

- Azimuth, Romania Octavian-Dragomir Jora, Alexandru Georgescu
- Time for Diplomacy Zsolt Németh
- The Three Seas Initiative – One Year after the Riga Summit: Full Steam Ahead? Mihai Sebe
- Trimarium – Western Fortress or Meeting Point of Cultures? Zoltán Koskovics
- Breaking the 3SI Piggybank: Wages, Inflation and Real Values Mihai Christopher Marian Radovici
- The Connection between the Three Seas Initiative and the Middle Corridor: An Italian Perspective Stefano Graziosi

- From Apollo to Artemis and Beyond Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu
- The Economic Consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian War Silviu Cerna
- Sovereignty, Security, Prosperity, and the Future of the Eurasia Project James Jay Carafano, Anthony B. Kim
- Breaking the Long Truce Steven Alan Samson
- Global Initiatives and Supply Chains Alexandru Georgescu
- Foot(Glo)ballisation by World Cup Octavian-Dragomir Jora

- On Conspiracy Theories and Theorizing Alexandru Georgescu
- Economic Fireside Stories Revisited Bogdan Tatavura
- The Lords of the Olympic Rings Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- IP, Fire, and Other Dangerous Things Henrique Schneider
- Binding Leviathan: The Case for Institutional Liberty Steven Alan Samson
- Romanian National Culture Day and the New Normal Mariana Nicolae

- Bracing for Hurricane Democracy Alexandru Georgescu
- Zombified Finance and the Walking Dead Economy Alexandru-Ștefan Goghie
- Romania’s Recovery According to the World Bank Dan Pălăngean
- The 2008 and 2020 Global Crises – Differences and Similarities Grațiela-Denisa Iordache
- Europe’s Paradigmatic Dilemmas amidst Pandemic Woes: How the COVID-19 Crisis May Reshape EU’s Geostrategy Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- Annotating the Paris Agreement Henrique Schneider

- Conservatism and Spiritual and Social Recovery Richard J. Bishirjian
- NASA & SpaceX Launch – A New Milestone in Space Exploration Olga Bodrug, Kassandra Maduzia, James Snedden,Michael Migaud, Mohammad Ahmadi, Justin Bullock
- COVID-19 Distributions and Balances of Power. Interview with Professor Cezar Mereuță Adelina Mihai
- Some Thoughts on COVID-19 Pandemic Shock Emil Dinga
- Charter Cities: Vernian Fantasy or Human Reality? Alexandru-Costin Udrea
- The Inconsistency of Biological Analogies in Economics Vlad Popescu

- The COVID-19 Pandemic – Changing the Paradigm Florin Paul
- The Race to the Bottom in Oil Alexandru Georgescu
- On the Self-Testability of the Minimum Wage Gabriela-Mariana Ionescu
- Brâncuși’s Endlessness and the Scarcity of Some Means Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Communicative Action, Subjective Perception and the Hermeneutics of Capital Structure Alexandru-Ștefan Goghie
- Was the Islamic State a Real State? Răzvan Munteanu

- The Anthropocene-Fallacy: Learning from Wrong Ideas Henrique Schneider
- Technology and Ethics: Of Man and Wisdom Georgiana Constantin-Parke
- On Brexit and Other Exits Andreas Stamate-Ștefan
- With Regards to Government Charity for the Private Sector Emil Dinga
- Political and Economic Fallacies: A Tribute to Sir Roger Scruton Steven Alan Samson
- Russian Relations with North Korea Stephen R. Bowers and Kelli M. Nab

- From Marxism to the Ideology of Free Society in 1989 Romania – Transition or Rupture? Ștefan-Dominic Georgescu
- The Power of Vague Things: A Cautionary Tale Steven Alan Samson
- Playing on High Difficulty: The Trade Barriers of Modern Video Gaming Vlad Moraru
- 21st Century Ethics and the New Jus Vitae Necisque? Georgiana Constantin-Parke
- Modern Monetary Theory and Its Poisonous Implications Silviu Cerna
- Gazprom as Policy Instrument Stephen R. Bowers

- The Earthly Algorithms of the Heavenly Affairs Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Sicut in Caelo, Et in Terra Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- The Supreme Unity, the Unity of the Species Dumitru-Dorin Prunariu
- To the Moon and Back Alexandru Georgescu
- The Steering Wheel with Free Will Ana-Maria Marinoiu
- In Memory of Romania’s Last King: His Royal Majesty Michael I (1921-2017) Bogdan C. Enache

- INFatuated, INFuriated, INFlexible? Narciz Bălășoiu
- Future Tense in the Job Market Mihnea Alexandru Ciocan
- Some Thoughts on the Criteria of Nominal Economic Convergence in the EU Emil Dinga
- State Role vs. State Size Gabriela Ionescu
- The Return of Microeconomics Alexandru Georgescu
- The Passions of France Adrian-Ioan Damoc

- New Developmentalism, Old Ideas Bogdan C. Enache
- Karl Marx and Switzerland Henrique Schneider
- Super Bowl and a Soup Bowl Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- How Migration Saved the White City Teodora Marković
- A New Way of Solidarity within NATO Florin Luca
- The Impact of Russia’s Strategic Interest in the Black Sea Region on the Imbalance of the Russian Economy Leonela Leca

- The Professionalization of the Public/Political Decision-Making Emil Dinga
- Is Small still Beautiful? A Swiss Perspective Henrique Schneider
- The Romanian National Cathedral: The Voice of a People Freed Georgiana Constantin-Parke
- Wisdom and Perseverance Ahmed Abdulla Saeed bin Saeed Almatrooshi
- The NEET Tag and Intergenerational Existence on Labour Market Monica-Florica Dutcaș
- The Regional Resources of Ukraine and New Opportunities for Economic Development Until 2030 Ganna Kharlamova Nina Chala Olexandra Gumenna Tetyana Osinchuk

- Football-ism – The Ultimate Global Ideology Savian Boroancă Vlad Roșca
- “Search Neutrality” Is Not Possible Henrique Schneider
- Excess Democracy? Andrei Sandu
- Freedom Under Assail Tanja Porčnik
- From the Queen to the Tsar: on Trump’s Travels to Europe Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- Operational Research of the Libyan Civil War and the EU Neighborhood Policies George Zgardanas

- Are Planned Economies Our Destiny? Prince Michael of Liechtenstein
- The Bear Stearns of Romania Bogdan C. Enache
- China’s Belated Spring Cleaning Nicoleta Stoianovici
- Toward Understanding the Balkan Economic Thought Nikolay Nenovsky
- On the Minimal Wage, with Responsibility Gabriela Ionescu
- How Did Horses Become a Luxury? Maria-Mirona Murea

- Romanian Capitalist Economic Thought. Brief notes on pre-1989 diasporic and post-1989 domestic debates Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Rebuilding Economics Emil Dinga
- The One-Size-Fits-All of the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” Reports Emmanuel Olusegun Stober
- “Are Central Banks Literally Independent?” Silviu Cerna vs. Ion Pohoață
- Some Thoughts on the “Global Competitiveness” Costea Munteanu
- Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose Mary Lucia Darst

- Pandora’s Botnet Alexandru Georgescu
- On the Nature of the Concept of Tolerance Emil Dinga
- Romania’s “Sonderweg” to Illiberal Democracy Bogdan C. Enache
- A Community in Search of Unity, a Union in Search of Communion
- Defence and Security: The UK and Romania after Brexit Adam Sambrook
- Orient and Occident – Perceptual and Complementary Macro-Regions Viorel Mionel

- European Construction. Intellectual Project vs. Emergence Emil Dinga
- Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Competitiveness Dragoș Preda
- Womenomics – Is It Worth Talking About Gender? Mariana Nicolae
- The Youth Atlantic Treaty Association and Its Role in Promoting Euro-Atlantic Values John Jacobs
- Water – the Ultimate Geostrategic Resource Viorel Mionel
- North Korea: “Reading the Tea Leaves” Alexandru Georgescu

- Cultural Goods and Cultural Welfare: Some Praxeological and Proprietarian Notes Octavian-Dragomir Jora
- Trump and the Paris Agreement Alexandru Georgescu
- The Risks of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Construction of Eurasian Economic Corridor Liu Zuokui
- Music Industry Development – Future Global Trends on the Rise Paul Niculescu-Mizil Gheorghe
- Cultural Diversity: Same Question, but a Different Answer. The Story of Azerbaijani Multiculturalism Raluca Șancariuc
- Planning for Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe: Mises’s Proposal for Political Integration Matei-Alexandru Apăvăloaei

- Shakespeare & Eminescu – Measure for Measure Adrian George Săhlean
- Ethnogenesis in Davos Alexandru Georgescu
- The Clash of Realism and Liberalism: Understanding the Nature of Cooperation on Energy Security between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia Ayhan Gücüyener
- Robots and Empire(s) Adrian-Ioan Damoc
- Debating the EU's Fiscal Union Filip Clem
- Space Debris – Visualizing the Risk and Informing Stakeholders Adrian Gheorghe

- The Long Slide towards Autocracy János Kornai interviewed by Zoltán Farkas
- Trumponomics – A New “New Deal” for the American people? Alexandru Georgescu
- The Costs and Benefits of Endowing the Romanian Army George Tăslăuanu & Marius Zgureanu
- Musk v. Hawking Andreea Paul
- The Chinese Dream – An Exhortation to Achieve Daniel Tomozei-Dimian
- The 12 Labours of Narendra Modi – India’s Demonetisation Saga Raluca-Andreea Manea

- To Be or Not to Be... Charlie! Camil A. Petrescu
- The Dissolution of the Communities Alexandru Georgescu
- The Banks in the Economy Silviu Cerna
- Geo-economics and Geopolitics of Brexit Crisis Napoleon Pop
- The Piketty-ism – A Childhood Illness for the 21st Century Ion Pohoață
- Simion Mehedinți – A Man of Fulfilled Ideas Silviu Neguț

Beyond Borders: An In-Depth Exploration of the Implications of the Dispute between Venezuela and Guyana Over the Essequibo Region
This article provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the territorial dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the Essequibo region, capturing its historical roots, evolution, and current situation. The research focuses on the influence of natural resources discovered in shaping the politico-economic interests that perpetuate instability, employing a multidisciplinary approach that unveils diplomatic interventions and the dynamics of international involvement. The article specifies the economic implications for each state and offers a perspective for a peaceful resolution, emphasizing regional stability, economic development, and bilateral cooperation. The conclusions of the article highlight the necessity of resolving this dispute, providing an analysis with practical implications for decision-makers, diplomats, or international organizations addressing similar challenges in other disputed territories. More

Neighbourly Bickering: The Argentine – Chilean Dispute for the Southern Patagonian Ice Field
Over the past two hundred years, Chile and Argentina have developed a fruitful bilateral relationship, marked by ups and downs, where any conflict was resolved through agreements and negotiations. However, the greatest difficulties have arisen in delimiting the borders for the Southern regions, specifically the Campos de Hielo Sur/ The Southern Patagonian Ice Field, where each state mapped out spaces that overlapped graphically. There have been multiple attempts to solve this issue by establishing a definitive limit, engaging in high-level conversations between the governments involved. Despite numerous territorial concessions from Chile, there still remain unresolved aspects and unjustified decisions. More

Small Island, Huge Stakes: the Dispute between Iran and the UAE for Abu Musa
Abu Musa is a small island situated in the Persian Gulf whose strategic position allows the power that controls it to influence the maritime traffic that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. This characteristic made it the point of contention between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, both states actively claiming their sovereignty over the island along with its sister islands of the Greater and Lesser Tunb.Iran is the de-facto ruler of these important islands since 1971, when it orchestrated their invasion at a time when they were in the possession of the Emirate of Sharjah, now part of the United Arab Emirates (Mobley, 2003). Regarding the island of Abu Musa, Iran maintains that the territory is an inalienable part of the state, refusing any kind of negotiations that imply otherwise. In turn, the UAE continues to claim the islands as part of the Emirate of Sharjah, which is one the Emirates composing it, and alongside other actors, advocates for negotiating a diplomatic solution to this dispute. More

Romania, Second Lowest Price Level in the EU for 2022
Romania had the second lowest price level in the EU for the year 2022, with a value of 59.3% relative to the European average. Bulgaria was first, with an index of 58.5%, and above our country were situated Poland (60.7%), Hungary (67.7%), Croatia (73.5%), Lithuania (78.8%) and Czechia (84.3%).*In 2022, the highest price level for consumer goods and services among the EU Member States was observed in Denmark (49% above the EU average) and the lowest in Bulgaria and Romania (41% below the average). More

The Trump Storm In an otherwise unchanged climate
2022 and 2023 saw a large number of suits brought against Trump, some of them legally and others still in the court of public opinion, from where his critics hope they will move into the courthouse. These cover a bewildering array of charges, ranging from rape to defamation to campaign finance fraud, and from improper use and storage of classified materials to insurrection. What are the charges? Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying documents related to payments made to women with whom he had sexual affairs in order to buy their silence. The main woman involved was the porn actress Stormy Daniels, whose case has been discussed since the beginning of Trump's tenure. The payments were made by Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, and were reimbursed from Trump organization funds marked as legal expenses. Normally, such actions, however disgraceful, would constitute a misdemeanor for which Trump would be fined, but Cohen was also well-positioned in Trump's campaign, and a visionary prosecutor made him declare, as part of Cohen's 2018 agreement with authorities regarding his personal financial crimes, that those payments represented a campaign contribution because Stormy Daniels' silence and the silence of the rest of Trump's “harem” facilitated his election as President, not just savi More

Let’s Not Let the Politicians Play Bits and Bytes! Who is afraid of the e-social contract, the e-democracy and the e-rule of law?
Before the political elections (about a year or so before), on the day of the vote and a little while after, the citizens remember the values of the Polis: the social contract (a subtle notion), democracy (more declaimed than digested), the rule of law (or the primacy of laws, which become frail when legality does not rhyme with justice). In the rest of the time between electoral cycles, we find ourselves, usually, in the posture of citizens nursing a profound displeasure towards the elected, who either forgo the promises for which we voted, or they deliver precisely the promises we did not vote for. Somehow, in between elections, power becomes something wielded by a few of “us”, as is the case on election day, when a majority of a narrow minority wins the day and decides the collective future. It leads to many people being in hock to the opposition, which is waiting for another turn of the wheel in their favour. This is the curse of the “social contract”, the high priests of the status quo assure us a bit cynically! More

Workshop Dedicated to the Incentives and Constraints that Affect the Dialogue and Positional Consensus within the Contemporary Epistemic Communities
The Advanced Research Institute of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) organised, on November 15, 2023, the “Sense / consensus / nonsense in today’s scientific research: Big societal themes and how to approach them with discernment” workshop, an event which was included among the activities assigned to the “BUES excellence research development and promotion through the strengthening of the RDI processes, maintenance of the visibility of the results and impact on the economic sphere in the context of Open Science” [„Dezvoltarea și promovarea cercetării de excelență din ASE prin consolidarea proceselor de CDI, susținerea vizibilității rezultatelor și a impactului asupra mediului economic, în context Open Science”] – CNFIS-FDI-2023-F-0499. The main topic was related to the probing of the (lack of) existence of a market for ideas in the realm of social sciences, especially economics, seen in an inter-/multi-/trans-disciplinary light, as well as ascertaining its (lack of) function, emphasising the situation here in Romania, in a comparatively international context. The marketplace of ideas is a symbolical space which consists of at least three overlapping (or even interconnected) layers – the first one, in which researchers exchange their scientific conclusions based on carefully demonstrated/demonstrable validities; then the one where producers and consumers put forward their business ideas centred around profitability and based on their met/satisfied needs and, finally, the one in which, either in support or in spite of the will of the people and of civil society, politicians either regulate or outright ban some ideas which are considered plainly inadequate or which are simply decreed as inconvenient. More

Turning Point in NATO: Arming Itself with Entrepreneurs
At the 2022 Summit, which was hosted in Madrid, NATO officials presented an innovative multi-sovereign venture capital fund, now headquartered in the Netherlands. The establishment of the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF) in mid-2023 saw its 23 member nations pledging over 1.1 billion EUR in the first funding round to foster the Trans-Atlantic deep tech landscape. What has happened since then and can this mark the beginning of a “pot of gold” for Central and Eastern European states?The idea for a quasi-private investment scheme was presented almost two years ago during one of the Summits, yet only by mid-autumn 2023 the NATO-backed venture capital fund officially commenced its first financial rounds. This was done to infuse defense and security-oriented start-ups with some acceleration or seed capital, aspects that would bolster the alliance’s technological edge and development of firsthand innovative solutions. More

Civilization Is Built on Borrowed Capital
The historical dynamism and resilience of Western civilization bespeaks both the Christian faith that laid its foundations and its ability to transform the families, institutions, and cultures of the world into which it grew. As faith wanes within its realm, cultural revolutionaries vie for control over the estate and the distribution of its assets. The prospect of recovery or renewal of the West depends on the character and courage of its heirs to restore a depleted heritage. The following article is drawn from the first two sections of “Cultural Vandalism: Lust to Rule, Road to Ruin,” Wokeshevism: Critical Theories and the Tyrant Left, ed. Augusto Zimmermann and Joshua Forrester (Connor Court, 2023) 221-37. Reprinted with permission. More

Workshop Dedicated to Science Journalism and the Relations between Academia and the Mass Media, in an Era Full of Pressures Put on the Intellectual Climate and Informational Quality
“To know>knowledge>news: How to navigate through the socio-politico-economic relations in the post-truth and fake news era” [RO: „A ști >știință >știre: cum navigăm prin realitățile socio-politico-economice în epoca post-truthși fakenews”] is the aegis under which the Advanced Research Institute of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) organised the workshop with the same name on November 8, 2023, a programme included among the activities subsumed in the “BUES excellence research development and promotion through the strengthening of the RDI processes, maintenance of the visibility of the results and impact on the economic sphere in the context of Open Science” [„Dezvoltarea și promovarea cercetării de excelență din ASE prin consolidarea proceselor de CDI, susținerea vizibilității rezultatelor și a impactului asupra mediului economic, în context Open Science”] – CNFIS-FDI-2023-F-0499. The debate started with the idea according to which the ultimate purpose of scientific research is, besides the maintenance of certain standards of excellence, that of contributing to the democratisation of the access to knowledge, while avoiding elitism and hermeticism in relation to the general public. This aspect is critical in the field of economics, which is found in the infrastructural area of general and civic education, as opposed to other areas that involve hyper-professional/specialised/technical knowledge. In addition, this approach/endeavour is made more and more difficult by the trends that relativize the truth and spreads misinformation (infodemics). In an international context, burdened by overlapping, asymmetrical and asynchronous crises (related to the management of climate change, migration, the post-pandemic society, security, resource accessibility, supply chains etc.), informed decisions, both public and private, become crucial. More

The Median Disposable Income in the EU Romania, third place from the rear but first when it comes to include pensions in the social transfers
In 2022, the median disposable income was 18.706 PPS per inhabitant in the EU, one-third of it was received as social transfers from governments (e.g. pensions, social benefits, etc.). Compared with 2010, EU’s median disposable income in real terms increased by 20% in 2022. Romania was first among the member states, with a 126% increase.EU median annual disposable income per inhabitant stood at 18.706 PPS in 2022. It varied considerably across the EU Member States and ranged from 9.671 PPS in Bulgaria and 9.826 PPS in Slovakia to 33.214 PPS in Luxembourg and 25.437 PPS in the Netherlands. The highest levels of income per inhabitant were recorded in Central and Nordic EU Member States. Romania was placed third place from the rear (10.033 PPS), although the level of GDP per inhabitant is currently above the ones in other six European countries. This signifies an increased inequality in relative terms. More

Sustainability, Cause It’s Better than All Else Especially when it’s brimming with circularity
The Brundtland report – Our Common Future (1987) – represents the catechism of durable/sustainable development, defined as that type of “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Sustainability puts two disciplines/social sciences to work, in a deliberate debauchery: economics (preoccupied with the efficient satisfaction of subjectively arranged individual needs, with the social stock of available scarce and, thus, precious resources) and ethics (preoccupied, amongst other things, with the moral validation of the exercise of violence/coercion, knowing that the scarcity of resources generates conflicts in a society). Therefore, economic sustainability is based on the ethical axiom according to which it is the responsibility of each and every generation to “preserve”/”conserve” an amount of “capital” goods deemed necessary in up-keeping a “level of income” sufficient enough for the future ones. More

The Regionally Relevant Romania Competitiveness, compliance, cooperation
The Romanian Economic Forum (Forumul Economic Român), whose first edition took place in 2018, represented a first, pioneering approach on the events market in Romania, showing that our country, through its strategic position, can play a nodal geo-political-economic role in the regional/European/global landscape, a role it can not only build, but also communicate intelligently.Finmedia imagined and implemented an event that served as a platform for discussions on the current key issues of the Romanian economy, such as European integration, attracting foreign investments, the development of new industrial and technological sectors, realistically realizing the impact of both global challenges and opportunities in their dynamics and complexity. More

Breaking the 3SI Piggybank: Wages, Inflation and Real Values
Meanwhile, from the same datasets we can observe that, even though most of the 3SI countries increased in this period their minimum hourly pay rates (on average by a quarter), an issue that dragged the rest of the brackets with them (as there is an inverted cascade into the median and high-end salaries), these actions did not necessarily translate into an overall prosperity growth, with even the hours needed to exit the poverty line increasing by approximately 10%. Despite this fact, the redistribution brought them closer to their Western counterparts, with respect to the minimum wages expressed in purchasing power standards, with the region growing faster than France, Germany, Italy of Spain in this timeframe. In turn, labour costs have grown at the same pace, while remaining lower than the EU averages, with some practitioners arguing that this can strain the operational capabilities of companies, particularly SMEs, since every minute worked by the employees is more valuable. More

The Rich Dynamic of Faith in Action
One of the most incisive analyses of the secular transformation of America’s – indeed the West’s – ruling ideology was published a century ago in 1923 by a Presbyterian theologian, J. Gresham Machen. James Kurth would later describe its evolution as “the Protestant Deformation.”[2]During the so-called Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy which began before the First World War, Machen was the most articulate critic of a theological movement known as Modernism or Liberalism: a secular religion of sentiment poached from Christianity. His critique begins as follows: “The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meaning, will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which we are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight. More

The 18th International Conference on Business Excellence Smart Solutions for a Sustainable Future (21-23 March 2024, Bucharest, Romania)
Business excellence is about achieving superior business results in relation to the competitors by means of developing and strengthening the management systems and processes of an organization; it is targeted at improving performance and delivering value for all the stakeholders, in a three-dimensional space characterized by uncertainty, complexity and dynamism.The first goal of this international conference is to reunite specialists from the triple-helix fields: university and research, consultancy and business, and policy making pursuant to optimizing the business added value by providing a stimulating environment for knowledge and knowhow business excellence transfers and alliance formation.The second goal of this internat More

Romania, the Highest Share of Children in Poverty or Social Exclusion in 2022
Among the EU member states in 2022, the highest share of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion was recorded in Romania, according to Eurostat data. The percentage of 41.5% (same as in the previous year) was well above those for Bulgaria (33.9%) and Spain (32.2%). On the other hand, the lowest shares were reported in Slovenia (10.3%), Czechia (13.4%) and Denmark (13.8%).Children who grow up in poverty or social exclusion encounter difficulties in doing well in school, enjoying good health and realising their full potential later in life. They also face a higher risk of becoming unemployed, poor and socially excluded as adults. More

Azimuth, Romania Towards global relevance through regional cooperation. And a follow-up to the 2023 Three Seas Initiative summit
The political-economic phrase “regional cooperation mechanisms” is dry enough that it brings in tow a serene attitude, which neither Romania’s voluptuous imaginaries, nor its immanent vicinities seem to pan out. Central and Eastern Europe, extruding towards the South East – the softly symbolic geographical notion which includes Romania –, has always possessed a lively geopolitical tectonic, prone to extremely brutal outbursts and worldmaking shifts (i.e., featuring as some hotspot for the two world wars), and a latent geoeconomic magnetism too (i.e., due to its fine resource pools and in spite of its dire infrastructures). These traits have remained somehow unchanged for centuries, only to be recurrently re-evaluated. More

Time for Diplomacy Geopolitical Forum – Danube Institute
On Ukraine – and on many other issues, such as how to deal with China –, the G7 members showed unprecedented unity in the consultation process organized by the Japanese Presidency in the spring. It has become clear that the Western powers do not expect Ukraine to make territorial concessions to Russia in order to achieve a ceasefire, and are even prepared to support it not to do so. And they have also made it clear that China is seen as a rival and challenge in many areas, but not an enemy like Russia. The G7 underlined that they intend to work with China both economically and in building a new world order. More

BRIC(S) by BRIC(S) East vs. West or North vs. South?
The East vs. West dilemma that has characterised the latter half of the twentieth century was put on hold following the collapse of the Soviet Union, only to be brought again into the mainstream following the Russian annexation of Crimea (and the subsequent invasion of Ukraine in 2022). However, the situation is complex and constantly evolving, the invasion itself managing to shake the way we perceive geopolitics. A paradoxical organisation is making bold announcements (in light of the recent summit), pushing rhetoric meant to represent the “Global South” as an actor, in opposition to the West, or as an up-to-date version of the Non-Aligned Movement. All this, while the Global South looks like a lucrative market for Russian exports, amidst the Western-imposed economic sanctions. Will East vs. West become North vs. South? More

Trimarium – Western Fortress or Meeting Point of Cultures?
Buongiorno, Amici!Io sono Zoltán.Io sono un padre. Io sono Ungherese. And…, in the immortal words of Joe Biden: “You know the thing.”I would like to thank the Machiavelli Institute for inviting me to the Eternal City, and I also want to thank all of you for coming to this important conference. When you walk the streets of Rome, you breathe history. This is the beating heart, the very soul of Western civilization.Since we are here and I am to speak about the Transatlantic dimensions of the Three Seas Initiative, allow me to open with a story that may be familiar to my colleagues who work in the field of geopolitics. A question I am often asked – usually by children or young adults – goes something like this: “Is America a new Rome?” What I usually say is that Rome was a great power for centuries before it became the mistress of the Mediterranean, ruled the known world for more than four hundred years, and remained a major player for a full millennium after that. The USA is a little over two hundred years old. Yes, they are the strongest power the world has ever seen, militarily and politically, but America is no Rome. They have a ways to go. More

Women in Sport – Inspirational Models That Robots Cannot Replace
The volume Women’s Strength in Sport coordinated by Andreea Paul appeared this fall at the Polirom Publishing House in Iași. It is the fourth volume in the series The Force of women in ... that Andreea Paul has delivered, thus filling the information gaps in the Romanian publishing market, but especially gaps in the collective mind of a deeply patriarchal society, despite the signs of change that have become increasingly obvious lately. Andreea Paul represents this change mainly through her efforts embodied in the Polirom series. And sure enough, as it often happens in life, the spark that set off the efforts of a small but brave team of volunteers was ignited by a simple question of the author’s daughter, a simple question that even ChatGPT couldn’t answer. More

The Connection between the Three Seas Initiative and the Middle Corridor: An Italian Perspective
It is not a mystery. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, intends not to renew the controversial memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road Initiative. After all, this deal has always been risky from a geopolitical point of view and it is good that the Prime Minister is about to take such a step. Indeed, we should not forget that China is listed among the major geopolitical threats to the West. On the other hand, Rome will face significant challenges. It is in fact possible that Italy will be hit by Chinese retaliation. Meloni is aware of this. Not surprisingly, in recent months she has significantly strengthened relations with the United States and India. It is for this reason that, looking ahead, the Prime Minister should consider joining the Three Seas Initiative. More

A Midsummer Night’s Chilling Dream The war’s “global warmings” and “nuclear winters”
Climate changes and armed conflicts – as facets of, basically, the “non-human” physical nature and of the “dehumanised” human nature, respectively –, when fatally intertwined with each other, bring us closer to Apocalypse nightmares. The mental cohabitation between ecological anguishes and the anxieties of belligerence is the product of the Cold War era’s madness (as in MAD – mutual assured destruction). A doctrine of deterrence, MAD highlights the fact that every nuclear confrontation between superpowers can only end with the annihilation of both, regardless of who was at first on the offense and who was on the defence. Such an infamous possibility also had a climate-related dimension. Either the thermonuclear explosions will broil Earth’s fluids like a boiler (some sort of a “Heat Death”), or they would release a cloud of particles in the atmosphere, blocking the solar radiation (generating an “Ice Age”), the horrific result would be a residual human-inhabited area to oscillate agonizingly between scalding and drowning, between freezing and extreme hunger. Even though the industrial rivalry, including the peaceful kind, remains the main target of the accusations that it devours the environment and disrupts the climate, war, even the regular genre (though it has been recently becoming more and more hybrid in nature) imposes itself as a research subject in relation to climate risks. More

The Three Seas Initiative – One Year after the Riga Summit: Full Steam Ahead?
We are witnessing an increased political concreteness of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) as the September 2023 Summit in Bucharest is approaching. First of all, we should look at the goals of this Initiative. As mentioned in several other papers, this is first and foremost a regional Initiative established based on a shared sense of identity, interdependence and cooperation. Romania joined the platform without reservations from its beginning, organising in Bucharest in 2018 the third summit of this Initiative. More

Foible Taxation, the Main Cause of Public Deficit
As a ratio of GDP, in 2021 tax revenue (including net social contributions) accounted for 41.7% of GDP in the European Union (EU) and 42.2% of GDP in the euro area (EA-19). The ratio tax revenue to GDP was highest in Denmark (48.8%), France (47.0%) and Belgium (46.0%), followed by Austria (43.7%), Italy (43.6%), Sweden (43.5%) and Finland (43.1%); the lowest shares were recorded in Ireland (21.9%), Romania (27.3%), Bulgaria (30.7%), Latvia (30.8%), Malta (31.2%) and Lithuania (32.6%). This situation makes taxation the main cause of public deficit. With public revenues even as low as Bulgaria or Latvia, Romania wouldn’t be outside the maximum 3% of GDP requirement for deficit. More

Stories that Matter
The book that I’d like to introduce to you is “Escaping the Frame. Women in Famous Pictures tell their Stories” by Mary Bevan. It was published in 2021. It’s the perfect book for today’s readers always in a hurry, nevertheless looking for something thought provoking, engaging, visual, educational but also grounded in today’s realities which are often so challenging. Especially for women. No, this is not the standard feminist, activist book that you are already fed up with. Instead, the book I want to introduce to you is a collection of brief thoughts belonging to women who have become celebrated in the art of men, or women who were themselves artists, but whom we have not been used to listen to or to imagine that they have thoughts that might be worthy of our interest. More

Year 0 A.D. (after Vilnius)
The NATO Summit in Vilnius on 11-12 July 2023 produced some of the expected results. It reaffirmed the Alliance’s support for Ukraine, and continued the work to coordinate investment in the industrial capacity needed to supply Ukraine in this war of attrition and to ensure the Alliance’s ability to defend itself in the event of conflict. However, Ukraine has not received a clear invitation or roadmap to join NATO, following opposition from the US and Germany, who shy away from direct escalation with Russia and the assumption of a territorial defense obligation that would be triggered the second the accession treaty is signed. Most significant was President Erdogan’s surprise announcement of his approval of Sweden’s entry into the Alliance, shortly after the unrealistic demand he made of resuming Turkey’s EU accession talks. President Erdogan’s unpredictability is due both to his own agenda of advancing Turkey’s regional power and specific security interests and to the recent electoral reconfirmation of his mandate to “make Turkey great again.” It remains to be seen whether Sweden will receive confirmation in the autumn, as Erdogan has indicated. Also, the presence for the second year in a row of the AP4 group (Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) indicates both the Indo-Pacific direction in which the US would prefer to take NATO and the growing role of the group, especially of South Korea, in the military supply of the Alliance, especially its European partners. More

Is the European Union Going Forward or Going Backwards?
The many crises that have hit the European Union during the last decade and a half have made many observers pessimistic about the future of the organisation. The deep economic crisis of the eurozone has been followed by a north-south political divide and the exit of Great Britain from the EU coincided with conflicts on the meaning of democracy with some notable eastern member states. The conclusion of a European Union going backwards is nevertheless premature. As in the past, great failures, such as the Constitutional Treaty, coincided with great steps forward. More

Edward Rozek: Bearing Witness
How do we develop the eyes to see and the ears to hear? The best teachers equip us to resist temptation and recognize deception. They enable us to develop the vision to discern truth and the voice to tell it. “Take everything with a grain of salt,” my father advised me more than once. As I went off to college in 1966, he urged me to get under the wing of Edward J. Rozek, a Polish emigré who fought first for Poland at the outset of the Second World War, then escaped his imprisoned country to serve as a reconnaissance officer under British command. Blinded in a tank explosion, he underwent several surgeries to remove shrapnel and restore his eyesight. More

Romania 2022 – Highest Share of People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion in the EU
In 2022, the shares of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion varied across the EU countries, with highest values reported in Romania (34%), Bulgaria (32%), Greece and Spain (both 26%). On the other hand, the lowest shares were recorded in three states from the former Eastern Bloc: Czech Republic (12%), Slovenia (13%) and Poland (16%).95.3 million people in the EU (22% of the population) were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, i.e. lived in households experiencing at least one of the three poverty and social exclusion risks: risk of poverty, severe material and social deprivation, and/or living in a household with very low work intensity. The figure remained relatively stable compared with 2021 (95.4 million, 22% of the population). More

Cultural Zig Zag – Confluences
Françoise Gilot, a successful painter and memorialist, died on June 6 aged 101. And beyond her venerable age, the name of the artist has appeared in almost every important cultural publication in the world. Why am I mentioning her here? Because her story is, in a way, exemplary of the condition of the female artist, and beyond that because it created some connections for me with Urmuz.Let me briefly introduce who Gilot had been and what she represented for the world of art. Those who know something about her, because they are interested in the world of modern art, remember that she was Picasso’s lover despite a 40-year age difference. She lived with Picasso for 10 years and bore him two children, Paloma and Claude, and is the only woman to leave him, rebuild her life and, despite Picasso’s considerable efforts to block her, build a career for herself as a painter and writer whom many consider remarkable. In 2021, the portrait made of her daughter in 1965 and titled Paloma à la Guitare, sold for 1.3 million dollars. The Musée Estrine in Saint Remy de Provence [1] dedicated to modern art of the 20th and 21st centuries, dedicated a retrospective to her in 2021. In 2009, she became an officer of the French Legion of Honour. Françoise Gilot was an independent woman who wanted to step out of the shadow of powerful men, from her father to Picasso, and who fought to keep her own identity. In her bestselling book, Life with Picasso, co-written with art critic Carlton Lake in 1964, she recalls that a friend warned her before she entered into a relationship with Picasso that she was heading for catastrophe. “I told him he was probably right, but I felt it was the kind of catastrophe I didn’t want to avoid” [2]. And also in her memoir, she firmly says “I’m not just a creature, I’m a creator. I am not an object to be painted, I am a subject, I am a painter” [3]. More

The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence Regulation
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be what Edison said about electricity - "it is a field of fields... that holds the secret to reorganizing the life of the world". Artificial intelligence, at all of its levels of complexity, is a technology with a radical impact on the global economy and security. AI solutions can be integrated into industrial robots as well as military robots, can become defenders as well as cyber attackers far more agile than human experts, can analyze information to uncover threats but also to violate the rights and the privacy of individuals, as well as to create discrimination or amplify social and political polarization. More than any other technology, artificial intelligence illustrates the dualism of emerging technologies and the need for cooperation, regulation and sustainable adoption of these technologies while maintaining the resilience and values of their respective societies. More

Italy’s Economic Saga Unraveling Public Debt, Post-WW2 Reconstruction, and Eurozone Realities
Italy is one of the biggest economies within the eurozone, yet its debt burden now stands as one of the largest globally, surpassing 140% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022. Italian debt spans multiple decades, with the country grappling with high levels of public debt since the 1980s, when the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio stood at around 60%, steadily mounting after that. The problem has evolved into a chronic predicament, persistently afflicting the national economy. The country’s heavy debt burden has caused the government to face higher borrowing costs, compounding the difficulty of reducing the debt over time. This situation puts the Italian economy’s stability at risk, as the slightest adverse change in the global economy can disproportionally hamper the country’s ability to repay its debts. More

“Touchy Pride” Libertarianism and the Accountability for Implicitly Given Consent
When thinking about Libertarianism, one who is not too familiar with terminological specifics would most probably imagine either a society under which laissez-faire Capitalism is the only present economic system, or, as an even more general rule, an ideology which advocates for individual freedom above all else. While these are, for the most part, accurate depictions of the final form Libertarianism would take when put into practice, what cannot be denied is the multitude of potential meanings behind these surface-level characteristics. More

Economics & Football (On professional amateurship)
Football has made the planet crazy, becoming today a veritable secular religion of the globalized world; or, metaphorizing it economically, a “medium of exchange” in the settlement of acts equally qualified as being of the communion type or of the competition type between us: it is both cooperative fun and quasi-blunt dispute. Then the football team is also an organization that optimizes itself by chasing the ball. It is part of a larger structure (club), in which other characters are inserted, usually opportunely, that, although they do not directly run the balloon, lubricate it logistically. These machines then come together to compete for customers, money and, ultimately, for happiness. More

The African Union Opportunity Act (AGOA): A Review of Trade Controversies and Opportunities
The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a unilateral agreement commissioned by the US, with the purpose of increasing the volume of trade between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of such an act is to encourage trade between the United States and qualifying Sub-Saharan economies by reducing tariffs and quotas for certain goods exported from Africa to the US. African countries, however, need to meet certain qualifications. The trade agreement enables the US President to designate countries as eligible based on the following criteria: “market-based economies; the rule of law and political pluralism; elimination of barriers to US trade and investment; protection of intellectual property; efforts to combat corruption; policies to reduce poverty, increasing availability of healthcare and educational opportunities; protection of human and worker rights; elimination of child labor practices” (U.S. Trade and Development Act, 2000). Since its adoption in 2000 under the Bush Administration, AGOA has been the centerpiece of U.S.-African trade relations (Paéz et al, 2010, p.1). Around the same time as the adoption of AGOA, the Chinese government inaugurated a “strategic partnership” with 44 African governments during the Forum on China-African Cooperation (FOCAC). According to the American Chamber of Foreign Affairs, the Chinese administration has promised to increase its imports to a total of $300 billion exclusively from Sub-Saharan Africa by 2024. More

International Conference on Political Sciences Time: October 12-14, 2023 | Venue: Manchester, UK
At the political science conference, we will dive into the most recent trends and discoveries, as well as the most pressing matters in various fields and subfields of political sciences. Attendees will listen to the fascinating presentations by esteemed speakers, participate in roundtable discussions, contribute to the buzzing atmosphere of the networking floor, and inspire the next generation of academics.This is an opportunity to deepen and broaden your knowledge about key concepts and subjects in political science as well as to meet with a sea of important academic and professional experts from diverse disciplines. More

Homo (Sapiens Sapiens) Digitalensis A future written in the past
After a flourishing era, in which humankind discovered the steam engine, standardization and electricity, a new beginning was on the horizon. Even though society reached unbelievable levels of productivity and new levels of wealth throughout the world, we were missing the last piece of the puzzle. The beginning of the Third Industrial Revolution has brought us a new way of communication that enabled us to send and receive data instantly. We have to look back to the 1950s when the base of the digital was laid and, after that, the world, as we know it, changed forever. Fast forward to the 1990s, the “.com” phenomenon reached its first all-time high, and new ways of interaction were created. We are talking about Google, Amazon and many others. The 2000s brought more core services through Facebook and YouTube, social media and streaming respectively. After people started consuming more and more digital content, technology needed to keep pace with demand; as a result, 4G communications (fourth generation data transfer speeds) are now a very common thing, 5G is becoming the new standard and we already see how 6G is ramping up its marketing drive in countries like China, Japan, South Korea and more. More

The Symphony Strikes Back When economic privileges become too expensive
During a military parade, nothing is more eye-catching than the expensive hardware that is brought in order to display the nation’s capacities and ambitions, which are calibrated in a rigorous manner to eventually self-defend itself, a desirable scenario that is. A sense of pride and marvel usually engulfs the audience in what can cynically be described, in the words of the heavy metal band Pantera, as a “vulgar display of power”.However, the audience rarely, if ever, questions the aspect of value, and if they do so, the numbers skyrocket to a degree where they no longer become palpable. The bread is cheap, while the circus is as expensive as ever.The event that the world witnessed a few days ago may have been a coup, a travelling circus accompanied by the music of a reputable German composer, a rebellion, a display of power or a combination of all of the above. The nature of the event is still uncertain, but it manages to give us another example of why economic privileges can lead to complications. More

“To Know” – That’s the Essence of Journalism! But how could “knowing” (news) and “knowledge” (science) find common ground?
The daily journalist is the professional who doctors us against informational nightmares – the wordplay I prefer to use in order to summarise this vocation (which is vocal in both a literal and a figurative sense). And I use that metaphor because, paradoxically, it is “in broad daylight” when “the night of the mind” acts with a most uncommon ferocity. This saying applies with particular accuracy to the so-called science journalism. This specialised form of journalism only managed to become its own thing starting in the second half of the twentieth century, occupying today a significant portion of the written, audio-visual and online press. Science journalism must be produced and consumed as something more than a mere form of entertainment. Sure, it diversifies our field of understanding of the world and of life, but its purpose is not to delight – even though it has curiosity (and curiosities) at its core –, nor is it to distract – though it successfully deviates from the trivialisation of reality and, equally so, from its vulgarisation. One of the harsher “stress tests” it was confronted with was the Covid-19 pandemic, which consisted of a mix of fake news and pseudoscience that oscillated between (or was even maintained by) “occult conspiracies” and “official statements”. More

Growth, Degrowth and Greening
Although discussions about the relationship between economics and the environment are no longer confined to scientific forums and have in fact become an inspiration for a variety of popular movements, it is often difficult to grasp the core issues at stake. The public agenda is literally flooded every day with news regarding the trade-off between preserving industrial jobs and averting climate change; supporting urban development and preventing environmental degradation; ensuring living conditions for an increased human population and avoiding biodiversity loss; but the average citizen is often unable to see how all these worrisome, dire, even catastrophic events and proposed solutions fit together in a coherent way and could therefore be addressed in a rational manner. More

A Walking Encyclopedia: Revisiting Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, an Austrian aristocrat who lived in the United States with his family for a decade after the Anschluss, was a journalist, linguist, novelist, encyclopedist, political scientist, theologian, and student of the human character who reported – on site – and bore even-handed witness to many of the great events of the mid-twentieth century, including the Ukraine famine, the Nazi revolution, the Spanish civil war, and Congolese independence. The first part of this retrospective appreciation is drawn from the first part of a review of Leftism Revisited published as “Yes, but…,” Modern Age, 34 (Spring 1992): 241-45.[1] More

Inflation: A Well-Known Phenomenon
Over the past two years approximately, inflation has resurfaced in Romania. Initially, price increases appeared to be temporary and due to purely external causes: international commodity market tensions and supply difficulties in a context of strong recovery of the global economy after the end of the pandemic restrictions.[1] Thereafter, inflation was found to be persistent and fueled by domestic factors, both on the supply and demand side.[2] In the short term, the most recent and possibly the most important cause of inflation has been the increase in energy prices exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. In the medium to long term, inflationary pressures are likely to increase as a result of structural factors such as imbalances in the Romanian economy, stagnating investment, demographic decline, a shift to (more expensive) green energy etc. The way these factors act and combine is specific to the Romanian economy, and, as a result, a monetary policy adapted to indigenous realities is necessary. The monetary policy decisions taken by the Fed, the ECB and the other central banks in the region that are not part of the euro area will also be of particular importance. These external decisions are important in view of the evolution of the interest rate differential and the orientation of international capital flows into which the Romanian economy is inserted. More

Adam Smith’s 300th Birthday The only hope the poor have of bettering their condition is in a market economy
We know very little about the man Adam Smith. We do not even know the famous Scotsman’s birthday. All we know is the date of his baptism, June 5, 1723 (Julian calendar), which means that, according to our Gregorian calendar, he was baptized on June 16. He never knew his father, a customs official, who died at the age of 44, just a few months before Adam Smith was born. More

The Limits of Merit as the Diverging Point between Economics and Moral Philosophy
The compatibility between the moral and the practical has always been a key issue for many philosophies and schools of thought. When it comes to Economics, advocates of certain systems have, more often than not, tried to argue that it isn’t only their primary interest in said system that makes it superior to all the others, but also the secondary ones. For instance, economists who advocate for a free-market economy will not only tell you that Capitalism is economically more efficient than its alternatives, but that it is morally superior, too. Alternatively, it is not unusual for someone whose moral outlook on life makes him prefer a certain system to also end up believing that that system is also the likeliest to lead to material prosperity. More

Geopolitical Perspectives and Technological Challenges for Sustainable Growth in the 21st Century The 6th International Conference on Economics and Social Sciences (icESS), June 15-16, 2023
The world today is vastly different than what it was even a few decades ago, as a result of advances in technology, globalization, and societal changes. Recently, a particular attention was given to sustainable development, raising the question of how to drive economic growth in a responsible manner by harnessing technology’s potential while accounting for diverse national perspectives. In 2015, the United Nations agreed upon 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed to transform our world by 2030. However, without the support of stakeholders from the government, business and civil societies, the SDGs are only aspirations. More

Preparing for OECD – Responsible Reforms and Policies
Joining the OECD and embracing its values, especially in the current context, will allow Romania to achieve a better alignment with the OECD motto: “better policies, better lives”. The preparation for accession is not an easy task, but Romania will benefit from the advantage of international expertise, which must be accompanied by determination and consistency in achieving the set objectives. The progress made since the Roadmap for Accession and up to the present is evident, but more is needed.About these advances of Romania, as well as about the challenges regarding necessary reforms and policies, I spoke today [N.B. May 3, 2023] at the opening of the conference “Romania in the OECD: toward the club of the good international economic practices”, organized at the National Bank of Romania, in company with the Prime Minister of Romania, the Governor of the National Bank of Romania and the chief economist of the OECD, Álvaro Santos Pereira. More

One Fifth of Young Romanians, Neither in Employment Nor in Education or Training
Last year, one fifth of young Romanian people were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET), according to data compiled and published by Eurostat. It is the largest proportion in any EU Member State, well above the European average and the situation deteriorated in the last ten years, as opposed to the progress recorded in neighboring countries.*In 2022, 11.7 % of 15-29 year-olds in the EU were neither in employment nor in education and training.* The proportion of 15-29 year-olds in the EU neither in employment nor in education and training in 2022 ranged from 4.2 % in the Netherlands to 19.8 % in Romania. More

Cultural Branding Strategies: Leveraging National Identity for Economic Prosperity
In the vast arena of international politics, where nations battle for influence and power, the art of branding cities or institutions/buildings plays a crucial role. By understanding the historical context, concepts, and authors behind this strategy, we can explore how states can effectively capitalize on cultural branding to enhance their geopolitical strategies and achieve economic prosperity. More

An Age of Hollow Words and Mutilated Souls
The history of marriage goes back thousands of years and has looked and been defined in different ways over time and in different corners of the world. But the modern understanding of the idea of marriage in most Christian or former Christian countries comes from the religious union between a man and a woman.This is an institution encouraged and lifted to a dignified place by Jesus Christ through His attendance of the wedding in Cana of Galilee. It was there that He chose to perform His first miracle.And it was within the stability of a family that Christ chose to come into the world, in a place and from a people who had a very particular understanding of marriage. So, the dignity of marriage originates from such a tradition, one of both man and woman serving God together in union. More

Warfare Economics and the Proper Use of Individual Incentives on the Battlefield
The science of economics has oftentimes proven itself to be more than capable at exceeding the role most people, especially those foreign to its potential, would grant it – the mere study of the economy – by having direct applications into many other fields. One need only read through the pages of David Friedman’s famous book Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life (1996) in order to get a grasp on how economic thinking can be used to improve the way of tackling his daily challenges. Furthermore, in his academic course on Price Theory (1986), Friedman’s writings feature an entire chapter called The Economics of Love and Marriage, which uses economic principles to describe how the marketplace of love works and how certain policies may be implemented to improve the societal outcomes related to it. More

Bad Political Decisions as an Engine for Change
Progress, in all its forms, implies the destruction of the status quo and its replacement by a new one. It cannot exist without emancipation or change, without the evolution of the old into the new, or even the disappearance of an element giving place to a novel one. Considering this view, progress can be viewed as a (r)evolutionary process. By changing the status quo, the foundations of a society shake or cease to exist. More

America – Pirouettes Based on Geopolitical Events of the World
On June 10, 2022, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held a meeting for over an hour with his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, in Singapore on the occasion of the 19th edition of the Shangri-La Dialogue. This meeting follows President Joe Biden's maiden tour of Asia, ending on May 24, 2022, after visits to South Korea and Japan to reassure traditional allies of American support in the face of what they describe as aggressive behavior by China and North Korea. Given the resumption of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022 and the limits of American resources, especially given turbulent domestic economic and social conditions, is the old pivot to Asia still possible? More

Early Christendom: Chrysalis of the West
So powerfully did the transformational grammar of the new religion, Christianity, change the western world that Arnold Toynbee has described the church as “the chrysalis out of which our Western society emerged.”[1] Historians have both praised the church for preserving the artifacts of the pagan cultures it converted and faulted it for absorbing too many of their elements into its life’s blood. While Pitirim Sorokin regarded the resulting fusion as a genuine synthesis, others have just as firmly maintained that Christianity created an unstable syncretism, pointing to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as evidence of cultural disintegration and growing secularization.[2] But this has always been a source of disagreement, even among Christians themselves, and the debate continues unabated. More

State and Prosperity
The strong global recession, caused by the containment measures imposed by the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as the aid granted by many countries to people and companies, has led to increased budget spending and public debt all over the world. This phenomenon has been added to the expansionary monetary policy of central banks, which in many cases has gone as far as monetary financing of a large part of public debt, which has led to the rise of inflation. In addition, the “relaunch” measures and the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine have led to the increase and intensification of the state’s intervention in economic activity and the continuous weakening of the market economy, on whose proper functioning depends on the well-being reached by a part of the world at the beginning of this third millennium. More

My First Encounter with Corneliu Coposu Memories from 1986 communist Romania
There is no reference in my Securitate file to the above episode, nor to that involving my contact with Corneliu Coposu who, after the 1989 revolution, became President of the National Peasant Party, although a report of my visit to him appears in Coposu’s own file. I had come to Bucharest that same August in 1986 with my two young children and deposited them with their grandparents while I pursued research into British contacts with Iuliu Maniu, the head of the National Peasant Party, during the Second World War. My Romanian friends told me that a key person to talk to on this subject was Corneliu Coposu, Maniu’s personal assistant. I was given his telephone number but warned, at the same time, that his house was under surveillance by the Securitate because the poker evenings that Coposu arranged with his septuagenarian friends were regarded as a cover for reviving the NPP. I telephoned Mr Coposu, explained briefly who I was, and we agreed a time when I should go to his house. He then warned me that visits to his home were monitored. Thanking him, I added that if he would be kind enough to receive me, then I was unconcerned as to what others might think. More

What Do People in Romania Think of Capitalism?
How do the Romanians feel about capitalism and the free market economy, and how do the attitudes in Romania compare to those in 33 other countries? This was the subject of a survey conducted between June 2021 and December 2022 in a total of 34 countries. The survey was conducted in the United States and in small, medium and large countries in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa. Representative samples of around 1,000 respondents were surveyed in each country.In Romania, Ipsos MORI surveyed a representative sample of 1,000 people from June 17 to 21, 2022. In total, 34.550 respondents took part in the survey. More

Natural Disasters as Economic and Political Weapons The Turkish earthquake against the Kurdish community
Kurdistan, or the impossibility of its existence, represents a millennial problem in the heart of the Middle East, being moreover one of the most controversial and at the same time current dilemmas of modern history. The most recent materialization of this conflict is represented by the aftermath of the earthquakes in Turkey at the start of February, when the tragic natural catastrophe underscored the maintenance of the neglect of the Kurdish community by the Turkish state. The weaponization of the earthquake against the Kurds leads the ostracized community into leaving the Turkish territory, a goal that the Turkish state has had for hundreds of years. More so, this natural disaster is not the first one that the Erdogan-led Turkey has used against the Kurds, blaming the Kurdish party for the start of the 2021 wildfires. However, President Erdogan is not the first one to neglect the Kurdish provinces when they were hit by natural disasters, the earthquakes from 2003 and 1975 being prime examples of the matter. More

Eurostat: Young People Materially and Socially Deprived, Highest Proportion Recorded in Romania
In 2021, the EU Member States with the highest levels of young people (aged 15-29 years) at risk of poverty or social exclusion were Romania (36.1 %), Greece (35.4 %) and Bulgaria (31.8 %), while the lowest rates were found in Czechia (10.6 %), Slovenia (11.5 %) and Malta (14.0 %), according to Eurostat.The situation in our country was extremely bad for the 15 – 19 age group, where the percentage goes up to 44.7% (see Figure 1), well above Greece (36.3%) and Bulgaria (36.2%), and a little better for the 20 – 24 age group (33.5%, under Denmark 43.8%, Finland 35.4%, Greece 37.1% and Bulgaria 34.4% ) and the 25 – 29 age group (28.1%, under Greece 32.7%, Italy 31.9%, Denmark 30.2% and Spain 30.0%), in the European context. More

“Twin transitions” and (the Transformation of) Art Exordium to an economist’s inquiry into the ecology and technology (and assorted ideologies) of tomorrow’s cultural and creative sector
The future of what is currently happening in the European Union (although the process we are discussing is ultimately and inevitably global) constitutes the beginning of the “twin transitions” that may find us, decades from now, in the following scenario: we will start our day in a smart and clean house (energetically and aseptically), looking out the VR window that shows us the weather status up to the air quality level and indicates the optimal time to spend outside from a health care index perspective; we will have breakfast after seeing the sustainability score of the menu’s food, with delicacies, by the way, coming from high-tech farmers who take care of their crops by buttoning in the cloud, connected to Big Data, open source weather platforms, fine sensors, and autonomous tractors; we use the washing machine when the dynamic electricity tariff is in our favour, for we are brave prosumers and suppliers in the grid, thanks to strategically mounted solar panels on the roof; we go to work, not yet counting among the lucky digital nomads with flexible telework regime, 4/24, 4/7, waiting for some well-deserved e-leisure hours reserved, for example, for culture; we have the choice between immersing ourselves, through the AR headset, in the captivating Metaverse for a play (where, no, we will not be spectators, but we will play Horatio, in Hamlet, replying to the immortal Laurence Olivier’s avatar) or we can order a Cézanne exhibition at home, as in the old days, at the Tate Museum (projected 16K on the white and versatile walls of the 3D printed and luxuriously finished house by Obi-One, the painter robot of the 100th Romanian unicorn); nostalgic, tired of e-books, we take a book from the vintage memories shelf and sit under the retro-futuristic lamp, in which an old LED bulb from Electromagnetica stubbornly functional has fused with the glass recovered from our great-great-great-grandfather’s oil lamp, a hero at Mărășești WWI clash. Always and everywhere, the cultural-artistic experience integrates us (as well as distinguishes us) in/from the environment, together with our exosomatic extensions (of instrumental, technological nature). More

China as a Space Power
After the death of the famous admiral Zheng He, whose fleet had explored the Indian Ocean and even reached East Africa, the move of the empire’s capital to Beijing and the threat from the Mongols led to an inward reorientation of China, which completely withdrew funding for new naval expeditions and repressed contacts with the outside world, even with those visiting China from Java, Siam and other kingdoms.This decision had a powerful impact in history, because only 55 years after Zheng He’s seventh and final expedition, Bartolomeo Diaz’s compatriots, the Portuguese, sailed past the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Indian Ocean, bypassing Arab and Ottoman-controlled routes through North Africa and the Middle East. Eventually, European powers came to impose their will on China through military and economic force, embodied in the “unequal treaties” that still dominate Chinese perceptions of the “century of humiliation”. I believe that this is one of the explanations for China’s surge in space. From its first steps in this area, with the launch of the Dong Fang Gong 1 satellite onboard a Long March 1 rocket in 1970, the fifth country in the world to launch a satellite, to Yang Liwei’s flight in 2003, by which China became the third country to send people into space through its own strength, the level of resources devoted to space has been steadily increasing. Now, China has developed an ambitious agenda to reach full parity with the US in space and become a global hub for space development that attracts other countries. More

Where To? The European Union between Brexit and the War in Ukraine
What has become of European integration? The present concerns regarding Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, a bloody war on the European Union’s Eastern borders, and transatlantic solidarity makes the question seem a bit irrelevant. Beneath the surface, however, the worries that Britain’s exit from the mostly Brussels-based organisation brought to the fore still linger. Is there any meaningful sense left to the buzzwords or has European integration become just another euphemism for piecemeal regional cooperation? More

Republicans and Support for Ukraine
Trump has been the most vocal of Republican critics of the Biden policy and has suggested that more money needs to be directed toward our domestic needs. DeSantis has also been moving in that direction and on 14 March, The New York Times reported that he had stated that defense of Ukraine was not a vital interest. The combined support within the Republic Party is a total of 75%. Establishment Republicans reject this position, but it could well have an impact on the attitudes of rank and file party members. More

Digitally United We Stand, Digitally Divided We Fall! Or vice versa?
The European environment – business and wider society alike – is undergoing significant disruptions following the impact of digitalisation. Traditional value creation models for European businesses change. Value creation models are impacted by digital transformations – both if we talk about a “digital twin” (a virtual/digital control of physically running processes and physical resources) or about a full “digital from scratch”. New combinations of digital and physical resources (components) allow new, innovative, fully – or partially – digital products to be launched onto the markets. Thereupon, digital platform ecosystems (DPEs) and digital platform-based value creation models leave their marks on production, consumption, organization and organizations, or exchange. More

The Broken Avant-garde of Max Hermann Maxy
The exhibition currently displayed by the National Museum of Arts of Romania (MNAR) in honour of Max Hermann Maxy is both an artistic and a historical event. Despite its limitations and imperfections, “M. H. Maxy: From Avant-gardisme to Socialism” offers precious insight into one of the least known, but most noteworthy, avant-garde movements in interwar Europe: integralism. The chronological organisation offers the visitor, for the very first time, a panorama of the ambitious artist’s entire work, which includes the discredited propaganda works in the service of the Communist regime. Maxy, who not coincidentally is also the founder and first director of MNAR, is the first controversial Romanian avant-garde painter who receives this kind of official treatment, although some semi-private galleries cautiously started this effort to publicly rehabilitate and reassess notable artists associated with the communist regime, such as his friend the constructivist painter Hans or János Mattis-Teutsch, just a few years before. More

Romania, Third Among EU Economies Regarding Net Personal Transfers as Percentage of GDP and First in Nominal Terms
In 2021, the EU countries that generated surpluses of personal transfers, representing more than 1% of their respective gross domestic product (GDP), were Croatia (2.7% of GDP), Bulgaria (1.6%), Romania (1.5%) and Latvia (1.1%). In contrast, Cyprus (-0.9%), France and Spain (each -0.5%) generated the largest deficits of personal transfers vis-à-vis the rest of the world as a share of their respective GDP. In terms of personal transfers and compensation of employees related to economic result, our country is placed also third among EU member states, with a percentage of 3.2% of GDP, after Croatia (7.3% of GDP) and Latvia (3.3%) and above Luxemburg (2.7%), Bulgaria (2.4%), Belgium (2.3%), Slovakia (2.1%), Portugal and Hungary (both with 2%). More

Dead Men Tell Many Tales Reflection on one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Part III)
It is worth noting that one of the most important issues the past three years have brought to the forefront is the fact that the EU’s unity and capacity to act coherently have been challenged both by the pandemic and by the ongoing war; to be more specific, the political, cultural and economic differences translate to divergent interests and stances which, at times, have undermined the EU’s ability to act concertedly, and we have witnessed matters of internal political opportunism bleeding into matters pertaining to European affairs. The pandemic highlighted how the differences between countries led to different effects of the pandemic and different approaches, while also dangerously increasing Euroscepticism. For example, the fact that, in France, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, though losing to Emmanuel Macron, still garnered 42% of the votes while her party, the National Rally, managed to earn 89 seats in the legislative elections (about eleven times the number of seats it previously held) is quite telling. The war, on the other hand, despite rallying most of Europe against Russia’s invasion, still left a few significant country-sized chinks in its image of harmony and unity. More

Restoring the EU Competitiveness: Challenges and Opportunities in the Context of the Twin Green & Digital Transition Thursday 23 March 2023 - online event, Zoom platform -
Since its creation in 1993, the single market has helped to make everyday life easier for people and businesses, fuelling jobs and growth across the EU. In the aftermath of the pandemic crisis and the war against Ukraine, the Council of the EU, through its three Presidencies – France, the Czech Republic and Sweden –, aimed at enabling the Union to overcome the economic and social shocks. The actions supporting this objective were: fully implementing the recovery and resilience plans, strengthening the EU’s resilience, competitiveness and convergence, and ensuring an optimum economic policy coordination. More

Dead Men Tell Many Tales Reflection on one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Part II)
As one year since hostilities began approaches, we are left to contemplate the harsh realities the ongoing situation has yielded thus far and what insights can be gleaned from them. As already stated, we have learned that even in the 21st century, war driven by geopolitical ambitions is still a part of reality on the European continent, in the very vicinity of Western Europe, and not a phenomenon occurring in less developed regions of the world, where wars are often grounded in ethnic tensions, historical animosities, or poverty and internal socio-political instability. More

Presidential Summits and the Role of the Host States: Lessons from the Three Seas Initiative Time: 22th March, 2023, 11.00-12.30, Venue: Dworkowa St. 3, Warsaw
The aim of the seminar, organized by the Three Seas Initiative Research Center, affiliated with the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science, is to review the results of the Three Seas Initiative Summits, the importance of the declarations adopted there, the role of the host states, as well as the challenges facing this model of cooperation. The seminar discussion will also focus on the upcoming summit, which will be held in Bucharest. It is worth noting that Romania is the first state to host the Three Seas Initiative presidential summit for the second time. More

Dead Men Tell Many Tales Reflection on one year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Part I)
An estimated 18 000 civilian deaths, 1250 of whom are children; over 17 million people who have fled Ukraine in 2022; a shrinking of the Ukrainian economy by 35%; a staggering total of 200 000 military casualties evenly split between Russia and Ukraine; an increase in European gas and electricity prices by well over 100% between February and September 2022; these are the estimated numbers describing the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022. As is typical of any war, it is frustratingly difficult to get any reasonably accurate numbers of the effects of the war, as each side will likely attempt to use the figures in order to project its own military might (by inflating the number of enemy soldiers killed and minimising its own deaths) as well as to gain the moral high ground and demonise the opponent’s war efforts (by reporting greater civilian deaths caused by the enemy and minimising those inflicted by its own troops). As is also typical of any war, there is a certain dry cynicism to using numbers to describe the proceedings of the war. Numbers fail to convey the tales that the dead tell through their damning silence in mass graves, and pale next to the unnerving accounts of those who have survived the horrors, though few of these are unscathed. Numbers fail to capture the full extent of the humanitarian damage done, the unspeakable atrocities committed, the manner in which war brings out the absolute worst in people, the trauma caused, and the resentment it breeds among the innocents on both camps towards each other that will endure throughout generations, even long after the war will have ended. They do, however, reveal an unsavoury reality that took most of Western Europe by surprise, namely that war and armed conflict are still a part of Europe’s contemporary geopolitical reality. More

Where We Head to When There’s Nowhere to Run The Metaverse, the Universe and the (sad) future of our species...
The phrase “life is a struggle” aptly describes the experience of writing about anything other than the ongoing war a year after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but so much has already been written on the topic (and so much will yet be written – in vain, though) that a distraction would be welcome for the sake of mental sanity. Thus, we “struggle” with the temptation to join the “library” division of the corps of strategists operating deep behind the front lines, specifically the “armchair reasoning” battalion of the “ex cathedra” regiment. Nevertheless, it is impossible to keep at it indefinitely, for the boomerang of wandering thoughts will follow its own course, no matter how much one may try to shift one’s mind away from the unceasing horrors. In Sci-Fi literature and cinema, the desolation of Mother Earth following a (nuclear, technological, environmental etc.) cataclysm is usually coupled with the remaining population fleeing to the unknown worlds of outer space and/or retreating to the catacombs of what’s left of the planet, partially sedated through immersion in surrogate cyber-realities. In other words, it is an outward and/or inward escape. More

Capturing the Commanding Heights
Half a century ago the German sociologist Helmut Schelsky succinctly dissected the political strategy of left-wing radicals in West Germany and the West generally. His essay, “The New Strategy of Revolution,” remains one of the best summaries of a remarkably successful ongoing strategy of cultural subversion by way of a “long march through the institutions.” As a consequence, our present day is dominated by what Michael Polanyi called moral inversion – and Roger Scruton called a culture of repudiation – which redefine the common ethos and the rules of public discourse. Scruton argued that the West is characterized by “a political process generating corporate agency, collective responsibility, and moral personality in the state.”[1] Citizens of the West live in what he calls a Personal State, which protects their rights wherever they go. The question today is whether the new strategy of revolution is converting the Personal State into something akin to a reeducation camp and turning citizens into subjects. More

The Reality of War
The 24th of February, the Russian invasion of Ukraine rather slowly awoke Europe to the forgotten reality of war. Despite the numerous armed conflicts all over the continent and in the world at large in which Westerners have been involved during the last three or seventy decades, Europeans in particular have forgotten the primary meaning of war. War as part of human nature, war as politics, war as a social state. This is due to something more than the usual dose of “Western hypocrisy” and double standards. Far from constituting an irrational choice, as narrow self-interested ideologies suggest, war has generally been viewed throughout most of human history as a character building activity on par with many others of a more peaceful nature, in which individuals were cultivated and through which societies were forged, maintained, expanded or destroyed. The paradox of contemporary Europe is therefore not that it denies war, its political and social function, but that the European identity is nothing but the product of the repressed memory of war. This is why it takes longer for Europeans to absorb the new reality: they must not only look at the facts around them, but also look inside them and accept their true selves as well. More

The Anti-Capitalist Mentality: A Big Problem for Romania
Decades of anti-capitalist propaganda have left deep traces in Romanian collective psyche, which causes poverty, unemployment, corruption, etc., to have an air of verisimilitude to capitalism, not to the reminiscences of communism.The word “capitalism” comes from “capital”, which derives from “caput, capitalis”, meaning heads of cattle (lat.), once identified with wealth, in general. It is first attested in 1850 in the writings of Louis Blanc, a French politician and historian of socialist political orientation.[1] However, it remained little used, being ignored even by Karl Marx in his famous book, Capital, published in 1867. The word penetrated with full force into political discussions only at the beginning of the 20th century, namely as an antonym for socialism. In scientific circles, it was validated by Werner Sombart’s brilliant book, Der Moderne Kapitalismus (1902). Although it was not used by Marx, this word was quite naturally incorporated into the Marxist conception, according to which the history of mankind comprises the following social arrangements (modes of production): the primitive commune, slavery, feudalism, capitalism and communism (called in its first stage “socialism”). The word “capitalism” is therefore polysemic, being used in politics and ideology as well as in scientific language. Hence, probably, the ambiguity of its destiny. More

GfK: Romania, 51% below the European Purchasing Power Average in 2022
Romania had a spending potential of €8,017 per capita in 2022. This is 51% below the European average and puts the Romanians in 31st place. Compared to the previous year, the gap between counties with high and low purchasing power has widened even further.In the top 10 ranking, Bucharest is clearly leading the field with a per capita purchasing power of €15,482. This means that the inhabitants of the capital have more than 93% more purchasing power than the national average and 3.6 times more than the inhabitants of Vaslui County, which has the lowest purchasing power in terms of spending and saving. Here, disposable net income is just €4,728, which is around 53%of the national average. More

China’s Economic Role Amid the Prolonged War in Ukraine
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, China’s position on the war has been a topic of discussion. Unlike Western countries’ consistent condemnation of Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine, China’s attitude has been inconsistent. At the beginning of the war, the spokesperson of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, challenged the Western media’s use of the word “invasion” and called Russia’s activity a “special military operation.” While refusing to condemn Russia, China also withheld strong backing for its former communist ally. Although China abstained from several votes at the United Nations that opposed Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, it did not join Russia in voting against a UN Human Rights Council resolution that condemned Moscow either.[3] In addition, China affirmed its support for the territorial integrity of sovereign states, including Ukraine, and called for the Minsk Agreement”[4] to be implemented to resolve the war.[5] Nevertheless, China continued to hold military exercises with Russia while President Biden was visiting the region in May 2022. [6] More

The American Elections Confirm the Course Will Be Maintained in Foreign Policy
During the recent midterm congressional elections, I had the opportunity to observe a polarized nation at the ground level while in Washington, DC. This was a competition in which political affiliation has become an element of identity as strong as, if not stronger than, race or religion. The Republicans talked about inflation and mismanagement of the economy, while the Democrats marched on the emotional message of the democracy under attack. In such a polarized society, there are no strong victories – the party in the White House has a habit of losing in the first midterm elections after the presidential campaign promises of rivers milk and honey fail to materialize; the Republican tsunami did not materialize, either, bypassing the Democrat majority in the Senate and winning a very small majority in the House of Representatives. In practice, the Republicans can only frustrate the Democrats. Any achievement in the next two years will have to come through bipartisan means, at a time of peak political and societal tension. Like the presidential elections, the congressional elections ended up being decided by the skin of one’s teeth, generating precarious and contrary majorities, deepening the political decay of the American state. More

How Time Flies in Cambridge and Why It Matters
I spent the 2022 winter holidays in Cambridge, UK. When we say Cambridge, we Romanians think primarily of the university, the University of Cambridge, although our Romanian mental image of a university is very different from theirs. And the fact that when we hear Cambridge we think most often of Cambridge, the English city on the River Cam, is yet another proof of our Eurocentrism. Why? Because Cambridge, UK [1], is different from Cambridge, MA [2], which is the seat of another great university, that of Harvard University, or Cambridge, Ontario, Canada [3]. For fun or information, there seem to be about fifteen places named Cambridge around the world [4]. More

Time – Resource and Currency Outlines of a book written by the Romanian economist and entrepreneur, Octavian Bădescu
Although it is a work that appears – at first glance – to be very analytical, the essence of this book is a relatively simple one – a practical vision for a better world.Continuing the ideas expressed in another book by the same author (For a Golden Romania [Pentru o Românie de Aur – in Romanian] in which the vision of the Romanian economist Anghel Rugină was brought back to light, especially regarding the issue of money – that should be completely backed in precious metals – and monetary systems – either in place, historically, or theoretically imaginable), in Time – Resource and Currency [Timpul – Resursă și monedă – in Romanian], Octavian Bădescu delves into a deep inquiry on the nature of money and its logical and practical essence, while exhorting readers to return with him to the “fundamentals” of economic reasoning. More

Fight (Book) Club Political philosophers’ punches: on Plato and Machiavelli vs. Sun Tzu
The war in Ukraine is the starting point for the creation of a new global structure. The process might last several decades. For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West is truly faced with a united and purposeful adversary whose endgame is yet to be determined.In order to know how the future world will look, it is helpful to have some ideological fountainhead in order to be able to understand the ideological structures of the current major players. The existing philosophical backbones will be used to define new relationships on the global stage. More

Romania, Above Eight EU Member States in Terms of Actual Individual Consumption
In international comparisons of national accounts data, such as GDP per capita, it is desirable not only to express the figures in a common currency, but also to adjust for differences in price levels. Failing to do so would result in an overestimation of GDP levels for countries with high price levels, relative to countries with low price levels. More

The Planet on a Collision Course Yet, the world’s menaces are not from out there, but sadly from within
The development of science fiction and the Space Race in the mid-twentieth century turned mankind’s attention to the stars, fuelling our collective imagination about the wonders and threats that may lie beyond the skyes, from alien contact to deadly asteroids. The past few years, however, have served as an unkind reminder that our world’s direst challenges come not from the vastness of space, but from within the bounds of our planet. The Covid-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 disrupted the usual comings and goings of societies everywhere in the world, forcing them to face a challenge such as had not been seen in over a century. This has caused significant economic, social and political upheaval due to controversies surrounding the virus, the restrictive measures taken by the government to contain it, and the vaccination campaigns undertaken. Supply chain disruptions, unemployment, rising inflation, grim predictions of a harsh economic recession, opportunistic political infighting, overloaded medical infrastructures, rising Euroscepticism and social divisiveness are some of the more visible effects of the pandemic. More