“By treating economies as living systems, we can build financial frameworks that regenerate rather than exploit.”
economics
Knock It Off!
“Getting copied is devastating—but not necessarily illegal. Who owns what in an era of unprecedented mass consumption?”
American Mid: Hampton Inn’s Good-Enough Formula for World Domination
“Hampton has become the largest US chain, and a global export, by being rigorously OK. The waffle makers are standing by.”
That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.
“Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called ‘sludge.'”
The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment
“We are increasingly trading our privacy for a sense of security. Becoming a parent showed me how tempting, and how dangerous, that exchange can be.”
The Dystopian Underworld of South Africa’s Illegal Gold Mines
“When the country’s mining industry collapsed, a criminal economy grew in its place, with thousands of men climbing into some of the deepest shafts in the world, searching for leftover gold.”
The Disappearing Art of Maintenance
What do you do with a subway car that’s been operating 25 years longer than it was designed to? What do you do with a phone that’s only designed to work for three? In this thoughtful essay, Alex Vuoco suggests that we look to the make-it-last ethos as a course out of the increasingly wasteful […]
China’s Communist Government Has a Strong Hold on Chinese Corporations
China’s largest e-commerce company is not only changing the way people in China shop, but how they think about commerce and each other in a Communist country.
