Julian Simon

Julian Simon (1932 – 1998). American economist.

      • This increase in the world’s population represents humanity’s victory against death.
      • We now have in our hands — really, in our libraries — the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years.
      • Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven, however. My message certainly is not one of complacency. The ultimate resource is people — especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty — who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well.

Biology and Economics

Charles Darwin at age 7 in 1816.

The relationship between economics and biology is historically important. The core idea in biology is Darwin’s theory of the origin of species through natural selection. Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) was not the only one to come up with that. Around the same time, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) also proposed the mechanism.

Wallace was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin’s earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the “big species book” he was drafting and quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species.” [wiki] Continue reading “Biology and Economics”

David Hume

Ever wondered why is it that the Scottish moral philosopher David Hume (1711 – 1776) is usually portrayed wearing what appears to be a tea cozy? Puzzling and funny.

Seriously, though, he was one of the greatest stars of the Scottish Enlightenment. The wiki entry on him is worth a careful read. He was a close friend of another great Scot — Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), also a moral philosopher. Smith is widely recognized as the father of the discipline known as political economy (which we now call economics). His book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) is a masterpiece. Read it when you have a few months of free time. Continue reading “David Hume”

Liberty

Samuel Adams, bronze and granite statue, 1880. Anne Whitney.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” Continue reading “Liberty”

The Best Thing for Being Sad

Photo credit: Anita Jankovic at unsplash.com

Learn something. I don’t know if that’s the answer for everyone but that’s what works for me. You mileage may vary, as they say in the ads for cars. But for the vast majority of the cases, it works. Learn something. The best thing you learn is that you are just fine just as  you are. Continue reading “The Best Thing for Being Sad”

Quotes – Mises

On this day, Sept 29, Ludwig von Mises was born in 1881. Happy Birthday, dear Ludwig.

“He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.”
― Ludwig von Mises
Bureaucracy

“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
― Ludwig von Mises
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis Continue reading “Quotes – Mises”

Economists’ Quotes

About quotations, the German-born American actress Marlene Dietrich said, “I love them, because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizedly wiser than oneself.”

I agree with her. I love quotations and collect them assiduously. They are valuable because they encapsulate ideas and thoughts that I have had but expressed better than I ever can.

Since being an economist is my vocation as well as my avocation, I like to keep bits of writings of real economists. Here are a few that I hope you would like. If you find any of them puzzling, or if they lead you to questions, I’d be happy to expand on them. Feel free to ask me anything. Continue reading “Economists’ Quotes”

Hay You

“The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.” ― Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions 

Continue reading “Hay You”

Danger

American Founding Father, John Adams (1735 – 1826):

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

American politician, Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865):

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

English historian, Arnold Toynbee (1889 – 1975):

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

French philosopher, Jean-Francois Revel (1924 – 2006):

“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”

Epictetus the Stoic

Epictetus

Epictetus[1] summarized the Stoic attitude of taking responsibility for what was within one’s control thus: “I must die. If forthwith, I die; and if a little later, I will take lunch now, since the hour for lunch has come, and afterwards I will die at the appointed time.”

Milton Friedman summarized the role of the government thus: Continue reading “Epictetus the Stoic”