How Many People Could the Earth Really Sustain?

In 1980, economist Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich got into an argument about the human population. They placed a bet for $1,000 that prices of commodities would fall if there were more people on the planet. 10 years later in 1990, the decade passed. In a Simon, the combined prices of the 5 commodities had dropped by 57%. As it turned out, human ingenuity was indeed at work.