By Ananya Das Nov. 16, 2024 I – Introduction The rise of platform-based labor has transformed global work dynamics. As of 2024, over 70 million workers worldwide  were employed through digital labour platforms such as ride-hailing, delivery, and task-based services according to the International Labour Organization (ILO). Amid this shift, traditional labour regulations and social protections are under strain: governments are seeing taxable employment decline, while job precar

By Haruka Yamada Nov. 17, 2025 I - Introduction Artificial intelligence is not just transforming labor—it is transforming the tax base itself. By 2025, AI-driven automation has replaced or altered over 18% of global service-sector jobs , according to the International Labour Organization (2025) . Corporations like Amazon, Alphabet, and Foxconn now employ more robots than human workers in select divisions, yet the fiscal systems designed to sustain national budgets remain tied

By Emma Zhao Nov. 19, 2024 I - Introduction In the span of just five years, the global deepfake economy has exploded from fringe novelty to billion-dollar industry. As of 2025, synthetic media markets are valued at $2.1 billion , with projected annual growth of 36.2% through 2030 , according to Allied Market Research (2025) . From entertainment and education to political campaigning and corporate training, AI-generated videos have redefined how societies produce and consume i

By Aarav Patel Nov. 21, 2024 I - Introduction Philanthropy is undergoing a digital renaissance. Over the last five years, more than $50 billion in charitable donations  have been processed through AI-assisted recommendation systems, according to the Charities Aid Foundation (2024) . As artificial intelligence transforms industries from finance to healthcare, it is now reshaping how generosity itself is organized. The integration of algorithmic decision-making in philanthropic

By Akira Nakano Dec. 2, 2024 Every time you open an app, scroll a news feed, or click a link, a digital auction takes place in milliseconds. Your age, gender, location, and browsing history are sold to the highest bidder—not by choice, but by design. This invisible infrastructure, called real-time bidding (RTB) , underpins most of the global internet economy. Yet few realize it is the largest unregulated market in human history—one where privacy is not protected, but priced.

By Luke Wilson Dec. 5, 2024 The race to net zero has become the defining moral theater of modern capitalism. From airlines pledging carbon-neutral flights to tech companies boasting zero-emission data centers, corporations claim to decarbonize faster than governments can legislate. Yet behind the language of sustainability lies a sophisticated system of carbon accounting alchemy —one that manufactures environmental virtue while disguising pollution as progress. According to t

By Kevin Zhang Dec. 8, 2024 The future of work arrived—but not for everyone. As corporations automate at home and outsource abroad, an invisible labor force now powers the digital economy: remote contractors, AI moderators, ghostwriters, data annotators, and algorithmic cleaners. According to the World Bank Global Digital Labor Study (2025) , over 360 million people —roughly one in nine workers worldwide—now depend on online labor platforms for income. Yet fewer than 10 perce

By Pooja Kapoor Dec. 9, 2024 We used to own things. Now, we rent access to them. From music to housing, software to cars, the world has quietly transitioned into an economy built not on possession, but on perpetual payment. According to the World Bank Consumer Capital Dynamics Report (2025) , over 68 percent  of global digital consumption now occurs through subscription or “as-a-service” models. Even in physical sectors—like automobiles, appliances, and real estate—subscripti

By Kento Yamashita Dec. 11, 2024 Artificial intelligence was supposed to supercharge human productivity. Instead, it’s rewriting the rules of value creation—and value capture. While global output per worker is rising at the fastest pace since the 1990s, median wages are stagnating or falling in real terms. The OECD Global Labor Productivity Review (2025)  shows that productivity in advanced economies grew 3.4 percent  in 2024, yet median income grew only 0.8 percent . The res

By Mei Chen Dec. 13, 2024 For most of humanity, “the cloud” feels weightless—an invisible space where photos, emails, and artificial intelligence models float effortlessly. But in physical terms, it is one of the heaviest infrastructures on Earth. Behind every text message and data upload lies a vast industrial ecosystem of servers, cooling systems, and power plants. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) Digital Infrastructure Outlook (2025) , the global cloud in

By Rahul Nair Dec. 15, 2024 The 21st-century food revolution is not growing in soil—it’s growing in spreadsheets. From lab-grown meat to vertical farming, venture capital has poured more than US$85 billion  into “agri-tech” since 2015 ( OECD Agri-Innovation Finance Report, 2025 ). These technologies promise sustainability, efficiency, and an end to hunger. But beneath the green marketing lies a troubling paradox: most of this innovation feeds investors, not people. Food has b

By Emily Kim, Dec. 17, 2024 In the race to “go green,” corporations have mastered the art of environmental theater. As of 2025, more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies  have announced net-zero  targets. Yet only 11 percent  have concrete plans aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) , according to the UNEP Corporate Accountability Index (2025) . Behind the climate pledges, a trillion-dollar industry of offsets, creative accounting, and unverifiable carb

By Isabella Rivera Dec. 19, 2025 Wealth no longer stays where it’s earned—it moves where it’s treated best. Over the past decade, an unprecedented migration of ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs) has redrawn the global tax map. According to the Henley Global Citizens Report (2025) , more than 128,000 millionaires  changed residency in 2024 alone—a 64 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels. This migration is not random. It is the direct result of governments competing

By Aarav Singh Dec. 21, 2024 Human attention—once considered limitless—is now the world’s most contested natural resource. In the digital marketplace, every scroll, click, and second of focus is mined, packaged, and sold. According to the World Bank Cognitive Capital Report (2025) , global corporations collectively extract over $900 billion  annually from the monetization of user attention—surpassing the revenues of the global oil industry for the first time in history. The w

By Angela Liu Dec. 23, 2024 Artificial intelligence may be the most democratizing technology of the century—but the infrastructure powering it is the least democratic in history. While startups and universities boast of “open AI,” the reality is that the world’s AI capacity is concentrated in fewer hands than global oil reserves. According to the OECD AI Infrastructure Report (2025) , 84 percent  of all high-performance computing (HPC) capacity used for AI training belongs to

By Haruto Watanabe Dec. 27, 2024 The world is obsessed with inflation—but not all inflation is visible. While central banks fixate on consumer prices, a hidden form of inflation is quietly reshaping the economy: data inflation . Corporations, governments, and AI systems are hoarding unprecedented volumes of digital information—driving up its value, restricting its circulation, and creating a world where access to truth  is a luxury good. According to the OECD Digital Capital

By Kevin Johnson Dec. 29, 2024 In 2025, for the first time in history, a major insurer withdrew entirely from California. Not because of crime or politics—but because of climate.  State Farm , Allstate , and AIG  all stopped issuing new home insurance policies in fire-prone regions, citing “unsustainable loss ratios.” Behind these announcements lies a deeper systemic threat: the slow collapse of the global insurance model under climate volatility. According to the World Bank

By Neha Gupta Jan. 2, 2025 Education was once a public good. Now it’s a subscription. Over the past decade, the global e-learning industry has expanded from a pandemic stopgap into a trillion-dollar economy that monetizes curiosity itself. According to the World Bank Global Education Market Review (2025) , corporate e-learning revenues surpassed US$1.03 trillion , outpacing the combined budgets of the world’s top 50 public universities. What was built to democratize access ha

By Ayumi Aoki Jan. 5, 2025 Artificial intelligence is often framed as humanity’s next leap forward—but few realize how much it weighs. Every ChatGPT query, image generation, or model training run consumes energy on a planetary scale. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) Data Infrastructure Report (2025) , global AI computing already consumes 340 terawatt-hours (TWh)  annually—roughly equivalent to the total electricity use of the Netherlands. By 2030, that figur

By Chloe Zhang Jan. 8, 2025 Artificial intelligence was supposed to democratize knowledge. Instead, it is draining it. As tech giants race to train ever-larger language models, the world’s supply of high-quality, human-generated data is vanishing. The OECD Digital Intelligence Outlook (2025)  estimates that over 70 percent  of publicly available online text has already been scraped into AI training datasets. What remains—low-quality, duplicate, or paywalled material—is rapidl