I actually don't disagree with Simon, although I admit that like Ehrlich I've had to come around to his point of view (I'm not sure if Ehrlich did come around or was just a good sport paying off his bet). His assertion is that as demand goes up, the price goes up, and that leads to innovation and increased effort at finding more of a commodity so there's never really a shortage, which has generally played out since he wrote the original book. It's especially applicable to pollution and things like renewable energy and efficiency.
My assertion is much different, I'm simply saying that if the whole world, operating under "Simon's Law" we'll call it, has a steady state growth rate of around 2%, then it's not possible for a China or India to have an average of 6% growth rate forever. The factors Simon lists, as I recall from admittedly a while ago read, apply equally to a China as a U.S. If "Simon's Law" is allowing for 2% growth, and if anything China and India are under-innovating the rest of the world, there's no reason to think they could somehow take advantage of the factors Simon iterates at 3X the rate of the rest of the world. At the point things like pollution and underfunded pension liability, and the rest of the factors the rest of us deal with catch up to them, their grown goes to 2% like everyone else's. And I'd submit we're rapidly approaching that point, although I'll be the first to admit that I'm not expert enough to know exactly when that will be.
