The Big Idea: Money as Humanity’s Scarcity MachineArthur Hayes begins with a philosophical question: How does society manage scarcity when utopia is still science fiction? Until humanity achieves infinite energy and abundance, we need a mechanism to decide who gets what—and that mechanism is money. Money, he says, is how markets “adjudicate scarcity.” It’s the tool that tells society what to produce, how much, and for whom. But whenever governments interfere with either the price of money (in...

The Big Idea: Money as Humanity’s Scarcity MachineArthur Hayes begins with a philosophical question: How does society manage scarcity when utopia is still science fiction? Until humanity achieves infinite energy and abundance, we need a mechanism to decide who gets what—and that mechanism is money. Money, he says, is how markets “adjudicate scarcity.” It’s the tool that tells society what to produce, how much, and for whom. But whenever governments interfere with either the price of money (in...