Talk:Simon-Ehrlich wager
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This article was nominated for deletion on 6 June 2006. The result of the discussion was keep. |
I think Paul Ehrlich was also a member of the 'Club of Rome', which wrote "Limits to Growth", also a famously wrong set of predictions.
The current revision of the article is written as an apology for Ehrlich. It needs to be made more balanced.
Done.
I want to know whether he would have won the bet which looked outside the normal boundaries of economics. Does anyone know where I could find that sort of statistical set?
His argument's analogy is flawed - life is not a sport, and there are factors outside raw economics which do matter, despite the views of economists - and I would definitely like to know if his style of economics and predictions is able to succeed outside its own proclaimed purveyance, as the 'invisible hand' would have us believe should happen.
- Simon would have very much agreed that much in life is driven by values rather than economic calculation. In fact, he worked to expose that, in many cases, what people presented as matters of fact, of which denial was forbidden, were in fact statements about their personal values which the rest of us are not compelled to adopt. Please sign posts. Cutler 11:37, August 21, 2005 (UTC)
Done.
For the second wager, does anyone know which of the predictions turned out to be true? – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 01:37, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Timing
Ehrlich possibly may have been ahead of his time in the prediction about scarcities and metal prices... What about the trend now, since China and India are coming strongly into the picture? Steel prices (the value-added product) have certainly gone up internationally. What about price tends with copper, tin, nickel? Are we sure this topic is handled in an up to date way in the wager article and in the Paul R. Ehrlich article? - M. Coral
- If someone wants to compile a list of current metal prices to match the wager it might be interesting, but we should avoid drawing any surmises from it on our own. -Will Beback 21:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Increased scarcity in the short-term is what drives Simon's theory. 'The aftermath' section was wrong, short-term price in increases in oil are not contrary to Simon's theory. Whoever wrote it misses the whole point, oil costs more so people invest in alternatives such as ethanol, so we use less oil. This is starting to happen now. - WGM
[edit] Resources
Why doesn't anyone bet on worldwide kilocalories of food intake per human per day? Instead of only betting on sections of the eco-system that already rape 80% of the earth to enhance their 20%? Any fourth grader can tell you comparing an Olympian to an average human is like comparing an aircraft to a car. They take more resources to maintain, repair, and operate than an average person, and hence betting on the Olympics as opposed to betting on an average human, is the way Simon won on the first bet.
He took economies of scale and used it to argue that things were getting better. How about using average number of hours worked as a scale? In 1960 in America, one wage earner could support a family of 4. In the year 2000 2 wage earners were the norm.
--Lee Wells 17:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
