Betting Stakes and Julian Simon

Price expressed in what currency?

Because with looming hyperinflation of the USD, you might be wrong just because you picked the wrong currency...

One thing to quibble with-

We've relied on enhanced technological methods to increase reserves of natural resources, but how long can this continue?

Take oil, for example. As the traditional reserves have declined, there have been new additional reserves popping up in the form of deep off-shore wells, "heavy oil" like in Canada's Tar Sands and Venezuela's Orinoco belt, and greater extraction from shale oil.

The problem is that these sources are all horribly expensive in terms of capital and operating costs to extract from, and they require a higher price of oil to make them profitable. It's not like there's an easy technological path for them to become cheaper, either - in the case of shale oil, for example, you can't really get around the use of massive amounts of heat in order to make it.

@Brett,
Good point, but, as Julian liked to say, "That's why it's a bet."
@Fare,
Check the dates. There was no large inflation between 1998 and 2008.

@Faré
Then again, if hyperinflation stroke, $10,000 might not have been a high price to lose.

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Krugman should have taken the bet in 1996. He would have won.

I think Simon got lucky and the world unlucky. He would have lost handily had there been no socialist movement or had Hitler managed to dismantle the Soviet Union. There would have likely been much more industrialization in the third world and far fewer states relying primarily on mineral extraction. We've seen that reforms in China and India have steadily created much higher demand, and prices, for commodities.