TheMarketForIdeas

Will We Face an Economic Uncertainty from the Current Political Instability?

Emil Dinga

By a system instability we must not understand a general fluctuations or oscillations of the system in its entirety. The instability of a system is done by only a few number of its components, but they must be crucial for the system identity/personality (the so called hub components). More, not any fluctuations or oscillations should be qualified as being instability, but only these fluctuations or oscillations which either are unpredictable (in their entirety or partially), or pass beyond a threshold usually accepted. This threshold could be viewed either as size, or as duration. So, the instability is, in fact, much lesser than it is usually considered. More

An International Auction for Romanian Wild Brown Bears

Bogdan C. Enache

In late August 2017, the Romanian Government, through the Ministry for the Environment, decided to allow the shooting of 140 brown bears in the Carpathian Mountains as an administrative measure to curb the bear population in the country, which in some areas is threatening peasant livestock and even the safety of town dwellers. Although the Government backpedalled on its decision in the face of strong pressure from the public and conservationist groups – who accused it of giving in to the hunting industry’s lobby and spurious bear population statistics –, ultimately reaffirming its ban on the trophy hunting of bears and other protected species in the country, it is worth reflecting on how economics can balance public and private interests in the management and conservation of wildlife. More

The China - Africa Relationship: A Recolonization?

Emmanuel Olusegun Stober

Behind all of the big headlines concerning the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly, there comes the African story which only a few in the print media has really shown interest in. When President Nana Dankwa Akufo-Addo was given the podium to address the assembly, he quickly used the opportunity to clear the air concerning the China-Africa relationship. He told the world to discard any insinuation that the movement of Ghana and some African countries towards China would result in the recolonization of the continent by a new power. He said this is not a uniquely Ghanaian or African phenomenon. “It has not been lost on us that the developed, rich and well-established countries have been paying regular visits to China and seeking to open new economic ties and improve upon existing ones”. What President Nana Akufo was pointing out was the difference between trade and colonization. The benefit of African trade with China is the return in form of investment in infrastructure. Meanwhile, the colonization process involves taking human and natural resources from Africa with no return, and there is nothing the continent can do about it. So, Africa does not perceive it relationship with China as a form of colonization or recolonization, because what they are getting from China has enduring value.  More

Breathing Life into Numbers: Power Asymmetry as Revealed by Nodal Analysis in Professor Cezar Mereuță’s Compendium

In his latest book, the esteemed Professor Cezar Mereuță, Ph.D. embarks on a journey that is as ambitious as it is demanding, but also fruitful and rewarding. Writing about Carl Friedrich Gauss’s religious views and opinion of divine revelation, biographer G. Waldo Dunnington remarked that “a book is inspired when it inspires”. The same can be said of Professor Mereuță’s compendium, Analiza nodală – abordare micro și macroeconomică [Nodal Analysis – A Micro and Macroeconomic Approach], insofar as the value of one’s research lies not only in the answers it offers, but also in the questions it generates that necessarily invite more research to further travel the paths the questions point towards. [N.B. The book is published in Romanian for now, but an English version of the research is being taken into consideration by the author. The launch of the Romanian edition: October 29, 2019, under the auspices of the Faculty of International Business and Economics, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.]  More

No Way In, No Way Out

Alexandru-Costin Udrea

Scratching beneath the surface of socio-political matters results in a multitude of findings and novelties. It is time that enough answers were given to the everlasting questions which naturally follow the inquiry into the reasonableness of dominating conceptions and policies. Gone are the days of a vigorous desire to make up for the “barbarity” of the past and build up ideals on the fertile land of the human mind. Instead of this, we are witnesses to an open confrontation between the remains of this desire (becoming ruinous) and the emergence of a cycle which, although seemingly new, learns from the goods and bads of history and looks forward to putting a halt to the illusions of a well-intentioned world in its bulk, but not so as regards the elites behind it. Following these hypotheses and beliefs, the European and then the national perspective are considered in this article, fundamentally bordered by the individual perspective. We unapologetically dismiss any attempts to “total objectivity”, typical of a world of make-believe.  More

Will We 3D-Print Medicine at Home?

Claudia Enache

It is around 7 AM, little Jim has just been woken up by his mom. He can distinguish clatter of softly gyrating gears from rain taping at his windowsill. There was no reason to focus more on those everyday sounds especially because he heard the same demand again “Can you come to breakfast, finally?” When he gets to the table, he spots his medicines, like usually, little and “zero” shaped. He has problems with swallowing the bigger ones. While looking at them he could spot little difference between layers. The bluish part is preventing him from epilepsy attacks that he has been suffering for years, the other one is navy blue; he was told that those were vitamins. On social media, he saw some anti-medicine printers posts again. That those are causing Down Syndrome or something, he is not about to read this till the end, in his mind is only one thing: if it was not for the 3D printed heart that his father received after the heart attack, they would have never played football again, never hug again and have no more breakfasts together.  More

The Crisis of Our Age: A Retrospective Glance

Steven Alan Samson

As a political philosophy and system of governance, liberalism is a product of Western Christian civilization. Yet some of its roots are decidedly illiberal. Thomas Hobbes offered an intellectual framework for our burgeoning Provider State, reducing people to hedonistic machines that accept the oversight of a Sovereign who serves as theologian-in-chief. Jean-Jacques Rousseau cited man’s natural compassion in support of rendering everyone collectively dependent on a sovereign General Will, which Jacques Maritain later called an “immanent social God”. Frederic Bastiat dismissed these pretensions by noting how self-serving lawmakers bend morality to justify—via greed and false philanthropy—the legal plunder that divisively empowers them.  More

Photon(e)s 4.0

The project I’m working on at the moment is influenced by a collection of photographs bought on eBay. I started with the thought of using them for collages or for other projects I’m working on, but the marks from their backs changed my plans because, well, you sometimes stumble at the threshold. With the family’s cat, in the reeks, or on the beach, the totally different frames one from another capture a couple of a Jewish family’s years that lives in England. I have more of them coming, so I recommend you to peek on Dissolved. More

On the Law Enactment Trap

Emil Dinga

A free society is that society in which the general law governs, that is, the law which concerns all the members of society in relation to the norm which that general law establishes. And, on the contrary, society is not free when the private law governs, that is, the law that concerns only a very small number, a minority or, to the limit, an individual or a few individuals. Such a law is also referred to as a privilege (private law). The current effervescence in Romania on amending the laws of justice is an example within reach for philosophers of law, but also for social philosophers or moral philosophers, to reflect on this fundamental aspect of freedom (I refer here to the concept of individual freedom, which is the source of all punctual liberties, which must under no circumstances be confused) in the Romanian society. More

National Sovereignty in Crisis

George Zgardanas

In the following article, we will analyze the issue of sovereignty, its characteristics and the elements that form and compose the term. Afterwards there will be a historical overview, so that we can observe what was the springboard that led to the introduction of the concept, who dealt extensively with the issue and what were the views that prevailed over the centuries. There will be also an examination of the issue in the modern world and the so-called New World Order, whether with positive or negative connotations. Τhe role of sovereignty will be examined within the international and European organizations, such as: the European Union, the UN, etc. We will also look at the reasons why national sovereignty is indispensable for states, as well as the risks that need to be avoided for it to continue to exist in practice.  More

Innovators from Germany, France, UK and the US Will Attend “Future Summit” on November 28th in Bucharest

The global director of Artificial Intelligence of E-ON, the Innovation Manager from Disneyland Paris, the inventor of the first electric flying taxi awarded in Paris by Emmanuel Macron, the activist planting tens of millions of trees in Africa and 25 more speakers come to Bucharest to offer insights on what the next ten years will look like and what decisions businesses and companies have to take now. More