How should society’s progress be measured? GDP tends to be used as a proxy. But its imperfections are widely known: it focuses on market-oriented production, for instance, and ignores how the gains from that output are distributed. Today experts gather in Seoul to discuss work on alternative measures led by Joseph Stiglitz and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, two eminent economists, and commissioned by the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries. Their report recommends adding a number of indicators to policymakers’ dashboards, including measures of inequality, environmental sustainability, happiness and trust. Economic insecurity—such as income buffers available to people when trouble strikes—also matters. If governments had considered insecurity during the 2007-08 financial crisis, they would have provided their economies with more support, and continued to do so even after GDP started to recover. But, as the report says, “what you measure affects what you do.”
Category: Economics
👓 Stakhanovite movement | Wikipedia
The term Stakhanovite originated in the Soviet Union and referred to workers who modelled themselves after Alexey Stakhanov. These workers took pride in their ability to produce more than was required, by working harder and more efficiently, thus strengthening the Communist state. The Stakhanovite Movement was encouraged due to the idea of socialist emulation. It began in the coal industry but later spread to many other industries in the Soviet Union. The movement eventually encountered resistance as the increased productivity led to increased demands on workers.
👓 Alexey Stakhanov | Wikipedia
Alexsei Grigoryevich Stakhanov (Russian: Алексе́й Григо́рьевич Стаха́нов; 3 January 1906 – 5 November 1977) was a Russian Soviet miner, Hero of Socialist Labor (1970), and a member of the CPSU (1936). He became a celebrity in 1935 as part of what became known as the Stakhanovite movement – a campaign intended to increase worker productivity and to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist economic system.
👓 A Stakhanovite regime: overwork | The Economist
Americans are taking a rare holiday for Thanksgiving today.
👓 How Japan’s prime minister plans to cope with daunting demography | The Economist
The reforms he has in mind are not bold enough
👓 Why Latin American governments spend money badly | The Economist
Costa Rica, among others, is trying to change that
👓 Why men who make less than their wives lie about their earnings | The Economist
Social norms have failed to keep pace with changes in the workplace
👓 The American Dream Is Alive. In China. | New York Times
Imagine two poor 18-year-olds, one in the U.S., the other in China. Who has a better chance of success? Are you sure?
The US used to pride itself on things like upward mobility… where’s the leadership on the American Dream these days?
👓 The next capitalist revolution | The Economist
Market power lies behind many economic ills. Time to restore competition
👓 Colombia’s biggest corruption scandal gets more complicated | The Economist
The magnate, the attorney-general and two strange deaths
👓 Hackers Are Stealing Influencer Instagram Accounts By Promising Lucrative Brand Deals | The Atlantic
In the Wild West of “influencer” marketing, there are few protections and plenty of easy marks.
Of the multi-billion dollar business and the issues with needing to give away one’s password to be tracked within this field, the real loss here seems to be that Instagram isn’t building infrastructure for their users to take advantage of these opportunities. Even if they were only taking a small fraction of the income for facilitating the market, they’re missing out on hundreds of millions.
It’s not mentioned here, but the fact that there are businesses built around the idea of “link in bio” means that Instagram really isn’t innovating on their platform.
Is Instagram really so deaf to the needs of their userbase?
👓 Ibn Khaldun | Wikipedia
Ibn Khaldūn (/ˈɪbən kælˈduːn/; Arabic: أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, Abū Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406) was a Tunisian Arab historiographer and historian. He is widely considered as a forerunner of the modern disciplines of historiography, sociology, economics, and demography.
Concerning the discipline of sociology, he described the dichotomy of sedentary life versus nomadic life as well as the inevitable loss of power that occurs when warriors conquer a city. According to the Arab scholar Sati’ al-Husri, the Muqaddimah may be read as a sociological work. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun’s central concept of ‘aṣabiyyah, which has been translated as “social cohesion”, “group solidarity”, or “tribalism”. This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun’s analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group’s downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion. Some of Ibn Khaldun’s views, particularly those concerning the Zanj people of sub-Saharan Africa,[27] have been cited as a racist,[28] though they were not uncommon for their time. According to the scholar Abdelmajid Hannoum, Ibn Khaldun’s description of the distinctions between Berbers and Arabs were misinterpreted by the translator William McGuckin de Slane, who wrongly inserted a “racial ideology that sets Arabs and Berbers apart and in opposition” into his translation of the Muqaddimah. ❧
November 09, 2018 at 11:09PM
He believed that the reason why non-Arabs were accepted as part of Arab society was due to their mastery of the Arabic language. ❧
November 09, 2018 at 11:21PM
🎧 The Daily: The Economic Cost of Authoritarian Rule | New York Times
As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey applies his strongman tactics to the economy, the country faces a crisis that could reverberate through global markets.
👓 Two Charts Show Trump’s Job Gains Are Just A Continuation From Obama’s Presidency | Forbes
When you look at the numbers (and graphs) the gains in employment under President Trump are essentially a continuation from President Obama‘s last six years in office.
Artificial Intelligence in 21st Century Education
13:00 – 14:15
Probe 3: How might an ethically and morally-informed AI be conceived in a culturally diverse global context? How might we realize a more equitably-designed, developed and deployed AI in light of the rate and range of disruption some have forecast as inevitable?
Panel: Abhishek Gupta, Nevena Francetic, Stephen Downes and video clips of Timnit Gebru & Rediet Abebe
Facilitator: Tylor Burrows
For the #e21sym question about Amazon’s AI discriminating against women, we do have some control. This article about how Sears helped to provide equality in the Jim Crow south is a great historical example of how economics can create equality: https://boffosocko.com/2018/10/18/searss-radical-past-how-mail-order-catalogues-subverted-the-racial-hierarchy-of-jim-crow-washington-post/