Archive - Feb 6, 2008
Technology and Human Rights
Today's Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the important role statistics play in prosecuting human rights abuses.
Is corporate responsibility good for business?
An Economist article from late January looks at the popularly supported concept of corporate responsibility and what that means for corporate profits.
If companies need to be vigilant about the limits of CSR, the same applies even more to society as a whole. A dangerous myth is gaining ground: that unadorned capitalism fails to serve the public interest. Profits are not good, goes the logic of much CSR; hence the attraction of turning companies into instruments of social policy. In fact, the opposite is true. The main contribution of companies to society comes precisely from those profits (and the products, services, salaries and ideas that competitive capitalism creates). If the business of business stops being business, we all lose.
The Implication of Economic Indoctrination
Children learn based on their teachers-- and often national policy regarding education. This month's issue of Foreign Policy explores how the way Germany and France teach economics may spell a dismal economic future.
Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries. They study from textbooks filled with a doctrine of dissent, which they learn to recite as they prepare to attend many of the better universities in the world. Extracting these children from the jaws of bias could mean the difference between world prosperity and menacing global rifts. And doing so will not be easy. But not because these children are found in the madrasas of Pakistan or the state-controlled schools of Saudi Arabia. They are not. Rather, they live in two of the world’s great democracies—France and Germany.
From the Archives


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