Talk:Simon–Ehrlich wager

message: 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)
thread_title: Peter Thiel

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: * 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 It is apparent that it is becoming increasingly out-of-date, and I will be happy to revise it to include the latest data available.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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Resources

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Hydroponics

message: 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)
thread_title: Fashion

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Agree. Done
Quark7 (talk) 19:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too POV! 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Non-renewable v non-energy v recyclable 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Lam 

message: 99.109.127.141 (talk) 01:31, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Not directly related? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Jeremy Grantham 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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