simon would pay the difference in cash. If prices fell, the
Ehrlich group would pay him. 

During the decade, the world's population grew by more than 800 million,
the greatest increase in history, and the store of metals did not get any
larger. Yet in the fall of 1990, with the prices of the metals down
sharply, Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07. 

Simon wrote back a thank you note, along with a challenge to raise the
wager to as much as $20,000, tied to any other resources and to any other
year in the future. Ehrlich declined to take him up on the new offer. 

Born in Newark, Simon studied psychology as an undergraduate at Harvard
University, then earned an MBA and a doctorate in business economics at the
University of Chicago. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois
in 1963. 

Much of his early work was in mail order marketing -- his book on the
topic, "How to Start and Operate a Mail Order Business," sold more books
than any he wrote subsequently. But his attention turned to population
questions after he heard the grim predictions about an overpopulated planet. 

Despite his optimism about the future of mankind, Simon was given to
personal bouts of depression. As a form of therapy he wrote a book on the
subject, "Good Mood: The New Psychology for Overcoming Depression." 

An active lecturer, Simon's view of the world and man's possibilities never
wavered. 

"He believed that the world needs problems because they make us better,"
said Robert L. Bradley Jr., president of the Institute for Energy Research
in Houston. "Problems make us better off than if they had never occurred." 

Simon is survived by his wife, Rita James Simon of Chevy Chase; three
children, David M. Simon of Chicago, Judith Simon Garret of Vienna, Va.,
and Daniel H. Simon of Laurel, Md., and one grandchild.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company




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