Is today’s China set to be the Japan of 1990? If green growth is the future, what will it look like? When fear of the climate crisis becomes adaptation. Why AI & social media searches for the perfect vacation end up ruining things for everyone. Time is zero-sum, don’t forget this when doing your meeting schedule.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Time is zero-sum” (in the last article)
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Paul Krugman, What happened to Japan?
(The New York Times, 25 July 2023)
In the debate about whether China will be the next Japan, Krugman argues that “it’s probably going to be worse.” In the late 1980s, after experiencing a monstruous stock and real estate bubble, Japan went from ‘world champion’ status to that of a ‘basket case’. Could China suffer from the same fate? There are many dissimilarities (the key one: China may not avoid the middle-income trap) and some obvious similarities between China now and Japan in 1990 (most notably a wildly unbalanced economy), but Krugman reminds us that Japan, rather than being a cautionary tale, is a kind of role model of how to manage difficult demographics while remaining prosperous and socially stable. If it’s headed for an economic slowdown, the key question is therefore whether China can replicate Japan’s social cohesion – managing slower growth without mass suffering or social instability. Unlikely (gifted article – reads in 6-8 min).
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Ellen Halliday, Is green growth the future?
(Prospect, August-September 2023)
Two prominent academic voices (Kate Raworth and Sam Fankhauser) discuss the limits of economic growth, the challenges of climate change and what a prosperous life really looks like. The key issue: can high-income countries come back within planetary boundaries in a democratic way that meets the needs of all people? Fankhauser believes it can be done with a growing GDP. Raworth is more doubtful. A great argument with interesting lines such as: “Green growth isn’t deregulation-driven, it is growth that is well regulated and respects planetary boundaries” (Fankhauser) (free access – reads in about 10 min).
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Maggie Mertens, Why aren’t we more scared of the climate crisis? It’s complicated
(The Guardian, 26 July 2023)
Despite extreme heat and weather, most Americans aren’t cowering in fear. It’s probably the same elsewhere and there’s a psychological reason for that: we aren’t designed to remain in a high state of fear for long. As a social psychologist puts it: “A very fundamental feature of the normal kind of expected emotional processing is hedonic adaptation.” We adapt to our stressors and the emotional response to the climate crisis is in many respects comparable to what those living in war zones may experience: if the threat does not escalate or the nature of the threat’s doesn’t change, “it is to be expected that the felt emotion is going to go down.” The recommendation: instead of getting engulfed with fear, we should take care of our own mental health as we go through rough times, because “our ability to eventually effect change, big or small, is directly tied to how we manage the stressors that come along with this issue” (free access – 10min-ish).
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Rebecca Jennings, Stop trying to have the perfect vacation. You’re ruining everyone else’s
(Vox, 19 July 2023)
How TikTok and Instagram are ruining your vacation. The reason: entitlement and endless optimization have turned holidaying into an “unfun blood sport.” Some are even letting ChatGPT plan their vacations – referencing every possible available recommendation and “best of” list and cobbling together a bulletproof itinerary. It all ends the same: with thousands of people doing the same things, in the same places, at the same time. There is now too much information and the great symbols of internet-driven over-tourism (Dubrovnik, Venice and the like) have become a nightmare. The most common and egregious posture: tourists believing that the locals should be grateful they’re there (metered paywall – reads in 6-8 min).
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Constance Noonan Hadley and Eunice Eun, Stop the Meeting Madness
(Harvard Business Review, July-August 2017)
Six years old, but as relevant as ever, for it seems that in the post-pandemic era meetings have increased in length and frequency. As the two researchers observe, “real improvement requires systemic change, because meetings affect how people collaborate and how they get their own work done.” Read on to grasp what this means and entails. The key point to bear in mind: time is zero-sum (metered paywall – reads in 7-9 min).
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