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randallsquared • today at 2:01 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

Per Claude, if you use Chinese prices for the metals (especially tungsten) Simon still wins from 1980-2026. If you use US prices, Ehrlich wins. Copper is the only metal with a market price above the 1980 value, but tungsten is export-controlled by China, so much more expensive in the West.

I think directionally Ehrlich was quite wrong, given that he expected widespread and crippling shortages before 2000, with a much lower population than we actually have, and there's no sign of such shortages being inevitable. In particular, we are opening new extractable oil sources and switching to solar fast enough that pure market actions seem on track to where we'll be leaving cheap oil in the ground in a couple decades absent AI X-risk, and this is after we politically killed the previous tech that would have produced this result earlier: widespread fission.