Nuance is what matters to understand the 21st century population paradox. A compelling overview of the inflation landscape. A climate change ABC. A digestible analysis of the post FTX crypto landscape. The colossal failure of Amazon’s Alexa.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Elevated and volatile inflation is likely to be persistent, not in the double digits but significantly above two percent” (Kenneth Rogoff in the second article of this weekly selection)
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Bryan Walsh, Are 8 billion people too many — or too few?
(VOX, 21 November 2022)
Welcome to the population paradox of the 21st century.
We just crossed the 8bn benchmark and the medium scenario predicts that by 2100, global population will level off at around 10.4 billion. For those who see every additional human being as one more consuming, carbon-emitting unit on a hot and crowded planet, this amounts to a catastrophe. But another group fears we’ll never actually get to 10.4 billion, observing that the pace of population growth is slowing at less than 1 percent a year. These ‘population worriers’ see an aging world of empty cradles, sapped of innovation and youthful energy, fearing an “underpopulation bomb” with a very long fuse. To get a sense of what’s coming, as this article argues, nuance in the analysis is what matters. Read on (free access – 7-9 min).
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Kenneth Rogoff, The Age of Inflation
(Foreign Affairs, November / December 2022)
A compelling overview of the ‘inflation landscape’. Two years ago, inflation caught much of the world by surprise, but as argued in this article, it is here to stay: elevated and volatile inflation is likely to be persistent, not in the double digits but significantly above two percent. There are several reasons for that: new global supply shocks such as war, pandemic, and extreme weather events that conflate with each other. And globalization turning into headwinds, both because China, like much of the world, is rapidly aging and because of growing geopolitical turmoil. For central banks, supply shocks are difficult to deal with: they entail complex tradeoffs between bringing down inflation and the costs to businesses and workers of lower growth and higher unemployment (metered paywall that may require prior registration – reads in about 10 min).
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Elizabeth Kolbert, Climate Change From A to Z
(The New Yorker, 21 November 2022)
In this alphabet primer, the author takes us to the stories we tell ourselves about the future. A long and leisurely read where we can stop at each letter in no particular order – whether it’s “Blah-Blah-Blah” (Greta), Despair (unproductive and sinful), Electrify Everything (the cost of renewables is falling like a stone), Green Concrete (cement-free), Narratives (avoid the fearful ones), Temperatures (pay attention to “extreme humid heat”), and all the remaining letters. Rich, dense and insightful (metered paywall that may require prior registration – reads in 20 min+ for the full article)
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Paul Krugman, Is This the End Game for Crypto?
(The New York Times, 17 November 2022)
Many readers will disagree, but Krugman makes some fundamental points in this simple, digestible analysis of the crypto industry that follows the FTX debacle. In particular: “Recent events have made clear the need to regulate crypto (…) But it also seems likely that the industry couldn’t survive regulation.” “After 14 years, cryptocurrencies have made almost no inroads into the traditional role of money.”
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Ron Amadeo, Amazon Alexa is a “colossal failure,” on pace to lose $10 billion this year
(Ars Technica, 21 November 2022)
How a seemingly brilliant idea fand the pet project of Jeff Bezos fell completely out of favour. Alexa has been around for ten years, but never made any money – every single plan to monetize it has failed, and now the layoffs reportedly hit the Alexa team hard as the company’s biggest money loser. It seems that all voice assistants are doomed (metered paywall – reads in 4-5 min).
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