Gold was on a tear in August. People, investors, and central banks around the world were buying more and more, in large part because it’s seen as a stable alternative to the dollar, or to any currency. But…why? Why gold? What makes it so special? Friend of the show Jacob Goldstein wrote a book called Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, and he explains the real, physical reasons why we love gold so much, and the long history of our collective obsession.

Further Reading

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, by Jacob Goldstein

ThePollenNation.com

America Is Having A Fiscal Midlife Crisis

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If you live in the worlds of financial markets and economics, sometimes it can be hard to remember that not all of life can be neatly packaged into data points and lists of pros and cons. And Nobel-Prize-winning-economist and Stanford professor Al Roth is pretty convincing that markets are Good, and that, if you think it through, we *should* allow some kind of market in the trade of *some* human organs. But across the Stanford campus, philosopher Debra Satz says those frameworks are missing things, important things. She wrote a book that suggests that some things simply should not be for sale. That book is called Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale. We needed remedial help remembering why some things should not be for sale. What things, exactly? And why?

Further Reading

Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, by Debra Satz

Organs, Sex Work, and Drugs: A Nobel Economist on Why Banning Things Can Backfire, Mary in America

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AI is creating unfathomable wealth for a handful of people, upending labor markets, and jacking up electricity bills for the rest of us. But somehow we have to figure out how to still be a society. We’ve done it before – AI is just the latest "General Purpose Technology" we have to adapt to. Many of the vectors we worry about here are even more pronounced abroad – visible inequality, inconsistent water and energy, and large populations of young people facing increasingly dire job prospects. Rohit Lamba, an economist at Cornell, studies AI’s spread around the world and especially in India. He offers a few ways to think about the big questions so this disruption can be less painful than past ones.

Further Reading:

Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity, by Rohit Lamba and Raghuram G Rajan

Barron’s: Why India Is Becoming a Data-Center Hub, Whether Communities Like It or Not

World Bank: AI Offers Lifeline to Developing Economies in an Era of Weak Growth

FT: The AI threat to India’s IT jobs machine

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