Posted On: Wednesday - March 18th 2026 7:03PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Pundits Media Stupidity The Future Race/Genetics
… actually, now dead, and no longer on the late Johnny Carson’s show.
Talk about bombs, pundit Steve Sailer just threw a BIG bomb out to his substack readers in the form of the video clip below. Not exactly being one of his substack readers*, I cannot tell you whether, in that post Paul R. Ehrlich, RIP , Mr. Sailer or his commenters discuss what you’ll surely want to view below.
The pundit got into asteroids and Science Fiction, so, I dunno what was gonna be next…. Regarding the byline of sub-headline that Mr. Sailer includes in all his posts there, The "Population Bomb" guy notoriously lost a bet to Julian Simon. But Simon refused Ehrlich's smarter second bet., I couldn’t even read about said 2nd bet. Along with a humorous comment on Robert Heinlein books, “ In Heinlein books, the main character teens have an IQ around 150.” (ha, same with Lionel Shriver novels), he ended his excerpt of Farmer in the Sky** with:
When Paul did answer it was just one word, one monosyllable, spoken so softly that it would not have been heard if there had not been dead silence. What he said was:PAY WALL. Marketing genius, I tell ya’! … ‘cept, it doesn’t work with me.
Peak Stupidity has lots of ex- or current- Steve Sailer readers reading here, based on the commenters, at least. So then, I’m sitting here telling all of you this - the 1st 3 minutes of this is as anti-iSteve as it ever gets. It’s almost as if this Paul Ehrlich, from Stanford, no less, was trolling future Steve Sailers from 49 years ago on the Johnny Carson show. He’s a one-man iSteve content creator from when iSteve was still either just graduating High School or in a studio across the hall losing on Jeopardy. (It was the buzzer, man! I was robbed! It was rigged! – there’s a ‘70s term for ya’!)
Now, lest the astute reader think that I have made yet another typo (of sorts), there in our title today, nope, it was meant to say “Population Theory Bomb” rather than “Population Bomb Theory”. The Population Bomb was the title of one of Ehrlich’s books. Interestingly, one could write a book about exactly the opposite using the same title.
The famous bet that Mr. Sailer refers to was between this Professor Ehrlich and Julian Simon, the latter an Economics Professor at the U.’s of Illinois and Maryland. Wiki labels it a wager, much more fitting for 2 esteemed Professors, and the main point was that Paul Ehrlich figured population increases were going to doom the world very soon. (Keep in mind, the Climate Calamity had yet to be popularized or wagered on.) Julian Simon did not think so.
Rather than bet on some hard to pin down values of something - deaths by starvation in various places? - they
Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.Julian Simon died in 1988, so he never collected his money… which, were I involved in this thing, would have been in gold and silver, not copper, chromium, nickel, tin, or tungsten. That’s just me, and I would probably would have been sorry… for another 15 years.
Here goes.
Nope, Paul Ehrlich’s theory bombed out way, way, before he R.I.P.ed last week. The bet on commodities was made because the argument was about near future scarcities of everything. That’s not… really… the problem though. Will we be happy living in a world of plentiful Bread & Circuses in a society that is a Tower of Babel? Neither Paul Ehrlich or Julian Simon could see what was coming regarding the Population Replacement Program in 1980, though you’d think they should have been smart enough to. (Even Peter Brimelow didn’t get concerned enough to write about mass immigration until over a decade later.)
If you’ve now viewed this, you’ll see that Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich was not just so very wrong about future demographics as seen from mid-1977, but he was wrong for something like 2 minutes straight on EVERYTHING! I suppose Johnny Carson’s job was to be nice and not get in serious arguments, but it sure sounded like he was drinking the same Kool-Aid.*** (Wait, that Kool-Aid meme was invented next year.) It’s too bad Paul Ehrlich didn’t make a wager with the teenage Steve Sailer on race relations, IQ differences, school integration, “The gap”, “Conquistador Americans”, etc. The guy who lost on Jeopardy would have thrashed the Stanford Professor. Then, being who he is, Paul Ehrlich would never have paid Steve Sailer, as I doubt he ever admitted he was wrong on the Johnny Carson Show on June 7th of 1977 about everything, right through last Friday.
After putting up this video of a guy spouting everything that is the complete, most stupidly opposite of what Mr. Sailer has tried to explain to America, he still gets an R.I.P. You’re too nice, Steve Sailer. Seriously. I’d have rather read about some Rock & Roll drummer dying due to asphyxiation by his own vomit… yes, at 78 years old… even cooler!! … or, more likely, he tried to smash his guitar and gave himself a fatal hernia.
PS: This kind of writing is why I enjoy Steve Sailer’s posts from on this side of The Wall:
Paul R. Ehrlich, who died at 93 with two great-grandchildren, one-fourth of the number necessary for Zero Population Grown (an organization he helped found in 1968), was a Stanford entomologist who became famous for his 1968 book The Population Bomb about how billions would starve to death real soon now.
* Again, I’ll note that this is neither about Mr. Sailer nor the $10/month. I don’t want to get hooked into yet another commenting venue. Life is short.
** Speaking of bets, I bet I read this one long ago. I also would bet that I wouldn’t remember 10% if I read it again.
*** Oh, and he actually said “Oriental”, GASP!, at 4:20 into the video.
Comments:
The Alarmist
Thursday - March 19th 2026 6:46AM MST
PS
Mr. Erhlich died just short of seeing how more than a half of the world population will fare going into planting season with limited stocks of fertilizer in the supply chain and half of the world’s supply of Urea now cut off.
Camp of the Saints on steroids, anyone?
🕉
Mr. Erhlich died just short of seeing how more than a half of the world population will fare going into planting season with limited stocks of fertilizer in the supply chain and half of the world’s supply of Urea now cut off.
Camp of the Saints on steroids, anyone?
🕉
I’ve been something of a prepper for a long time now, but I never have felt actually ready for what might be coming sooner rather than later.