Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet
"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 world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's 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.
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"Our future is a battle between positive-sum technology and zero-sum mentalities. Tupy and Pooley show that we have the numbers on our side and that the long-term trend in resource abundance is promising."--BALAJI SRINIVASAN, former chief technology officer, Coinbase
"My father, Julian Simon, would have treasured Tupy and Pooley's 'Superabundance.' Its breathtaking scope, encyclopedic data, and deep and precise analysis of both economics and history powerfully confirm that people are indeed the ultimate resource--and that a growing population, particularly with greater freedom, has and will overcome every challenge and will, in virtually every measurable way, continue to enjoy greater prosperity."--DAVID M. SIMON, senior fellow, Committee to Unleash Prosperity
"Many people think that superabundance is too good to be true. More of something can be a blessing, but to take the obvious counterexample, superabundance of fossil fuel is a potentially catastrophic curse. If doomsters could recognize the innovative capacity revealed by superabundance and boomsters could admit that the market can blindly misdirect that capacity, the two sides could agree that all it takes to sustain progress are small policy adjustments that point innovation in the right direction."--PAUL ROMER, Nobel Prize-winning economist and former chief economist, World Bank
"We are living in signal times. The rate at which everything is changing is unparalleled, as is the increase in that rate itself. Two starkly divergent paths therefore present themselves before us, more clearly than ever before: movement toward an era of superabundance, where everyone could have everything they needed and perhaps even most of what they wanted, or degeneration into a state of apocalypse-inspired, faux-compassionate, authoritarian hell, perhaps worse than anything we saw in the most extreme excesses of the 20th century. Could we choose the former path? Tupy and Pooley, anything but naive optimists, say yes and explain why. Read this book. It's a valid antidote to demoralization, cynicism, and hopelessness."--JORDAN PETERSON, author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
"'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 that cares about the future of humanity should read this book."--Jason Furman, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (2013-2017)
"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
"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
"Pessimism sells, which is strange. But the scientific evidence shows that optimism is a lot more sensible. Stop weeping. Read the book, and smile."--DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY, author of Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All
"It's true that we live on a delicate planet that is composed of a finite number of atoms. But as this fascinating and heartening book shows, it's also true that we humans can increase both our population and prosperity as much as we want without endangering the Earth. The key, as Tupy and Pooley show, is innovation. Read Superabundance to have your assumptions challenged and your sense of hope restored."--ANDREW MCAFEE, author of More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next
"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
"In a tsunami of bad news about Russian revanchism, nuclear saber rattling, global warming, inflation, supply chain shortages, and a pandemic emerges Superabundance, a data-fueled corrective to the doom and gloom the media daily heaps upon us. Tupy and Pooley have done the world a service with this fact-filled reminder of how good our lives are compared to ages past, and how much more human flourishing is in store if we unleash human innovation."--MICHAEL SHERMER, author of The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom
"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
"More people produce more ideas and innovations. They also produce more nonsense. It is not resources but hope and common sense that are scarce. Human ingenuity can come up with a solution for every scarcity, though, and now we have an antidote to nonsense as well: this magnificent, groundbreaking book by Tupy and Pooley."--Johan Norberg, author of Open: The Story of Human Progress
