
In the 1970s, many journalists and academics thought that metals the needed for a modern society to function would become increasingly scarce as the world’s population grew and mines got depleted. As a result, these metals would skyrocket in price and the economy would stagnate.
But that never happened: These predictions of doom did not come true. As The Doomslayer explains, key metals actually fell in price after adjusting for inflation, and continue to become cheaper relative to the average hourly wage worldwide:
In 1990, [doomsayer] Paul Ehrlich lost [a] 10-year bet and had to write a check to [optimistic economist] Julian Simon for $576.07. Simon had let Ehrlich pick the five metals 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 was 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, resource prices dropped, reinforcing Simon’s argument that human population growth, coupled with ingenuity and the freedom to innovate, drives resource abundance rather than scarcity.
The long-term abundance of these metals has increased significantly….Between 1900 and 2000, the 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 22,823 percent.
The relationship between population growth and resource production is captured by the production elasticity of the population. It is the ratio of the percentage change in production divided by the percentage change in population. On average, every 1 percent increase in population corresponded to a 57.06 percent increase in the production of these five metals.
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 the population.
The Doomslayer argues that “These data reinforce Simon’s prediction: The more people, the more we produce, and the lower the prices.”
Oil has also defied predictions that it would be in short supply as population increased and oil wells ran dry. Global oil production has risen, reaching an all-time high in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. Oil production has also risen in the United States, debunking false predictions made 20 years ago that the U.S. had reached “peak oil.” Oil has become the most productive U.S. industry, says Bloomberg News.
Twenty years ago, people wrongly wrote off the U.S. oil industry as a dinosaur. Oil production fell after 1970, so people wrongly predicted that oil production would continue to fall ever thereafter — the “peak oil” theory. Based on this prediction, there was even a weekly newspaper column called “peak oil“, written by former CIA analyst Tom Whipple, the husband of Democratic politician Mary Margaret Whipple.
But then the fracking revolution came, and oil production boomed. The “peak oil theory was effectively falsified when United States oil production began to increase in 2009 and surpassed the 1970 peak in 2018.”
Technological change has continued to expand oil production in the U.S., making America the world’s biggest oil producer by a substantial margin