Insider Business (April 21, 2023) – For generations, farmers in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir have been selling their crops on the Dal Lake in a floating market. The lake is an economic hub for people living there – with many working in agriculture, fishing, and tourism. But decades of pollution have threatened their livelihoods.
The floating vegetable market on Dal Lake is in Srinagar, Kashmir, where locals trade out of their canoes. The produce sold here is grown in floating gardens.. The rich ecosystem of this wetland produces plenty of tomatoes, cucumbers, water chestnuts and the famous nadru (lotus roots, a delicacy in the Kashmir Valley).
They gather in the centre of the lake at dawn, and disappear just as sunlight hits the waters.
Insider Business (April 4, 2023) – Purple flowers in Kashmir produce the world’s most expensive spice — saffron. While it can sell for $10,000 per kilogram, climate change is making it even more expensive. Because of lower-than-usual rainfall over the last few years, production has dropped significantly.
And fields that once yielded this delicate spice have become sites for new housing construction. Climate change is threatening the production of all kinds of foods from cloves in India to eels in Japan and Spain. Here are 10 expensive, and vulnerable, foods and why climate change is making them so much more expensive.
CNBC (April 2, 2023) – An apartment building boom is unfolding in cities across the U.S. Many of the new units come with “luxury” amenities, like pools and fast-access to transportation. Experts say the uptick in supply is welcome news, but won’t ease rent inflation anytime soon.
As a result, many cities remain stuck in a price-elevating housing shortage. Washington lawmakers are now scrutinizing regulations that slow the pace of homebuilding, in an attempt to slow rent inflation.
NOBODY HAS EVER seen the economy. We can see specific markets, but my local farmers’ market looks very different from the Diamond District in Manhattan and even the street stalls I frequented in East London.
Markets are institutions with more or less physical infrastructures, but “the market” (like “the economy”) is an abstraction, no more fixed or certain than “the Left” or “nature.” If “the economy” and “the market” are often described as though they were things out there in the world to be measured and monitored while other abstractions (such as “beauty” and “joy”) are not, that tells us as much about ways of thinking as it does about the workings of the world.
Powered by this insight, the history of economic thought (and related “new histories of capitalism”) has grown over the past 20 years to become one of the most lively and popular historical subfields.
The recent controversy over Jacob Soll’s new book Free Market: The History of an Idea (2022) reveals just how attached some people are to their economic ideologies (no surprise there) and to their ideas about who gets to have “economic thoughts.”
In a sweeping text that ranges across 2,500 years in barely 250 pages, Soll argues that, for centuries, “free” markets were understood as existing only where strong, moral governments liberated trade from domination by selfish, moneyed merchants. Markets had to be set free—they were not born that way—and the danger has always lurked of commerce being recaptured to enrich the few rather than benefit the many.
This is a loosely “antitrust” way of describing market freedom, and it might have barely registered at all had Soll attributed it chiefly to Louis Brandeis, Frances Perkins (secretary of labor under FDR), or even Machiavelli. But by invoking the name “Adam Smith,” Soll seems to have violated the holy of holies.
0:15 This AI robot is revolutionizing farming – The robot can identify weeds and crops at rate of 20 plants a second. The robot then delivers either weedkiller or fertilizer directly to individual plants to an accuracy of within 1mm. It can treat up to 500,000 plants per hour. The robot was invented by US firm Verdant Robotics.
1:24 This company cancelled all internal meetings – In January, e-commerce platform Shopify cancelled all regular meetings with 3 people or more and imposed a 2-week window before staff could schedule anything new. It also permanently banned meetings on Wednesdays and limited large meetings to a strict window on Thursdays. More organizations are trying a ‘meeting reset’, from Dropbox to Asana and Zapier. But why – and could your organization try it too?
3:00 How to build a thriving workplace – Businesses often ask staff why they resign. So why not ask why they’re joining or staying? “Why would you wait until people have already committed to walk out the door to say, ‘If only I had a time machine, I would go back to the past and convince you to stay’? What I would much rather see employers do are entry interviews and stay interviews. Entry interview is just asking the same questions you would normally pose at exit at the beginning of the employment relationship: Why are you here? What are you hoping to learn? Right. What are some of the best projects you’ve worked on? Tell me about the worst boss you’ve ever had so we can try to emulate the good and avoid the bad.”
5:22 ChatGPT is already being used for scientific research – ChatGPT launched to the public in November 2022. It gives in-depth, natural language answers to prompts, based on what it has learned from a huge database of books and articles. People have been using ChatGPT to perform an impressive range of tasks, from writing university-level essays to debugging code and filling in job applications. It has written fake scientific reports that have fooled scientists and has even been used to write a children’s book.
The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.
0:15 Global Recession 2023 – Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s Managing Director, says 2023 will be ‘a difficult year for the world’. The European economy has been severely affected by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Half of the EU will go into recession in 2023, Georgieva says. While for the first time in 40 years, growth in China – the world’s second-largest economy – is not likely to exceed global growth.
2:02 Japan’s worldbeating health system – For more than 50 years, Japan has offered healthcare without restrictions to anyone living in the country for 3 months or more whether or not they are Japanese. Payments are decided on a sliding scale depending on age, residence and income status.
3:26 These pipebots stop water leaks – The tiny bots patrol the inside of pipes. They’re small enough to avoid blocking the pipes and are fitted with sensors, cameras and a microphone. They take pictures and listen to the pipe to detect any faults and weaknesses before these develop into leaks.
4:48 Ukraine uploads their treasures to the cloud – Volunteers use the Backup Ukraine app to scan cultural artifacts – from statues and paintings to buildings, mosaics, and monuments – to preserve the country’s heritage and history from Russian theft, vandalism, and bombing. Backup Ukraine turns these symbols of Ukrainian culture into 3D models, which take their place in a digital archive, safe from Russian attacks.
As of 12 December 2022, UNESCO had verified damage to 227 cultural sites in Ukraine. Russian troops had removed the bones of Prince Potemkin from Kherson, stolen priceless relics of the Scythian Empire, and allegedly stripped thousands of pieces of art from local museums. Backup Ukraine is a collaboration between UNESCO, Blue ShieldDenmark, and the media group Virtue. Watch to learn how Ukrainian culture is being impacted. _____________________________________________
The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.