52 Posts found for source_year: 2017

Why is a donut shop pushing bananas? Perhaps profit margins are higher on the overpriced fruit. Or maybe the shop is attempting to proclaim its good corporate citizenship by providing an uncharacteristically nutritious snack. How you feel about this — whether you’re grateful to have been prompted to make a healthier choice or irritated that even a donut shop feels the need to try to … [ Read more ]

Authors: Cass Sunstein, Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business (Autumn2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Today’s economic and political upheavals reflect an ongoing misalignment between business and economies (on the one hand) and acceptable societal outcomes (on the other). There is still time to adjust, if we are willing to reexamine some long-held assumptions.

Authors: Blair Sheppard, Colm Kelly | Source: strategy+business (Autumn2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, History, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

So that’s what we mean when we say America is exceptional. Not that our nation has been flawless from the start, but that we have shown the capacity to change, and make life better for those who follow.

Yes, our progress has been uneven. The work of democracy has always been hard, contentious and sometimes bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take … [ Read more ]

Authors: Barack Obama, Darlene Superville, Josh Lederman | Source: PBS NewsHour (January 10, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, People, Politics & Public Policy

This liberal philosopher predicted Trump’s rise in 1998 – and he has another warning for the left

Author: Sean Illing | Source: Vox (February 12, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

Twenty years ago, Richard Rorty warned that “a spectatorial, disgusted, mocking Left” would give rise to a populist demagogue. Is it ready now to take his advice?

Author: Conor Friedersdorf | Source: The Atlantic (July 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Lines can bring fairness and order to what might otherwise be a free-for-all. There’s even a science, called queuing theory, that examines the optimal ways to make lines move equitably and efficiently. But they don’t always work that way; sometimes, they can operate to institutionalize unfairness and inequality. That’s why Arlie Russell Hochschild uses lines as a metaphor for the challenges facing contemporary American society … [ Read more ]

Author: Nitin Nohria | Source: The Atlantic (December 2, 2017) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

“There’s a magical thinking among business executives that something about the profit motive makes everything run better,” noted Raymond Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University. […] A serious body of economics, not to mention reams of evidence from decades of privatizations around the world, suggests this belief is false.

[…]‌

Of course, the government can also do a horrible job of running things. And private … [ Read more ]

Author: Eduardo Porter | Source: The New York Times (January 10, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

It’s now a commonplace that Trump and his underlings tell whoppers. Fact-checkers have never had it so good. But all politicians lie. Bill Clinton could barely go a day without some shading or parsing of the truth. Richard Nixon was famously tricky. But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth — even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a … [ Read more ]

Author: Andrew Sullivan | Source: New York Magazine (February 10, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Theories of international relations
Of the large range of theories that have emerged on how states get along with each other, or not as the case may be, I will draw, in simplified terms, on two leading schools today: liberalism and structural realism.

1. Liberalism
   The basic notion in liberalism is that conflict tends to occur where states have diverging interests. Where these interests are non-trivial, sometimes such

… [ Read more ]

Author: Michael A. Witt | Source: Insead Knowledge (January 2, 2017) | Subjects: Excerpts, Foreign Policy, History, International, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology

[The] trend toward rationality and enlightenment was endangered long before the advent of the Internet. As Neil Postman noted in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the rise of television introduced not just a new medium but a new discourse: a gradual shift from a typographic culture to a photographic one, which in turn meant a shift from rationality to emotions, exposition to entertainment. … [ Read more ]

Author: Hossein Derakhshan | Source: WIRED (October 19, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Communication, Culture, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Sociology | Anthropology

Portugal treats addiction as a disease, not a crime.

Author: Nicholas Kristof | Source: The New York Times (September 22, 2017) | Subjects: Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy

When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul – and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does.

Author: Suzy Hansen | Source: The Guardian (August 8, 2017) | Subjects: America, Culture, Demographics, Excerpts, International, Life & Society, Race Relations, Sociology | Anthropology