News > Business
Why it’s so hard to keep the financial sector caged
“The US itself looks almost like a giant hedge fund. The profits of financial companies jumped from below 5 per cent of total corporate profits, after tax, in 1982 to 41 per cent in 2007, even though their share of corporate value added only rose from 8 to 16 per cent... A financial sector that generates vast rewards for insiders and repeated crises for hundreds of millions of innocent bystanders is, I would argue, politically unacceptable in the long run. Those who want market-led globalization to prosper will recognize that this is its Achilles heel. Effective action must be taken now, before a still bigger global crisis arrives.” READ MORE >
News > Business
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
“It took decades to shake off the assumption that computing was supposed to be rationed for the few, and we're only now starting to liberate bandwidth and storage from the same poverty of imagination. But a generation raised on the free Web is coming of age, and they will find entirely new ways to embrace waste, transforming the world in the process. Because free is what you want — and free, increasingly, is what you're going to get.” READ MORE >
News > Business
How business can save the world
“Can businesspeople really be counted on to foster virtue? It's a shaky proposition when profits are at stake. In a 2005 debate in Reason magazine, Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey articulated his vision of virtuous, socially responsible business. ‘Human nature isn't just about self-interest,’ Mackey wrote, paraphrasing Adam Smith. ‘It also includes sympathy, empathy, friendship, love, and the desire for social approval. As motives for human behavior, these are at least as important as self-interest. For many people, they are more important.’" READ MORE >
News > Business
Too many stores: How long will the anti-shopping backlash last?
“The extreme consumption of this current gilded age has inspired a backlash. In December, hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio ran full-page advertisements in newspapers urging Americans to eschew Christmas gifts and instead make donations to charity. Maybe he's just run out of things to buy. Or maybe he's surfing the zeitgeist… [but] the cultural anti-retail moment will likely pass. Thoreau lasted only 26 months in his cabin by Walden Pond. The elevation of frugality into a virtue seems likely to last about as long as modern recessions do—about eight months.” READ MORE >
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