The Coal Question

Simon’s work directly challenges Jevons’ predictions of rapid resource depletion and lower population growth. Simon states that human ingenuity alleviates the problem of scarcity through the development of substitutes and use of new resources.

Resources grow with improving knowledge, expanding capital, and capitalistic policies—including privatization of the subsoil—that encourage market entrepreneurship. Resource availability decreases with war, revolution, strife, nationalization, taxation, price controls, and restrictions on access.…

Tupy makes the case that humans live in a time of consistent resource growth, instead of scarcity, and explains how population growth contributes to prosperity.

Malthus’ work similarly touches on key themes in The Coal Question to make the claim that population growth will cause drastic resource depletion and economic disaster.

Where Jevons examines the macroeconomic problems of Britain’s reliance on coal, Young explores the sociological, environmental, and microeconomic condition of Appalachia during the decline of the coal industry.

The Myth of Resource Efficiency affirms the Jevons Paradox to make the claim that resource efficiency doesn’t solve the problem of scarcity, and seeks to apply this to natural resource usage policy.

Jevons didn’t predict the development of new resources, one of those being oil. However Weinar sees similar problems with oil such as the resource curse, non renewability, and immorality.