This week I’ve been reading Ha-Joon Chang’s book 23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism. I’ll review it when I’m done, but I thought I’d share his insight from chapter one: “There is no such thing as a free market”. Popular economic wisdom suggests that markets should be free and interfered with as little [...]
Archive | September, 2011
What’s a tree worth?
As Tom Hodgkinson says, the first thing you should do when you move to a new house is plant a tree. This we did two years ago, two apple trees and a cherry tree, and over the last couple of weeks I’ve picked the first apples off our little cordon apple in the back garden. [...]
Questions I asked myself this week
Could the idea of the commons help us imagine alternatives to constant economic growth? Got a visionary idea using algae you could enter in the International Algae Competition? How can board games help to create a culture of sustainability? What comes after modern capitalism?
How to generate solar power at night
If we’re going to reduce carbon emissions in the Western world and maintain a decent standard of living, there needs to be a renewable energy revolution. If the poorer countries of the world are going to share in the benefits of energy without destabilising the climate, it has to turn to renewable first time round [...]
A trillion dollars of wasted aid?
Following my review of Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid yesterday, I’ve been thinking a little about one of the starting points of her critique: the fact that Africa has received over a trillion dollars in aid in the last fifty years. “But has more than $1 trillion in development assistance over the last several decades [...]
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