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Why demonizing Trump supporters destroys democracy

There are ways to engage with someone with whom you don't agree.

  • When you have pre-conceived ideas about a group whose views oppose your own, you risk closing the door to meaningful discourse before it begins.
  • "When you demonize those who voted against you then there's no chance of a democratic debate," argues Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and founder of DiEM25. "You've lost it completely. Then you go into a state of civil war."
  • Varoufakis says that there are two ways of approaching a difference of opinion: external and internal critiques. Focusing on internal critiques as the more fruitful method, Varoufakis explains how using logic to work through one's assumptions to see if they lead to the same conclusions can open up a pathway to conversation.

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What is ESG investing?

Transparency no doubt keeps organizations more accountable, but public companies need to reconnect with their true owners.

  • ESG in investing stands for environmental, social and governance. It is a set of criteria investors can use to understand the values and the future of an organization.
  • Companies pour resources into disclosing their ESG because, as the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Or so has been the thought for many years.
  • While ESG is undoubtedly good, says John Fullerton, mere transparency is not going to solve the world's sustainability issues. For that, public companies need to act more like private companies and be responsible to their owners.
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economics investment personal growth finance government environment global development capitalism sustainability

The plasma debate: The ethics of paying for human blood

Should pharmaceutical companies pay people for their plasma? Here's why paid plasma is a hot ethical issue.

  • Human blood is made up of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and plasma. Plasma is the liquid part of blood. It is used to treat rare blood conditions and has an increasing number of medical applications.
  • It is a $26 billion industry, and the US is a major exporter of plasma to other nations. Most nations do not collect enough plasma to sustain therapies for their own citizens. The US has such a large supply of plasma because it pays people to donate plasma—a controversial practice.
  • Is it ethical for people to be paid for their plasma? Here, Peter Jaworski, an ethics scholar, explains five key arguments people make against paying people for plasma—safety, security, altruism, commodification, and exploitation—and explains his views on them. What do you think?
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bioethics capitalism disease ethics health human body illness medicine pharmaceuticals poverty

How the last two centuries led to today’s economy

The best and worst of yesterday has created the economy of today.

  • Adam Davidson, co-founder of NPR's Planet Money, can trace a line through time from homemade clothing and baked goods to today's passion economy. Davidson argues that a combination of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are how we got to where we are.
  • We shifted from an intimate and localized economy of goods and services, to an economy of scale, and finally to what Davidson refers to as "intimacy at scale."
  • There are, of course, positive attributes to this hybrid economic system, but it also comes with some of the flaws of its predecessors.

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Restoring a healthy economy will require a local focus. Here’s why.

How will the current challenges to the global economy pressure it to change?

  • Life is different everywhere—it is determined by the context of a unique culture and a unique geography. The same goes for economies. Local economies are unique to their contexts, says John Fullerton, founder and president of Capital Institute.
  • "[I]magine if you thought about human economic development from a place-based perspective," says Fullerton. "You would have, instead of a global corporation like Apple, thought of as a single thing, you would have Apple's manufacturing plant in China as part of the Chinese bioregional economy."
  • The pressure on the current global economy will cause it to shift and evolve into a healthier state of community-based economic development.
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behavioral economics capitalism economics finance global development global issues government money policy population poverty society state-building
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