I know JS is a lightning rod for some, but economics are economics. His guest this week details how AI is helping to exacerbate the current cost of living crisis with real time surveillance pricing and enabling collusion amongst companies to keep costs of everything from French fries to gas to rent as high as possible. Worse is when she gets into the patents being filed by companies like Wal-Mart, which, for example, filed a patent for scan card technology (essentially grocery shopping where you scan items into your cart and pay for everything without having to go to self check out or any check out....) that prices items based on what you are purchasing; example used in the patent claim was that if you scanned in a can of tuna fish, it is highly likely that you will go for mayonnaise as well, and the price for mayo will increase based on this algorithm. You're not being paranoid, everyone is out to rip you off. Fun times.