"For centuries, the ivory towers of academia have echoed this sentiment of multitudinous ends and limited means. In this supremely contrarian book, Tupy and Pooley overturn the tables in the temple of conventional thinking. They deploy rigorous and original data and analysis to proclaim a gospel of abundance. Economics--and ultimately, politics--will be enduringly transformed." --George Gilder, author of Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued, "The worlds rapidly growing population is consuming the planets natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources . . . [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030." But is that true?
After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. That was especially true when they looked at "time prices," which represent the length of time that people must work to buy something.
To their surprise, the authors also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population--a relationship that they call "superabundance." On average, every additional human being created more value than he or she consumed. This relationship between population growth and abundance is deeply counterintuitive, yet it is true.
Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test those inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living.
But large populations are not enough to sustain superabundance--just think of the poverty in China and India before their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they must be free.
To learn more about Superabundance, please visit Superabundance.com.
GALE POOLEY is an associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University‐Hawaii, coauthor of the Simon Abundance Index, and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute.
MARIAN L. TUPY is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, coauthor of Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting, coauthor of the Simon Abundance Index, and editor of the website HumanProgress.org.
“With great writing and a mountain of good evidence, Tupy and Pooley remind us that we are immeasurably better off than our ancestors. In this day of pestilence, war, and climate change, we need that reminder, and we can hope that the doom‐mongers will be wrong about the future, just as they have always been wrong about the past.”
—ANGUS DEATON, Nobel Prize–winning economist
“For centuries, the ivory towers of academia have echoed this sentiment of multitudinous ends and limited means. In this supremely contrarian book, Tupy and Pooley overturn the tables in the temple of conventional thinking. They deploy rigorous and original data and analysis to proclaim a gospel of abundance. Economics―and ultimately, politics―will be enduringly transformed.”
—GEORGE GILDER, author of Wealth and Poverty, Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
“People don’t depend on stuff; they depend on ideas—formulas, algorithms, knowledge—which allow stuff, useless by itself, to satisfy our wants. In this lucid and illuminating book, Tupy and Pooley lucidly use this insight to explain a fact that, surprisingly, surprises people: over the centuries, our increasing knowledge has made more stuff available to us.”
—STEVEN PINKER, author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
“There are those who wish for scarcities, and who work to inhibit economic growth, so that government can claim an excuse to ration this and that. Happily, they have met their match in Tupy and Pooley, who demonstrate that population growth is not a problem, it is the solution—the most important resource.”
—GEORGE WILL, Washington Post
“Superabundance pulls off the remarkable feat of being both exhaustive and entertaining at the same time. It adds a critical piece to the growing canon of books documenting the rapid improvements in the quality of human life: an explanation that is grounded in rapid population growth. Anyone who cares about the future of humanity should read this book.”
—JASON FURMAN, professor of the practice of economic policy, Harvard University, and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
“In their essential and provocative new book, Tupy and Pooley show that the ultimate resource remains human ingenuity. Superabundance is a must read for anyone who cares about the fate of humankind and our bountiful, beautiful planet.”
—MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
“The decline of poverty and famine and disease and violence over the past few decades has been spectacular, as Tupy and Pooley demonstrate. There is every reason to think it can continue and our grandchildren will look back on today’s world with horror and pity. This book is a comprehensive, detailed, and devastating riposte to the perpetual pessimists who dominate modern discourse.”
—MATT RIDLEY, author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
