Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet

by Marian L. Tupy, Gale L. Pooley

“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 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.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, History, Science, Politics, Business, Society

580 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2022

Reviews

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

2023-05-05 Just finished this morning. Outstanding book.
Highly recommended.
See clips highlighted for a sampling of what you will get in this amazing book.

I hope to detail some more points about the book soon.

[Amy Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Definitely written as a scholarly research project, and should be read with that genre in mind (don’t expect a literary work here).

It’s important to remind ourselves—for our collective memory is way too short—of just how far humanity has come. While I don’t subscribe to a philosophy of human progress (as a Christian I am convinced history illustrates to us repeatedly that the fundamental problem plaguing humans is sin and sin’s curse), I also find the present age’s crippling anxiety about a supposed coming doomsday due to over population, exhaustion of resources, and environmental catastrophe to be absurd. Thankfully Superabundance brings the data to expose misperceptions driving really bad policy—but probably the policy makers in need of seeing it, will look away.

Standards of living are higher than anyone alive in 1900–or 1975!—could even hope to imagine. Even after a global pandemic, people today are healthier and richer than ever. If anyone doubts this, it’s surely out of ignorance. And this book shows us the data, then gives a survey of global history to show how humans built upon the learning of those who came before them, bettering life through technological innovation and civilization’s stabilizing effects. The authors convincingly show that increased population leads to thriving economies and innovative solutions and improvements. They also make it clear that industrialized and economically free nations enjoy cleaner air, cleaner landscapes, better forestry growth, and generally better environments. Countries with the worst environments are the globe’s poorest.

It’s tempting to bemoan the negatives of modernity, which in so many ways has worked to make us less human, hurting our souls, and damaging our families. Yet Superabundance reminds us that humans are indeed a blessing upon the earth and that as population has grown, humans have not run out of resources. On the contrary, they have a superabundance.

I especially enjoyed reading how the time-price of so many commodities and finished goods has dropped so dramatically over mere decades. Commodities that were once luxuries requiring hours and hours (or days) of work to afford now take minutes of labor to afford. Fascinating charts.

[Grant Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will likely become an instant classic due to the rigorous, clear way it clearly shows how much better so many things are getting. It deserves 5 stars just for that.

Like Stephen Pinker's book Enlightenment now there is also a good discussion on why things have got better and how to make sure they keep getting better. However I find the more interesting question is why, if things are better, do people feel so despondent about the state of the world? The main theme in this book is that if we give people evidence they will change their mind. However, there are a range of other reasons that are touched on briefly like our preference for negative news and nostalgia bias that I suspect are more important. In my book “Comparonomics - why life is better than you think and how to make it better” I identify 20 “feel-bad” factors that make us feel worse than we should. It would be great to have more people analyzing these things as this is where I think real progress can be made in helping people understand the world and make better decisions.

I love the focus on time as a measure of economic progress but a possible weakness of the analysis is that the core commodities they analyse now take such a small amount of our time that it doesn’t analyse much of what we now deem as important time wise. However you can take the idea further as a way to measure not just common commodities but you can measure progress on completely new things that have never previously existed. I propose that the speed at which new things go from impossible to everyone having them is a good way to measure this progress (took many decades for us to all get plumbing but much faster to get internet). My analysis of this in Comparonomics concludes that this main part of the economy that we spend most time on is accelerating too. Things really are getting better making the need to understand why we feel the opposite all the more interesting.

The main reason I couldn’t give the book 5 stars is that it is weirdly political. The theme that capitalism is good and socialism is bad is maybe tied up in the American view of the words. I agree that markets and innovation from creative destruction are the reason that we have made so much progress. But the answer is not always completely free markets. As we learn things society typically puts rules regulations on the market them to make it better for everyone (don’t allow child labour and slavery, don’t put lead in petrol, don't use CFC’s looking after elderly is good thing to do, giving everyone free roads and education even health is useful for everyone).

While I agree that some environmental doom-saying has gone way too far in some cases it is also the reason we make some much progress at solving things like ozone layer or lead poisoning. My personal conclusion from learning that we are much better off than is commonly thought means I’m much happier to allocate resources to fix issues like de-carbonising the economy. History shows that as we get richer we allocate more resources to fixing environmental issues and this analysis shows we are vastly better off. I think this makes more sense to allocate resources to the climate change problem that is clearly a significant environmental challenge that needs addressing.

While most of the review pointed out some points for improvement I’d really like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of the core analysis about the improvements not captured by conventional economics - great addition to understanding progress.

[Michael Moon · Rating 2 out of 5]

novel ideas, overplayed, rendered absurd

First, I love the audacious and effective framing of value and value creation: time based pricing. How many minutes in my day, given my current economic earnings, must I trade for a proverbial “loaf of bread”?

Second, I love the simple and effective exposition on how exchange of ideas and economic goods expand, at a geometric rate, the economic power of consumers.

However, they make fallacious claims about the true cost of populations, the impact of climate changes (notably persistent droughts and food production), the inbound flight of black swans— geopolitics of decoupling of China / implosion of Russia, and their framing of environmentalism as a crypto-fascist pseudo-religion …

Grand irony of ironies: they present on the most cogent exposition on the basis of fascism without without directing their analysis to the right-wing authoritarian, nativist populism as evidenced in their naive realism and freedom trumps all boosterism.

In a phrase, they’re dishonest brokers of truth.

However, that is the reason to read this polemic: to understand and have empathy for bat-shit crazy academics and their rationalized boosterism and naïveté

I might have given this more stars. But that would be to reward dishonesty.

[Emmi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Authors say “Keep going! Keep going! Everything is OK. We can continue mining and produce lots of things for your lifestyles. Keep going! Don’t stop! We need all Chinese and Indians to keep reproducing and make Americans happy by mining, producing goods and services for cheaper price. Keep going!”

It’s total flawed and ignorance of environmental consequences of over population and overconsumption.

[Dr. Richard Cramer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yes, a clever way of measuring abundance -- but otherwise, nothing but a compilation of historical statistics and quotations, which do not in any way support the authors' central extrapolation, that more people would surely yield "superabundance".

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet (2022) by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley is a very good book that showcases some original research and calculations by Tupy and Pooley was well as examining the work of others on human progress. Tupy is the editor for Human Progress and Pooley is a professor at Brigham Young Hawaii.

Superabundance takes the work of the economist Julian Simon and also William Nordhaus and expands the quantification of how humans have advanced and how people have become richer. That is the inflation adjusted price of various commodities and commonly bought items is taken and the amount that the average blue collar and unskilled worker in the US and globally can purchase is compared over time. A ‘Time Price’ is calculated, that is the time taken to earn the money to buy the quantity is calculated. The abundance for a person and the abundance for the population is then compared over time.

It sounds somewhat mundane but has huge implications. It shows that presently and if trends continue then there is an increasing abundance of most commodities and items that is outpacing population and wealth growth. The authors define this increase as a ‘superabundance’. If the time price remains constant despite increasing population and abundance the authors define this as an abundance.

The book is divided into three parts. The first is a justification of their quantification work. Here the Malthusian proposition is described and the works of various people on how famine and resource exhaustion was just around the corner is outline. This culminates in a description of the work of Paul Ehrlich and his famous bet with Julian Simon that a given quantity of metals would drop in price over the 1980s. Simon won. Also given that Ehrlich had not just been predicting the price of metals would increase but that there would be mass starvation Simon really showed Ehrlich’s hypothesis to be utterly wrong.

The second part of the book describes the work of quantifying the increasing purchasing power of blue collar and unskilled worked over various time periods. This is a very impressive piece of work that extends both Simon’s work and William Norhaus’s work on how long it takes to earn the money to pay for lighting by workers over time.

The book also includes some work on the incredible improvements in some technological goods, such as large screen TVs, over time. The improving quality of cars and the increase in the amount of housing by floor space is also included.

The third part of the book is on Human Flourishing and It’s Enemies. This is the weakest part of the book and it’s not required. Their initial description of the history of the Malthusian Hypothesis does enough in this regard.

The counterpoint to the work is that fossil fuels may, in future, actually be a break on human welfare. The work of Vaclav Smil is well worth considering regarding this issue. Smil’s point that the amount of energy required for most products, in particular for food, is very pertinent. Superabundance does, however, make the point that nuclear fission and hopefully soon nuclear fusion will be able to provide effectively infinite energy in the medium term.

Superabundance is a really good book that gives a great, new, quantitative description of how much wealthier people have become over the past hundred and fifty years. By carefully quantifying how much better off humanity has become the author’s have provided a worthy update to the work of Julian Simon.

[Russell Wardrop · Rating 5 out of 5]

read and be amazed.

Think you know about how lucky (or unlucky) we are? You know almost nothing and what you think you know is probably wrong.

[Ronald J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is mind blowing, and one of the most significant contributions to economic measurement this century. Certainly part of our future is a battle between positive-sum thinking and zero-sum mentalities. As George Gilder writes in the Foreword: "The single greatest breakthrough in 21st-century economics is the comprehensive and creative translation of prices into time—time prices. They calculate the hours and minutes needed to earn the money to buy goods and services. Unlike money prices, time prices are unequivocal and universal; they are the true prices." Time is not money, but money is tokenized time. It's a constant (it's also a constraint). Therefore, measuring prices in time (the amount of labor needed to purchase a commodity) is the truest way to arrive at a comparable standard of living across times and countries. It has none of the problems of inflation adjustments, purchasing power parity, etc. because it used nominal prices and average hourly earnings. Gilder again: "Going back to 1850, for more than a century and a half, measured by time prices, resource abundance has been rising at a rate of 4 percent a year. Every 50 years, the real-world economy has grown some sevenfold. Between 1980 and 2020, while population grew 75 percent, time prices of the 50 key commodities that sustain life dropped 75 percent. For every increment of population growth, global resources have grown by a factor of 8."

According to the authors, time prices make more sense than money prices for at least three reasons.
1. Time prices avoid the contention and subjectivity of commonly used inflation adjustments. Since innovation shows up in both lower prices and higher incomes time prices more fully capture the effects of innovation.
2. Time prices are independent of currency fluctuations. Instead of gauging the standards of living in India and the United States by comparing the adjusted “purchasing power parity” prices of a gallon of milk in Indian rupees and American dollars, time prices provide a universal and standardized way (hours and minutes) to measure changes in well-being.
3. George Gilder argues that wealth is knowledge, growth is learning, and money is time. From these three propositions, we have derived a theorem, which states that the growth in knowledge—which is to say innovation, productivity, and standards of living—can and ought to measured with time.

Just a few examples of time prices:

1. In 1319, sugar sold for two shillings a pound in medieval London. A tradesman had to work 80 hours to afford a pound. In 2021, in London, it took 1.89 minutes.

2. In the USA in 1850, a pound of sugar was .17¢, and it took 2 hours and 50 minutes to buy on hourly earnings of .06¢. In 2021, it took 35 seconds (at $32.54/hour).

3. In the USA, the average TP of 42 food items fell by 91.2% between 1919 and 2019. Eggs fell the most (-97.2%) and tea fell the least (-53.5%).

For average wages, the authors used blue collar and unskilled labor, which is very conservative and certainly less contentious regarding income inequality. The fact is, all workers have benefitted enormously in the reduction of time prices, across many of the commodities we purchase everyday.

The authors sum up their findings:

"All 18 of our data sets fall within the superabundance zone. We estimate that personal resource abundance grows by over 3 percent per year, thereby doubling every two decades or so. Resources have been growing more abundant by over 4 percent per year, thereby doubling every 16 years or so. Moreover, it showed that humanity is experiencing superabundance, a condition where abundance is increasing at a faster rate than the population is growing. Data suggest that additional human beings tend to benefit rather than impoverish the rest of humanity."

This is an remarkable book, and it will change how you think about pricing, inflation, deflation, etc., because it cuts through the money illusion and gets to the heart of the matter: how long do you have to work to buy things. In nearly all categories, across all countries, the answer is much less than you did in the past. And that contributes tremendously to human flourishing.

We had the honor interviewing both authors of this book on The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy. The first interview was with Marian Tupy. You can listen here:

https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/t...

The interview with Gale Pooley on December 2nd, 2022:

https://www.thesoulofenterprise.com/t...



Notable
P. J. O’Rourke (1947–2022) wrote that “if you think that in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: dentistry.”

British historian and statesman Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), who wrote this in 1830:
"In every age everybody knows that up to his own time, progressive improvement has been taking place; nobody seems to reckon on any improvement in the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who say society has reached a turning point—that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason.… On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?"

“Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin,” as the American economist Allan H. Meltzer (1928–2017) once put it. “It doesn’t work.”

F. A. Hayek suggests that markets perform a “catallactic” function. He wrote, “The term ‘catallactics’ is derived from the Greek verb katallattein (or katallassein), which meant, significantly, not only ‘to exchange’ but also ‘to admit into the community’ and ‘to change from enemy into friend’ [emphasis added].”

George Gilder, “the key role of entrepreneurs, like the most crucial role of scientists, is not to fill in the gaps in an existing market or theory, but to generate entirely new markets or theories. They stand before a canvas as empty as any painter’s; a page as blank as any poet’s.”

Instead of measuring income inequality, we should measure time inequality.

[Simeon Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The general thesis of this book is absolutely spot on - we are way richer, healthier and live longer safer lives than anyone in the past. The economic paradgim used is also spot on - measure how long it takes you in hours to "earn" a purchase, and the bottom line is everything is way cheaper and more accessible.
The book is also correct that environmentalism and death is a new secular religion.
The reason for my low review is that the book also contains a major incorrect thought process that pops up a number of times in different ways throughout teh chapters, that somehow Christianity as a religion is the party of guilt of planting these negative seeds. Christian thought is very wide and, as an example, eschatology (end times theology) is not seen as negaltive nor the world as being in terminal demise. These broad and indescriminate brushstrkes diminsh what is otherwise a very good text.

[João Cortez · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read in years and a great antidote against the permanent doom and gloom portrayed in the media about the state of the world and the future of mankind. Supported by data and facts, the authors present a very compelling case on why population growth makes resources more abundant, and they give us great reasons to be optimistic about the future.

[Garrick Andres · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Superabundance" offers an intriguing exploration of global economic and population trends, though it occasionally falters with an overabundance of examples in its initial explanations, particularly regarding religion and overpopulation.

One of the standout sections is the chapter on China and India's birth control policies. The unique insights presented suggest that, had these programs not been implemented, the world might be significantly wealthier today. This perspective is both thought-provoking and eye-opening.

The discussion of the Ehrlich vs. Simon debate is another highlight, offering a compelling analysis of their contrasting views on population growth and resource availability.

The book's methodology is innovative and thorough. However, a simpler approach using more universally understood metrics, such as minutes or hours of work, might have been more effective. The invented benchmarks, while accurate, require a deep dive into the methodology to fully grasp.

Initially, I considered rating the book three stars. However, Part 3 of the book is so exceptional that it elevates the entire work to a four-star rating. This section provides a comprehensive historical analysis of Western development, examining how innovation and population growth have shaped the West. It also addresses the threats to these achievements from various ideologies, including Marxism, Nazism, and radical environmentalism. The depth of examples and thorough explanations make it an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the West and global capitalism.

[mark propp · Rating 2 out of 5]

i am 100% on board with the message our authors are delivering. yes, please, more free, open trade and unregulated markets. these are the only paths to increasing wealth for everyone. that's obvious.

and the sections where they lay out how purchasing power has increased for all people at all economic levels are incredibly well done. i've read a fair number of the articles posted at human progress, so i was familiar with a lot of the numbers, but it was still nice to have them all laid out so efficiently. great stuff.

but hfs. the second half of this book was a dirge. and far far far too long. there was absolutely no need for this book to be so terribly long.

and a lot of it covers things that i've certainly heard before, and frankly it doesn't say it in a terribly engaging way. if you've read pinker & norberg & sowell & friedman & ridley, then you have heard this case made and you've heard it made by much more interesting, engaging writers.

i applaud the message, but i really wish they had worked on making the book leaner, less dense, and frankly less dull. this was a dull read. should have left me inspired. made me bored instead.

[Paul Sand · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hefty tome, weighing in at 580 pages. But many of those pages are tables with row after row of data, and I hope you'll forgive me for skipping over those. Obtained by the Interlibrary Loan service at the University Near Here, from Wesleyan.

You may remember the 1980 Simon–Ehrlich wager, where techno-optimist Julian Simon bet eco-doomster Paul Ehrlich that the prices of five minerals (copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten) would go down in real terms over the next decade. Simon won that bet. This book's authors (Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley) deem Simon their hero, and this book is their effort to expand and generalize his sunny optimism.

Their approach is to calculate the "time price" (TP) of various commodities and services; how long it would take a typical worker to earn enough money to buy them. And to see how those TPs have changed over time. Spoiler: nearly without exception, the TPs have declined over the periods they examine. I.e., the items have become more "abundant". And, in many cases, the growth in abundance has outstripped the growth in population; the authors term this "superabundance".

Reader, did your school teachers chide you to "show your work" in your math classes? And to "cite your sources" in other classes? Tupy and Pooley do so, in mind-numbing detail. Again, a lot of pages skimmed over. I trust them.

Other than those core calculations, the book is an examination of the history and causes of economic prosperity. It is a rebuke to the gloomy followers of Malthus, like Ehrlich. (And also, amusingly, Thanos, the mass Malthusian murderer from the Marvel movies.) Here, they mainly follow the arguments of folks I like too: Deirdre McCloskey, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Michael Shellenberger, and the like.

No surprise, I think the authors are largely correct in their cheerleading for technological optimism and free-market capitalism. And also that the main dangers to continued prosperity are the too-popular advocates for (various flavors of) socialism, economic degrowth, technophobia, and (generally) predictors of doom, unless we stop our sinful ways.

One small nit to pick: the phrase "infinitely bountiful planet" up there in the book's subtitle. I'm more of a fan of (Herbert) Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." (Example: Moore's Law: even its originator admitted that would eventually bump into fundamental limits.)

Also, the authors make a decent argument that innovation is driven in areas with large populations. (You want a country where Jobs has a better chance of meeting Woz, for example.) But large doesn't necessarily imply growing indefinitely; I think the authors tend to blur that distinction.

[Mr Brad McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should probably give this 4 stars. As this is probably more scholarly than I was led to believe. So a lot of repetition of numbers. A lot of charts.
But the analysis around all this is fantastic. Understanding the philosophical underpinnings of the anti growth movement is so helpful.

Would highly recommend this book.

[Ebookwormy1]

This is the reference that landed the book on my #ToRead
https://www.cato.org/events/superabun...

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Just a superb study on the relationship between population and abundance of resources.

Firstly, 5 ⭐️ for the blissful aroma of the spine of the hardback book. Book sniffers rejoice.

Next, I really want to give this book an overall 5 star rating, but I have one reservation. My internal rating system reserves 5 stars for books I think every human should/could benefit from reading, but as much as I want every person to read this book, I simply don’t think it is accessible to all people. That’s fine. The authors didn’t intend this for a general audience. The extensive math and theoretical economics (the authors do suggest a chapter to skip if you aren't interested in the math behind their data), the high vocabulary (I learned some new words), and some dry stretches mean that you’ve really got to be serious about wanting to read this book. I set it aside for 6 months in the middle before picking it up again, though I read it like a page-turner while actively engaged. So for that reason, I rate this book overall 4⭐️ with a hope that a good summative interview or documentary will be produced that everyone can engage with.

This book is equal parts economics via statistics, philosophy, and history. Through extensive study, the authors attempt to discover whether overpopulation will spell catastrophe for human kind and civilization or whether the blossoming population lends to greater innovation and abundance of resources. Addressing the Ehrlich-Simon debate over scarcity of resources, the authors standardize the unit measure of abundance. Rather than fight inflation adjustment calculations, sometimes over the course of centuries as data allows, the authors measure the cost of products in the one currency that never changes…the number of hours in our day. They compare how many hours unskilled/skilled/upskilled laborers must work to buy any number of products across decades and centuries of data. An unskilled worker in 1919 had to work 2.69 hours to buy a pound of butter, while an unskilled worker in 2019 worked only 0.22 hours for a pound of butter, despite the price on the tag increasing 352%. Regardless of inflation and wage increases, the laborer is wealthier (in terms of butter and hundreds of other products) and finds his ability to access resources more abundant.

Beyond just the benefits of consumers’ resource abundance, the question remains whether the finite resources of the world can support exponential population growth. Using the personal resource abundance data, the authors assess whether the the consumers gain or lose abundance as the population expands. If/when the abundance of resources grows at a faster rate than population growth, the world experiences Superabundance of resources.

In addition to the the abundance of resources and the improvement to the lives of all humans, but most notably the poorest, they explore the effects innovation and population have had on extreme poverty, life expectancy, nutrition, sanitation, child labor, work safety, education, democracy, environmental quality, mortality, healthcare, and violence.

The authors then examine human nature, the changes of ideas and ideals of civilization in the Age of Innovation, and what factors might put the world of Superabundance at risk. Ultimately, they conclude that the two most crucial factors to continued superabundance are: people (the minds to innovate and the market to test the value) and freedom (protection for voicing ideas and engaging in the market with creative innovations).

In addition to the delicious smell of this book, the editing is superb, the graphs and charts are clear and colorful, and the back is full of Appendices of more data, notes, and sources.

[Taylor Ahlstrom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay. I don't want you to think I'm giving this book two stars solely because the premise of an "infinitely bountiful planet" where "more people create more resources" is obviously absurd. I'm only taking off one star for how stupid it is. The other two stars I'm taking off for how painful it was to read.

But let's start with the absurdity of the premise: While Tupy and Poole are busy arguing that everything is more abundant because everything is infinitely cheaper than it was in 1850 or 1950, they completely neglect to mention the reasons why everything has gotten so much cheaper over the past 100 years: specialization and human innovation and division of labor, sure. But mainly, a globalized society that has externalized all human labor costs to machines powered by oil where the price of oil is a rounding error. Of course we can farm 100x faster and make steel 100x faster and everything else will be cheaper. Because we have outsourced every single job to a machine that it's been possible to do. And if we couldn't outsource it to a machine, globalization means we can outsource it to slave labor in a "developing" economy. The price of something does not tell you how much there is of it. Nor do humans "create" more resources like lithium and cobalt and oil in the ground. We can get better at extracting them, and extract them at a lower cost, but it never increases their abundance. If anything, this entire argument just shows how flawed our economic systems are because they think our markets are perfectly efficient at pricing goods. They are not.

But besides this tiresome argument repeated again and again, the book was needlessly long, and presented no new information from the introduction until possibly the final section. For every single "time price" presented, they broke down the data, and then showed you a table, and then compared the information for washing machines or air conditioners or refrigerators or housing or air travel or whatever the thing was. Then they repeated the number for the blue collar wages and the white collar wages. A thousand times. It was like getting beat over the head with a spreadsheet. Not to mention every chapter closing with a chapter summary to remind you what they just beat you over the head with. I don't see how I could have possibly missed the point along the way. I feel like this entire book could have been a single article. Did it start from an article? Because that would make a lot of sense. It felt almost as if the reams and reams of data were the authors desperately screaming from the rooftop: "See! We're not wrong! Capitalism is GOOD! SEEE????" No one--not a single environmentalist--is arguing that things haven't gotten cheaper. It's not the flex you think it is.

I didn't take away all the stars because time prices are still an interesting way to look at a lot of things, and the research they did has merit. The conclusion as well had some interesting insight into human society and progress (nothing groundbreaking, but I always love reading someone's take on how we got to where we are), and I'm always interested to hear views counter to my own. But at the end of the day, for every single new thing I learned reading this book, I rolled my eyes at least two dozen times at something pointless, repetitive, or utterly inane.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully positive outlook on the current state of the world. The authors perform an in-depth analysis of individual and global civilizations over the past 250 years. Their findings prove out that population growth, when combined with political and economic freedom, leads to greater human flourishing which is in stark contrast to much of the "scientific" take since the 1960's. This book is very much worth reading especially for the analytically minded that believe we are all better off than our predecessors in health, wealth, and freedom.

[Floris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to read this book because it fits an opposing worldview to the previous few books I read about humanities history and future. I greatly enjoyed the empirical approach with lots of calculations about personal resource abundance and time prices. Reminded me of Factfulness but with tables instead of graphs. Then again, all these numbers say is we've got it better than our ancestors because of economic growth, which we knew. Even with these numbers it's a very one-sided view with a clear political agenda to push, including some weak grounded attacks on environmentalism and inclusion that don't track with their claims to strive for freedom and wellbeing. And, in Nate Hagens words: energy blind.

In a sense it fits well with both Catton's Overshoot and Tainter' The Collapse of Complex Societies: find new energy subsidies or perish. But where they focus on the question what happens when growth can't continue anymore, this book just says: yay growth!

I hope we can create some kind of continuation of innovative improvement of human prosperity and freedom without the continuing growth that overshoots planetary boundaries. Not the extreme degrowth of Jason Hickel, nor the extreme growth of Tupy and Pooley. I'm glad both views have a voice. As Vetinari said: Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free people pull in all kinds of directions. It's the only way to make progress.

[Asher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good and thorough counterargument to the fearmongering about Earth's "limited resources". While the content is informative, it's very dense.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because I read non-fiction in many fields and have for 50 years- this book does not surprise me as much as it has others. Because much of what we have been taught for many decades about population density, growth, and other aspects of homo sapiens ventures vs nature- has been majorly wrong.

Abundance happens and facts are facts. They are not theories.

This is truly a tome and it will take you some time to navigate. It took me a month working on it nearly daily. And there are 100 pages of reference sources etc. alone. But even from my youth, I tested teachers and professors and business leaders all with the same types of evidence. And how "progress" and much else is truly measured in the opposite way that is the MOST valid. The opposite and wrong way to "measure" success or progress or human life in any era- in great majority the "answer" equates for all aspects of the NEGATIVE outcomes. Either anticipated, realized or recognized. And real data of human states of abundance never measured adequately and virtually/ literally.

Read this and understand just a little about human work/ production and the results, both short and longer term.

Nothing is more sure than a portion of humanity and ones with the MOST abundance will deny and decry any aspect for this view. Education and politico have propagandized the most arrogant hubris for millennia to support their own powers and controls. Just exactly like their private aircraft outputs are OK because they are "special". Ridiculous in logic, but way beyond that the facts plus history do not support conclusions of such negativity and voids in which these elites measure "change".

(As a specific section- the Chinese and India related specific reports of forced abortion and sterilizations over varied time periods will be enlightening for reading the REAL outcomes.) This is a book to buy and read over a period of a longer time than most non-fiction published presently. Numerous philosophers, scientists, leaders of human history have major inputs. This is wide analysis with a scientific approach to many disciplines. The last sections on how entire invalid "science" coupled with emotive effusion has become the new religion in our present day should be read by all who can read.

It will be hard going to digest this without have sufficient knowledge of human record for philosophy, economics, patterns of power or religious core- and dozens of other inputs from homo sapiens innovative paths. The more you know of human past states and progressions, the better you will understand this discourse.

[Drtaxsacto · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last chapter of my book (Of Course Its True Except for a Couple of Lies (https://www.amazon.com/Course-True-Ex...) starts with a conclusion - "If you wonder whether the glass is half full or half empty, you are asking the wrong question - it is refillable." In some ways I wish this book had been in my hands when I was writing the book.

Superabundance really has three parts - The first is a formal exposition of a rethinking of some of the basic premises of economics - we should not start the discussions about the field with supply and demand curves - scarcity because the valuation mechanism for any thing at any time is the time required to acquire the thing. All prices are normalized between the current nominal cost and the hours it takes to get the product. The point of this re-evaluation is to get to focus on time as the allocation mechanism. the method allows real comparisons between two products at different places in time. It ultimately values knowledge and ingenuity in human systems.

The second part is an interesting exposition of the fundamental errors of Malthusian thinking. Soon after Thomas Malthus finished the second treatise (which argued that our ability to procreate beats our ability to innovate) Thomas Carlyle described the field of economics as the dismal science. In a very short time after Malthus penned his essay he was proven wrong as crop yields began to grow rapidly. But even with that record every generation get the benefit of at least on Malthusian thinker. In the latter part of the 20th Century we seemed to have an overabundance of Malthusians including a Stanford professor who argued that by the end of the century mass starvation would be rampant. The discussions here give anyone who is an Apocaskeptic as I am plenty of ammo to shoot down this nonsense.

The third part of the book presents data from which the authors derived their estimates. It is a wonderful set of data sets on commodity prices over various periods and wage rates.

I first found out about the book in George Gilder's The End of Capitalism. I am glad I did.

[Momen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book argues that population growth fuels human innovation, leading to greater resource abundance and overall prosperity. While this perspective has historical examples of technological advancements increasing resource efficiency, it faces significant biases and overlooks many issues.

A major point of contention is the book's optimistic view of infinite resource availability. The Earth's biophysical limits impose constraints on perpetual growth. Human activity has driven biodiversity loss, with species extinction rates far exceeding natural levels. This decline in biodiversity undermines ecosystem services—such as pollination, water purification, and climate regulation—that are vital for human survival.

Additionally, technological advancements cannot fully compensate for the degradation of natural ecosystems. While innovation has enhanced efficiency in resource extraction and usage, it often overlooks long-term ecological consequences. For example, agricultural innovations that increase crop yields may simultaneously deplete soil quality and reduce genetic diversity in plant species, threatening food security over time.

Another point concerns the assumption that economic growth inherently improves human well-being. While short-term increases in wealth and consumption may occur, they can mask long-term environmental degradation. The collapse of fisheries due to overexploitation, deforestation-driven soil erosion, and freshwater depletion illustrate how unchecked resource use can lead to critical ecological thresholds being crossed.

While Superabundance presents a compelling narrative of human potential, I would stress the importance of ecological limits, biodiversity preservation, and the long-term consequences of resource depletion.

This book will make any human feel great while reading it—that things are okay! However, the reality and scientific evidence of issues raised by overpopulation exist. The sixth mass extinction is happening right now, whether we like it or not. You can turn a blind eye to feel good, but that doesn't change it.

[Brad Bevers · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite book genres is 'optimism.' With so much negative coverage in the news, in politics, and basically everywhere else, I always find it worthwhile and refreshing to look at any good news. This book's main argument is that the world has become surprisingly, unbelievably better in the past 200 years. At the same time, the world's population has grown from about 1 billion people to almost 8 billion. Almost no one was expecting or predicting the unprecedented changes we have seen for the better over that time period. The author's argue this explosive economic growth has happened not in spite of the population boom, but because of it.

One really helpful tool that the authors focus on throughout this book is the concept of 'time price.' Instead of looking at the actual price of things across time, they figure out the number of working hours it took to buy an item on average vs. the number of hours it takes now to buy the same item. This method has the advantage of getting rid of any inflation and making it much easier to look at a wider scope when evaluating change. One great example towards the end of the book they use to demonstrate this is the cost of a 42" flatscreen television between 1997 and 2019. The cost in 1997 was $15,000 and in 2019 was only $148. Great, but the time price change was even more dramatic, from 828 hours of work to afford a television to 4.6 hours.

This was written for the public, but its full of formulas and charts that were borderline too much information for me. It's the type of book that you can flip through and learn something really useful, and also sit down and read through cover to cover. Loved this one, highly recommended.

[Hayden DeBoer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly an excellent written book that is well researched in terms of economic data!
First of all I loved all the Thanos references as a big Marvel fan. Learning more about Malthusian economics and its implications in today’s discourse was one of the most important take aways for me. I always felt like every generation before us, Even our parents and grandparents, were poorer. It was hard to understand and convey this feeling before this book. It’s true! They had less stuff! I know everyone in our generation talks about how expensive everything is… (and maybe 2022 really did a number on that) but the general trend of better cheaper stuff is real and should be appreciated by everyone young and alive to enjoy it!

That said, this book certainly shows its bias against the environmentalist and while I sympathize with the idea that many people in the eco political space today use less reason than before… I really wish this book did a better job addressing the “plight of the commons” problem for issues like climate change. As this book comes from libertarian sources that is often a blind spot that should be instead faced head on. Especially when there are market driven but collective actions that can be considered.

Overall enjoyable to read and lots of good research, of course biases are there but that’s why you just read more!

[sam tannehill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book presents some assertions up-front that may seem counter-intuitive. However, the datasets and the math are easy to understand and follow to their conclusions.

This book is about the abundance, even superabundance of resources, despite concerns that increasing population growth is feared to result in famine and want. To the contrary, the data show that the more populace the earth, the more abundant are resources.

One hinge point is the industrial revolution, that capitalized on innovation and problem solving, but also occurred at a time in which the population size naturally contributed to reverberating effects.

Other interesting comparisons and data discussed through the book are the harm that population control policies in countries, the increases in resources that free markets have generated compared to planned economies, and the attitudes of environmentalist movements (distinguished from moderate and natural concerns for the environment).

The logic is clearly presented, any caveats are explained, the equations make sense, and there are charts! Some are even in color! The data sets are included in the chapters and in the annexes.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long been amazed at how much richer we are today than we were in the nineteenth century; these guys put numbers to that observation.

In the 1970s I ran across an article listing quotes from "informed scientists" claiming that "we're gonna run out of oil in the next ten years" every decade going back to 1910. Before that, I later realized, it was people doing the math on how horse excrement was going to end up burying big cities. Cars and other motorized vehicles resolved the horse problem, and technological advances and the more efficient use of resources keep resolving the lack of fossil fuels problem -- plus a lot of those doomsayers don't seem to understand that no one is looking for oil or coming up with better ways of getting at it when it's plentiful, so we will likely never have more than a decade's supply known.

Doomsayers have always been with us, and most of them are long on panic and woefully short on evidence. Tupy and Pooley look at the evidence. I found Julian Simon's books more readable, but I'm working on a novel set in 1861 and found some of what this book has to say about the nineteenth century quite interesting.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked up this book, I thought that it was going to be a futuristic book about how the GRIN technologies were going to create abundance. Instead, the book is an historical view of making the argument that we are much better off than at any time in the past based on how long the average person needs to work to acquire goods. While the conclusions may still be valid I find several issues with the assumptions

1. Housing is not included in their list of commodities. There is one paragraph in the book where they claim that the price per square foot of housing has decreased. At least in the north east this does not seem to be true
2. They don’t address daycare at all , again in the northeast it usually requires 2 salaries to afford a house
3. While the studies go back before 1900, they don’t address the fact that today a portion of one’s earnings is not available for consumption due to income tax, ss, Medicare
4. They don’t address the cost of education which is definitely getting more expensive
5. They don’t address new “must haves”. Such as mobile phone, internet, next new gizmo

[Jeff Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. At times it was slow due to the abundance of statistics and numbers. The numbers were helpful in supporting the case made by the authors, but it did make it hard to get through portions of the book.

The main premise of this book is that availability of resouces has become more abundant as the population has increased. This is largely due to invention and innovation. More people result in more ideas and a better assortment and judgment of which ideas are good. This is supported by the idea of looking at resources in terms of time prices. Instead of just looking at the price of an item or the wage an earner makes, it is better to evaluate how much time a person has to work in order to buy something. This is quite enlightening and shows that many items are becoming much, much more inexpensive in terms of time prices. In other words, the price of a television may be a lot higher now than it was 40 years ago, but a person has to work fewer hours in order to be able to buy the television.

The book supports a very interesting thesis that I think is needed to combat some of the doom and gloom messages present in social media today.