Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, has weighed in on the Amazon controversy with a piece titled “Amazon Must Be Stopped.” The subtitle reads “It’s too big. It’s cannibalizing the economy. It’s time for a radical plan.”

I, for one, am feeling a little less alone as a result. We proposed our own “radical& ... Read more »

In December 2012, Brad Werner — a complex systems researcher with pink hair and a serious expression — made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. But it was Werner’s session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled “Is Earth F**ked?” (Full title: “Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism”).

Standing at the front of the conference room, the University of California, San Diego professor took the crowd through the advanced computer model he was using to answer that rather direct question. He talked about a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But the bottom line was clear enough: Global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free ... Read more »

Gallons of ink have been devoted to Wall Street executives’ lack of accountability for a global financial meltdown that was built on top of a mountain of fraud.

Nobody at the top has faced criminal prosecution. Executive compensation and bonuses have rebounded nicely. And while taxpayers committed trillions to keeping those “too-big-to-fail” institutions afloat, the foreclosure crisis persists six years after the crash.

And while the Troubled Asset ... Read more »

This week, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents turned out to protest China’s plan for bringing democracy to that city. Rather than letting voters pick the candidates that get to run for chief executive, Beijing wants the candidates selected by a 1,200 person “nominating committee.” Critics charge the committee will be “dominated by a pro-Beijing business and political elite.” “We want genuine universal suffrage,” Martin Lee, founding chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party demanded, “not democracy with Chinese ... Read more »

Rotten to the Core: How an Apple mega-deal cost Los Angeles classrooms $1 billion

Bad business and worse ethics? A scandal is brewing in L.A. over a sketchy intiative to give every student an iPad

Technology companies may soon be getting muddied from a long-running scandal at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the nation’s second-largest system. A year after the cash-strapped district signed a $1 billion contract with Apple to purchase iPad ... Read more »