295. Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley — Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet

<p>Is it true that the world’s rapidly growing population is consuming the planet’s natural resources at an alarming rate that would require two Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources by 2030? Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. They also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population. On average, every additional human being created more value than he or she consumed.</p> <p>Shermer, Tupy, and Pooley discuss: why we long for the “good ol’ days” • Malthusian trap • Ehrlich’s predictions on overpopulation • the birth dearth • the Simon Abundance Index • compound interest • What does it mean for the economy to grow 2–3% a year? • accumulating wealth • what poorer countries need to do to become richer countries • running out of fossil fuels • Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech • inflation • electric vehicles • How many people can the Earth sustain? • post-scarcity trekonomics • the future of religion and other social institutions in a superabundant world.</p> <p>Marian Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and coauthor of the Simon Abundance Index. He specializes in globalization and global well-being and the politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa. He is the coauthor of <em>Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting</em> (Cato Institute, 2020). His articles have been published in the <em>Financial Times</em>, the <em>Washington Post</em>, the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, <em>The Atlantic</em>, <em>Newsweek</em>, the <em>UK Spectator</em>, <em>Foreign Policy</em>, and various other outlets in the United States and overseas. He has appeared on BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, and other channels. Tupy received his BA in international relations and classics from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and his PhD