Scarcity or abundance

2012Best year in

historyLess HungerLess Disease

More Prosperity

How does the media

make money?Sells you to advertisers

Fear gets attentionNo context

Julian Simon(1932-1998)

The Ultimate ResourceThe 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 so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.” — The State of Humanity (1995)

This is my long-run forecast in brief: the material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards.“I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.”

Theory

Life ExpectancyFact

Fact

Price of Raw ResourcesTheory

Think Utilitynot

Physical Quantity

Drill or Holes?

Do the 88 keys limit the number

of potential songs?

High Prices

Use LessInnovate a Substitute

Ideas make things valuable

Only humans have ideas

Therefore, only humans make things valuable