In Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care, economist Arnold Kling argues that the way we finance health care matches neither the needs of patients nor the way medicine is practiced. The availability of "premium medicine," combined with patients who are insulated from costs, means Americans are not getting maximum value per dollar spent. Using basic economic concepts, Kling demonstrates that a greater reliance on private saving and market innovation would eliminate waste, contain health care costs and improve the quality of care. Kling proposes gradually shifting responsibility for health care for the elderly away from taxpayers and back to the individual.

Climate change, peak oil and economic instability aren't just future social problems -- they jeopardize our homes and families right now. Our once-abundant food supply is being threatened by toxic chemical agriculture, rising food prices and crop shortages brought on by climate change. Funding for education and health care is strained to the limit, and safe and affordable housing is disappearing. Depletion and Abundance explains how we are living beyond our means with or without a peak oil/climate change crisis and that, either way, we must learn to place our families and local communities at the center of our thinking once again. The author presents strategies to create stronger homes, better health and a richer family life and to live comfortably with an uncertain energy supply prepare children for a hotter, lower energy, less secure world survive and thrive in an economy in crisis, and maintain a kitchen garden to supply basic food needs. Most importantly, readers will discover that depletion can lead to abundance, and the anxiety of these uncertain times can be turned into a gift of hope and action. An unusual family perspective on the topic, this book will appeal to all those interested in securing a future for their children and grandchildren.

From cities to biofuels, competition for water is accelerating. Climate change threatens to intensify the onset and severity of the water crisis in several regions of the developing world: this is already happening throughout much of Asia, the Mediterranean, southwestern Australia, and the southwestern US. Along with water shortages, unsafe water becomes an increasingly widespread problem, too. As water crises trigger food and health crises, billions may slip further into poverty, leading to greater social and political unrest, new wars, and worsening national security. Out of Water doesn't just illuminate the coming global water crisis: it presents innovative solutions in agriculture, engineering, governance, and beyond, including state-of-the art techniques for integrated water management. This book will help raise the level of debate about water to the highest levels of government, and identify workable reforms and incentives to help water users utilize this crucial resource far more efficiently.

Baby boomers enjoyed the most benign period in human history: fifty years of relative peace, cheap energy, plentiful grain supply, and a warming climate due to the highest solar activity for 8,000 years. The party is over—prepare for the twilight of abundance.

Generations of people have been taught that population growth makes resources scarcer. In 2021, for example, one widely publicized report argued that “The world's rapidly growing population is consuming the planet's natural resources at an alarming rate . . . the world currently needs 1.6 Earths to satisfy the demand for natural resources ... [a figure that] could rise to 2 planets by 2030.” But is that true? After analyzing the prices of hundreds of commodities, goods, and services spanning two centuries, Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley found that resources became more abundant as the population grew. That was especially true when they looked at “time prices,” which represent the length of time that people must work to buy something. To their surprise, the authors also found that resource abundance increased faster than the population―a relationship that they call superabundance. On average, every additional human being created more value than he or she consumed. This relationship between population growth and abundance is deeply counterintuitive, yet it is true. Why? More people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test those inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living. But large populations are not enough to sustain superabundance―just think of the poverty in China and India before their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they must be free.

The authors document how four forces--exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion--are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. "Abundance" establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

With advances in information technology people are being empowered to connect, collaborate, create wealth and self-order without bureaucracy or representative government. Infinite Wealth shows how the frantic change within organizations is part of a process of creating a new type of wealth creation enterprise enabled through the Internet. Infinite Wealth illuminates our environment, allowing us to clearly see the big picture and how the individual pieces of today's activity fit into a coherent new worldview, thus making sense of today's chaos. This revolutionary synthesis empowers you to understand what is occurring and to make effective personal choices regarding your work and life.