Julian Simon

American economist (University of Maryland, 1932-1998) best known for The Ultimate Resource (1981), which argued human ingenuity makes resources effectively inexhaustible, and for publicly wagering biologist Paul Ehrlich in 1980 that the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals would fall, not rise, over the following decade — a bet Simon won in 1990 and which became a durable symbol of techno-optimism over resource-scarcity pessimism.

Matters to this vault as Paul Ehrlich's principal public antagonist in the resource-scarcity debate: until this capture, Simon's name and the wager itself were entirely absent from a vault that already held Ehrlich as a hub, despite sitting one hop away. His own private correspondence complicates the public triumphalist reading of his win.

References

• claim-julian-simon-1989-letter-admitted-luck-in-ehrlich-wager
• claim-sunstein-2013-simon-ehrlich-wager-tested-neither-mans-thesis
• claim-sunstein-2013-applies-hedgehog-fox-typology-independently-of-tetlock
• claim-three-resamplings-estimate-ehrlich-would-have-won-54-to-63-percent-of-intervals