Update On The Five Metals From The Simon Ehrlich Bet
Since 1900, the average abundance of these five metals has increased 36.5 percent faster than population.
Hannah Richie at OurWorldinData.org recently published an insightful article on the five metals featured in the Simon-Ehrlich bet. In 1990 Paul Ehrlich lost the 10-year wager and had to write a check to Simon for $576.07. Simon let Ehrlich pick the five metals back in 1980 when the bet started. The payment reflected the inflation-adjusted decline of 36 percent in the average price of the five metals over the decade.
This 36 percent drop in real prices occurred despite an extraordinary global population increase during the 1980s of 850 million people (19 percent)—the largest growth in human history. Yet, even with this surge in population, resource prices dropped. This reinforces Simon’s argument that human population growth, coupled with ingenuity and the freedom to innovate, increases resource abundance, not scarcity.
Richie highlights an important trend: the long-term abundance of these metals has continued to increase significantly. Take a look at the staggering growth in the production of these five metals since the early 1900s:
Between 1900 and 2000, global population grew by 400 percent, from 1.6 billion to 8 billion. During the same period, the production of the five metals soared: chromium increased by an astounding 78,082 percent, copper by 4,062 percent, nickel by 26,918 percent, tin by 226 percent, and tungsten by 4,829 percent. On average, production of these metals rose by an extraordinary 22,823 percent.
The relationship between population growth and resource production is captured by the production elasticity of population, computed as the ratio of the percentage change in production divided by the percentage change in population. On average, every one percent increase in population corresponded to a 57.06 percent increase in the production of these five metals.
In our book Superabundance we compared the time prices of these five metals for blue-collar workers from 1900 to 2018, and have since updated the data to 2022.
The charts below detail the growth in abundance for each resource since 1900. Please note that vertical scales differ across the charts. You can see the effects of 9/11, the financial crisis of 2008, and COVID-19 lockdown policies in the charts.
This table summarizes our findings.
From 1900 to 2022, the global population increased by 400 percent. Over the same period the abundance of these five metals increased by an average of 546 percent, demonstrating that abundance has grown 36.5 percent faster than population.
Some have suggested that Simon was just lucky. This is why looking at a much longer time period reveals underlying trends behind temporary fluctuations.
These facts reinforce Julian Simon’s prediction: The more people, the more we produce, and the lower the prices.
Tip of the hat: Max More
Please consider enjoying our new course on the Economics of Human Flourishing at the Peterson Academy. Students have logged over 18,000 hours watch and learning. Join for free 7-day trial.
We explain and give hundreds of examples why more people with freedom means much more resource abundances for everyone in our book, Superabundance, available at Amazon.
Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and a board member at Human Progress.
Copyright © 2025 Gale Pooley
This is a good read for neo-Malthusians. Instead of banking on scarcity and fear mongering, we should encourage human ingenuity and progress.
At its most fundamental level, human material progress is simply using energy and matter to create beneficial counter-entropic forms. This requires knowledge.
What we call “economic growth” is just a rough measure of the rate at which this knowledge accumulates. The “GDP” as such, is roughly analogous to the total stock of human knowledge.
We grow this stock of knowledge like a supercomputer solving algorithms; billions of human minds coordinate every day, acting in their own interests, and finding new and better pathways forward.
The primary data signal used to coordinate these billions of minds is pricing data. That’s why Elrich was wrong. When the price rises it signals scarcity, and the “social supercomputer” is set into motion finding alternatives.
Essay on the “Progress’s First Principles” is coming soon, stay tuned.