Thought leaders across the web

There’s a glum desperation in the air that’s hard to escape: volatility, futility, and a McFuture ghoulishly wagging its skeletal finger at a lost generation. So on what scale would you say transformation should happen? What’s the breadth of your vision for change? It’s time to get not just serious, but maybe even a little [...]

In case you’ve been on Mars (or even just on vacation), here’s a surprising idea that’s been making the rounds lately: there might have been something to Marx’s critiques of capitalism after all. Now, before you leap into the intertubes, seize me by the arm, perform a citizens’ arrest, and frog-march me into the nearest [...]

The Labor Department is reporting that, in August, the United States failed to add any new jobs (the unemployment rate is holding at 9.1%). This is the most disappointing unemployment report since September 2010, then the Labor Department reported a slight decline. But this is just one measure of the country’s jobs-related health. The Monster [...]

Herewith, without further ado, a minor eulogy for Steve Jobs the CEO. When you look at the global economy today, here’s what might strike you: Apple is an organization almost singularly unlike the massed hordes and would-be contenders to the throne that surround it. It is the one company seemingly tuned to hit the revolutionary [...]

I grew up a global orphan, and I call London my home today. The simple reason I chose to live there was this: first and foremost, I’d never met a city that let a mutt like me be myself. And yet, over the last several years or so, gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, the tenor [...]

Why is this mysteriously reluctant so-called non-recovering recovery, at this point, as persistent as the proverbial psychotically obsessed ex from hell? I believe we stand on the cusp of a great turning point in human exchange: a quantum leap from opulence to eudaimonia. A shift from the pursuit of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, to [...]

It’s been a scary couple of days. I’d bet, given recent events in the markets, like many, you’d like to get to the bottom of what the heck is really going on here. Why does everything we try to fix this crisis seem not to work? Let me recap my take of what’s happened over [...]

Here’s a confession that may surprise no one who regularly reads this blog: I’m a misfit. And I always have been. And having spent a few decades on this planet as a slightly octagonal peg facing an endless vista of square, machine-made holes, I’ve developed a hypothesis about achievement. It’s this: great accomplishment usually takes [...]

The monsters, they say, come out at night. And right now, we’re in a long, dark night of the economy. So to a stage crammed with the now familiar-pantheon of modern-day monsters — the clueless chairmain of the board, the narcissistic chief executive, the proudly sociopathic investor, the servile, principle-less politician — let me introduce [...]

How big would America’s “debt crisis” be if we looked not merely at (largely artificial) financial costs, but at real economic — social, human, natural, personal, emotional, and more — costs? You probably don’t want to know. But grit your teeth and let’s do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation just for fun. To begin with, America’s [...]