Snatching the Wrong Conclusions from the Jaws of Defeat (Part 1)

Abstract

Historian Paul Sabin’s The Bet aims to present the first full-fledged account of the 1980 wager on the future prices of five metals between biologist Paul Ehrlich and his collaborators, and economist Julian Simon. The Malthusian Ehrlich predicted that growing populations would rapidly deplete the world’s finite supply of valuable resources, causing their prices to rise. Simon countered that, in a market economy, prices and technological change would result in resources being used more efficiently, new deposits discovered, and substitutes developed, resulting in less scarce resources and lower prices. Unfortunately, Sabin’s account is marred by a lack of historical perspective, an oversimplification of Simon’s theoretical framework, and a quest to find a middle ground between mutually exclusive positions.