Economics

The Last Empire
Much has been written about China's environmental crisis in recent years: vanishing forests, encroaching desert, depleting ground water, acid rain, toxic chemicals in polluted rivers, etc...

The True Cost of Our Gadgets
The next time we whip out our Blackberries, cell phones, gaming consoles, iPods, and laptops, we would do well to remember their true cost, beyond what we paid for them at the store. Each of these gadgets use an ore called coltan....

Global Democracy Index
The Economist magazine's intelligence unit has come up with a Democracy Index that rates 165 states and 2 territories on their democratic character. It examines 60 indicators across 5 broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government...

Land of the Free ?
Which country has the highest incarceration rate in the world? The United States of course. The prison population in the US has more than quadrupled in the last quarter century. Some 2.2 million are behind

Amartya Sen on Globalization
Where does "our own" Nobel laureate in economics stand on globalization? Earlier this year, I reviewed The Argumentative Indian by A Sen. A wide ranging book with sixteen essays on Indian culture, history, and identity, it ...

Free Market News
The newspaper business has changed radically in recent decades. Most newspapers are now owned by a handful of large corporations, even by "holding companies", with parallel interests in cement, telecom, real estate, etc. While profit was once.....