Showing 1 - 5 of 5
How the world can escape the new Gilded Age
News, Daron Acemoglu, Published on 25/10/2024
» Tech billionaires such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are not just among the richest people in human history. They also are exceptionally powerful -- socially, culturally and politically. While this is partly a reflection of the social status that our society attaches to wealth in general, that is not the whole story.
The tragic misbehaviour of big business
Oped, Daron Acemoglu, Published on 07/10/2022
» Are successful businesspeople more like heroes or villains? In fictional accounts, one can find plenty of examples of each, from Charles Dickens's miserly Ebenezer Scrooge to Ayn Rand's rugged individualist entrepreneur John Galt. In F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan represents privileged old money, with its ruthlessness and incapacity for empathy, whereas Jay Gatsby is a self-made millionaire with no shortage of sentimentality and idealism.
We need less 'content' and more journalism
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/01/2020
» Content, as media gurus keep preaching, is king. But such PowerPoint pep talk is shallow: "Content" -- an increasingly bastardised term that has come to signify TV newscasts, podcasts, movies, viral videos, Netflix series, memes, news articles, editorial features, real advertising, covert advertising, tweets and Facebook posts, organic or boosted -- is also an anaesthetic. It dulls the senses and kills meaning, then proceeds to belittle essence, promote shallowness and eventually undermine the practice of journalism.
Ban crime films now!
News, Postbag, Published on 10/12/2018
» It is a matter of the gravest concern that a gold shop robber has admitted that watching "several films about robberies gave him the idea to imitate them", (Online, Dec 7).
Bells of tolerance
News, Postbag, Published on 09/10/2018
» Re: "'Big Joke' targets foreign lady who griped about bell ringing", (BP, Oct 6).