Population Growth and Resource Abundance
Contrary to popular belief, personal resource abundance has increased four times faster than population growth in the last 40 years.
Are resources becoming more or less abundant? To answer this question we analyzed the change in the time prices of 50 basic commodities from 1980 to 2020. Recall that 1980 was the year Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered into their famous 10-year $1,000 bet on the price of five metals. The 50 commodities we analyzed included items from energy, food, m…