Yet another weird SF fan
 I'm a mathematician, a libertarian, and a science-fiction fan. Common sense? What's that?Go to first entry

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 Yet another weird SF fan

### Advice for Bill Gates

If you must read stuff from leftists, I recommend The Nature of Mass Poverty by John Kenneth Galbraith. In particular, you'll find out that the initial stages of an economic takeoff tend to increase the prosperity of people who are already above average in their societies before improving the lot of the rest. Increasing inequality is not always bad news.

Addendum: It looks like Bill Gates has not taken leave of his senses:

A core belief of Mr. Gates is that technology can erase problems that seem intractable. That belief was deepened, Mr. Gates says, by his study of Julian Simon, a now-deceased business professor who argued that increases in wealth and technology would offset shortages in energy, food and other global resources.

Pacing in his office last week, Mr. Gates retold the story of a famous $10,000 wager between Mr. Simon and Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University professor who predicted that human population growth would outstrip the earth's resources. Mr. Simon bet that even as a growing population increased demand for metals such as tin and copper, the price of those metals would fall within the decade ending in 1990. Mr. Simon won the bet. "He cremated the guy," says Mr. Gates. Mr. Ehrlich's administrator at Stanford University said he was out of the country and couldn't comment on the wager. Will the alliance with Warren Buffett soon end? #### 1 Comments: Anton Sherwood said... If I remember right, the wager was on the 1990 price of a basket of metals worth$1000 in 1980. Simon won about \$500 (in 1990 money).

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