A new trilemma dogging the world economy. What democratic governments must do to resist and reverse the political inroads of big tech. A detailed portrait of Giorgia Meloni. Revelations about Total Energies’ dealings in Mozambique pose far-reaching questions relating to human rights and security. Inflammation has the capacity to help us heal but it can also do much harm.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Dani Rodrik, A New Trilemma Haunts the World Economy
(Project Syndicate, 9 September 2024)
The academic argues that it may be impossible simultaneously to combat climate change, boost the middle class in advanced economies, and reduce global poverty. Under current policy trajectories, any combination of two goals appears to come at the expense of the third. The reason is obvious: what ‘Western’ policymakers see as a necessary response to neoliberalism’s failures (combating climate change and reducing inequalities) looks, to poor countries, like an assault on their development prospects. The reason: green industrial policies and subsidies, and other regulations, are often discriminatory and threaten to keep out manufactured goods from developing countries (metered paywall that may require prior registration, reads in 6-8 min).
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Marietje Schaake, Big Tech’s Coup
(Foreign Affairs, 26 September 2024)
Schaake – an influential academic (at Stanford), former member of the European Parliament and the author of “The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley” – asserts that democratic governments have lost their primacy in the digital world, with tech companies and their executives increasingly in charge. She argues that, if democracy is to survive, political leaders must fight head on. “They need to shrink their overdependence on powerful tech companies (…) and must empower public interest technology as a counterweight”. Most of all, they must build effective and innovative regulatory regimes that can meaningfully hold tech companies (and governments using tech) to account (metered paywall that may require registration, reads in 7-9 min).
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Alexander Stille, The Shapeshifter: Who Is The Real Giorgia Meloni?
(The Guardian, 19 September 2024)
A longread (15 min +) that is also a must-read at a time when the populist far-right is on the ascendency in Europe and elsewhere. Meloni is often called a neo-fascist and a danger to Italy, but she’s also credited as having been accepted by EU centrist parties and has surprised many people by her political pragmatism and shrewd ability. Who is she and what’s she achieved so far? And is she a closet fascist or a conservative democrat? The ‘full’ picture is much more nuanced than expected. Read on (free access).
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Alex Perry, All Must Be Beheaded
(Politico, 26 September 2024)
A long, thorough, deeply researched article that contains revelations about the atrocities committed at Total Energies’ (the French energy giant) African stronghold in Mozambique. Behind the moral revulsion of the torture and summary executions that happened on the doorstep of the gas plant’s gatehouse, the article begs the question of Total Energies’ and other commodity giants’ adventures in countries in which it’s hard to adhere to security and human rights standards. In this specific case, it’s hard to imagine how the banks and state lenders from Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa and the US who agreed to back the $14.9bn project will now proceed (metered paywall, reads in 15-20 min).
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Daniela Lamas, Inflammation May Be the Root of Our Maladies
(The New York Times, 16 September 2024)
A growing body of research shows that inflammation (the body’s response to infection or injury) is not just a marker of underlying disease but also a driver of it; and the more medicine learns about inflammation, the more we learn about heart disease and memory loss. This is a reminder of the delicate balance that exists in our bodies and of the fact that the same system that protects us can also cause us harm (gifted article, 4-5 min).
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