At the top of David Cameron’s agenda when Britain hosts the G8 this year is tax avoidance. In a presentation in Davos in January he called for an internationally co-ordinated clampdown on companies that pay too little tax. In his…
Economics & Finance, Order from Chaos
The Cultural Theory of Risk
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Financial bubbles and crashes are a form of collective madness: a catataxic moment when suddenly more of the same is different. Perhaps you think there is no more to be said about financial crisis? You might be right from about…
Biology, Economics & Finance, Politics, Virtue Reversal
The tragedy of the commons
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“Don’t worry darling, there are plenty more fish in the sea ” said my mother as she comforted me after my girlfriend dumped me in 1983. It was little solace to my heartbreak then: a platitude worn thin by careless…
Categories mislead, Politics
The Olympics – who really won ?
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I spent a few weeks in Scotland at the Edinburgh festival on my summer holiday. I was struck by how the local press was trumpeting how successful “Scotland” had been in the Olympics, even though it was competing as part…
Biology, Business, Economics & Finance, Groups to singles, Social & Media
The hour between dog and wolf
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There is an old French aphorism that calls sundown ‘the hour between dog and wolf’. At dusk, the familiar domestic pet turns into a rabid hunter. Dusk is the hour of metamorphosis. This is how Jean Genet puts it in…
Biology, Business, Groups to singles
Microsoft’s management kills innovation
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Vanity Fair this month has a great article titled “Microsoft’s lost decade”. It describes how the corporate giant lost its way and changed from being an indomitable technology Titan to a has-been. Just as IBM did a decade earlier. The…