End of democracy ?

The bemoan autocracies in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and China but largely ignore the more subtle authoritarian trend in the West. Don’t expect a crudely effective dictatorship out of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: we may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the nosiest of dictatorships.Full article in The Spectator.

Απογοητευτικά ποσοστά εμπιστοσύνης των πολιτών σε βασικούς θεσμούς δείχνει το “Edelman Trust Barometer 2021”

Στα συμπεράσματα γίνεται λόγος για ένα ”αποτυχημένο οικοσύστημα εμπιστοσύνης” που δεν μπορεί να αντιμετωπίσει την αχαλίνωτη infodemic (επιδημία πληροφόρησης) που καταδικάζει θεσμικά όργανα - επιχειρήσεις, κυβερνήσεις, ΜΚΟ και μέσα ενημέρωσης - σε μια ”χρεοκοπία” ενώ το κλίμα που καταγράφεται καθιστά επιτακτική την ανάγκη αποκατάστασης της εμπιστοσύνης μεταξύ θεσμών και πολιτών και την χάραξη μιας νέας πορείας.
Η έρευνας της Edelman-  “Edelman Trust Barometer 2021”, που επί δύο δεκαετίες έχει καταγράψει τις απαντήσεις χιλιάδων πολιτών σχετικά με την εμπιστοσύνη τους σε βασικούς θεσμούς, διαπιστώνει πως το 57% των ερωτηθέντων θεωρεί ότι οι κυβερνήσεις, οι επικεφαλής επιχειρήσεων και οι δημοσιογράφοι διασπείρουν ψευδείς πληροφορίες ή υπερβάλλουν. Πιο αναλυτικά στη Huffpost εδώ.
Τα  αναλυτικά αποτελέσματα της έρευνας εδώ.

How to Shrink Inequality

"Some inequality of income and wealth is inevitable, if not necessary. If an economy is to function well, people need incentives to work hard and innovate. The pertinent question is not whether income and wealth inequality is good or bad. It is at what point do these inequalities become so great as to pose a serious threat to our economy, our ideal of equal opportunity and our democracy." A classic article by Prof Robert Reich in The Nation.

Χ. Παπαδημητριου του Columbia-Κινδυνεύουμε να μπούμε στην απόλυτη επιτήρηση

… “ Είναι η φύση του διαδικτύου και αυτών των επιχειρήσεων: winner takes all. O κερδισμένος τα παίρνει όλα.
για παράδειγμα, βλέπουμε ότι για τα κοινωνικά δίκτυα υπάρχει μόνο μια εταιρεία παγκοσμίως -το Facebook, έρευνας στο διαδίκτυο μόνο μία -το Google-, για σύγχρονα gadgets μόνο η Apple, για διαδικτυακές παγκόσμιες αγορές μόνο μία – η Amazon.
Εγώ εδώ και πολύ καιρό δεν χρησιμοποιώ το Google για να κάνω αναζητήσεις στο διαδίκτυο. Υπάρχει μια εταιρεία που λέγεται duckduckgo (κάπως σαν «παπάκι πάει στην ποταμιά») την οποία χρησιμοποιώ, και δεν μου λείπει το Google.  Eχω σταματήσει το Facebook εδώ και χρόνια, έχω σταματήσει τις αγορές μέσω Αmazon…   Για όλα υπάρχουν μη μονοπωλιακές επιλογές, ακόμα και για το zoom, που ο κορωνοϊός θα το μετατρέψει σε μεγάλο μονοπώλιο που θα μας κατασκοπεύει: μια εναλλακτική είναι το jitsi.”

Χρίστος Παπαδημητρίου ,
Kορυφαίος θεωρητικός σε θέματα computer science και «πατέρας» της αλγοριθμικής θεωρίας των παιγνίων.
 Kαθηγητής  Columbia , MIT , Harvard , Berkley
Η συνέντευξη ολόκληρη ΕΔΩ.
(Πηγή: iefimerida.gr - https://www.iefimerida.gr/ellada/hristos-papadimitrioy-nea-yorki-tramp-koronoios)

The State of Corporate Reputation in 2020

Weber Shandwick  recently took stock of the reputation of business. The study, “The State of Corporate Reputation in 2020: Everything Matters Now”, was conducted in partnership with KRC Research and surveyed executives from 22 markets around the world. The study examines what drives reputation, why it is important to be highly regarded and the benefits that come with having a strong reputation. A primary finding from the research is that reputation today is omnidriven. That is, a company’s portfolio of reputation drivers is no longer dependent on solely a few select factors. Everything matters today, from quality of employees, to quality of products, to financial performance, to corporate culture, to community. The list goes on. In an environment where business leaders are being caught off guard by dangers that seemingly lie in plain sight, companies must ensure they are hyperalert to all factors when working to build and safeguard their reputations. See the report at : https://bit.ly/38eemnW

On-line prices based on customers’ habits, Big Data and algorithms

When you buy an airplane ticket or a DVD online, you may pay a higher -- or lower -- price than another customer buying the very same item from the very same site.Why? Because the information the site has compiled on you suggests that you may be willing to pay more -- or less -- than others for that item. Is this kind of "price customization" legal? The Internet allows shoppers to easily compare prices across thousands of stores. But it also enables businesses to collect detailed information about a customer's purchasing history, preferences, and financial resources -- and to set prices accordingly. More here.

Weapons of Math Destruction: A fascinating, timely, book by Cathy O’Neil

Weapons of math destruction, are mathematical models or algorithms that claim to quantify important traits: teacher quality, recidivism risk, creditworthiness but have harmful outcomes and often reinforce inequality, keeping the poor poor and the rich rich. They have three things in common: opacity, scale, and damage. They are often proprietary or otherwise shielded from prying eyes, so they have the effect of being a black box. They affect large numbers of people, increasing the chances that they get it wrong for some of them. And they have a negative effect on people, perhaps by encoding racism or other biases into an algorithm or enabling predatory companies to advertise selectively to vulnerable people, or even by causing a global financial crisis. But as the book suggest the mathematics of big data increases inequality and threatens democracy.  More here and at  http://amzn.to/2clQHXG

Media: the least trusted institution globally, according to a new study

For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally. In 22 of the 28 markets surveyed it is now distrusted. The demise of confidence in the Fourth Estate is driven primarily by a significant drop in trust in platforms, notably search engines and social media. Sixty-three percent of respondents say they do not know how to tell good journalism from rumor or falsehoods or if a piece of news was produced by a respected media organization. The lack of faith in media has also led to an inability to identify the truth (59 percent), trust government leaders (56 percent) and trust business (42 percent). For more see Edelman TrustBarometer .

There Is No Such Thing as a Green Product ?

Authors Trevor Zink and Roland Geyer  suggest that here is no such thing as a “green” product. The corporate sustainability gospel—that green companies sell green products, and green products have some absolute and well-defined environmental attributes—evaporates on closer inspection. According to the authors the environmental benefits of green products are not that they somehow fix the environment or have zero impact, but rather that their environmental impacts are less than those of similar products. Products can have an impact on the environment during one or more stages of their life cycles, which are production, use, and end of life. A natural step is therefore to tally up the environmental impacts of similar products throughout their life cycles and compare the results. Read more at SSIR here .

Economics, in the last decades, has been harmful for most people?

As Chang  had put it in Guardian: “Economics, as it has been practised in the last three decades, has been positively harmful for most people.” !! “Economists are not some innocent technicians who did a decent job within the narrow confines of their expertise until they were collectively wrong-footed by a once-in-a-century disaster that no one could have predicted.” Far from being an inward-looking, hermetic discipline, economics has been a hugely powerful – and profitable – enterprise, shaping the policies of governments and companies throughout much of the world. The results have been little short of disastrous” . A great book, a must read, for all thought leaders. Ha-Joon Chang, Prof at the University of Cambridge,  is one of the leading heterodox economists and institutional economists specialising in development economics . 

A Professor at Cambridge that  is analytically debunking the myths of capitalism in his book “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism”. A must read.

See more here. 

Monsanto: Strong Ties, Strong Media and the challenge of editorial integrity and independence

According to Huffpost , the media and partnerships division of the venerable magazine Scientific American hosted a panel Thursday at the National Press Club featuring journalists and scientists. The event, cosponsored by a group called GMO Answers, focuses on whether science is “explained fairly in the media.” What might be less apparent is that GMO Answers requires some explanation itself: The group is a project of agricultural biotech firms meant to buttress the industry’s reputation.

GMO Answers, which was launched in the summer of 2013 to help improve the impression of genetically modified foods in the U.S., is a project of PR giant Ketchum. Funding for the effort comes from agricultural biotech companies, including Monsanto and Syngenta.
Monsanto, which sells seeds that have been genetically altered so crops can survive the company’s glyphosate weedkiller, was facing pressure in many states to label foods containing GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. GMO Answers was created as a website where people could have questions answered by supposedly “independent” scientists.
The New York Times reported in 2013 that GMO Answers would embrace a more “transparent” approach in addressing critics, who accuse big agricultural companies of “purposely hiding information.” Around the same time, Politico reported that Monsanto shook up its internal PR shop and began a “charm offensive,” visiting newsrooms across Washington.

Nestle in Society: Creating Shared Value (CSV)

 The  2015 report  focuses on the 39 commitments that range across the Creating Shared Value (CSV) focus areas of nutrition, health and wellness; water and environmental sustainability; rural development, human rights, and  people, to provide the reader an overview of Nestlé’s material issues and activities in these areas.  Nestlé’s societal commitments, first published in 2012, were developed in consultation with external stakeholders and provide the reader with a clear sense of the strategic direction and standards of the company.  A more detailed version of the reportis also available on the company’s CSV page.

Why organizations must look beyond corporate-social-responsibility initiatives to truly engage

Antibusiness sentiment is nothing new. Yet mending the rift between big business and society isn’t merely a worthy goal—it may represent a new frontier of competitive advantage, profitability, and longevity for today’s organizations. In Connect: How companies succeed by engaging radically with society (PublicAffairs, March 2016), L1 Energy chairman and former BP chief executive officer John Browne, McKinsey’s Robin Nuttall, and entrepreneur Tommy Stadlen offer a practical blueprint for reconciling companies and communities. Read more about this topic from McKinsey here  .