Monday, February 16, 2009
Fun with Commodities
Scarcity? Chill. Carpe Diem, channeling George Will, channeling the late Julian Symon, reminds us that the price of a basket of five critical commodities fell by 21.56 percent in the ten years ending at 2000. Let's do the numbers: $100*(1-0.2156)^10= $8.62, so is that the price we can predict for a $100 basket in 3000? And when, exactly, will the supply go to infinity?
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3 comments:
Did anybody check the prices recently? I did. They went way up, and very recenty, way back down.
So I guess Will's a genius. We can solve our scarcity problem with a huge financial crisis.
Prices of commodities do not go to infinity. They go to zero.
Your foolishly linear argument tells me that you are too limited to understand that fact which is at the root of human progress.
Do you think we will still be using oil in 3000AD? I don't. We'll have someting better. What is the value of a commodity we have no use for? Hint: Try zero for the ultimate price of oil.
Your foolishly linear argument tells me that you are too limited to understand..."
Apologies for forgetting the first rule of blogging, i.e., never assume that your audience is smart enough to understand snark.
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