The Power of Gold
Incorporating myth, history and contemporary investigation, Bernstein tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, Bernstein's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
17mentions
6people
2022–2024years
71% recommend29% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If I had to pick one: The rise and fall of American growth: the U.S. standard of living since the Civil War by Robert Gordon. The gains that we have made in the (early) 20th century are unlikely to ever be repeated, and progress in many metrics has measurably slowed or even stalled since ~1970s (likely being asymptotic). And while the Internet (classified under the Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) chapters) gave a bump in the 1990s, it's mostly been flat since 2004.
More economic history with Slouching towards Utopia: an economic history of the twentieth century by J. Bradford Delong. More economic ideas stuff in Value(s): building a better world for all by Mark Carney (ran the Banks of Canada and England). Also Waphsott's Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics and Samuelson Friedman: the battle over the free market.
The currency of politics: the political theory of money from Aristotle to Keynes by Sefan Eich, Money: the true story of a made-up thing by Jacob Goldstein, and The power of gold: the history of an obsession by Peter Bernstein (also his Against the Gods on risk). Show how much of a human construct "money" is, how its meaning changes in different times and places/cultures. Should be required reading by all the 'hard money' folks (gold standard, BTC).
The good life: lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness by Waldinger and Schultz (directors of the Harvard study). If there's one 'magic' thing for health and happiness it seems to be having good relationships (family, friends) in your life.
Religion: what it is, how it works, and why it matters by Christian Smith and Strange rites: new religions for a godless world by Tara Burton. While many think that religion is in decline, the non-material/supernatural things that people believe in has actually shifted. And having beliefs in a super-human entity seems to be the basis of most societies and civilizations. Related, The warfare between science and religion : the idea that wouldn't die, a series of essays; the conflict thesis bunk, both historically and presently.
The origins of Canadian and American political differences by Jason Kaufman, two seemingly-the-same neighbouring countries that have had different development paths when it comes to culture and government. (I'm Canadian.)
Speaking of government: Civil resistance: what everyone needs to know by Erica Chenoweth. Seems violence/force is generally a less effective way to affect change in society than non-violence.
The week: a history of the unnatural rhythms that made us who we are by David Henkin. Seems that while seven days has been around for a long while, making it a really 'hard' structure/schedule around it is a more recent phenomenon than you'd expect.
If you have kids, Karen Le Billon's French kids eat everything (and yours can, too) and Getting to YUM: the 7 secrets of raising eager eaters, her husband is French and she lived there for a year and found many things done better there than US/CA. See also The happiest kids in the world: how Dutch parents help their kids and themselves by doing less by Acosta and Hutchison.
Flying blind: the 737 MAX tragedy and the fall of Boeing by Peter Robison is an HN favourite. While we get a lot of engineer vs MBA comments, I think the bigger problem (associated with the MBA-types) is financialization, i.e., returns over everything else. Having non-engineers/MBAs can be 'fine' also long as trying to squeeze blood/money from a stone at the cost of everything else.
Some philosophy with Alasdair C. MacIntyre: After Virtue is a good starting point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue
- If anyone wants a decent history of gold-as-currency, Peter Bernstein's The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession is pretty good (second edition has a preface by Volker):
> Incorporating myth, history and contemporary investigation, Bernstein tells the story of how human beings have become intoxicated, obsessed, enriched, impoverished, humbled and proud for the sake of gold. From the past to the future, Bernstein's portrayal of gold is intimately linked to the character of humankind.
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/249245
People may be more familiar with his book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128429.Against_the_Gods
- See also Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358103-money
And The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (2e has an intro from Volcker):
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold
With all the talk of the US dollar losing its status (highly unlikely due to no realistic alternative), How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future on the history of various previously predominant currencies is also interesting:
* https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177007/ho...
- According to Peter L. Bernstein’s The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (a book I’d highly recommend), fractional banking has its origins in scams perpetrated by goldsmiths, who’d issue promissory notes for more precious metal than they had in stock. Once they saw how they could utilize it for its own purposes, European governments legalized what was previously a widespread criminal practice.
So if governments end up appreciating this particular “scam”, crypto might conceivably (although I personally doubt it) go through a similar process in the future.
- > You are given currency coupons in exchange for your work, and then more of those coupons are just forged than correspond to actual work having been done, thereby defrauding you out of the value of your work, also commonly called theft of service.
All currency is made up. Even gold, or bitcoin, or giant rocks:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones
The only thing that has "inherent" value to humans is air/oxygen, shelter, water, and food. Everything else is psychological projection for convenience.
See The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Bernstein:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Bernstein
And Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Goldstein:
- > The article presents two graphs of arguably manipulated/unreliable CPI rates […]
And you can tell this because… ?
> […] the author isn't even attempting to present an impartial view on the topic.
Neither would someone who was arguing the Earth was round.
> It always amuses me how strongly people come out in opposition to the idea of the gold standard, when it demonstrably seemed to work for America, it powered the country from the time it was a collection of colonies to the time it had men driving buggies around on the moon.
No, it caused some huge boom and bust cycles, deflationary periods, and much suffering. It certainly made the Great Depression worse:
* https://www.nber.org/papers/w3488
Gold-as-currency was useful when we didn't know better, but we've moved on. See The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Bernstein for a good history:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold
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