If there was anyone you would expect to believe in humanity’s limitless potential, Elon Musk would seem to be the quintessential champion. Consider his trailblazing achievements: revolutionizing payments with PayPal, spearheading the electric vehicle revolution with Tesla, and single-handedly reviving American spacefaring with SpaceX. All of these accomplishments — and more — were initiated by one single person.
That’s why it was so perplexingly strange to read his January 6th tweet: “The US construction industry can increase available housing by 1% to 2% per year. But the US population is only 330M (million) out of 8B (billion.) So if just ~4% of Earth moves here, housing would need to double, which is impossible, causing a massive homeless problem and house prices to be astronomically unaffordable.”
The irony of course is very rich. If anyone should understand that turning scarcity into abundance is what humans do, one would think the guy who invented cars and trucks that run on zero fossil fuels would get it.
However, Elon Musk — an immigrant from South Africa himself — had not yet arrived in the United States in 1980, so we will give him a pass for having missed the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager that may have informed his thinking.
Here’s a quick recap:
Paul Ehrlich, a prominent biologist and environmentalist, wrote a book called “The Population Bomb” which warned the world was facing a fatally catastrophic resource crisis resulting from population growth. Ehrlich went as far as to claim (in a manner now similar to Musk) that the country of England would cease to exist by the Year 2000.
Ehrlich’s hypothesis was contested by economist and beloved humanitarian Julian Simon, who reasoned that human ingenuity and innovation would develop solutions around any resource constraints that ail us — even as the population grows.
To settle their differences, they proposed a bet where Ehrlich chose five metals (chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten) and predicted their prices would increase over the next decade due to population pressures. Simon countered that their prices would decrease due to technological advancements and market forces.
In 1990, Simon was declared the winner after prices for all 5 metals had fallen significantly over a decade.
Pivoting back to Musk and his extraordinary accomplishments, surely he understands that an economy’s strength is determined by the total production of a collection of individuals. The United States should want more workers — and having them would cause prices to fall.
One final thought. The New York Times recently reported that “More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined.”
Don’t Fear the Masses Mr. Musk, Immigration Is America’s Genius
January 16, 2024
If there was anyone you would expect to believe in humanity’s limitless potential, Elon Musk would seem to be the quintessential champion. Consider his trailblazing achievements: revolutionizing payments with PayPal, spearheading the electric vehicle revolution with Tesla, and single-handedly reviving American spacefaring with SpaceX. All of these accomplishments — and more — were initiated by one single person.
That’s why it was so perplexingly strange to read his January 6th tweet: “The US construction industry can increase available housing by 1% to 2% per year. But the US population is only 330M (million) out of 8B (billion.) So if just ~4% of Earth moves here, housing would need to double, which is impossible, causing a massive homeless problem and house prices to be astronomically unaffordable.”
The irony of course is very rich. If anyone should understand that turning scarcity into abundance is what humans do, one would think the guy who invented cars and trucks that run on zero fossil fuels would get it.
However, Elon Musk — an immigrant from South Africa himself — had not yet arrived in the United States in 1980, so we will give him a pass for having missed the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager that may have informed his thinking.
Here’s a quick recap:
Paul Ehrlich, a prominent biologist and environmentalist, wrote a book called “The Population Bomb” which warned the world was facing a fatally catastrophic resource crisis resulting from population growth. Ehrlich went as far as to claim (in a manner now similar to Musk) that the country of England would cease to exist by the Year 2000.
Ehrlich’s hypothesis was contested by economist and beloved humanitarian Julian Simon, who reasoned that human ingenuity and innovation would develop solutions around any resource constraints that ail us — even as the population grows.
To settle their differences, they proposed a bet where Ehrlich chose five metals (chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten) and predicted their prices would increase over the next decade due to population pressures. Simon countered that their prices would decrease due to technological advancements and market forces.
In 1990, Simon was declared the winner after prices for all 5 metals had fallen significantly over a decade.
Pivoting back to Musk and his extraordinary accomplishments, surely he understands that an economy’s strength is determined by the total production of a collection of individuals. The United States should want more workers — and having them would cause prices to fall.
One final thought. The New York Times recently reported that “More than 24,000 Chinese citizens have been apprehended crossing into the United States from Mexico in the past year. That is more than in the preceding 10 years combined.”
Putting aside the national debate on border security and America’s senseless guest worker program, one can take it to the bank that these Chinese arrivals will see their prosperity soar just as all Americans do. If the objective is to grow our economy, we will never have a problem of too many people working in the United States — but we do have a problem of too many people not working here.
And consider what the arrival of all these workers says about China. After the dystopian pandemic lockdowns, its citizens are now risking life and limb to live in the United States in unprecedented numbers. This amounts to a global “bat signal” showing off in full display our strength relative to China, despite the hyperbolic political rhetoric.
And how great it is that we still attract the best and brightest minds from all over the world. Even South Africa.
