Thursday, May 29, 2008

Blegs

Can anyone lend me GTA San Andreas for the Xbox? Any region is fine.

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This weekend in Puli is the Basic Aid music festival. Does anyone know of a good hotel in Puli? It's probably going to rain like hell, so I'm going to forgo the camping option.

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A long time ago there was the Simon-Ehrlich wager, which proved that free markets are more beneficent and powerful than God, and that anyone who worries about overpopulation and resource depletion is a big ninny-headed worrywart. The five metals that they bet on were copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The cart on the Wiki page goes to 2003. Where could I find one that goes through April 2008? I'm wondering if the worrywart made the right bet at the wrong time...
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2 comments:

Red A said...

So, would you take the bet that in 10 years time, the prices would be higher or lower than today?

That bet seems to be simply weighing the speed of human ingenuity versus the speed of economic growth in the developing world in the context of the overall demographics.

The demographics are far better now then when Erhlich wrote his Population Bomb book, 2.9 babies versus 6 babies per woman.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0502-rhett_butler.html

So, the real issue is whether poor people are getting rich and demanding stuff faster than human ingenuity can increase supply.

ex:
Aluminum cans weigh 40% less than they did in the 70's, but there are a whole lot more people able to afford to drink Coke now.

Two other factors would be that there may be a bubble forming in commodities which would mean these current prices won't hold up. And that we are naturally focused on higher prices for certain materials where maybe not all materials are rising. (I noticed the industrial metals index in the Economist shows it DOWN for the year...but I think steel is not included in that.)

2:32 AM
Chaon said...

"So, would you take the bet that in 10 years time, the prices would be higher or lower than today?"

No, I was wondering if I couldn't go back to May 1998 for example, run the prices forward ten years, and see if there doesn't exist a period of time for which Simon's bet would have won.

11:30 AM

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