Future financial crises could accelerate the rebalancing of global economic activity from developed to emerging markets. To some extent, the rebalancing of global economic activity from developed to emerging markets simply reflects economic laws of gravity. In a world where ideas can flow freely and countries are at different stages in adopting modern modes of [...]
Foreign Companies Chafe at China’s Restrictions
HONG KONG — Foreign companies doing business in China are increasingly feeling as if the deck is stacked against them. Workers pour liquid into sealed drums at a yellow phosphorus factory in Yunnan Province, China. China has filed more than a dozen trade cases to limit imports, imposed a series of “buy Chinese” measures and [...]
The Case for Working With Your Hands – NYTimes.com
The television show “Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. [...]
The Laws of Simplicity » About
This site is devoted to my ongoing thought processes regarding the topic of simplicity. I wrote and designed a book entitled The Laws of Simplicity to let the ideas take root. Here online, I continue to develop the thoughts that surround the paradoxically complex topic of simplicity. I have had many suggestions over the recent [...]
Economics: What went wrong with economics
And how the discipline should change to avoid the mistakes of the past Illustration by Jon Berkerly OF ALL the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself. A few years ago, the dismal science was being acclaimed as a way of explaining ever more forms [...]
Sputnik Observatory
Sputnik Observatory is a New York not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture. We fulfill this mission by documenting, archiving, and disseminating ideas that are shaping modern thought by interviewing leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology from around the world. Our philosophy is that ideas are NOT selfish, ideas are [...]
Power Game – Hoopin with Obama
WASHINGTON — Baron Hill is in training, working on his jumper, pumping iron, doing rep after tedious rep on the weight machines to strengthen his bum knee. He swore 15 years ago that he’d never play competitive basketball again, but here he is at his health club, 55 years old, shooting baskets alone. Once, he [...]
What Will China Look Like in 2035?
In years past, foreigners were skeptical about China, doubting whether it would ever become a stable society and have a decent economy. In years recent, foreigners are nervous about China, worrying whether China will take over the world at least economically. But how do China’s own researchers and leaders think about the future of the [...]
Guangdong Visions: Stability vs. Innovation
In Part I of this report on what’s now happening in Guangdong province, the center of China’s low-cost manufacturing power, I presented the vision of Communist Party Secretary Wang Yang, Guangdong’s top leader and a rising star in Chinese politics. In the second part, I look at how Wang and Premier Wen Jiabao stressed different [...]