economics
Good robots, bad robots, and the future of work
You say 'the robots will take our jobs' like it's a bad thing.
The blind, dangerous enthusiasm of a ‘Techno-Optimist’
Billionaire Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto makes the case that technology is a pure blessing, that more is always better, and it shouldn’t be regulated or held back by anyone or anything. Here’s a skeptical counterpoint.
Eco-friendly transportation? The good, the bad, and the pipe dreams
The saying about putting a fox in charge of the hen house grossly underestimates human ingenuity. We are not foxes, and so we have the ability to be much cleverer custodians of institutions we’re still destroying.
Is real carbon sequestration possible under capitalism?
Reading Time: 11 minutes Given the incentives in capitalism, the “stick” approach to climate change isn’t working. Could a new currency provide a carrot to reframe our priorities?
Internet Archive loses to publishers, mediocre tech futures continue
Reading Time: 6 minutes It is the easiest thing in the world to copy and paste digital content. This is why elaborate systems needed to be invented, to push back on the native capabilities of technology. Digital Rights Management (DRM) most often refers to advanced technology that locks in document
Do Biden’s bank bailouts create a ‘moral hazard’?
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Biden administration is insisting its recently announced bailouts of two failed tech-focused banks—Silicon Valley (California) and Signature (New York)—is something else. But experts in previous government interventions to save failing financial institutions, notably thos
Low-income workers get a little raise! Big whoop.
Reading Time: 4 minutes We’re all, at least to some degree, deluded. Whether we believe fervently in deities that—let’s be honest—seem not to exist anywhere. Whether we believe someone we love deeply loves us back when they actually don’t. Or whether we believe we understand what being poor really m
The longtermism that works—and the kind that doesn’t
Reading Time: 10 minutes In 2004, a tsunami and earthquake killed almost 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries. Many forms of relief then mouldered on the beaches—used clothes, high heel shoes, expired medicines—because “in-kind” donations are well known not to be effective forms of aid on a g
COP27 Climate Conference: The change we need vs. the change we’ll get
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last November, government ministers at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) agreed to The Glasgow Climate Pact. It was both ambitious, in setting key targets for emissions reductions by 2030, and also heavily criticized, including by the Sc
Patagonia company owner gives it away to Planet Earth in perpetuity
Reading Time: 3 minutes The owner of outdoor clothing and equipment company Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, is giving the entire company away to support the environment and fight climate change devastation, something that many in the humanist community interested in helping our planet, will laud. Yvon Ch