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to washington anytime anywhere. ♪ your own book tv were joined by professor gale pooley. co-author of this book. it's called pop it's about innovation growth and flourishing on infinitely bountiful planet. professor pulley what you mean when you talk about superabundant? >> first of all thank you for give me the opportunity to share what we have discovered in our research. the idea of superabundancee really occurred to us when we were looking at u this original- you remember back in the 1980s. paul hurley written the population. at the book that painted this you still be in future things

are going to collapse, england was not g going to exist they we going to start reading the comments picked up and read it initially thought sounds like it makes sense but maybe i should go back and look at the data unsealed the data says about resources. how abundant resources are. as economists we look at the price of resources. if something is running out we should look at it more extensive. but what julian simon found the price of these things was not going up. they were going down. so how could you have something becoming more scarce that was becoming cheaper? he begins to research other things are. he starts look at that nonrenewable metals like copper and he extended to lumber and all these other resources. what he observed as a population increase. the prices of these resources actually went down. so he publishes finding a create a huge contention between the

two. science magazine had published his article. so they have a disagreement it's very public why don't we just bet you pick five medals however many you want and i will bet you they're going to be cheaper in the future. so ehrlich and two of his friend picked five medals copper, nickel and they put $1000 on the table said okay let's bet for ten years and see what happens. well, ten years later the bet comes due and inflation adjusted prices of these five medals had fallen by 36%. it is during the same decade we had the highest growth of population on the planet. subpopulations during this but the prices are doing that. they writes a check to julian

and julian says but would like to bed again? let's keep doing this. so as economists we've always been interested in that. i felt this is on the most important checks it ever been written in economics. >> host: how is it population growth equals? >> it's counterintuitive you think well we have this pie this pizza and i keep inviting friends over the slices all get smaller will good around the pizza. and that thinking the idea of living in a world that we have limited resources is a fundamental flaw. we recognize we do live in a world with a finite number of atoms economics is not about atoms. economics is about knowledge. of value when we add knowledge to atoms. bet it's really work comes into the core issue. human beings are the source of

knowledge. and as they come they bring their knowledge and discover and create knowledge it makes these things much more abundant than most less expensive. that is theth basic idea that we score in the book. take oil we've talked about all the time. we thought we're going to run out of oil. >> if you go back you can further look at the history of oil. we first found it was a bubbly up on the ground you go to rspennsylvania that stuff is stinky and a liability. but through thinking about what could this be used for? we discovered if you heat up the oil in steam it when it condenses it turns into this other substances like kerosene. kerosene became a valuable asset that replaced while oil because the price of whale oil people wanted to buy whale oil. as we are hunting all these whales trying to get their oil.

to operate light lamps. so kerosene comes along as a substitute and much much cheaper to do that. suddenly this liability becomes an asset. it was always there but what wasn't there was the knowledge of how toat make the stuffff valuable. george gilder, my friend doxey wrote the introduction. >> yes he makes this really great observation. he says the tfe difference betwn our age in the stone ages entirely due to the growth in knowledge. we are not getting more atoms we are getting more. knowledge is the product of free human beings are able to explore and innovate. that is what allows us to escape poverty is knowledge. that's a function of human beings. if you really would have more stuff you've got to be in favor of more human beings. >> you teach economics at

baylor. >> byu. in hawaii. at brigham young. your co-authors who? >> marion is a senior editor editor at cato institute on human progress. >> host: one of the theories that you talk about what is it? >> example used throughout the book. >> first of all remember we buy things with money that we really pay for a time,e, right? we buy is something i've got to go earn the money to make them money and money and buy this thing. we buy things with money and we pay for them with time. can we measure things -- we couldn't measure things in dollars and cents. we can also measure things and hours and minutes. if pizza cost $20 and i am

earning $40 an hour pizza cost me 30 3 minutes. everything then gets converted from money to time. it really has four benefits time has four benefits over money. the first benefit is you do not have to worry about making adjustments for nominal dollars in real dollars. you can avoid the whole inflation issue. the cpi and all of these adjustments were made as a communist to adjust back to some real numbers. you can avoid all that confusios just go straight to time. the second advantage once you thdevelop the time you can lookt anything. through history but was a time price for a loaf of bread in paris inn 1850? what is the time price of a loaf of bread in new york today? you're going too post to time prices and measure the change in that time price.

convert money prices to time and look at the change in the time price over time. that is really what we think yield this true insights about resource abundance. if the time prices going down it means that resources got should become more and more abundant. and the reason the time prices going down is two things. when we have innovation we are going to see it show up both in a lower prices and higher incomes. when you have a new innovation and a business you are able to pay your employees more money. so the income actually increases. so time prices more fully captures innovation than just the money. and the other reason i got for here, the last reason is we relate it back to this fundamental measure of time.

on the seven measurements we use in science, six of them related time. if we can take economics and related back to time that we have a universal constant that isyb recognized for everybody bt we all get 24 hours a day. everyone on the planet gets a sense of what time is it. time prices are really the true prices versus normal and real. they capture what it really cost you to buy something. >> you weaved throughout the book as a farmer in india. >> that is a go to them. to 1960 you are a guy in india how much time do you have to spend to earn the money to buy your rights for the day? back then based on the price of rice and what income was it

would take about seven to eight hours. i work all day during the money to buy my rice. the 1960s the price of rice was falling. an income increased so now takes less than an hour. there's been 80 -- 90% drop in the time price of rice. so in india now has six or seven more hours a day they can devote to something else. .now, you can compare that to somebody in indiana. it only took them an hour to earn the money to buy their bushel of wheat. today it takes less than six minutes. of their time prices fallen by the same amount but who is actually better off? the guy in india who has six hours of the guide indiana but has another 50 t minutes? it really shows us the time prices are allowing this the

quality of life because people have more and more time to devote to other activities. quick to talk about the issue of innovation surprises in your book is in the innovation incremental or are there surprises?? >> we would divide there's an idea of continuous innovation occurs at three or four or 5% of your brain you also have punctuated equilibrium periods, pony express for examples going along suddenly have the telegraph, boom get a big gain in one day. went exist much time the next day it's like wow. there punctuated equilibrium swells have a continuous innovation that occurs parts of both of those are happening around us. the attention gets drawn to this

punctuated work while we get a big surprise of abundance once every 20 years. we have a continuous innovation that is happening. that occurs about a rate of three or four per year. if you grow three or 4% a year you double your abundance every 20 years. ouso the question would be do wt to grow three and half a year in dublin 20 years or would you like to wait 20 years and get a doubling in one day? if you waited 20 years you bring to the store everything was 50% off one day it's wow this is fantastic. but we are experiencing that every day just a little bit every day. we don't really notice that until we step back to what really happened in 1980? how much was i earning in 1980 an hour? over the price of things in 1980? it took me two hours to buy pizza 1980 today it takes me only 20 minutes.

and that is what time prices allow you to do. look at the change in time over time. that really revealed a whole new world we think how much really, really happening with our resources. we look at the basic commodities we started with that. lookic at 50 basic commodities. oil, energy, food, materials, minerals and metals. and then we expanded it pretty pulled out a sears catalognd in 1980 looks really prices of things and then we went to walmart.com today and looked at all the same prices is kind ofco the same things. a bicycle, a blender, a microwave, tv. it's astonishing how expensive things used to be when you look at what we have to spend today versus what you would spend even in 198040 years ago. okay i remember 40 years ago.

>> are sitting here in las vegas. lake means a levels are dropping. were talking about drought down hereal. population growth leads to more water usage. elation growth is more co2 per. >> population growth leads to more water. because as population grows what is the price of water doing? when the prices that goes up four things happens read first of all people use less of it. guess for example at $5.50 a gallon i am not going to be using as much gas so people use less of it. the second thing is on the supply side people start used looking for s substitutes. half of these guys are today or talk, energy. try and invest in new energy. they're looking to increase the supply. they're also looking for substitutes. we find things that are substitutes for this thing?

iit is not a good substitute fr water produce lots of water on the planet. the issues going to be can you figure out for example how to innovate these? you actually lowered the cost. we see that kind of innovation happening all over the planet with places like israel have gone in and figured out p water and less than 5 cents a gallon like a half a cents a gallon is phenomenally inexpensive today. so if we can trust human innovation to show up when prices go up then we can expect these resources to not become more scarce to become more abundant because now you're taking and applying knowledge. you are intelligent rising atoms. you are adding intelligence to adams the way they's organize those atoms.

for example draws up this analogy you buy a 2 million-dollar sports car drive off the a lot and also new crashes what's happened to the value of the car. but all the atoms are still there. organization ofat the atoms that added value, not the atoms. this guy here you've got like 6 ounces basically sand, silicone and aluminum but what makes it so valuable? the way we have been able to organize these things with the knowledge we are adding to this material physical world and that's what economics is really looking at. when you walk into the store to buy a loaf of bread how many

times you go up and count the number of lives on the shelf? have you ever counted the number of loaves on the shelf? what's more important the number of loaves on the shelf or the price? the price, right? that's economic thinking. the information contained in that price really tells you about what you should do. so if you think like an economist we make fun of accountants they like to account everything. how much oil do we have how much are we using? h were going to run out in five years. signals all the people in the market about changing behavior that would create this abundance. the focus would be on let's go out discover and create knowledge that will convert this scarcity into abundance. you go back to her issue of oil. we are experiencing oil thing right now.

is it due to the fundamental are we really running out offu oil? or something else affecting the price and a temporary nature? if you look at the price of oil and how much it takes you in terms of your time to earn the supplies to buy a gallon of gas is going like this. we have periodsen of up with an underlying trend is the time price continuing to get lower and lower and lower. which is really more and more abundant. a car for example today gets twice the mileage of a car in 1980. but suddenly it means the price of gas is found by 50%. we don't buy gas for the gas we buy it's what it provides to us through the knowledge and the innovation shows up over there in the efficiency when it comes

to the superabundance how does government or government entities promote the process? >> the first two issues, the first one is we have got to overcome this ideology we live in this world of scarcity. this idea of local going to run out of stuff. no, we are nottu going to run ot of stuff. then the second issue is the challenge, we are destroying the environment, right quick? or have this effect on the environment. with knowledge and innovation that are actually going to lead us out of these environmental challenges. we really see human beings ability to be able to adapt and accommodate to changing conditions.

i live in hawaii. it is a chain of semite dormant volcanoes. wake up and i've got a crosscut got air conditioning it's astonishing i can live there. human beings are supremely adaptable to conditions. conditions change that we seem to be able to adapt, innovate, take a liability converted into this asset. see what this online info going wato quote to you that kind of struck me. liberal societies appear to be growing less tolerant of eccentricity. [inaudible] quickly he would say is as we become more and more prosperous, what do we worry about? we tend to start worrying about smaller and smaller things. the more prosperity we enjoy

fewer things are big we really have to worry about. that intolerance of people wanting to try new things take more risks. you kind of lose that. you lose that edge. when you are whole in an air conditioning, what are you going toe do? the ideas of culture we need to be more open to experimenting. allowing people to experiment with new ways of doing things. more tolerant if you will of mistakes. let people have a go at it. see what they can come up with. let people have a measure of freedom. that is how we characterize china. china until 1980 is flat. suddenly they start to take off like this. i love that. >> you give people small measure

of freedom they suddenly blossom with all of this new innovation. in this new ability to create value. this fundamental argument that we make is superabundance the idea that your resources are growing at a faster rate than population. it is as if the more people you bring that not only bring their pizza but they bring pizza shares everyone else. every 13 to 4% increase in personal resource abundance. these people show up on the planet and suddenly i am free and 4% richer. that is what we have seen over the last 200 years. ask this introduction is written by george gilder who has a blurbs of support from jason of the obama administration. jordan peterson, steven tinker

get something right to get that diversity group of people to a grander book, correct? >> i was in marion. marion knows all of those guys. what they were able to see is a look, you have this y framework. looking at things with the time it pricing a set of money pricing reveals a completely different picture of what is happening. you go out in this data and we see a different world. it is like a telescope almost. once you have this instrument, this way of looking at things you see a completely different world. in the world we see when we loos at time prices says we are experiencing this superabundance where we do not see populations going to have a problem. we do not see an increase in population is going to make us run outs of resources that will become more abundant for we do not see the increasing populationla is going to cause

these other kinds of the story here was about elon musk versus. we have new he was this guy in 1798 who wrote this book and so the population is going to do this but your food is going to do this you're going to crash. that thinking is what we think ofee as a virus that has affectd our culture that we are going ts run out of stuff. and we have it today. bill maher talks about we've got too many people, we've got this pollution. aoc is a silicate have children? there has never been the time on our planet in the history of humanity were we have had more abundance to be able to have more children. it's really true. but let's go back the population

bomb ever publicly apologize for getting it wrong or did he cut the check? >> he cut the check i actually saw him the other day he said i was not extreme s enough. slick pulp there is still time to repent i guess for. >> absolutely final question this little selfish exerciser born in 1955 i was born in 1960. how is our economic world change in our life? >> well we have data that goes back to 1960 we can do a term line. i am 60 years old every 20 year my life hasye doubled on the average my life standard of living has doubled every 20ub years. so if i went from one to two, to four, to eight. i'm really eight times better thanea i was in 1955. think about your life, what did you have in 1960?

you've got at least eight times more today you really do. show my students assisted what you should pay for this question i paid $600. and i always ask them what would i have to pay you for you to never use this again? that is really how much you value it. i cannot find a student that will do it for less than 5 million. you've got a $5 million thing here you're going to walk around with? how rich are you? how abundant is your life? >> co-author of this book. superabundance. story of population growth, innovation. on an infinitely bountiful planets. thank you. oco middle and high school students, in the short time to

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