re: #57 ericblair

Looks like this story about the asteroid 16 Psyche is making the rounds of the right wing rags. This asteroid in the main belt apparently looks like an exposed core of a rocky planet and its gold content dwarfs that of Earth. Of course, the wingnut goldbugs think that mining this gold would make everybody rich, instead of, for instance, making gold bars not worth picking up on the street. Because gold is magic.

A) NASA isn’t dragging it back to Earth.
B) I can imagine a private company taking control of it if it in fact has that much gold, to ensure only it makes money by selling tiny quantities.
C) Gold is valuable because it is scarce and people think that makes it valuable. Lots of scarce things aren’t particularly valuable.