A Message for the New Year (from Marian Tupy at HumanProgress)

“I hope that next time you hear people complain about the terrible state of human affairs, you’ll ask them in what other period in human history do they think they would be better off. If they get the point of the question, good. If they don’t, they should sign up to receive our scintillating newsletters. Pronto.” (Marian Tupy, below)

MasterResource is inspired by the work, worldview, and personal example of Julian Simon (1932–1998). The leading expositor of the Simon worldview today is Marian L. Tupy, the intellectual entrepreneur and scholar behind the Cato Institute project, HumanProgess.org.

It is with pleasure that we share with our readers the year-end message from Tupy at HumanProgress.

Your favorite website has had a successful year. In July, we experienced our heaviest traffic yet, with 230,000 page views and 122,000 unique visitors. Overall, we averaged 50 percent more unique visitors and 60 percent more page views than last year. (If only my 401K grew that much!)

Our Twitter following rose by some 200 percent to 87,500 people. Our Facebook following rose by 25 percent to over 43,000 fans. Not bad for a couple of “optimistic data nerds,” as The Washington Post called Chelsea and I.

Together with Gale Pooley, an economics professor from Brigham Young University – Hawaii, I published a new study titled, The Simon Abundance Index: A New Way to Measure Availability of Resources. Gale and I revisited the famous wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich. We found that far from making resources scarcer, population growth is making commodities superabundant.

Chelsea Follett, the managing editor of HumanProgress, produced her first policy analysis titled, How Markets Empower Women: Innovation and Market Participation Transform Women’s Lives for the Better. Yesterday, she gave birth to a girl called Miranda Grace. A truly Stakhanovite effort! Heartfelt congratulations on both counts….

How can you help us?

First, keep your chin up. The curve of human progress is a jagged one, and, as Steven Pinker from Harvard University says,

Progress is not magic. Progress is not perfection. Progress is not a miracle. It doesn’t mean that everyone is maximally happy. It doesn’t mean that everything gets better for everyone everywhere all the time and always … The question is however bad things are now, were they worse in the past?

Second, I hope that next time you hear people complain about the terrible state of human affairs, you’ll ask them in what other period in human history do they think they would be better off. If they get the point of the question, good. If they don’t, they should sign up to receive our scintillating newsletters. Pronto.

Tupy’s year-end message also included the good news that he and Ronald Bailey (Reason magazine) have a book coming out in 2019, 10 Big Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And many others that will intrigue you. 

Julian Simon lives!