Ortdos JUN 22 1970

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
Boulder, Colorado 80302

 

 

INSTITUTE OF BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE
June 19, 1970

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford University
School of Medicine

300 Pasteur Drive

Palo Alto, California

Dear Dr. Lederberg,

Thank you for your letter and the enclosures, which I have read
with great interest.

Economists have really not done very much with the development of
a good concept of the Net National Product, which is what we really
need. Part of the problem is that it is very hard to assess the
relative impact of exhaustion of known resources and the development
of new knowledge about resources. On the whole, in the last two
hundred years we have probably developed known resources faster than
we could use them up, but obviously this process may not, indeed cannot
go on forever. Whether there are any real signs of slackening in it,
however, it is hard to tell. It is also, of course, very difficult to
assess the "cost" element in the GNP, like commuting, cleaning up
pollution, and disposing of "bads." :

I am enclosing a bibliography and I am sorry that I have exhausted
my supply of "The Menace of Methuselah."

Yours sincerely,

fist 3 1G whhy
_—
Kenneth E. Boulding

P.S. I have authored an article entitled "Fun and Games with the Gross
National Product--The Role of Misleading Indicators in Social Policy."
It appears in The Environmental Crisis, Harold W. Helfrich, Jr., ed.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970.

KB: vw
Encl.