Talk:Simon–Ehrlich wager

Peter Thiel

I took out the quote from Peter Thiel discussing the years after the wager. It wasn't even presented as a quote, but stated in this article as a fact. I do not believe Peter Thiel by himself can be considered a reliable source for claims about economics in the 1990s. It isn't even his specific field of formal education, and I don't think he was even investing in the 90s. Regardless, I don't see how one could consider him saying something about the economy in the 90s as sufficient to state it as a fact in this article. BenjaminMan (talk) 03:43, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

old comments

I think Paul Ehrlich was also a member of the 'Club of Rome', which wrote "Limits to Growth", also a famously wrong set of predictions.

The current revision of the article is written as an apology for Ehrlich. It needs to be made more balanced.

Done.

I want to know whether he would have won the bet which looked outside the normal boundaries of economics. Does anyone know where I could find that sort of statistical set?

His argument's analogy is flawed - life is not a sport, and there are factors outside raw economics which do matter, despite the views of economists - and I would definitely like to know if his style of economics and predictions is able to succeed outside its own proclaimed purveyance, as the 'invisible hand' would have us believe should happen.

Simon would have very much agreed that much in life is driven by values rather than economic calculation. In fact, he worked to expose that, in many cases, what people presented as matters of fact, of which denial was forbidden, were in fact statements about their personal values which the rest of us are not compelled to adopt. Please sign posts. Cutler 11:37, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Done.

For the second wager, does anyone know which of the predictions turned out to be true? – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 01:37, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Timing

Ehrlich possibly may have been ahead of his time in the prediction about scarcities and metal prices... What about the trend now, since China and India are coming strongly into the picture? Steel prices (the value-added product) have certainly gone up internationally. What about price tends with copper, tin, nickel? Are we sure this topic is handled in an up to date way in the wager article and in the Paul R. Ehrlich article? - M. Coral

If someone wants to compile a list of current metal prices to match the wager it might be interesting, but we should avoid drawing any surmises from it on our own. -Will Beback 21:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Increased scarcity in the short-term is what drives Simon's theory. 'The aftermath' section was wrong, short-term price in increases in oil are not contrary to Simon's theory. Whoever wrote it misses the whole point, oil costs more so people invest in alternatives such as ethanol, so we use less oil. This is starting to happen now. - WGM

The graph in the article implicitly draws conclusions. Many of these minerals are now at much higher prices than in 2002, having increased by hundreds of percents in some cases - the graph is no longer indicative of long term trends. Whether they'll be replaced with alternatives and the price will drop is still a matter of debate of course.... I think it should go. Mostlyharmless (talk) 00:39, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

• When I created the graph for Wikipedia (2006), it was current. It is apparent that it is becoming increasingly out-of-date, and I will be happy to revise it to include the latest data available. It may take several weeks to complete; please be patient. —Aetheling (talk) 03:28, 29 February 2008 (UTC).

Also see peak oil and oil price increases since 2003 (from <$20/bbl to >$100/bbl in 2008). It may be worth mentioning that Richard Rainwater has profited handsomely by essentially betting against Simon in the futures market since the late 1990's. See: Richard Rainwater#Betting on peak oil. Peakniks such as Matthew Simmons predict oil at $300/bbl within five years after world oil production peaks, and the peak may have occurred in 2005 or 2006. Oil production has been approximately flat since then, despite a sharp run-up in price. This is the first time in history that world oil production was unable to increase in response to rising prices in the absence of any major supply disruptions. --Teratornis (talk) 00:14, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about trashing this page with my last edit. My computer rebooted in the middle of my editing session, and then I got distracted with a phone call. I'm not sure what happened. I've never seen something like that before, the blanking of everything outside the section I was editing. --Teratornis (talk) 00:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

It's now 2012, and the graph has still not been updated, so I removed it. Quark7 (talk) 19:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Resources

Why doesn't anyone bet on worldwide kilocalories of food intake per human per day? Instead of only betting on sections of the eco-system that already rape 80% of the earth to enhance their 20%? Any fourth grader can tell you comparing an Olympian to an average human is like comparing an aircraft to a car. They take more resources to maintain, repair, and operate than an average person, and hence betting on the Olympics as opposed to betting on an average human, is the way Simon won on the first bet.

He took economies of scale and used it to argue that things were getting better. How about using average number of hours worked as a scale? In 1960 in America, one wage earner could support a family of 4. In the year 2000 2 wage earners were the norm.

--Lee Wells 17:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but their real income was much greater -- that is average household real income was greater, and hence per capita real income was also higher. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Hydroponics

Everyone please forgive my ignorance concerning the talk page protocol if I'm doing this incorrectly...this is my first one! In the second to last paragraph it is implied that advances in energy generation and hydroponics may result in less of several listed items. The language may be a little confusing, how could an increase in hydroponic agriculture decrease the amount of fertile soil? Similarly, does rice consumption automatically decline due to the adoption of a western lifestyle? I think I see the point, but I think that if it stays with the article, and is considered by the author to be important, that the causality should be defined more clearly. Thoughts? --thanks-- Jasnorth 09:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the entire paragraph is an attempt at synthesis and is original research -- and a bit confused. Remove it and just let Simon's words speak for themselves. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Fashion

The article says that it became "fashionable" to argue .... Seems non encyclopedic/NPOV to attribute motive without documentation of that motive. Were people really going around saying, "I don't think this will happen, but it makes my butt look smaller."?

I'd also argue about the loaded "anti-industrial", but it's always possible to nut-pick someone like Ted Kaczynski and pretend that lone wackos are representative of a larger trend. Balance is a lost cause when people are willfully stupid. Mykej (talk) 18:23, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Too POV!

This article is now blatantly POV in favor of Simon and against Ehrlich. It needs to be rewritten for objectivity and balance. Just the facts--stop being cheerleaders for your "cause" and start being Wiki-scholars! 173.16.125.178 (talk) 23:21, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Two useful papers on the subject :

- Lawn P. (2010): On the Ehrlich-Simon bet: Both were unskilled and Simon was lucky. Ecological Economics 69(11): 2045-2046 - DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.07.009.

- Kiel K., Matheson V. & Golembiewski K. (2010): Luck or skill? An examination of the Ehrlich-Simon bet. Ecological Economics 69(7): 1365-1367 - DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.03.007

The problem is that Ehrlich was utterly wrong about nearly everything. In the 70s it was still, barely, possible to believe that we were near the limits. Now, when we can look at the Green Revolution in the light of hindsight and can begin to understand the potential of biotech for crops, there is no reason whatsoever to think so beyond mistaking the limits of our current economy (essentially dependent on century-old fossil-fuel technology) for some kind of theoretical limit. 128.194.250.117 (talk) 00:06, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the article seems heavily biased in favor of Simon. I've begun revising some of the more flagrant examples of this. It strikes me that the section title "Analysis of why Ehrlich lost" places undue emphasis on Ehrlich's status as "loser." Couldn't it be changed to just "Analysis"? --74.96.103.19 (talk) 07:47, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Done

Quark7 (talk) 19:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Here's what I would like to see: the actual amounts of the five materials bet on, in 1980 and in 1990, and the inflation adjustor they agreed to use as well. It should be possible, then, to ask Google "what is the price of a pound of tin in dollars," get a number, then ask "what is a dollar in 1980 worth now?" and get a range of websites providing a list of inflation adjustors. (Or just link a website doing whatever inflation adjustor they agreed on.) Then, anybody could plug in the numbers, inflation-adjust, and see whether the bet would still be true now. But to make that possible, the reader needs to know the specifics of the original bet. I'm sure they were written up in a paper, and I thought the Wikipedia article a few years back included the specifics, but apparently not.

That would be far superior to quoting from Grantham's newsletter. That's an appeal to authority--as far as I can tell the actual newsletter referenced does not actually contain details of how the bet would look in 2011, just a statement about it--when through the magic of Google the plain information itself is available. Grantham's views could be included as the viewpoint from a commodity investor's point of view, but not inserted as the final word on whether bet still holds.

The bet continues to be of great interest, and both participants (and partisan fans still do) felt that no matter the specific outcome at the ten year mark, their side would dominate in the long run. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.2.193.153 (talk) 16:58, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Non-renewable v non-energy v recyclable

There's some discussion, buried in the last subsection, titled, Other Wagers, of the meaning or analytic significance of the original wager, and its outcome to date, to the emerging understanding of the economic implications of global resources limits on global economic growth. It might be worthwhile to pull out this analytic discussion, including the quotations illustrating later reflections on the significance of the wager for emerging views.

The original Simon-Ehrlich wager involved the prices of five commodity metals. The costs of these recyclable resources can reasonably be expected to respond differently to the pressures of global population and economic growth than will the prices of fossil fuel energy resources, subject to depletion, or the prices of commodities derived from the biosphere (farmland, fisheries), which may be subject to congestion effects or the risk of ecological collapse.

The Wikipedia articles on "Renewable resources" and "Non-renewable resources" do not make clear into which category, a recyclable metal falls, so that terminology might be better avoided. The stock of recyclable metals, however, is not used up in current production; new production only adds to the available stock-in-use, and metals are often significantly cheaper to recycle, in energy terms and enviornmental impact, than to extract in mining operations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BruceW07 (talk • contribs) 22:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Lam

I have deleted the last 5 sentences in the "Other wagers" section, which were added some time ago by an unsigned user. These are the deleted ones:

However, Simon would have won $200 if the bet had ended in 2009. According to Lam "the big picture is that these important non-energy, recyclable resources cost about the same today as they did 50 years ago, despite the addition of 4 billion people." About commodities in general, Lam adds: "The big picture in commodity prices has something for both optimists and pessimists. For pessimists there is the fact that non-energy prices more than doubled since 2000. For optimists we have the fairly amazing fact that while world population doubled from 1960 to 2000 the price of non-energy commodities fell almost 50%. These two facts roughly offset each other, with the price of non-energy commodities in 2009 almost exactly at their 1960 level. "

I see two issues with this:

1. The reference given for this quote was published in 2001 -

David Lam, How the World Survived the Population Bomb: Lessons from 50 Years of Extraordinary Demographic History, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, Report 11-743, 2001.

, and 2. Claims of 2009 commodities prices being anywhere near 1960 prices are factually inaccurate (and very much so). Belsavis (talk) 01:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Not directly related?

In recent years, there have been many bets and bet challenges related to global warming. For instance, J. Scott Armstrong challenged Al Gore to a climate-related bet in 2007 that focused on year-to-year variation in temperatures but not on betting over longer term changes in global average temperatures.

99.109.127.141 (talk) 01:31, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you arguing that it should, or should not be included in the article? I wouldn't be opposed to including it in a "similar wagers" or "context" section. Peregrine981 (talk) 09:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

References

Jeremy Grantham

Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon–Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Simon would have lost on four of the five metals. He also noted that if the wager had been expanded to "all of the most important commodities," instead of just five metals, over that longer period of 1980 to 2011, then Simon would have lost "by a lot." He concluded, "So, please "Cornucopians," let's not hear any more of the Ehrlich-Simon bet ... Ehrlich's argument was right (so far)."[12]

The link provided still doesn't work. Even if the link works, there is just but one problem with the source: Saying that Simon would have lost in a longer period does not prove anything and is quite irrelevant to the wager in question. The wager was set in 1980 and ended in 1990, if Simon had agreed to extend the wager by 20 years then this would be a different story but he didn't. The article already mentions this under the section "Aftermath" with a much better source (the Economist) and a more NPOV description. Jeremy Grantham certainly didn't prove "Ehrlich's argument was right", he was just taking cheap shot at Simon who clearly didn't (and couldn't since he was long dead) bet on the prices of 2011.203.145.192.245 (talk) 07:30, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, it is quite easy to find copies of the letter online (fx. [1]). I disagree that it is irrelevant. If you read the letter he explains why:

"The essence of the bet was that Ehrlich believed that compound growth could not be sustained in a world of fi nite resources, and therefore the real price of raw materials would rise. Simon argued that, regardless of the rate of growth, real prices would fall. Of course, the spirit of this bet has no time limit – 40 years is better than 10, and 100 is better than 40. But a bet like this between humans of middle age is one that both would like to collect on. So, the bet was set at 10 years and fi ve commodities9 were chosen by mutual agreement. Here again, all commodities would have represented the spirit of the bet better than fi ve, but fi ve was easier to monitor. Simon won all fi ve separate bets fair and square at the 10-year horizon. But let’s admit that this is a very unsatisfactory time period for the rest of us who are really interested in this contest of ideas. So, let’s take an equally arbitrary but much more satisfactory bet: from then, 1980, until now, and include all of the most important commodities. Simon would have lost posthumously, and by a lot!"

So, not really sure what your point is, unless you think we shouldn't include any context to the bet in the article. Peregrine981 (talk) 09:10, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

There's not point in adding discussions about a bet that didn't happen. It's like betting, "The Yankees will win more world series from 1980-1990 than the [fill in the blank]" and then having the Wikipedia article say, "If the bet had been extended forever, the outcome would have been different." Stick to the topic--the bet, the terms of the bet, the results of the bet. The rest is sour grapes from the losers. Don Williams (talk) 20:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

My problem with the Grantham point is that 2011 was in the middle of a precious metals crunch. Since then, the prices of all the metals have tumbled to the point where Simon would have won again. I'm not sure that this adds much to the discussion since his point is only true at a very very specific time frame. 71.58.109.49 (talk) 17:46, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

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