Category: Economics
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SOPA | Internet Piracy
In the most high-profile action against the US Senate’s ‘Protect Intellectual Property’ Bill (PIPA) and the House of Representatives’ ‘Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Wikipedia has begun an English language black-out of its main site. As you’ll know if you read here often, I’m in the depths of a book-length piece on piracy. The aim…
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If You’re Reading This, You Have a Duty to Listen to This | Chinese Piracy
If you’re reading this blog post, you are almost certainly doing so on a digital device made in China. And that means you’re almost certainly doing so on a device made in Shenzhen. Don’t know where Shenzhen is? Neither did I. It’s here: View Larger Map It’s a city bigger than New York or London,…
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Non-Excludable, Non-Rival : The Upside-Down Economics of Good Ideas
Some thoughts to share on sharing thoughts… “If you have an apple, and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” George Bernard…
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Gay Pirates
I received a present the other day – a book through the post from an ex-colleague: ‘Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition.’ It’s a fascinating read. Admittedly, I was a little wary: there’s a long history of ‘actually, they were gay’ books which would have us believe that Jesus, St Paul, Shakespeare and even George Michael…
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‘Now I Am Become Death…’ | Theology of Decay | Rituals [2]
“We fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.” Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III In the previous post I tried to set out a distinction between death (which can remain beautiful – a frozen moment just beyond life)…
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Debt Crisis, Leveson, Healthcare… Finally Paying the Price for the Poverty of Capitalism
Listening to the radio this morning I was struck by the odd similarity between three of the major news items. Firstly, ubiquitously, there’s the economic crisis – which more and more seems to boil down to the fact that people – that’s you, me and them – got greedy. With the boss of Barclays now…