CONCLUSION
THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE
No food, one problem.  Much food, many problems. 
(Anonymous)


The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the 
past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an 
influence even on persons endued with the profoundest 
judgment and most extensive learning.  David Hume, "Of 
the Populousness of Ancient Nations", in 1777/1987, p.  
464

Is Our Age Different from Ages That Have Gone Before?
What Does the Future Hold?
	Afternote:  "Born Without a Chance"
	Afternote:  Prometheus Bound
   Raw materials and energy are getting less scarce.  The world's food supply is 
improving.  Pollution in the developed countries has been decreasing.  Population 
growth has long-term benefits, though added people are a burden in the short run.  
Most important, fewer people are dying young.   
   These assertions, publicly stated in 1970 and then in the first edition of this 
book in 1981, have stood the test of time.  The benign trends have continued until 
this edition.  Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way. 
(The Introduction lists others among the more dramatic findings of the book.  And each 
chapter ends with a summary on its particular topic.)  And there is stronger reason 
than ever to believe that these progressive trends will continue indefinitely. 
   Indeed, the trends toward greater cleanliness and less pollution of our air and 
water are even sharper than before, and cover a longer historical period and more 
countries (though the environmental disaster in Eastern Europe has only recently 
become public knowledge).  The increase in availability and the decrease in raw 
materials scarcity have continued unabated, and have even speeded up.  None of the 
catastrophes in food supply and famine that were forecast by the doomsayers have 
occurred; rather, the world's people are eating better than ever. The conventional 
beliefs of the doomsayers have been entirely falsified by events during past decades.  
   When we widen our scope beyond the physical matters of mortality, natural 
resources, and the environment covered in this book - to the standard of living, 
freedom, housing, and the like - we find that all the trends pertaining to economic 
welfare are heartening, also.  Perhaps most exciting, the quantities of education that 
people obtain all over the world are sharply increasing, which means less tragic waste 
of human talent and ambition. (The evidence for those matters is found in Simon, 
forthcoming.)  
   Many of the trends reported here are in fact commonplaces in among the scientists 
who study them.  The consensus of agricultural economists has consistently been an 
optimistic point of view about food supply, and the consensus of natural resource 
economists has never been gloomy.  But the scientific consensus with respect to 
population growth largely changed in the 1980s.  The consensus of population 
economists is now not far from what is written in this book; the profession and I 
agree that in the first few decades the effect of population growth is neutral. Such 
institutions as the World Bank and the National Academy of Sciences have recanted 
their former views that population growth is a crucial obstacle to economic 
development. (I am still in the minority when I emphasize the long-run benefits on 
balance of more people.) 
   The central issue is the effects of the number of people upon the standard of 
living, with special attention to raw materials and the environment.  On balance the 
long-run effects are positive.  The mechanism works as follows:  Population growth and 
increase of income expand demand, forcing up prices of natural resources.  The 
increased prices trigger the search for new supplies.  Eventually new sources and 
substitutes are 
found.  These new discoveries leave humanity better off than if the shortages had not 
occurred.

   The vision which underlies and unifies the various topics is that of humans beings 
who create more than they destroy.  But even talented and energetic people require an 
incentive to create better techniques and organizations, and protection for the 
property that is the fruit of their labors.  Therefore, the political-economic 
structure is the crucial determinant of the speed with which economic development 
occurs.  In the presence of economic liberty and respect for property, population 
growth causes fewer problems in the short run, and greater benefits in the short run, 
than where the state controls economic activity.  
   In evaluating the effects of population growth, it is crucial to distinguish 
between the long run and the short run.  Everyone agrees that in the short run 
additional people cause problems.  When the pilgrims arrived in the United States, 
real problems arose for the Native Americans.  ("There goes the neighborhood.")  And 
when some Indians pointed out that there would be benefits in the long run, each of 
the others said, "Not in my hunting grounds."  Babies use diapers and then schools 
before they become economically productive.  Even immigrants need some services before 
they get to work. 
   In the short run, all resources are limited - natural resources such as the 
pulpwood that went into making this book, created resources such as the number of 
pages Princeton University Press can allow me, and human resources such as the 
attention you will devote to what I say. In the short run, a greater use of any 
resource means pressure on supplies and a higher price in the market, or even 
rationing.  Also in the short run there will always be shortage crises because of 
weather, war, politics, and population movements.  The results that an individual 
notices are sudden jumps in taxes, inconveniences and disruption, and increases in 
pollution.
   But what about the effects in the longer run?  What would life be like now if the 
Native Americans had managed to prevent immigration from Europe and there had been no 
population growth from then until now?  Or if growth had stopped ten thousand years 
ago on earth when there were only a million people?  Do you think that our standard of 
living would be as high as it is now if the population had never grown from about four 
million human beings perhaps ten thousand years ago?  I don't think we'd now have 
electric light or gas heat or autos or penicillin or travel to the moon or our present 
life expectancy of over seventy years at birth in rich countries, in comparison to the 
life expectancy of 20 to 25 years at birth in earlier eras, if population had not 
grown to its present numbers.  
   The longer run is a very different story than the shorter run. The standard of 
living has risen along with the size of the world's population since the beginning of 
recorded time. And with increases in income and population have come less severe 
shortages, lower costs, and an increased availability of resources, including a 
cleaner environment and greater access to natural recreation areas.  And there is no 
convincing economic reason why these trends toward a better life, and toward lower 
prices for raw materials (including food and energy), should not continue 
indefinitely.
   Contrary to common rhetoric, there are no meaningful limits to the continuation of 
this process. (Resolving this paradox entailed considerable explanation in the early 
chapters.)  There is no physical or economic reason why human resourcefulness and 
enterprise cannot forever continue to respond to impending shortages and existing 
problems with new expedients that, after an adjustment period, leave us better off 
than before the problem arose.  Adding more people will cause us more such problems, 
but at the same time there will be more people to solve these problems and leave us 
with the bonus of lower costs and less scarcity in the long run.  The bonus applies to 
such desirable resources as better health, more wilderness, cheaper energy, and a 
cleaner environment.
   This process runs directly against Malthusian reasoning and against the apparent 
common sense of the matter, which can be summed up as follows:  The supply of any 
resource is fixed, and greater use means less to go around. The resolution of this 
paradox is not simple. Fuller understanding begins with the idea that the relevant 
measure of scarcity is the cost or price of a resource, not any physical measure of 
its calculated reserves. And the appropriate way for us to think about extracting 
resources is not in physical units, pounds of copper or acres of farmland, but rather 
in the services we get from these resources - the electrical transmission capacity of 
copper, or the food values and gastronomic enjoyment the farmland provides. Following 
on this is the fact that economic history has not gone as Malthusian reasoning 
suggests. The prices of all goods, and of the services they provide, have fallen in 
the long run, by all reasonable measures.  And this irrefutable fact must be taken 
into account as a fundamental datum that can reasonably be projected into the future, 
rather than as a fortuitous chain of circumstances that cannot continue.
   Resources in their raw form are useful and valuable only when found, understood, 
gathered together, and harnessed for human needs.  The basic ingredient in the 
process, along with the raw elements, is human knowledge.  And we develop knowledge 
about how to use raw elements for out benefit only in response to our needs.  This 
includes knowledge for finding new sources of raw materials such as copper, for 
growing new resources such as timber, for creating new quantities of capital such as 
farmland, and for finding new and better ways to satisfy old needs, such as 
successively using iron or aluminum or plastic in place of clay or copper.  Such 
knowledge has a special property.  It yields benefits to people other than the ones 
who develop it, apply it, and try to capture its benefits for themselves.  Taken in 
the large, an increased need for resources usually leaves us with a permanently 
greater capacity to get them, because we gain knowledge in the process.  And there is 
no meaningful physical limit - even the commonly mentioned weight of the earth - to 
our capacity to keep growing forever.
   There is only one important resource which has shown a trend of increasing scarcity 
rather than increasing abundance.  That resource is the most important of all -- human 
beings.  There are more people on earth now than ever before.  But if we measure the 
scarcity of people the same way that we measure the scarcity of other economic goods -
- by how much we must pay to obtain their services -- we see that wages and salaries 
have been going up all over the world, in poor countries as well as in rich countries.  
The amount that you must pay to obtain the services of a driver or a cook has risen in 
India, just as the price of a driver or cook -- or economist -- has risen in the 
United States over the decades.  This increase in the price of peoples' services is a 
clear indication that people are becoming more scarce even though there are more of 
us.  
   The most dramatic evidence that development of countries does not depend upon their 
rates of population growth is shown by the economic histories from 1950 onwards of the 
three pairs of countries that began with the same demographic rates as well as the 
same histories and cultures but were split into two very different political-economic 
systems:  North and South Korea, East and West Germany, Taiwan and China.  The 
countries with controlled economies and unfree societies have performed abysmally 
compared to their twins.  The enormous influence of the political-economic system 
leaves nothing for population change to explain in these individual countries.
   Many who oppose population growth assume that additional people now would not have 
positive effects in the long run.  Or,  at least they put a low weight on those future 
positive effects. And they believe that more people now implies that the air will be 
dirtier than otherwise ten years in the future (say), and there will be less natural 
resources available.  And they assume that the standard of living would be lower than 
otherwise. 
   An interesting aspect of this short-run view is that many who hold it are 
ecologically minded.  One of the great intellectual strengths of ecology is its long 
view of the consequences of present happenings, and a propensity to search out the 
indirect and hard-to-see consequences, both of which tendencies it shares with 
economics.  If one raises one's eyes beyond the most immediate future, we see that the 
negative short-run effects are more than countered.  This is seen in the trend 
evidence of long-run progress. And there is solid theory that fits these facts.  That 
theory again is as follows:  More people, and increased income cause problems in the 
short run.  This increased scarcity of resources causes prices to rise.  The higher 
prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for 
solutions.  Many fail, at cost to themselves.  But in a free society, solutions are 
eventually found.  And in the long run the new developments leave us better off than 
if the problems had not arisen.  That is, prices end up lower than before the 
increased scarcity occurred.  We have seen many examples of this process, such as the 
energy transition from burning wood to coal to oil to nuclear power (chapter 11), and 
in the development of ways to handle wastes so as not only to reduce the scope of the 
problem but also to convert "bad" waste to economic "goods".
   At work is a general process that underlies all the specific findings in the book: 
humans on average build a bit more than they destroy, and create a bit more than they 
use up.  This process is, as the physicists say, an "invariancy" applying to all 
metals, all fuels, all foods, and all other measures of human welfare, in almost all 
countries at almost all times; it can be thought of as a theory of economic history.  
The crucial evidence for the existence of this process is found in the fact that each 
generation leaves a bit more true wealth - the resources to create material and non-
material goods - than the generation began with.  That is, the standard of living of 
each generation is on average higher than the generation before. 
   Indeed, it is necessarily so.  If humankind did not have a propensity to create 
more than it uses, the species would have perished a long time ago.  This propensity 
to build may be taken as a fundamental characteristic that is part of our evolution.  
This is the overarching theory that explains why events turn out in exactly the 
opposite fashion from what Malthus and his followers foresaw.
   Underlying the thinking of most writers who have a point of view different from 
mine is the concept of fixity or finiteness of resources in the relevant system of 
discourse. This concept is central in Malthus, of course. But the idea probably has 
always been a staple of human thinking because so much of our situation must sensibly 
be regarded as fixed in the short run - the bottles of beer in the refrigerator, our 
paycheck, the amount of energy parents have to play basketball with their kids. But 
the thema underlying my thinking about resources (and the thinking of a minority of 
others) is that the relevant system of discourse has a long enough horizon that it 
makes sense to treat the system as not fixed, rather than finite in any operational 
sense. We see the resource system as being as unlimited as the number of thoughts a 
person might have, or the number of variations that might ultimately be produced by 
biological evolution.  That is, a key difference between the thinking of those who 
worry about impending doom, and those who see the prospects of a better life for more 
people in the future, apparently is whether one thinks in closed-system or open-system 
terms.  For example, those who worry that the second law of thermodynamics dooms us to 
eventual decline necessarily see our world as a closed system with respect to energy 
and entropy; those who view the relevant universe as unbounded view the second law of 
thermodynamics as irrelevant to this discussion.  I am among those who view the 
relevant part of the physical and social universe as open for most purposes. Which 
thema is better for thinking about resources and population is not subject to 
scientific test. Yet it profoundly affects our thinking. I believe that here lies the 
root of the key difference in thinking about population and resources.
   Why do so many people think of the planet and our presently-known resources as a 
closed system, to which no resources will be added in the future?  There are a variety 
of reasons. (1) Malthusian fixed-resources reasoning is simple and fits the isolated 
facts of our everyday lives, whereas the expansion of resources is complex and 
indirect and includes all creative human activity - it cannot be likened to our own 
larders or wallets.  The same concepts, rhetoric, and even wording pop up in one 
resource and environmental scare after another - with respect to water as to oil, 
fluoridation of drinking water as with nuclear power, global warming as with acid rain 
as with the ozone layer.   (2) There are always immediate negative effects from an 
increased pressure on resources, whereas the benefits only come later. It is natural 
to pay more attention to the present and the near future than to the more distant 
future. (3) There are often special-interest groups that alert us to impending 
shortages of particular resources such as timber or clean air. But no one has the same 
stake in trying to convince us that the long-run prospects for a resource are better 
than we think. (4) It is easier to get people's attention (and television time and 
printer's ink) with frightening forecasts than with soothing forecasts.  (5) 
Organizations that form in response to temporary or non-existent dangers, and develop 
the capacity to raise funds from public-spirited citizens and governments that are 
aroused to fight the danger, do not always disband when the danger evaporates or the 
problem is solved.  (6) Ambition and the urge for profit are powerful elements in our 
successful struggle to satisfy our needs.  These motives, and the markets in which 
they work, often are not pretty, and many people would prefer not to depend on a 
social system that employs these forces to make us better off.  (7) Associating 
oneself with environmental causes is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get a 
wide reputation for high-minded concern.  It requires no deep thinking and steps on 
almost no one's toes.
   The apparently obvious way to deal with resource problems - have the government 
control the amounts and prices of what consumers consume and suppliers supply - is 
inevitably counter-productive in the long run because the controls and the price 
fixing prevent us from making the cost-efficient adjustments that we would make in 
response to the increased short-run costs, adjustments that eventually would more than 
alleviate the problem. Sometimes governments must play a crucial role to avoid short-
run disruptions and disaster, and to ensure that no group consumes public goods 
without paying the real social cost. But the appropriate times for governments to play 
such roles are far fewer than the times they are called upon to do so by those 
inclined to turn to authority to tell others what to do, rather than allow each of us 
to respond with self-interest and imagination.
   One of the main themes of this book, which this edition emphasizes even more than 
the first edition because there is now a greater weight of evidence behind it, is the 
proper role of government; to set market rules that are as impersonal and as general 
as possible, allowing individuals to decide for themselves how and what to produce and 
what to consume, in a manner that infringes as little as possible on the rights of 
others to do the same, and where each pays the full price to others of the costs to 
others of one's own activities.  Support for this principle appears in chapter after 
chapter as we view the history and the statistical data on such issues as food 
production, supply of natural resources, and the like.
   It is not only the human mind and the human spirit that are crucial, but also the 
framework of society.  The political- economic organization of a country has the most 
influence upon its economic progress.  In 1742 (first edition), the man whom I regard 
as the greatest philosopher who ever lived, and one of the greatest economists of all 
time - David Hume - wrote this:   "Multitudes of people, necessity, and liberty, have 
begotten commerce in Holland".  In that one short sentence, Hume  summarized 
everything important about economic progress - economic liberty,  which comes from a 
country being "ruled by laws rather than men", allows people to make the most of their 
individual talents and opportunities; necessity - that is, in Holland's case, the lack 
of great stretches of fertile land on which to grow crops easily, and therefore the 
necessity of creating new fertile land by fighting the sea for that land; and 
multitudes of people - the human talent to invent new ways of doing things and of 
organizing an effective society.  That is the heart of the story told in this book.  
   The greatest asset of the United States and of other economically-advanced 
countries is the political and legal and economic organization.  Compare how easy it 
is to do business (for example get inputs from suppliers) in the United States with 
way it was in the Soviet Union, and as it will certainly continue to be in Russia for 
some years after this is written in the 1990's.  
   But again, people look at the matter in the small rather than in the large, and 
don't see the long-run benefits of problems.  Perhaps our willingness to believe that 
"clever" people can make sound decisions and render useful advice when in such 
positions as head of the World Bank or IMF is related to our belief that people can 
find pattern even when there is no pattern.  We are reluctant to think that we as 
human beings can do no better than chance in such matters.  

IS OUR AGE DIFFERENT FROM AGES THAT HAVE GONE BEFORE?	Again and again I have argued the 
importance of taking a long view backwards so that we can see the continuity of the 
trends.  People err by thinking that their age is different than all that have gone 
before.  Especially this is true when they think about the dangers of their own age.
     Having said this, I note that our age is fundamentally different than any other 
age that has been or that could come, most especially in mortality and life 
expectation.  One can only go once from an expectation of 25 to 75 years of life at 
birth. 
     The change in opportunity is almost as great, and perhaps almost as unrepeatable.  
One can only progress once from almost no access to secondary and tertiary education 
to almost universal access to them only once.  And the idea of going beyond does not 
seem to be something that society bestows or could bestow.
     And materially:  Sometimes I think that our very last physical needs are being 
taking care of, to the extent that technology can do so.  In my own short lifetime we 
have gone (even in a rich country) from shoveling coal into the furnace and banking it 
at night, and winding up a spring alarm clock with a chain at the end to open the 
furnace in the morning, and then carrying out the ashes to the street in a bucket -- 
ashes which might also be used to harden the mud in the spring on the basketball court 
-- to fully automatic furnaces with fully automatic thermostats and air conditioners, 
and the like.  How much further can we go?  Does this all mean that I lack imagination 
when I cannot see further directions for technology in these respects?  You go away 
from home, pick up the telephone, dial some numbers, and anyone who has called you can 
be heard on your tape machine.  How could communication be improved much from this?  
How much can frustration be reduced from this?  Of course frustration is always a 
function of expectations.  But ... 

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?
   The years since its publication have been kind to the forecasts of the first 
edition.  Or more importantly, the years have been good for humanity.  The benign 
trends have continued until this edition.  Our species is better off in just about 
every measurable material way.  And there is stronger reason than ever to believe that 
these progressive trends will continue indefinitely. 
   Based on these trends, the long-run material prospects are so favorable and so 
certain that (as I mentioned earlier) I am prepared to bet on them, expanding the 
offer made in the first edition.  I'll bet a week's or month's pay that just about any 
trend pertaining to human welfare will improve rather than get worse (my winnings go 
to charity).  
   People alive now are living in the midst of - and from one point of view, just 
ending - the most extraordinary two centuries in human history - the years both before 
us and probably after us, too.  Humanity will soon have succeeded in the historic 
battle against early death.  Most inhabitants of the rich countries already are 
reasonably sure of a satisfying diet, decent shelter, and access to sufficient 
education.  What is still to come is to bring these benefits to all on earth.  And 
that may take half a century or a century.
   Some writers worry that unsound ideas will stop progress and bring down 
civilization.  Their slogan is "Ideas have consequences".  Yes, ideas matter, and 
fighting for the truth can make a difference in how fast we make progress.  Unlike 
those writers, however, I do not think that ideas are decisive in the long run.  Yes, 
Marxism and a belief in rational social control turned Eastern Europe backwards and 
created havoc for 75 years and probably much more.  Yes, anti-growthers who close 
their eyes to science can stop nuclear power for a while, and waste billions on 
unnecessary cleanup campaigns.  But I believe that in the long run, in a world of 
modern global communication and mobility, real material improvements cannot be 
prevented forever.  Nuclear power will have its way because it is just too much better 
than alternatives for anti-nuclear zealots to deny it to others forever.  Poor women 
and men want to improve their lot, married couples want to have children, and people 
want freedom; these tendencies are so deeply and "naturally" ingrained in most human 
beings that abstract arguments about overpopulation or the virtues of simple living or 
the subordination of the individual's desires to the state will convince only a small 
fraction of the most persuadable for more than a short time.  As Lincoln said, You can 
only fool some of the people some of the time.  Human nature seeks human betterment on 
average; there is enough evidence of this in history - perhaps most especially the 
indisputable evidence that each generation tends to leave more to its descendants than 
it acquired from its ancestors - so that the proposition can be taken as fact without 
further corroboration.  
   Writers and scholars are entitled to think themselves a bit more important than 
they really are; Adam Smith even advises the wisdom of that.  But I think that some of 
us flatter ourselves too much when we think that our ideas -  or those of our 
opponents - are so powerful that they can affect the course of human development more 
than temporarily (although even temporary effect is important).
   Material insufficiency and environmental problems have their benefits, over and 
beyond the improvements which they evoke.  They focus the attention of individuals and 
communities, and constitute a set of challenges which can bring out the best in 
people.  (The competition from Japan illustrates how we need our problems.  The United 
States and Europe will certainly be much better off in the next few decades because 
the Japanese came along to make us pull up our socks.)  In the absence of such 
problems, people turn to less pressing material problems, such as ever-less-
threatening and ever-more-benign environmental conditions (see chapter 15), and to 
non-material issues such as inter-group equity, which often bring out the worst rather 
than the best in people.  Material success even leads people to question whether that 
success indicates human progress or instead causes greater problems; a familiar 
example is the lament that young people with too much time and money cause trouble for 
themselves and others.  Again: no bread, one problem; plenty of bread, many problems.  
   As Beisner puts it, we can forecast with certainty that humanity will be richer in 
the future than now;  we cannot forecast with any confidence whether at any given 
future time humanity will be more or less evil than now.  It may be that for at least 
some time - until the evolution of our knowledge and our society, together with our 
imaginations, put us onto a new track - the developed world will suffer from a 
shortage of challenges to bring out the best in people.  It may be that, just as 
additional people are the ultimate resource to resolve human problems, the absence of 
satisfying challenges may be the ultimate shortage.
   I do not say that everything now is fine, of course.  Children are still hungry and 
sick; some people live out lives of physical and intellectual poverty, and lack of 
opportunity; war or some new pollution may do us all in. What I am saying is that for 
most of the relevant economic matters I have checked, the trends are positive rather 
than negative. And I doubt that it does the troubled people of the world any good to 
say that things are getting worse though they are really getting better. And false 
prophecies of doom can damage us in many ways.
   Is a rosy future guaranteed? Of course not. There always will be temporary 
shortages and resource problems where there are strife, political blundering, and 
natural calamities - that is, where there are people. But the natural world allows, 
and the developed world promotes through the marketplace, responses to human needs and 
shortages in such manner that one backward step leads to 1.0001 steps forward, or 
thereabouts. That's enough to keep us headed in a life-sustaining direction. 
   Which should be our vision?  The doomsayers of the population control movement 
offer a vision of limits, decreasing resources, a zero-sum game, conservation, 
deterioration, fear, and conflict, calling for more governmental intervention in 
markets and family affairs.  Or should our vision be that of those who look 
optimistically upon people as a resource rather than as a burden -- a vision of 
receding limits, increasing resources and possibilities, a game in which everyone can 
win, creation, building excitement, and the belief that persons and firms, acting 
spontaneously in the search of their individual welfare, regulated only by rules of a 
fair game, will produce enough to maintain and increase economic progress and promote 
liberty?
   And what should our mood be?  The population restrictionists say we should be sad 
and worry.  I and many others believe that the trends suggest joy and celebration at 
our newfound capacity to support human life -- healthily, and with fast-increasing 
access to education and opportunity all over the world.  I believe that the population 
restrictionists' hand-wringing view leads to despair and resignation.  Our view leads 
to hope and progress, in the reasonable expectation that the energetic efforts of 
humankind will prevail in the future, as they have in the past, to increase worldwide 
our numbers, our health, our wealth, and our opportunities.  
   So to sum up the summary:  In the short run, all resources are limited.  An example 
of such a finite resource is the amount of time and attention that you will devote to 
what I have written.  The longer run, however, is a different story.  The standard of 
living has risen along with the size of the world's population since the beginning of 
recorded time.  There is no convincing economic reason why these trends toward a 
better life should not continue indefinitely. 
   The key theoretical idea is this:  Increased population and a higher standard of 
living cause actual and expected shortages, and hence price rises.  A higher price 
represents an opportunity that attracts profit-minded entrepreneurs and socially-
minded inventors to seek new ways to satisfy the shortages.  Some fail, at cost to 
themselves.  A few succeed, and the final result is that we end up better off than if 
the original shortage problems had never arisen.  That is, we need our problems, 
though this does not imply that we should purposely create additional problems for 
ourselves. 
   Of course progress does not come about automatically.  And my message certainly is 
not one of complacency, though anyone who predicts reduced scarcity of resources has 
always drawn that label.  In this I agree with the doomsayers--that our world needs 
the best efforts of all humanity to improve our lot.  I part company with them in that 
they expect us to come to a bad end despite the efforts we make, whereas I expect a 
continuation of successful efforts.  And I believe that their message is self-
fulfilling, because if you expect your efforts to fail because of inexorable natural 
limits, then you are likely to feel resigned, and therefore to literally resign.  But 
if you recognize the possibility--in fact the probability--of success, you can tap 
large reservoirs of energy and enthusiasm.  
   Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solve these 
problems.  The main fuel to speed our progress is our stock of knowledge, and the 
brake is our lack of imagination. The ultimate resource is people - skilled, spirited, 
and hopeful people who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, 
and inevitably they will benefit not only themselves but the rest of us as well.  

AFTERNOTE:  "BORN WITHOUT A CHANCE"
Born Without a Chance

The Time: Napoleonic in Europe, Jeffersonian in America
The Scene: An outlying border state, sometimes called "the dark and bloody ground."
The Exact Date: February 12, 1809.

A squalid village set in wintry mud.
A hub-deep oxcart slowly groans and creaks.
A horseman hails and halts. He shifts his cud
And speaks:

"Well, did you hear? Tom Lincoln's wife today.
The devil's luck for folk as poor as they!
  Poor Tom! poor Nance!
Poor youngun born without a chance!

"A baby in that Godforsaken den,
That worse than cattle pen!
Well, what are they but cattle?  Cattle? Tutu!
A critter is beef, hide and tallow, but
Who'd swap one for the critters of that hut?
  White trash! small fry!
Whose only instincts are to multiply!
  They're good at that,
And so, today, God wot! another brat!

"Another squawking, squalling, red-faced good-for-naught
Spilled on the world, heaven only knows for what.
  Better if he were black,
For then he'd have a shirt upon his back,
And something in his belly, as he grows.
More than he's like to have, as I suppose.
  Yet there be those
Who claim 'equality' for this new brat,
  And that damned democrat
Who squats today where Washington once sat,
He'd have it that this Lincoln cub might be 
Of even value in the world with you and me!

"Yes, Jefferson, Tom Jefferson, who but he?
Who even hints that black men should be free.
That featherheaded fool would tell you maybe
A president might lie in this new baby!

In this new squawker born without a rag
To hide himself! Good God, it makes me gag!
  This human spawn
Born for the world to wipe its feet upon
  A few more years hence, but now
More helpless than the litter of a sow,
And---Oh, well! send the womenfolks to see to Nance.

"Poor little devil! born without a chance!"
                 Edmund Vance Cooke (suggested by Donald Bishop)  


AFTERNOTE: PROMETHEUS BOUND 



... For men at first had eyes but saw to no purpose; 
they had ears but did not hear.  Like the shapes of 
dreams they dragged through their long lives and 
handled all things in bewilderment and confusion.  They 
did not know of building houses with bricks to face the 
sun; they did not know how to work in wood.  They lived 
like swarming ants in holes in the ground, in the 
sunless caves of the earth.  For them there was no 
secure token by which to tell winter nor the flowering 
spring nor the summer with its crops; all their doings 
were indeed without intelligent calculation until I 
showed them the rising of the stars, and the settings, 
hard to observe.  And further I discovered to them 
numbering, pre-eminent among subtle devices, and the 
combining of letters as a means of remembering all 
things, the Muses' mother, skilled in craft.  It was I 
who first yoked beasts for them in the yokes and made 
of those beasts the slaves of trace chain and pack 
saddle that they might be man's substitute in the 
hardest tasks; and I harnessed to the carriage, so that 
they loved the rein, horses, the crowning pride of the 
rich man's luxury.  It was I and none other who 
discovered ships, the sail-driven wagons that the sea 
buffets.  Such were the contrivances that I discovered 
for men -- alas for me!  For I myself am without 
contrivance to rid myself of my present affliction.

Chorus

What you have suffered is indeed terrible.... 

Prometheus

Hear the rest, and you will marvel even more at the 
crafts and resources I contrived.  Greatest was this: 
in the former times if a man fell sick he had no 
defense against the sickness, neither healing food nor 
drink, nor unguent; but through the lack of drugs men 
wasted away, until I showed them the blending of mild 
simples wherewith they drive out all manner of 
diseases.  It was I who arranged all the ways of 
seercraft, ...  Beneath the earth, man's hidden 
blessing, copper, iron, silver, and gold -- will anyone 
claim to have discovered these before I did?  No one, I 
am very sure, who wants to speak truly and to the 
purpose.  One brief word will tell the whole story: all 
arts that mortals have come from Prometheus.  


The Complete Greek Tragedies, Volume 1, Aeschylus, 
Edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: 
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 327-8.

page # \ultres\ tconclus December 23, 1993