What Is the Simon Early Bet?

Is humanity running out of resources, or are resources more abundant than ever? Gale Pooley is the co-author of Superabdundance, a fascinating and optimistic exploration of how economic progress has made life better for humanity. He joins us to explain why goods continue to become more abundant, why fears of overpopulation and resource depletion continue to be refuted forcefully by reality, and why human time keeps getting more valuable. We discuss the work of one of our favorite economists, Julian Simon, and how he brilliantly refuted the common view of resource scarcity, and reframed scarcity as the scarcity of human time. We also explore how inflation reverses economic progress, and how much better life would be without it, and conclude with a discussion of bitcoin's potential.

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