Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 9 of Michael Shellenberger’s excellent 2020 book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (footnote deleted):

If resources determined a nation’s fate, then resource-scarce Japan would be poor and at war while the Congo would be rich and at peace.

DBx: By “resources,” Shellenberger here means those atomic and molecular combinations created by physical nature – things such as land, iron ore, and petroleum. But if we include, as we should, among “resources” human creativity and effort, then Japan is part of an economy that is far more resource rich than is the largely closed economy of the Congo. (Shellenberger would agree.)