Resources Are More Abundant Than Ever, and People Are the Reason: from Cato Unbound. Quoting Julian Simon: “There is no physical or economic reason why human resourcefulness and enterprise cannot forever continue to respond to impending shortages and existing problems with new expedients that, after an adjustment period, leave us better off than before the problem arose.… Adding more people will cause [short‐run] problems, but at the same time there will be more people to solve these problems and leave us with the bonus of lower costs and less scarcity in the long run.… The ultimate resource is people—skilled, spirited, and hopeful people who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and so, inevitably, for the benefit of us all.”
Ideas of India: The History of Textiles: Shruti Rajagopalan and Virginia Postrel discuss the development of textiles and their economic relevance in India and throughout the world. “The sari is interesting in several different ways because the other thing about a sari is, it’s a rectangle. And of course, a sari can be, as you say, very expensive. It can be made of silk. It can be brocaded, which requires very complex weaving patterns. If you go back in history, almost everybody wears clothes that are basically rectangles. Think about a sari. Think about a sarong, a toga, and the toga-like cloth in West Africa. Think about a kimono, which is basically some stitches, and even European peasant clothing is basically rectangles. You can make a skirt; you can make a shirt. It’s just rectangles.”
Reading: Murder at the Mushaira. A mystery set in 1857 Delhi with Ghalib as detective.
