Friends matter even more than we might imagine. Might we be underestimating the likelihood and impact of longer term inflation? Asian democratic technocracy is now challenging (post truth) Western Democracy’s long held status as the least worst of all political systems. Women’s rights unequivocally emerge, as a major casualty of the pandemic – mass tourism could be another.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The number and quality of our friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life save for giving up smoking” (Robin Dunbar in “Friends”)

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Rachel Cook, Friends by Robin Dunbar review – how important are your pals?
(The Guardian, 21 February 2021)
This is a review of Friends*: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships by Robin Dunbar – an evolutionary psychologist. The thrust of his argument: the number and quality of our friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life save for giving up smoking. Two interesting insight: (1) friendship requires investment -it “dies fast” when not maintained, and distance, even in the age of the mobile phone, has a catastrophic effect on it; (2) most of the gender stereotypes about friendship are true (reads in 6-7 min).
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Kenneth Rogoff, Are Inflation Fears Justified?
(Project Syndicate, 1 March 2021)
The Harvard economist thinks that the markets are probably overstating short-term inflation risks for 2021 but do not yet fully appreciate the longer-term dangers. The real inflation risk could materialize if both central-bank independence and globalization fall out of favor (a reversal of globalization in particular could have a big impact on inflation). The bottom line: longer-term inflation risks are skewed much more to the upside than markets or policymakers seem to realize (reads in 6-7 min).
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Parag Khanna, The New ‘End of History’
(The National Interest, 6 March 2021)
In this piece largely devoted to Fukuyama’s thought, Khanna argues that Asian democratic technocracy is the political system that has emerged victorious from the pandemic. In his opinion, countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are global role models for their blend of competence and transparency. They are the vanguard of “new Asian values” of technocratic governance, mixed capitalism, and social conservatism that “are far more likely to become a global set of norms than post-truth Western democracy” (reads in 8-10 min).
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Helen Lewis, The Pandemic Has Given Women a New Kind of Rage
(The Atlantic, 10 March 2021)
This article explains why the pandemic has been a disaster for feminism and a huge setback for the gains of the past 50 years, such as the domestic-violence-refuge movement and women’s increased economic independence. The burden of homeschooling caused by COVID has fallen harder on mothers, and when couples were forced to protect one job, they normally picked the man’s, either for sensible economic reasons or for unconscious cultural ones. The end-result: the pandemic has sent many families back to the 1950s, with a revival of the breadwinner/homemaker divide (reads in about 10 min).
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Sophie Haigney, Are We Ready for the Return of Mass Tourism?
(The New Republic, 9 March 2021)
This is about The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry Into the Tourist Age by Marco D’Eramo – a new book in which the Italian social theorist claims that we live in the “Age of Tourism” – the defining industry of the 21st century that was an $8.8 trillion business in 2018 (10.4% of global GDP). It explores many different issues (like whether “sustainable travel” is oxymoronic) and more generally the impact tourism has had on our politics, our planet, and our selves. The pandemic has not made it any clearer what the end of this age of tourism would look like, but it has clarified just how tenacious tourism’s hold on society has been—and how it simply cannot go on like this (reads in 7-8 min).
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*Friendships old and new underpin the network of the Monthly Barometer. This is the ambitious commitment we make to all MB Summit of Minds participants: that they will leave us with at least one new friend, a new idea and a new project.