Hoodwinking the Nation
By Julian Simon
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Why do we believe bad news about our world when the facts show otherwise?
Price: $7.25
Publication Date: 1999
ISBN: 1-56000-434-7
Number of Pages: 140
Hardcover
Categories: Energy and Environment
This item is Temporarily Out of Stock.
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About the Book
Most people in the United States believe that our environment 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 last 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 barns for environmental news scares and doomsday analysis.
Simon 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.
The purpose of this book is not to preach but to examine. Most importantly, it aims to consider whether institutional structures can be changed in a way that would allow more sanctions against undesirable practices and unethical behavior. This volume will be valuable to political economists and sociologists, and the general reader concerned with environmental issues and their social impacts.
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About the Author
Julian Simon was an economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
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What Others Have Said
"For thirty years Julian Simon has proven himself to be the nation's premier slayer of myths. In Hoodwinking the Nation Simon has done it again."
--Stephen Moore, senior fellow, Cato Institute, and president, Club for Growth
"[Julian Simon] changed the way I look at my whole world, I've always been too much of an optimist for my looks, style and profession, but after reading Julian, I got way Pollyanna, and -- to the irritation of almost everyone I talked to -- Mr. Simon had taught me to back up my sunshine with facts. Why did it take a man with this much fighting spirit and goofy charisma to get me to realize what now seems obvious? Well, this book is about just that. It's Julian Simon looking for the answer to why I (and you, and just about everyone else) lived in this happy, healthy world, and still kept thinking it was trashed and getting worse. I'm glad we have this book. I wish we still had Julian."
--Penn Jillette, who bills himself as "the larger, louder half of rip-off artistes Penn & Teller"
"Julian Simon had a brilliant insight into the economics of doomsaying. The reason for this surplus of environmental is the political, psychological, and professional premium paid to the purveyors of folly. Journalists, activists, intellectuals, and would-be holders of political office profit by creating false alarms. No doubt all business causes some pollution, but the business of environmentalism has fouled the marketplace of ideas to the point where truth is an endangered species."
--P.J. O'Rourke, author of Eat the Rich
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