The idea behind the bet is stronger than the statistics of year shopping: the price of critical ingredients is subject to many changes, what was at stake was their availability expressed as price: Ehrlich argued for scarcity because of a flawed belief in exhaustion and limits to growth. Simon argued for supply chain dynamics, and had a strong sense the relative abundance of primary inputs was not the limiting factor.

Sure, the specific bet could be lost and won in different windows. But the actual underlying point remains: were not facing exhaustion of resources as a limit to economic growth and development as much as exhaustion of willingness to invest in exploration and development of sources.

"Oh God, there isn't enough cobalt or lithium for all the EV to be sold in the next 5 years" or "there isn't enough lithium for every car to be converted to EV" which are both variants of counterfactuals to actual rate of deployment, replacement of cars in the real world, the replacement of battery technology, new forms of battery chemistry, you name it PLUS extraction of new sources and discovery of new ore beds.