That's a fascinating article about Earth-system science. Here is an idea of the impacts of more carbon in the atmosphere, which is only one aspect of the changes brought about by humans: The result of putting more carbon into the atmosphere than can be taken out of it is a warmer climate, a melting Arctic, higher sea levels, improvements in the photosynthetic efficiency of many plants, an intensification of the hydrologic cycle of evaporation and precipitation, and new ocean chemistry. The article reminds me of "The Age of Stupid", an excellent "fiction-documentary" set in the future, which scans through events from the past and essentially wonders why the humans didn't save themselves when they had the chance. Here is the trailer: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xee6fs_the-age-of-stupid_shortfilms

Clayton Christensen is talking about how the faith in profitability metrics affects innovation. I found it a very interesting perspective in an age where people with even more modest theoretical background in business keep talking about business cases all day.

This special report is a solid one. It begins by going over direct democracy and underlinging the things that make up a direct democracy: referendums, recalls, and initiatives. The first one of these, referendums, is not controversial and available in most countries and states. Recalls are bolder and more rare. Initiatives are even bolder and rarely found in modern democracies. This report argues that initiatives can work, but that they have gone terribly wrong in the case of California. The historical turning point when initiatives went sour is Proposition 13, in 1978. Prop 13 forced the legislature to enact a property tax rate of 1% (down from 2.6%) with a maximum yearly increase of 2%. It also required a two-thirds majority for any new tax hike. This proposition had many unintended consequences. The municipalities lost a lot of revenues from property taxes. At that point the state stepped in and began redistributing money to the localities, thus instigating a redistribution system that put Sacramento at the center of everything. The proposition was also fought vigorously by both sides and Howard Jarvis -- the man behind the proposition -- became a celebrity and made himself famous by bringing relief to homeowners. The number of initiatives since then increased steeply. 74 initiatives became propositions in the last decade. The problems with powerful direct initiatives is that the people become a fourth branch of democracy, competing with the representative legislature. By voting for services or against tax hikes, the initiatives bind the hands of the representatives who can't satisfy everyone without running huge deficits: hence California's economic troubles. The main loser has been the school system which takes the biggest part of the state's spending at 34.5% of the total. The spending per pupil has gone from 9,011$ in 2001 down to 7,886$ in 2010. Other problems include: - The petition gathering rules, which do not provide for enough time, and allow agencies to make a business of selling signatures to the backers of an initiative. - The initiatives actually have the power to change the constitution. That is a dangerous gamble. - The drafting of the initiatives makes voting tedious. The initiatives contain hard-to-read legalese and can run up to 10,000 words a pop. The report also makes the point that the voters don't seem to be all that well-informed on the workings of their democracy. They answered basic questions wrong around revenue and spending of the state, as well as around the content of proposition 13. In conclusion, the report presents a few solutions -- some of which are already being implemented or debated: - Stop the initiatives from altering the constitution - Allow the legislature to present alternatives or updated drafts (here Switzerland is an example) - Prevent gerrymandering - Go from a bicameral system to a unicameral one -- California does not have a good reason to bother with two chambers - Simplify the representation by electing fewer officials and having those appoint their staff - Extend term limits to retain knowledge and experience in the legislature

An article by Roubini about how the world finds it hard to collaborate within the G-20 forum:

G-7 leaders share the belief in the power of free markets to generate long-term prosperity and the importance of democracy for political stability and social justice. The G-20, on the other hand, includes autocratic governments with quite different views about the role of the state in the economy—often models of state capitalism—and differing views on rule of law, property rights, transparency and freedom of speech.

He's hoping the world will find a way to collaborate somehow though:

The argument that we live in a G-Zero rather than a G-20 world should not be taken as a normative statement. It is rather just an analytical statement of the world we are in rather than the world of cooperation we should be in. Since most global issues are transnational, with global spillover effects, the need for dialogue, coordination and cooperation is more necessary than ever.

Also, here's a short interview with Joe Stiglitz where he mostly agrees with the article above: http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2011_spring/05_stiglitz.html

An old but good talk on urbanism. Kunstler emphasizes that urbanism is about defining space into something worth caring about.

Kickstarter is getting a lot of press after a project promising to build an amazing iphone dock raised more than a million dollars. The record was recently broken by a new project, for creating an old-school adventure game, that as of now raised more than 2.3M dollars. I find it amazing how Kickstarter allows ventures to cut the middle man and raise money straight from the audience, skipping the investors altogether. Another interesting project -- promising long-form journalism -- also raised an astounding amount of money in no time at all: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/readmatter/matter

Very interesting article written by a super-rich (early investor of Amazon.com) with an "eight-figure income" who provides a good testimony of how wrong trickle down economics is. The crux of the argument is that job creation will only occur if one has both parts of the equation: a middle-class which has money to spend as well as investors who have products to offer. He highlights the fact that the current American tax system primarily benefits the rich and is thus counter-productive to the objective of job creation. My favorite para is this, which is a great counter-example of trickle down economics: It’s true that we do spend a lot more than the average family. Yet the one truly expensive line item in our budget is our airplane (which, by the way, was manufactured in France by Dassault Aviation SA), and those annual costs are mostly for fuel (from the Middle East). It’s just crazy to believe that any of this is more beneficial to our economy than hiring more teachers or police officers or investing in our infrastructure.

This article meanders along discussing how the economic rise of China and Vietnam challenge the assumption that as a country develops economically, it inevitably becomes more democratic. Both China and Vietnam have seen large economic growth without any substantial change in their autocratic regimes. Furthermore, they've handled transfers of power seamlessly. What I found most compelling about this article was the suggestion that representative democratic institutions themselves have changed substantially over the last 20 to 30 years; that they have become less capable of handling policy decisions in the face of outside interests, and spend an inordinate amount of time address popular "non-issues".

This is a very short text about the decade since 9/11. I always think it is useful to appreciate the essentials of a major event (in this case 9/11), especially when they are expressed by an expert in the field.

Here is an article about the nature of the OWS movement (and not just how news outlets operate). It feels like the "conservative moral focus" is a subset of the "progressive moral focus", which degrades the quality of the argument. I think it would have been possible to describe those two moral foci so that they would appear more distinct from one another. And I generally agree with this: Nobody makes it on their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private. But I think it remains shallow and is not rigorous. For example, the statement "Corporations exist to make life better for most people" is certainly debatable. The primary goal of corporations is to make a profit. And profits can easily be made by making life worse for people. The arms industry is just one example.

Here is a good provocative article on modern feminist factions. The conclusion reads:

You cannot say that, because women suffer injustices far more severe in other parts of the world, a woman who's had to give up work in Harlesden because her tax credits were cut is not a feminist issue. You cannot hope that a belief in equality will lead everybody to the same conclusions about body shapes, or all-women shortlists, or gender essentialism. When we try to present a united front, we're not asking too much of ourselves, we're asking too little: waiting for an unattainable unity is just another way of doing nothing. When we divide, we can burn more brightly in many places.

Another related article summarizes the current representation of women in political bodies. The charts and graphs are quite good: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/mar/07/women-representation-in-politics-worldwide

GDP growth vs. inflation and middle-income.

Sometimes productivity is not good for the producers

Here's a link to the movie 'Debtocracy'. The movie was released under a Creative Commons license and is thus freely available online. The production quality of the movie is quite good and the movie is easy to watch. The animated sequences are enticing and the camera work is good. As for the content, I am divided. Critics have said that the movie is just a piece of propaganda, and it's easy to agree with those critis, especially in the first 30 minutes. After that point though, the movie picks up and describes the concept of odious debt -- debt that was incurred illegitimately by a government without investing the money into infrastructure that would be beneficial for the people. The movie presents an analysis of Iraq, and one of Ecuador. In both of these cases, part of the national debt was claimed to be illegitimate and left unpaid by the respective governments. Towards the end, the plot comes back to address the case of Greece, and states that most of the Greek debt is probably illegitimate and will have to be cancelled. The interviewees push for an independent audit, independent of the european governments and independent of the IMF. This looks like a good idea to me. Finally, some fleeting points are being made about the debt being illegitimate because it was incurred in a neoliberal system. Which is too vague an argument for me to absorb, but the larger point that the people should not pay for the crimes of others is clear. I was happy to see that Debtocracy makes use of a few clips from Democracy Now!, which is of course often featured on ON.