Business

Michael Moss on the extraordinary science of addictive junk food

March 22, 2013
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Michael Moss on the extraordinary science of addictive junk food

  In this editorial for the New York Times Magazine, Michael Moss discusses the “Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”. He begins the article, which derives from his current book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” by describing a fateful afternoon when the CEOs from all the major corporations in the junk food industry gathered to be warned about their significant role in the American obesity epidemic. The article also features interviews with former and current junk food industry insiders, PR professionals and other experts who helped or continue to help create, market and sell the most addictive,…

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Andrew McAfee’s technological utopia

March 1, 2013
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Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, delivered this astonishing lecture at a TEDx event in Boston in 2012. The main question of the lecture was “Are droids taking our jobs?” His answer, which is based on research, not mere speculation, is “most definitely yes.” And it’s not just mechanical or manufacturing jobs that are being taken over by robots, but also jobs involving higher order cognitive skills, like writing newspaper articles. Indeed, McAfee points out that Forbes online magazine has already started publishing flawless articles written by droids,…

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Mondragon Corporation

January 31, 2013
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While technically a corporation, Mondragon is actually federation of worker cooperatives operating mainly in the Basque country. Quite different from the typical capitalist corporation, it is one of the most promising developments in area of business management. It was founded in 1956 by a progressive Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta, who had a mission to spread a form of humanist teaching emphasizing solidarity and participation. From the outset, the purpose of Mondragon was not simply to earn profits, but to provide employment and other social benefits to the local community. It is now the largest business group in the Basque…

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Stiglitz on economic inequality

June 30, 2012
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The issue of economic inequality has been receiving quite a lot of attention in the past few months–at least in the progressive media. This is no doubt due in part to the Occupy movement and to the anti-austerity protests in Europe, which have really thrust the issues of inequality and economic justice into the spotlight. More so than at any point in the last several decades, there is a real public thirst for understanding the causes and consequences of economic inequality and what can be done to reverse it. The Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is one of several academics who have…

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Alternatives to capitalism?

June 28, 2012
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In this brief article first published in the Guardian, Richard Wolff, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts and New School University, discusses the amazing success of the Mondragon Corporation of Spain and its potential as a model of social organization in a post-capitalistic economy. Key differences between businesses working within the MC framework and typical corporations are (1) the democratic nature of the decision-making process within the organization and (2) the limits on income inequality between workers. Imagine all businesses in a country working within the MC framework and you have a realistic and intriguing alternative to capitalism. Here…

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Business with a conscience

May 19, 2012
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Every corporation, now matter how socially or environmentally destructive, presents itself as doing something good for consumers, for communities, for the species, or even the planet. Monsanto, for instance, claims to be all about “improving lives” (though notice they don’t say whose lives) and about “meeting the needs of today while preserving the planet for tomorrow.” This overt corporate public relations bullshit (I know that you know that I don’t believe this but I’m going to pretend I do because that’s how I make a lot of money) has led to such profound cynicism that reasonable people have to wonder…

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Capitalist logic and student debt

May 12, 2012
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Those who are interested in understanding the American political system–And shouldn’t we all be?–would do well to pay close attention to these two organizations: 1. Republic Report (http://www.republicreport.org/) 2. Open Secrets (http://www.opensecrets.org/) Both organizations are doing good work keeping track of how the US Chamber  of Commerce and the major corporations pervert the political process and prevent politicians from working in the public interest. One good example of this was illuminated in a recent Truthout article by Lee Fang that connects corporate lobbying with a looming rise in student loan interest rates. The following passage gives the essence of Fang’s article: On…

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Can there be “good” corporations? (by Marjorie Kelly)

April 22, 2012
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When companies are owned by workers and the community—instead of Wall Street financiers—everything changes. Our economic system is profoundly broken. To anyone paying attention, that much is clear. But what’s less clear is this: Our approach to fixing the economy is broken as well. The whole notion of “fighting corporate power” arises from an underlying belief that there is no alternative to capitalism as we know it. Starting from the insight that capitalism has become virtually a universal economy, we conclude that our best hope is to regulate corporations and work for countervailing powers like unions. But then we’ve lost…

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I am Fishead (Documentary)

March 23, 2012
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Official movie description:  how psychopaths and antidepressants influence our society: a provocative snapshot of the world we live in. It is a well-known fact that our society is structured like a pyramid. The very few people at the top create conditions for the majority below. Who are these people? Can we blame them for the problems our society faces today? Guided by the saying “A fish rots from the head,” the movie sets out to follow that fishy odor. What they found out is that people at the top are more likely to be psychopaths than the rest of us.…

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Nine strategies to end corporate rule

March 21, 2012
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Yes Magazine has put together an interesting collection of articles, written by various writers, around the question of the century: What can we do to bring an end to corporatocracy and help build a sustainable society that prioritizes human needs above corporate profits. The collection of articles can be found here. The nine strategies: 1. Amend the constitution to end corporate personhood. 2. Dive into grassroots campaigns.  3. Hold corporations accountable to our laws. 4. Get Past the Propaganda 5. Support independent media and keep the Internet free. 6. Protect the Commons 7. Vote. Protect our democracy. 8. Make your…

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Are Wall Street traders psychopaths?

March 16, 2012
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One has to be pleased that Time magazine even considers the question. Their answer can be found here. Also worth reading is the article that got them thinking about this, the insider’s account of what it’s like to work for Goldman Sachs.

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Too big to jail (by Simon Johnson)

February 28, 2012
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Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF, and co-founder of a leading economics blog, BaselineScenario, a professor at MIT Sloan, and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics published recently published “Too big to jail” on project-syndicate. Though I highly recommend to read the whole article, the first paragraph sums it up quite nicely: Among the fundamental principles of any functioning justice system is the following: Don’t lie to a judge or falsify documents submitted to a court, or you will go to jail. Breaking an oath to tell the truth is perjury, and lying in official documents…

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Consumer surveillance

February 7, 2012
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Until recently brick-and-mortar businesses have looked upon on-line operations like Amazon with envy because the latter have something that the traditional business do not–an easy and legal way to track consumer behavior and conduct market research. While many proposals have been put forward, none of them have been entirely effective, appropriate (RFID tracking, Payback/Loyalty Systems) or legal (METRO Loyalty card). But recently a new technological approach has been introduced by Prism Skylabs, utilizing the data from security surveillance cameras to track consumer behavior. On their website they state that: Prism Skylabs’ goal is to transform the world’s multi-hundred billion-dollar camera network…

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More on the Apple sweatshops

February 7, 2012
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Another article in the mainstream media (in this case from CNN) on the horrible working conditions at the Chinese factories run by Foxconn, the main supplier for Apple and many other high-tech brands. One really has to wonder what Apple has done to deserve all of this bad publicity in the Western press, especially considering that just about every other major western brand is doing exactly the same thing–that is, outsourcing to Chinese sweatshops in which there is neither the incentive nor the inclination to maintain labor conditions that are acceptable by Western standards. The article is worth reading mainly…

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Should consumers boycott Apple products?

February 1, 2012
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The New York Times, rather surprisingly, published an interesting article recently on the inhumane and unsafe conditions in which Chinese workers are suffering while making products for high-profile, high-tech Western companies like Apple. The conditions there are so bleak that when workers there aren’t being killed by explosions or toxic chemicals they are killing themselves. And those who manage to survive don’t fare much better, working overtime, sleeping in crowded dorms, living effectively in conditions of slavery. The NYT article, and others like it,  have received a lot of attention and caused a bit of an image problem for Apple–surprising because…

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How profitable is lobbying?

January 15, 2012
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With a number like 25.8 lobbyists per member of Congress (totaling 11,140 in Washington alone), lobbying has become a serious business. The  idea is to get regulations gutted or a tax loopholes and exceptions created to spare corporations of inconvenient profit losses. But getting those laws changed can be fairly expensive. And if so, how much money does a corporation get back from investing in a good lobbyist? Fortunately there is a study conducted by Raquel Alexander, Susan Scholz and Stephen Mazza entitled “Measuring Rates of Return for Lobbying Expenditures: An Empirical Analysis under the American Jobs Creation Act” that provides some hard fact answers…

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Chain gangs are cheaper

December 10, 2011
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As one could expect, Alabama’s tough new immigration law  induced a large percentage of immigrants to flee the state. However, the Alabama legislators responsible for the new immigration law apparently either thought otherwise or simply underestimated the consequences this law would have for the agricultural sector, which is heavily reliant on low-waged Hispanics to do the hard labor and now struggling to replace the lost labor force.  But fear not, for John McMillan, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries knows the solution to this problem. He suggests: […] that inmate labor through the state’s work-release program offers a…

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Don’t let a financial crisis go to waste: use it to privatize public education

November 18, 2011
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Another must-read article in The Nation magazine documents the successful efforts that are underway to privatize the last shreds of the crumbling public education system in the US.  The author, Lee Fang, picks up where Naomi Klein ended in No Logo. Reader beware: the information contained in this article is extremely distressing and should not be read by those who are easily depressed. 

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The network of global corporate control

November 7, 2011
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Unfortunately, though there are many books and articles written on the tight grip multinational corporations have on global governance, there is relatively little empirical research conducted on this matter. This recently published paper by Swiss researchers however provides some practical empirical evidence and background research on the network of global corporate control: Abstract:  The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along…

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Study reveals that traders are worse than psychopaths

November 2, 2011
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St. Gallen University in Switzerland recently conducted a study to examine the differences and similarities between stock market traders, clinically diagnosed psychopaths, and representative “normal” citizens when tested with the classic prisoners dilemma game. As expected, the traders revealed a much higher penchant for competitive advantage and destructive behavior than the “normals”. What wasn’t expected–and what is highly interesting–is that the traders outdid the clinical psychopaths in psychopathic tendencies.  Thomas Noll, one of the conductors of the study said in a Spiegel interview: “Naturally one can’t characterize the traders as deranged, but for example, they behaved more egotistically and were more willing…

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