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The Future of the Cultural Economy: Ideological Assumptions, Technological Breakthroughs and Ecological Constraints
The “economic” and “cultural” traits of human existence are brought together by the objective fact of subjective values (that incite our sought ends) and valuations (that inform our chosen means). While “cultural economy” is that interplay of activities related to producing/distributing/consuming spiritualized materiality, “cultural economics” allows us to view/review/preview all of the above. Blamed for obsessively “pricing the priceless” and for stuffing artistry into “production functions”, cultural economics still has many paths open for scrutiny, yet with epistemic prudence and prowess. More
Fostering Recovery through Metaverse Business Modelling
The past years’ uncertainties and pressures resulted from the pandemic, alongside new developments in social technology, 5G, cloud computing, augmented and virtual reality, generated the perfect setting for the Metaverse to gain traction. Several companies found there’s a critical need to redefine the work environment and started exploring the Metaverse concept beyond the entertainment sector. Thus, new tools for collaboration and data visualization within a digital shared space are being created, aiming for a fully immersive interaction between the virtual and the physical worlds within the next few years. While still in its early developments, the Metaverse can be seen as an extension of the social media platforms, and an opportunity to leverage remote work even further. More
Ersatz Liberals (Part I)
(Too) many of today’s politicians in Romania claim an intellectual and/or moral affiliation to different political ideologies or schools. Ignoring the fact that such a claim resonates with the voters if and only if the population reaches an average level of political sophistication (or even general culture) at the minimum level required for such complex issues, the problem is whether those claims are justified, i.e., morally legitimate. Of course, we have here two ‘sources’ of information in solving the question: a) the politicians’ declarations; b) the facts, that is, the political decisions and actions (either as acts or abstentions) of the politicians in question. More
The Earthly Algorithms of the Heavenly Affairs
The papal institution opens up the road to redemption for more than 1.200 million Roman-Catholics – that is for the so-called “Western Christianity” –, according to Vatican statistics. Through its doctrine of closeness to God, far and away from any canonical schisms, the Holy See inspires all Christianity, pervasively radiating to all hemispheres, over other distinct cults as well. The fact is that to be able to order the immanent chaos while indulging your mind to wander with the transcendent is a tough penance. Even if you have adhered to your faith wholeheartedly, the spiritual stakes were and are under assail by the modern-version-of-Canaan capitalist hedonism (now called insatiable consumerism), by the anti-social socialism (now dead, but still not buried), and by “welfare-warfare” statism (now, as ever, trying to divide and conquer, and command and control). The aforesaid progenitors of the human “fallen existence” have declared foreclosure on the most valuable assets of the life we lead, all except for the “perceivable physical” biases. The pitfalls looming ahead of all our mundane trespasses, entailed by the very nature of the interaction with our own kind, tarnished as that may be, are lurking as far as the eye can see, even what we now call in vernacular the supreme “consultancy” and “governance”: namely, the one covering the “salvation of our souls”. All human beings, with all their burning passions, are, since the beginning of times, fumbling in the dark to find their way to reach Him. And the mission is not easier even for His most faithful servants. As the supreme pontiffs, the Bishops of Rome, are (supposed to be). More
Inflation: Old Wine in New Bottles
Inflation is rapidly rising at present across most of the world. This happens in the aftermath of a first pandemic year during in which the fears of deflation that have characterised the decade following the 2008 financial crisis resurfaced in earnest. The new inflation wave is commonly blamed on the pandemic supply shock to global supply chains, as well as on the negative effect of Russia’s war in Ukraine, particularly with regard to grain prices. These aggregate supply rationales are real and correct as far as they go, but insufficient to explain the phenomenon. The pandemic affected both supply and demand, whence sustained efforts in large consumer-driven economies such as the United States to preserve the latter. Less financially constrained consumers accumulated large cash balances at the height of the pandemic which have been reinjected into the economy since the most draconian restrictions have been gradually lifted. And excessively cautious monetary policies, oriented towards recovering lost growth from years past, have reinforced the inflationary effect of post-pandemic spending. More
Sicut in Caelo, Et in Terra
When Pope John Paul II visited Romania in 1999, he achieved a historical landmark as it was the first time the head of the Catholic Church visited a primarily Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054. While his papacy did not escape criticism and controversy, John Paul II was arguably one of the most charismatic and well-liked popes in recent times, having received recognition for several breakthroughs: he is widely credited for his role in motivating political movements that led to the collapse of Communist regimes and of the Duvalier rule in Haiti; he publicly addressed apologies in the name of the Catholic Church to those individuals and groups who had suffered because of it, for instance the Galileo affair, the actions of the Inquisition or the Church’s underwhelming response to the Holocaust. Another key feature of his tenure was the efforts he invested to establish and sustain dialogue among the Abrahamic faiths. Although, from a theological viewpoint, he is considered to have been a conservative, he came under criticism from both progressives and traditionalists for issues such as failing to adequately handle the sex abuse of children by Catholic prelates, his stances against artificial birth control methods or his support of religious freedom. More
How Many Healthy Life Years for Romanians in EU Context
In 2020, the number of healthy life years at birth in the EU was 64.5 years for women and 63.5 years for men. Romanians had a significantly shorter healthy life span, four years less for women and 4.2 years less for men. Nevertheless, we ranked at 17 for women and at 19 for men in-between the EU27 member states. More
The Supreme Unity, the Unity of the Species
After exploring continents, seas, and then, with great sacrifice, the air, we wanted to know for sure what lies beyond the Earth’s confines. Mankind’s scientific adventure in outer space and even beyond, in the interplanetary area, is directly connected with the long-lasting question regarding the origin of life on Earth. Did the seed of life originate from our own planet, or is it coming from the galactic space? If Panspermia is indeed true, does life outside of our world hold the same Carbon building blocks and RNADNA construction? Could we be compatible? However, if our life began on Earth, birthed by our planet’s unique conditions, what would life look like in the other parts of the Universe? In lieu of concrete methods of analysis, these questions are being approached by scientists in a rather philosophical way, but they are indeed questions which will, sooner or later, require an answer, once incremental steps take us to the exploration of place where alien life may be present, even in our Solar System. More
Economic Sovereignty: Between Slogans and Realities
In the speeches of some politicians and in the writings of some Romanian journalists and economists, the slogan of economic sovereignty is often present. The economic conception expressed by this phrase is obviously inspired by the xenophobic-autarchic model of the Communist economy, but it is also reminiscent of the “Through Ourselves” policy applied in the interwar period. In order to be economically independent, Romania must come out of the world in one way or another! The problem is that in the face of globalization, leaving the world can have serious consequences. Ultimately, autarky means reducing imports and limiting foreign capital inflows, which impedes economic development and makes economic sovereignty impossible. More
To the Moon and Back
On July 20th 2019, the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first manned mission to touch down and explore the Moon’s surface. At the time, this was generously presented by the Americans as an achievement for all mankind, but it was, in fact, a near knock-out punch in the Space Race between the US and the Soviet Union. This race was, among other things, a competition for prestige in the eyes of the world and a validation of each country’s individual development model. It was also what Jerry Pournelle and Stefan Possony termed “technological war” in their landmark book “The Strategy of Technology”. Conquering and developing space or “the high frontier” became a priority for the rapid advancement of the military applications of the new space technologies – reconnaissance, early warning, command, control and coordination of conventional and strategic military assets etc. More
The Post-Cold War Hybridization of Geopolitical Concepts
On November 9, 1989, humanity registered an event whose concrete, yet symbolic value continues to echo to the present day: the wall that had split not only Berlin, but Europe and the whole world as well, started to crumble… Was the Cold War ending? Did the bipolar world not exist anymore? Were the spheres of influence disintegrating? What was going to happen to the US and USSR, the two superpowers? These questions were waiting for an answer. Scenarios such as The End of History (Fukuyama, 1992) and The Clash of Civilizations (Huntington, 1996) were trying to predict what the world would look like after the fall of the Berlin Wall while new phrases were starting to materialize gradually, first in the media, then, timidly in the academic circles, both as discourse and in university courses, after half a century of geopolitical “prohibition”. However, the great international events were not waiting. The start of a new geopolitical world and international order were foreshadowed. More
The Steering Wheel with Free Will
“The advent of AVs on the busy roadways of the world’s nations represents a sea change in the way human transportation is conceived and enacted. We are now witnessing an epoch of significant transition in which active control of the vehicle is being taken from the human driver and placed within the charge of the on-board computer systems themselves.”Hancock P.A. 1997. Essays on the Future of Human-Machine Systems. Eden Prairie, MN: Banta Information Services Group. More
