ECONOMY

Posts in "Economy"

North Dakota’s Historic Public Bank

The Bank of North Dakota, or BND, is the nation’s only public bank: a government-owned and -operated entity that prioritizes public access over profit, and offers fair banking services to North Dakotans when private banks can’t or won’t. “It is potentially insulating you from loans, lenders, from out-of-state interests who won’t or don’t listen to the concerns of the local economy,” Flynn said.

At the time of its creation, BND’s purpose was to protect the state’s farmer class by offering low-interest agriculture loans. A century later, the bank is still an active force in the state, although its function has shifted, Flynn said, “from an insulator to more of an incubator.”

With $8 billion in assets, BND now offers business and student loans along with commercial services. Its purpose, however, continues to distinguish it from modern private banks. “When a US bank isn’t interested in going into that type of loan or startup, or thinks it’s too risky, BND would get engaged,” Flynn said. “They could point to this mission and say, ‘We’re helping growth, the growth helps the state.’”

 

Rethinking ‘economics’

This ferment is beginning to solidify into a movement. The New Economy Organisers Network (Neon), a NEF spin-off based in London, runs workshops for leftwing activists, to learn how “to build support for a new economy” – for example, by telling effective “stories” about it in the mainstream media. Stir to Action, an activist organisation based in Bridport in Dorset, publishes a quarterly “magazine for the new economy”, and organises advice sessions in left-leaning cities such as Bristol and Oxford: Worker Co-ops: How to Get Started, Community Ownership: What If We Ran It Ourselves?

“There’s a totally new impulse to activism about the economy now,” says the magazine’s editor, Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, who was previously involved in anticapitalist and environmental protests. “The movement has gone from oppose to propose.”

 

McDonald’s to sell a McVegan burger in Europe

The fast food chain plans to start selling a McVegan burger in hundreds of restaurants across Sweden and Finland starting on December 28.

The sandwich, which has already been tested at a handful of McDonald’s locations in Finland, consists of a soy patty, bun, tomato, lettuce, pickles, onion, ketchup, mustard, oil and an egg-less sandwich sauce.

Link: https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/19/news/mcdonalds-mcvegan-vegan-burger/

The Last Death-Defying Honey Hunter of Nepal

Three hundred feet in the air, Mauli Dhan dangles on a bamboo rope ladder, surveying the section of granite he must climb to reach his goal: a pulsing mass of thousands of Himalayan giant honeybees. They carpet a crescent-shaped hive stretching almost six feet below a granite overhang. The bees are guarding gallons of a sticky, reddish fluid known as mad honey, which, thanks to its hallucinogenic properties, sells on Asian black markets for $60 to $80 a pound—roughly six times the price of regular Nepali honey.

Link: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/07/honey-hunters-bees-climbing-nepal/

How Mushrooms Could Repair Our Crumbling Infrastructure

The U.S. has one of the most advanced economies in the world. And yet the concrete infrastructure that supports it—the roads, bridges, sidewalks, and so on—is slowly crumbling. This deterioration requires complex repairs, causes long delays, and in the most severe cases can lead to structural failure.

Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608717/how-mushrooms-could-repair-our-crumbling-infrastructure/

A juice company dumped orange peels in a national park. Here’s what it looks like now.

In exchange for donating a portion of unspoiled, forested land to the Área de Conservación Guanacaste — a nature preserve in the country’s northwest — the park would allow the company to dump its discarded orange peels and pulp, free of charge, in a heavily grazed, largely deforested area nearby.

https://www.upworthy.com/a-juice-company-dumped-orange-peels-in-a-national-park-heres-what-it-looks-like-now

The Economics of the Jetsons, Or Why Don’t I Work 9 Hours a Week?

Matt Yglesias has an interesting observation about The Jetsons:
George Jetson enjoyed a nine-hour workweek—thee hours a day, three days a week. Mike Konczal rightly connected this to JM Keynes’ essay on “The Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren” (PDF) highlighting the consequences of a super-abundance of material prosperity.

http://www.angrybureaucrat.com/2011/05/economics-of-jetsons-or-why-don-i-work.html

China is about to get its first vertical forest

The Nanjing vertical forest will be higher than its Milanese predecessor, with two neighbouring towers at 200 and 108 meters tall.

World Economic Forum | about a year ago
They could be the breath of fresh air that pollution-choked cities desperately need. Vertical forests – high-rise buildings covered with trees and plants – absorb carbon dioxide, filter dust from pollution and produce oxygen.

http://ewn.co.za/2017/05/05/china-is-about-to-get-its-first-vertical-forest