The Real New Deal: Spend Stimulus Money on Women and Girls
The United States government is about to borrow and spend an unprecedented amount of money to revitalize an economy staggered by a global pandemic, in the hopes of lifting a nation at odds with itself. There is one sure path to increase the investment’s payoff: spend it on women and girls. While the Biden administration […]
Big Tech And The Social Contract
The Age of Enlightenment gave us the notion of the “Social Contract” and governing mandates based on collective self-interest not divine right or brute force. With large tech companies now standing shoulder to shoulder with government in terms of influence and power, we need a new social contract – one that can reconcile how powerful […]
The Economics of Pain: America’s Opioid Epidemic
Pain is one of nature’s strongest forces. Pain makes the hand recoil at the flame and provides the instinct to duck when a rock is heading your way. Pain is also one of the most bedeviling forces in nature. Ancient people understood pain when they could see a gash or crooked finger. If pain was […]
Heed The Ancient Mariner: Stop Dumping Plastic in The Ocean
In the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, the killing of an albatross was believed to have turned the fates against a ship in open water. “With my crossbow, I shot the Albatross,” confessed the ancient Mariner. Ruin, guilt, and pain followed. As we look across the oceans today, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem looks prescient. […]
China’s Control of Cobalt May Leave Tech Investors Feeling Blue
Charles Marlow, the fictitious steamer captain from Joseph Conrad’s late 19th century novella Heart of Darkness was drawn to the vast “blank places” on the map that surrounded the Congo River. Today, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is no longer a blank place on the map, but it’s still a land gripped by instability. It […]