Nicholas Eberstadt, With Great Demographics Comes Great Power
(Foreign Affairs, July 2019)
This is a very helpful article to understand why and how demographics (the most enduring global trend) drive geopolitics. Demographics offer a clue to the geopolitical world of the future because few factors influence the long-term competition between great powers as much as changes in the size, capabilities, and characteristics of national populations. Relative to its principal rivals, the US is in an enviable position, and analysts often forget that unfavorable demographic trends are creating heavy headwinds for the Chinese economy, and worse even for Russia (reads in 9-10 min).
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Coral Davenport, Climate Change Poses Major Risks to Financial Markets, Regulator Warns
(The New York Times, June 11, 2019)
In a recent interview, Rostin Behnam (who sits on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) just said that the financial risks from climate change are comparable to those posed by the mortgage meltdown that triggered the 2008 financial crisis and that “it’s abundantly clear that climate change poses a financial risk to the stability of the financial system.” If you are still in doubt, read on! (Reads in 7-9 min).
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Amy Zegart, Decades of Being Wrong About China Should Teach Us Something
(The Atlantic, June 8, 2019)
The think-tanker reminds us just how much China has defied and continues to defy, the odds and predictions of experts. The fact is that generations of Western policymakers, political scientists, and economists have got China wrong more often than they’ve got China right. In domestic politics, economic development, and foreign policy, China has charted a surprising path that flies in the face of professional prognostications, general theories about anything, and the experience of other nations (reads in 7-9 min).
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Casey Newton, Bodies in Seats
(The Verge, June 19, 2019)
This is a harrowing piece about the appalling life of some Facebook content moderators – the people who purge the social network of the worst stuff that its users post on a daily basis: the hate speech, the murders, the child pornography. They are contractors hired through a handful of large professional services firms. Their work conditions are so bad that they are often diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and related conditions (reads in 12-15 min).
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Bryan Lufkin, How to be a better tourist
(BBC Capital, June 19, 2019)
At a time when over-tourism is suffocating many regions, places, and cities around the world, this article details what we can do to avoid being part of the problem – short of staying home – and thus be a ‘better tourist’. The first thing to do is to avoid the “drive-by tourism” syndrome (everybody going to the same place to see the same things). Other easy answers: be more inventive about your destination, be respectful, genuinely curious… (reads in 5-6 min).
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