Expanding Democratic Ownership

The ownership model of the public corporation should no longer be the aspiration for startups in the digital economy

In August 2019, a group of 200 chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations, calling themselves the Business Roundtable, issued a statement committing to invest in their employees, compensating them fairly, and providing benefits. They also committed to fostering diversity, and inclusion, dignity, and respect. And this was newsworthy given ...
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Expanding Democratic Ownership

Giving Back to the University

The scandal of “Employee-Giving” campaigns at American universities

For many, this time of year brings a deluge of fundraising emails, letters, calls, text messages, and social media posts from non-profits asking for donations. Despite the disruptions that the pandemic has posed this year to colleges and universities, they have continued to fundraise. Many of them are using sophisticated, ...
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Giving Back to the University

How Do We Process the Loss of Our Homes?

A talk with filmmaker Swetha Regunathan

By all measures we are living in an era defined by housing crises, a flood of human habitat destruction. The losses are both economic and environmental. Over 17 million people in 2018 alone were displaced from their homes because of climate change–associated disasters, according to the United Nations. Here in ...
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How Do We Process the Loss of Our Homes?

How Taxpayers are Picking Up the Bill for the Destruction of Local Restaurants

Ghost Kitchens are a trend that are as spooky and scary as they sound

This past summer, Kroger, one of the nation’s largest grocery store chains, received a 15-year, 75 percent sales tax exemption for setting up two new data centers in Ohio. This is the definition of unnecessary. Kroger is not exactly poverty struck – it accrued profits of more than $2 billion last year. ...
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How Taxpayers are Picking Up the Bill for the Destruction of Local Restaurants

Why Google Is Facing Serious Accusations of Monopoly Practices

The tech monopolies are increasingly being acknowledged as a danger to people, other companies, and even to democracy

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Google-Alphabet (Google’s parent company) on October 20 for a range of anti-competitive practices, including its monopoly power in the search market. It is the only major action in the U.S. against tech monopolies in recent years, the last one being the 1998 action against ...
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Why Google Is Facing Serious Accusations of Monopoly Practices

Fall Fashion

Could the collapse of consumption point to a better future for the fashion industry?

----- Outside the window, it should have been autumn season. With the arrival of more crisp weather, a section of the wardrobe opens for the new possibilities, colors, and textures: jackets and closed shoes, knits and tweed. And layers. Layers force the wearer to think in more complex combinations. With a ...
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Fall Fashion

Why We Need to Forgive Pandemic Debt

In a “Force Majeure Global Catastrophe,” we need to take extraordinary steps

The way economies have weathered the pandemic, so far, has been through very muscular interventions by the world’s central banks. To address the economic damage done by COVID-19, governments have borrowed, in the aggregate, trillions of dollars from central banks, using the money to do everything from prop up falling asset ...
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Why We Need to Forgive Pandemic Debt

Why Business Depends on Big Government

The economy was meant to be underwritten by tax dollars—but Americans don’t want to know that

————— One of the most telling statements of our political era was made by Republican Dick Cheney in a Vice Presidential debate with Democrat Joe Lieberman on October 5, 2000, 20 years ago this month. Lieberman jibed that Cheney, the Republican nominee, had profited handsomely from the job he had recently ...
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Why Business Depends on Big Government

Can We Trust Monopolies to Play Fair?

Current debates on Big Tech and antitrust law lack a clear definition of “competition”

----- For the anti-monopoly movement, the past three months have been exciting but sobering. In late July, the House Antitrust Subcommittee held a landmark hearing at which members of Congress forced the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to admit to business practices they would rather have stayed private. Amazon ...
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Can We Trust Monopolies to Play Fair?

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Higher taxes are necessary, but who will have the political courage to make it happen?

Early in September, more than 160 executives from companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe corporate law firm Skadden Arps, and a host of real estate developers and financial firms sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. They expressed their fear that “deteriorating conditions” in the city might slow ...
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As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

How digital behemoths create economically vulnerable communities — and then prey on them

----- In May, 2020, the city of Gallatin, Tennessee, voted to provide nearly $20 million in tax breaks to an entity called “Project Woolhawk” that proposed building a data center in the area. Local economic development officials refused to confirm who or what was behind that name, only that it was ...
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Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

Alienation, anxiety, and religion

QAnon is a conspiracy theory alleging that the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, is battling an organized and criminal deep state—which also happens to be a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles engaged in sex-trafficking—and that this battle is moving towards an apocalyptic showdown in which our president will ...
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QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America