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. analyzes the famous Simon-Ehrlich bet about resource scarcity:
“Overall, material values have fluctuated up and down but around a reasonably consistent level.
The time series are noisy, but the signal is that prices have not changed much over more than a century.
Studies stretching as far back as 1840 find that mineral prices — across many more than the five below — “have been basically trend-less” over the long term.
Crucially, this is despite the fact that the world produces much more of these materials.
The chart below shows the change in global production of each of the five materials since 1900.
Today, the world produces 40 times as much copper annually and 250 times as much nickel as it did in 1900.
The fact that we produce far more materials than we did in the past, yet prices have barely changed, suggests that contrary to Ehrlich’s prediction, we’re not close to running out of these materials any time soon.
That is what brings me closer to Simon’s worldview.”
