Most people in the United States believe that our envi- ronment is getting dirtier, we are running out of natural resources, and population growth in the world is a burden and a threat. These beliefs, according to Simon, are entirely wrong. Why do the media report so much false bad news about the environment, resources, and population? And why do we believe it? Those are the questions distinguished scholar Julian L. Simon set out to answer in his book, Hoodwinking the Nation.The opening chapter of this, the final book by Simon, discusses facts about population growth, natural resources, and the environment, and presents survey evidence of the public's view of these topics. The discrepancy between the facts and the public beliefs sets up the puzzle that the remaining chapters attempt to explain. Simon explores how and why false bad news is produced, citing government reports as often being the basis for environmental news scams and doomsday analyses. He examines the intellectual bases of concepts that lead to scares about resource depletion and population growth, and why biologists, in particular, tend to become overly alarmed about mythical environmental scares. Simon follows with an explanation of how the false bad news is disseminated. He notes that journalists know little about statistics and science and thus gather data in ways that lead to inaccurate conclusions, and politicians may misuse statistics in the service of their own policy and political goals. Simon contends that psychological and cultural mechanisms make people receptive to bad rather than good news and that most people have a too positive view of the past and a too negative view of the future.

About the Author
Julian L. Simon was a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland. His many books include: The Ultimate Resource, The Economics of Population Growth, Population Matters, and A Life Against the Grain: The Autobiography of an Unconventional Economist, published by Transaction.

Reviews
"Julian Simon loved to make bets. Fifty years from now readers who peruse Earth in the Balance by Albert Gore and Hoodwinking the Nation by Julian Simon will giggle at one of them. Let's bet which." - Ben Wattenberg "Julian Simon had a brilliant insight into the economics of doomsaying...the business of environmentalism has fouled the marketplace of ideas to the point where truth is an endangered species." - P. J. O'Rourke"



Book Information
ISBN 9781412805933
Author Julian Simon
Format Paperback
Page Count 154
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Inc
Weight(grams) 272g