Rubrics » Bridging News
CAPITOL LETTERS (Ep. 2): “Enlightenment” and “Environment”
The Smithsonian Museums in Washington, D.C. are, par excellence, propitious places for memory. Universal, and also personal. Walking through the National Museum of American History, I made the acquaintance, in sculptural form, of a certain Mr. Thomas Alva Edison, and was reminded of what I had written about him a decade ago, when the EU was starting up its eco-crusade against its beloved baby, the incandescent lightbulb. I said back then: “Mr. Edison, a lightbulb went on in our good European heads and made us turn off your bloody wasteful invention, once and forever!” Mr. Edison is a grown-up, no doubt, and he knows how to cash in this historical punch. In his time, the brilliant guy is said to have “first” invented the lightbulb only after other gentlemen did the same before, but none had flashed the exquisite ideas to “fill in” a brighter-burning filament, to immerse it in a “more void” vacuum, while having a “more enduring” electrical resistance. Having gorged himself on patents and being the 4th most well-protected “luminary” in the history of technology, he became known for eagle-eyeing others’ ideas, while draping his own in government paperwork, for none could be allowed to think up similar ideas to him and independently of him. He then played God, despite being a free-thinking atheist, and libeled the alternative current of rival George Westinghouse by cunningly associating it with the electric chair, in whose creation Edison had had a hand in. More
How Migration Saved the White City
Few parts of the world can boast of a history as turbulent as that of the Balkan peninsula. Never quite East, nor quite West, it has been at the crossroads of different cultural and political influences throughout the centuries. One of the places that has suffered the most is Serbia’s capital, Belgrade.On the confluence of two major rivers, the Sava and the Danube, it has been coveted by many and, it seems, conquered by even more. This is the impression you get while walking through the city’s center. Old Balkan style buildings, next to lavish Art Nouveau and then simple Brutalist building right around the corner. Today, over 25% of the total population of Serbia lives in this city. Similar to most countries in Europe, Serbia is experiencing a problem with the aging of its population, as well as a significant “brain drain” ever since the 1990s. Most of Serbia is a source for emigration; however, Belgrade, as a coveted destination, has a net positive migration rate. The biggest university in the country and better job opportunities are just some of the reasons why. More
Romania, Last in the EU Regarding the Expected Duration of Working Life
Romania was placed last among the EU Member States regarding the expected duration of working life, according to data provided by Eurostat for 2021. The duration of 31.3 years was lower than in Italy (31.6 years), Greece (32.9 years), Bulgaria (33.1 years) and Croatia (33.5 years). The highest durations in the EU were recorded in the Netherlands (42.5 years), Sweden (42.3 years) and Denmark (40.3 years). More
A New Way of Solidarity within NATO
The NATO Summit that took place in Brussels on the 11th and 12th of July 2018 – almost one year before its recently celebrated 70th anniversary – was the Euro-Atlantic event that fueled great passion from the mass-media and the general public. I was invited back then to take part to a series of important debates at the Summit, where I had the opportunity to interact with NATO high officials, heads of states or governments, ministers / parliament members. At the same time, I had a few private meetings with NATO dignitaries / statesmen (including Paolo Alli, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO, and Joseph Day, Senate Liberal Leader, from Canada), leaders of big international organizations specialized on security issues. I was also given the opportunity to publicly express my opinion on the future of the North Atlantic Alliance. More
Ersatz Liberals (Part II)
In my last communication, I have identified some issues based on which I would illustrate the weaknesses of those I called the ersatz liberals. I want to now add another issue, so I shall examine, below, five cases that are on the table of current political debate: a) a flat tax rate; b) tax adjustments; c) prices increases; d) social responsibility and solidarity on the part of the large companies; e) inter-dependencies between the private sector and the public sector. More
The Impact of Russia’s Strategic Interest in the Black Sea Region on the Imbalance of the Russian Economy
March 6th, 2009, Geneva. In an attempt to boost the diplomacy between the two nations, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the English word “reset” mis-translated into a Russian word meaning “overload”. The wrong translation proved to be a prediction for US – Russia relations for the years that followed. More
CAPITOL LETTERS (Ep. 1): Industrial Revolutions
Industrial Revolutions (IR) are manifestations of the delightful concept of “creative destruction” (J. Schumpeter). This means destroying the useless as a force of creation for the useful, not vice versa, that is being creative in destroying. Destruction qua creation is about capitalising and making the most of resources, whereas creativity in destruction sooner resembles blunt vandalism (war, for instance, is creative in its nihilistic annihilation). Apparently, an IR is like TV: it isn’t necessary to understand how it works, what matters is to have the remote at the ready. However, some economists and historians continue to fiddle with the explanatory and predictive mechanism of a phenomenon that has already reached its fourth generation. Thus, for IR 1.0 (manufactured by the British), the main contributing factors identified were cheap energy and somewhat improved wages, coupled with metropolitan freedoms and the extortion of colonies, or perhaps the establishment of a general climate of “bourgeois equality” (D. McCloskey), where the ideas of common people could be expressed and experimented with free from the tyranny of statutes. Debates remain vivid here. More
Should the State Adjust the Market? The Case of ROBOR
The duel between state and market is an old story in the debates regarding the best way to run society. Of course, there are both extremists and moderates in this debate. I am not interested in covering the large array of opinions, but in exploring the essence of the issue. More precisely, I am interested in whether the state has a legitimate role in adjusting the macroeconomic variables generated by the free market and, to a finer degree, to see if we have thresholds or intensities or other contingencies in accepting or requesting the state's intervention in the market (viewed as a free market). More
The Economic Consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian War
The Russian invasion in Ukraine marked a new war in Europe, which started four months ago and whose end is not yet in sight. The longer the conflict lasts, the larger the threats to world peace will become. The Western world’s reaction was to apply severe economic sanctions, to impose penalties, mainly as deterrence. Even though it is too early to see the end of this war, some economic consequences are already visible.When Ukraine was invaded by the Russian army, the world’s economy was already in a huge stagflation, not comparable to the one from 1973-1974. This economic shock was strong enough to impact the demand in different sectors: fossil energy (oil, gas and coal), food (corn), chemical fertilizers (based on potassium and nitrogen) and industrial raw materials (nickel, titanium). Those goods accounted for a good percentage of the exports of Russia and Ukraine, and the war led to an increase in the world prices for those goods. More
Universal Basic Income – A Challenge for Social and Economic Policies
The purpose of this article is to draw the reader's attention, perhaps even initiate a debate on the Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a policy instrument for economic and social policies. It is not a comprehensive scientific study of all current problems, rather an introduction to research into a possible revolutionary social change, correlated with the fourth industrial revolution. In terms of economic growth, income inequality and the possible effects on the labour market, two important issues need to be taken into account. UBI establishes a direct causal relationship with human life. The revolutionary aspect comes from eliminating economic and legal causation between income and labour. Its global implementation or a differentiated implementation at the level of all states would require new ways of individual thinking, new systems of economic and social thinking, new institutions or even states. So far, some approaches to the concept are known, especially in the form of social experiments, different in size and coverage, that have attracted the attention of researchers and theorists, as well as of political decision makers. More
CAPITOL LETTERS (Ep. 0): New World Orders
When we speak of “order” where the international system is concerned (international relations, to be precise), the discussion gives the impression of value-neutrality, in the same vein as the scientific approach to a problem. However, the minute we enclose this word in the syntagma “new world order”, there is a distinct feeling of veering into vain gossip and idle chatter. Thus, there are conspiracies, occult and confined to tenebrous spaces, away from common decency, standing opposite the rigorous, refined academic thinking that inhabits the halls of universities. Such rhetorical pedantry cannot, however, rule out the raw fact that human society, beyond the intensiveness and extensiveness of the (hierarchical and/or anarchical) relations between humans, seeks order (including “novel” and “worldly” ones), and not just any kind of order, but that order in which we are creative, proactive architects instead of passive artefacts. To this end, we employ tangible or symbolic means, be they transparent or opaque, genuine or deceitful. And politicians, who enact this (dis)order as per their (ir)responsibility, are far from being accused of a lack of ambidexterity (as they are naturally born “on the one hand… and on the other hand…” cynical calculators). More
Simion Mehedinti and the Romanian Geopolitics
We have the privilege and pleasure of inviting the Romanian readers of The Market for Ideas, Saturday, February 23, 2019, 13:30, at Romexpo, Pavilion B2, Stand 261, to a brief meeting with the name of the visionary geographer and geo-political scientist Simion Mehedinţi, the one who:• wrote about the “United States of Europe” as early as 1909, using systematically this syntagm in several studies and conferences, four decades before the European Coal and Steel Community, the future European Union, was born;• wrote about the “corporate state” as early as 1920, long before the phenomenon of globalization penetrated the Romanian space;• wrote about the “international aviation for world peacekeeping” as early as 1927 (in the famous work “Le pays et le peuple roumain”), anticipating NATO, which will be born two decades later. More
