By Martin Chen Aug. 6th For decades, policymakers have promoted the circular economy as a cornerstone of the global green transition. From the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Resource Efficiency initiative, nations are increasingly imposing restrictions on raw material exports in the hope of fostering domestic recycling industries. Yet beneath these green aspirations lies a paradox: restrictions on scrap metal export

By Emily Garcia Aug. 8, 2025 The 20th century was defined by nations. The 21st may be defined by networks. Multinational corporations now command resources, data, and influence once reserved for sovereign states—blurring the boundaries between economic entity and geopolitical actor. Power has migrated upward from parliaments to boardrooms, and outward from borders to supply chains. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2024) , the top 2,000 corporat

By Ava Smith Aug. 10, 2025 The 20th century was defined by nations. The 21st may be defined by networks. Multinational corporations now command resources, data, and influence once reserved for sovereign states—blurring the boundaries between economic entity and geopolitical actor. Power has migrated upward from parliaments to boardrooms, and outward from borders to supply chains. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2024) , the top 2,000 corporatio

By Aarav Malhotra Aug. 11, 2025 For much of the past century, meritocracy stood as the moral justification for capitalism. It promised a fair system: that talent and effort—not birth or wealth—determined success. But in 2025, the evidence tells another story. The ladder of merit hasn’t disappeared; it has been pulled up. According to the OECD Intergenerational Mobility Report (2024) , income persistence between parents and children in advanced economies has reached its highes

By Yuto Hayashi Aug. 13, 2025 Governments and corporations alike have rallied around a comforting slogan: green growth . It promises a world where the economy can expand endlessly while emissions decline, where prosperity and preservation coexist without tradeoffs. Yet beneath the rhetoric lies an arithmetic contradiction—growth, by its very nature, consumes. The International Energy Agency (IEA, 2024)  reports that despite record renewable energy investment exceeding US$1.7

By Alice Carter Aug. 15, 2025 In the 20th century, power belonged to those who controlled production. In the 21st, it belongs to those who control perception. Every platform, product, and politician competes not for money or labor, but for attention —the single finite resource in an infinite informational universe. The more the world produces knowledge, the less any of it matters. According to the World Economic Forum’s Information Saturation Index (2024) , the average person

By Jiawei Xu Aug. 17, 2025 Human history has always been a struggle against uncertainty. From astrology to actuarial science, civilizations have sought to tame the future through prediction. Yet the 21st century has accomplished something unprecedented: it has monetized foresight. Prediction—once a tool for decision-making—has become the product itself. Corporations, governments, and algorithms now compete not over resources or markets, but over who gets to see tomorrow first

By William Clark Aug. 22, 2025 Meritocracy was once a moral ideal. It promised fairness through measurement — that skill and effort, not birth or privilege, would determine success. But in the data-saturated economies of the 21st century, merit has been hollowed out into mathematics. The system still measures, but it no longer means. Every institution — from universities to corporations to governments — now depends on performance metrics to justify legitimacy. Yet these same

By Brian He Aug. 23, 2025 In the 21st century, the frontier of global power is shifting. Energy, territory and raw materials remain important—but a quieter, far more disruptive race is underway: the contest for quantum-powered artificial intelligence (AI). Quantum computing promises to collapse time-and-space constraints on computation; when tied to AI, it can break encryption, optimise logistics, automate decision-making and tilt the balance of power between states. The majo

By Fiona Cheng Aug. 25, 2025 The story of the modern economy can be told through a single obsession — making everything cheaper. From fast fashion to fast shipping, progress has been defined by price deflation, efficiency, and access. But the relentless drive to lower costs has produced a paradox: the cheaper the world becomes, the poorer it feels. Wages stagnate, environments collapse, and meaning evaporates in a marketplace that values affordability over integrity. Accordin

By Aarush Pandey Aug. 27, 2025 For centuries, the ethics of war revolved around human judgment — soldiers, generals, and policymakers deciding who to fight, when, and why. But in the 21st century, that moral calculus is being rewritten by code. Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming warfare from a human-driven enterprise into an algorithmic process, governed not by conscience but by computation. The result is an unsettling paradox: wars that are faster, more precise, an

By Nicole Chan Aug. 29, 2025 For most of modern history, ownership meant freedom. Land, housing, machinery, even the personal computer—each symbolized autonomy within capitalism: the ability to produce, store, and control one’s own value. But in the 21st century, the economy has quietly inverted that principle. We no longer own; we subscribe. Cars are leased, homes mortgaged, software rented monthly, and data—our most personal asset—is borrowed from us by the very companies t

By Haru Takeda Aug. 31, 2025 In the 20th century, the fate of refugees was often determined by diplomats, bureaucrats, and political negotiations. In the 21st, it is increasingly being decided by algorithms. Across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, governments are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) systems to manage everything from refugee resettlement to asylum screening. Proponents argue that AI improves efficiency and fairness in a system burdened by millions of

By Rafael García Sep. 2, 2025 Economic progress was once synonymous with speed. Faster trade, faster communication, faster production — all markers of a civilization in motion. Yet paradoxically, as every process accelerates, the system as a whole drags. Supply chains stall despite automation, decision-making lengthens despite data, and productivity stagnates despite connectivity. The 21st century has entered what economists might call the velocity trap : a condition in which

By Chloe Zhao Sep. 4, 2025 In an era where every scroll, tap, and pause is tracked, the most valuable resource on Earth is no longer oil, gold, or even data—it is human attention. Artificial intelligence has transformed the global economy into an algorithmic marketplace for cognition, one where corporations compete not for money directly, but for the seconds of human focus that generate it. This is the new attention economy: a system where psychological engagement is the curr

By Krishan Gupta Sep. 8, 2025 The modern economy no longer sells things — it sells names . From sneakers to smartphones to software, what drives value is not material composition but linguistic construction. In a world saturated with abundance, the economic unit has shifted from the product to the paronym  — the word that stands near another word, borrowing its prestige, ambiguity, or aura. “Apple” is no longer a fruit, “Meta” no longer an adjective, and “X” no longer a lette

By Daniel Brown Sep. 10, 2025 For decades, climate action was framed as a moral duty—an obligation to save the planet from human excess. But in the 2020s, the narrative shifted. Fighting climate change is no longer just about ethics or survival; it has become an arena of economic strategy, geopolitical influence, and technological dominance. At the center of this transformation stands a new phenomenon: climate capitalism —the fusion of financial power, artificial intelligence

By Eric Zhang Sep. 13, 2025 The modern economy no longer sells things — it sells names . From sneakers to smartphones to software, what drives value is not material composition but linguistic construction. In a world saturated with abundance, the economic unit has shifted from the product to the paronym  — the word that stands near another word, borrowing its prestige, ambiguity, or aura. “Apple” is no longer a fruit, “Meta” no longer an adjective, and “X” no longer a letter.

By Amara Singh Sep. 13, 2025 Artificial intelligence is often marketed as humanity’s great equalizer—a universal tool for innovation, inclusion, and economic growth. Yet beneath this rhetoric lies a sobering truth: the global AI revolution is widening the technological divide between those who own data and those who merely generate it. Across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, emerging economies find themselves supplying the raw material—human labor and data—for algorithm

By Hana Lee Sep. 14, 2025 For most of the past century, economists feared shortage — of oil, of food, of credit, of labor. But the 21st century’s most destabilizing force may be the opposite: too much of everything.  Too many factories, too many products, too many homes no one can afford to live in. Capitalism’s greatest success — its ability to produce abundance — is slowly eroding the conditions that make abundance valuable. The International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2024)  esti