And Simon offered to repeat the bet with Ehrlich because Simon knew that he would win again. But Ehrlich turned it down. Simon then left his bet open to anybody who was willing to take it. But nobody was willing to take it. Another analogy is telephone wires.
Gold is the best material to use for telephone wires.
But gold is expensive, so poeple use copper instead. And more recently, we can now build telephone systems using satellite and wireless technologies. In fact if you are starting from scratch, wirless technoloy is actually cheaper than putting up copper wires all over the place. But the thing is, poeple aren't looking for wires per se. People aren't looking for gold wires or copper wires or whatever.