“Superabundance” is an optimistic story of “population growth, innovation and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet”
Public reaction to Grassroot Scholar Gale Pooley’s new book, “Superabundance,” co-authored by Marian Tupy and released officially on Aug. 31, so far has been abundantly positive.
>> On July 12, Pooley — an economist and associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii — was interviewed on C-SPAN 2 Book TV, while he was attending the latest annual FreedomFest in Las Vegas.
>> On Sept. 1, he appeared with Tupy on “The Jordan B Peterson Podcast,” hosted, of course, by Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist, Canadian media personality and best-selling author of “12 Rules for Life.”
>> On Sept. 12, he and Tupy were featured on “The Cato Institute Book Forum.” Also on hand were Lawrence Summers, Harvard professor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary; Ian Vasquez, Cato Institute vice president for international studies; and David Simon, son of economist Julian Simon, whose works — such as the 1981 book “The Ultimate Resource” — were among Pooley’s inspirations.
In fact, in 2018, Pooley and Tupy developed an index they named after Simon — “The Simon Abundance Index“ — which they billed as “a new way to measure the availability of resources.”
Finally, just yesterday, the highly respected Economist magazine published a favorable review of “Superabundance,” though at the end it did throw some cold water on the book’s subtitle: “The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.”
“No planet can be ‘infinitely bountiful,'” the reviewer said, while adding, however, that the book is “brain-stretching, optimistic and humane.”
Asked to comment, Pooley said, “Yes, the Economist’s closing statement missed our point. Our focus on ‘infinite’ is based on the idea that we live on a planet with a fixed number of atoms, but economics is not about counting atoms, it is about measuring the growth of knowledge, and knowledge does not appear to have limits.”
If you want to read “Superabundance” yourself, you can buy a copy at Amazon.com or any other leading bookseller.
