economics
Confronting the Supply Chain Crisis
For a generation, the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors in California handled more than 40 percent of all container cargo headed into the US and epitomized the power of a globalizing economy. Today, the ships—mostly from Asia—still dock, but they must wait in a seemingly endless conga
Luxury Belief Systems and Economic Stagnation: The Recipe for Our Discontent
In his 1950 book Unpopular Essays, Bertrand Russell divides the misfortunes that can befall humanity into two general categories—those inflicted by nature, and those inflicted by other humans. As he points out, for most of human existence a good chunk of our suffering was caused by nature—things like
What If Ayn Rand Was Right About Entrepreneurs and Inequality?
Few public figures have managed to consistently attract both sheer adoration and abject disgust quite like Russian-American author Ayn Rand. Fewer still have created an intellectual legacy with as much endurance as her radically individualistic philosophy of Objectivism. Atlas Shrugged remains a cherished favorite of venture capitalists and libertarian-leaning politicians
We Can Put an End to State Bidding Wars
In a crashing finale to its corporate headquarters search saga, Amazon announced that it is withdrawing from its commitment to New York. Politicians have responded with mixed reactions, with some hailing the decision as a victory for the middle-class locals who came out in droves against the deal proposed by
Video Games and the (Male) Meaning of Life
Virtual worlds give back what has been scooped out of modern life . . . it gives us back community, a feeling of competence, and a sense of being an important person whom people depend on. —Jonathan Gottschall When I was seven, my parents bought me and my brother an Atari 2600, the
What We Talk About When We Talk About Immigration
My father moved to the UK from Iran in the 1970s to study engineering when he met and married my mother, who is from a small town in the Welsh valleys. Many people from that town would not have met a non-white person before they met my father. After the
Why Assumptions About 'Rising Inequality' Are Wrong
The past year has seen a spate of books worrying about the decline of Western liberal democracy. One of the lazy and unexamined assumptions in these books is the idea that “rising inequality” is a causal factor for the current wave of so-called populism witnessed in Europe and America. This
