[Paul Ralph Ehrlich ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul\_R.\_Ehrlich) passed away a few days ago. He was famous for his pessimistic view about the future of humanity. For example he was on [Carson's show a lot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E5lUNBk3zQ).
In 1980 Simon convinced him to put a bet on his prediction that there was soon to be shortages of everything and that prices would rise rapidly. They bet on a basket of 5 particular metals. Ehrlich lost the bet in 1990.
I thought it would be interesting to see when he would have lost and when he would have won the bet. R package code and data [here](https://gist.github.com/cavedave/614ddd0e92875ec6f4209bfbe0b85995) Data from [here](https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/historical-statistics-mineral-commodities-united) USGS Data Series 140 (5 metals: chromium, copper, nickel, tin, tungsten it is not updated for all the metals recently.
by cavedave
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This is really interesting! I’m curious about what drives the variation here — it would be interesting to see if there’s a way to tease out the impact of things like trade agreements and global macroeconomic conditions on these prices. Obviously that’s super complicated to do, but I’m just thinking out loud, because interesting data often generated more questions than it answers!