Society

The Federal Reserve has raised U.S. interest rates five times in 2022, but how do today’s levels compare to historical interest rates?

“A couple of thoughts: I don’t think using Dan Hannan and Jacob Rees-Mogg illuminates what most Leave voters thought: they weren’t in favour of letting the free market rip. That was why Vote Leave focused, for good or ill, on public services…”

A discussion on supply chains, commodities, and climate

Abstract. Liberals claim that globalization has led to fragmentation and decentralized networks of power relations. This does not explain how states increasingly “weaponize interdependence” by leveraging global networks of informational and financial exchange for strategic advantage. The theoretical literature on network topography shows how standard models predict that many networks grow asymmetrically so that some nodes are far more connected than others. This model nicely describes several key global economic networks, centering on the United States and a few other states. Highly asymmetric networks allow states with (1) effective jurisdiction over the central economic nodes and (2) appropriate domestic institutions and norms to weaponize these structural advantages for coercive ends. In particular, two mechanisms can be identified. First, states can employ the “panopticon effect” to gather strategically valuable information. Second, they can employ the “chokepoint effect” to deny network access to adversaries. Tests of the plausibility of these arguments across two extended case studies that provide variation both in the extent of U.S. jurisdiction and in the presence of domestic institutions—the SWIFT financial messaging system and the internet—confirm the framework's expectations. A better understanding of the policy implications of the use and potential overuse of these tools, as well as the response strategies of targeted states, will recast scholarly debates on the relationship between economic globalization and state coercion.

Texas-based RealPage’s YieldStar software helps landlords set prices for apartments across the U.S. With rents soaring, critics are concerned that the company’s proprietary algorithm is hurting competition.

On the concept of self-referential fame, a tool some use even before they’ve actually become famous.

by Brewster Kahle, June 2011   Press on this:  NYtimes Books are being thrown away, or sometimes packed away, as digitized versions become more available. This is an important time to plan carefully for there is much at stake. Digital technologies are changing both how library materials are accessed and increasingly how library materials are preserved. […]

“War of memes: why Z-war won't end with peace Some Western analysts unfamiliar with Eastern European cultural context perceive Z-war as an accident. They presume that Russian invasion results from some sort of "misunderstanding" or mistake which can be resolved via negotiations🧵”

“Word of the day is another old favourite. A 'mumpsimus' (16th century) is someone who insists that they are right, despite clear evidence that they are not.”

With more people conscious of racial inequities, it’s worth drilling down into what exactly ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ mean. How are they different, where do they overlap? And how do both impact how we interact with society?

The video below—first posted on social media by China Kestrel Defence—depicts an armed robotic dog dropped off by drone. Note that it says “Blood-Wing” in the upper right. It’s no…

Check out this informative documentary thread by @marina0swald—who, to be clear, is not actually Marina Oswald, the 81-year-old widow of JFK assassin Lee Harvey. The thrust of the thread is “on Glo…

At Wednesday’s oral argument in Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt, the court will consider whether Michael Hewitt, an oil-rig worker, was wrongly denied overtime pay. At the heart of the case are rules allowing highly compensated “executive, administrative, or professional” employees to b

The executive branch proposes a rule, a district court judge can block it, then one member of the Supreme Court determines if Congress would have approved of that rule.

The paragraph (below) sums up the predicament of the post-social world: there is hardly any difference in information, misinformation, and disinformation anymore. You have to spend more energy and …

South Africa wanted to be the first African nation to host the World Cup. They also wanted the tournament to be the start of a new chapter. During apartheid, the country was banned from the international sporting community. But in 2004, they were on the precipice of hosting soccer’s biggest event. South Africans gathered in

In the face of the geopolitical and climate crisis, the question of sovereignty is on everyone's lips. Each country is seeking to regain control of its destiny, its supplies and its production chains. People are even talking about European sovereignty, sovereignist federalism or federal sovereignism. A contradiction in terms? Not necessarily, but on condition that … p class="link-more"a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2022/10/11/rethinking-federalism/" class="more-link"Continuer la lecturespan class="screen-reader-text" de « Rethinking federalism »/span/a/p

Co-ops are a big part of the global economy: they employ 10% of the world's workforce and over two trillion dollars flow through their doors every year. At a co-op, there's no single person with overarching, top-down power over everyone else, like a CEO at a traditional company. So what exactly is a co-op and how does it work? Explore the different types of cooperatives and how they operate. [Directed by Elizabeth Galian, AIM Creative Studios, narrated by George Zaidan, music by André Aires, João Mendes].

In a little-noticed case on pork production, the justices could pare back the tools that California and other progressive states use to regulate a wide array of industries.

Native Land Digital, a Canadian nonprofit, offers resources for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to learn more about the land and its history. It hopes its map will be just a part of that journey.

One of the smartest people we know is the Political Economy professor from Brown University, Mark Blyth. Before NN Taleb was a thing, he gave Mark the