Nouriel Roubini, Bipolar Markets in the “New Mediocre”
(Project Syndicate, April 22, 2019)
After the global risk-off at the end of last year, the recent central bankers’ dovishness combined with some positive macro developments has revived investors’ animal spirits. But Nouriel argues that we should not assume that the current ebullience will last the year. He sees a wide array of financial and political risks. In his view, eight reasons, in particular, might trigger another risk-off episode (reads in 6-7 min).
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Paul Mozur, Jonah Kessel and Melissa Chan, Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State
(The New York Times, April 24, 2019)
This NYT investigation reveals how Ecuador (like many other countries) has vastly expanded domestic surveillance, becoming a “voyeur’s paradise” made with technology from the global capital of surveillance: China, whose surveillance know-how and equipment is now spreading throughout the world. This could well underpin a future of tech-driven authoritarianism and leading to a loss of privacy on an industrial scale (not mentioning darker potential uses as tools of political repression) (reads in 7-8 min – more with the videos).
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Roy Scranton, Lessons from a genocide can prepare humanity for climate apocalypse
(MIT Technology Review, April 24, 2019)
This article doesn’t make for happy reading but is essential to understand what’s coming and the cost it entails in terms of adaptation (not mitigation). Over the next 30 years, we should expect not one shock but an unending series of them. It is psychologically, philosophically, and politically difficult to come to terms with our situation because everything we take for granted will be questioned. Climate change will mean ditching some of our most basic assumptions about what constitutes a normal, good life (reads in about 15 min).
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Apoorve Dubey, This is what great leadership looks like in the digital age
(World Economic Forum, April 24, 2019)
In a world where everybody has to deal with unprecedented changes and an unpredictable and challenging future, this short piece enumerates what great leaders should encourage: participation, involvement, and contribution from everyone. Top-down doesn’t work anymore: leadership is no longer hierarchical, but about empowering others to lead and creating self-organized teams (reads in 5-6 min).
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Leo Benedictus, The library of things: could borrowing everything from drills to disco balls cut waste and save money?
(The Guardian, April 25, 2019)
In the Oxford Library of things (or Lot), you can borrow for a small fee all the things that usually cost much more to buy or hire. The social enterprises behind it claim that their scheme is about to conquer the world and that it will allow us to live a cheaper, cleaner, more enjoyable, and more sustainable life. Are we at a relatively early stage of what might become a commonplace thing? (Reads in 8-9 min).
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