Inimtegevusest vihmametsades, kasutatud riiete, fotoportreede ja Machiavellini
Finantskriis pole ainus teema, millest huvitavaid ja silmaringi avardavaid artikleid kirjutatakse.
Mõned aastad tagasi lugesin Atlantic Monthly’st, kuidas näiliselt puutumatud troopilised vihmametsad on tegelikult paljuski just inimtegevuse tulemusena kujunenud selliseks nagu nad on. Selgub, et artikkel on nüüd ka tasuta saada, kuid vahepeal on aeg edasi läinud. Artiklis Can’t See the Forrest for the Trees selgub, et globaliseerumine ja majandusjõud ei tähenda ilmtingimata lõppu metsadele vaid võib-olla hoopis nende uuestisündi ja märksa sarnasemat rolli sellele, mis neil oli minevikus:
Despite assumptions that globalization is destroying forests, these researchers argue that in many parts of the world globalization and the policies that go along with it are in fact helping to create them. Migration from rural areas to cities or other countries, new markets for forest commodities, and even war are helping in some places to bring trees back. In other places the demand for diverse and far-flung products like rubber, tea, and açaí fruit, for example, is transforming existing forests and the lives that depend on them, often in unexpected ways. Perhaps most surprisingly, archaeologists and ecologists have discovered growing evidence that many forests once considered pristine, including much of the Amazon, have long been marked by human activity.
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Tõenäoliselt on enamus meist kokkupuutunud kasutatud riietega – neid kas ise edasimüüki viinud või mõne sümpaatsema eseme isegi endale soetanud. Reason’is ilmus hiljuti valgustav artikkel Afterlife of American Clothes, mis kajastab just ameeriklaste kasutatud riiete saatust toetudes ühele värskele dokumentaalfilmile. Muu hulgas tuleb juttu sellest, kuidas kasutatud riided pakuvad ettevõtlusvõimalusi:
In Miami and Boston, both of which are home to large Haitian immigrant populations, the pepe market is intergenerational, with children of workers who started in President Kennedy’s day now responsible for sorting or arranging the shipment of the clothing. Schapiro’s grandson employs Haitians in his Miami warehouses. While their history and political situation is vastly different from those of the Jewish peddlers of the early 1900s, Shell told me she met Haitian factory workers in Miami who were “very ambitious.” Perhaps the grandchildren of Haitian immigrant pepe dealers may achieve the same success as Bernard Schapiro’s grandson.
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Libertaarne paternalism on tõenäoliselt sõnapaar, mis enamusele eestlastest pole tuttav, kuid on viimaste aastate jooksul sellegi poolest osutunud tänu käitumusliku majandusteaduse rolli kasvamisele huvitavaks ja kohati poleemiliseks teemaks. Will Wilkinson on Reason’i artiklis Why Opting Out is No “Thrid Way” võtnud libertaarse paternalismi tõsisema vaatluse alla ja pakub ka ühe kompaktse definitsiooni:
“Libertarian paternalism” turns out to translate into something like “choice-preserving helpfulness” or, more naturally, “helping people without taking away their options.” Hey, I’m for that. But who isn’t? Paternalists, that’s who! Indeed, Thaler and Sunstein’s philosophy when spelled out in nontendentious terms sounds a lot like plain old benevolent liberal anti-paternalism. The crucial conceptual difference is that “libertarian paternalism” pictures all manner of helpful guidance—meddlesome or imperceptible, persuasive or compelled—as falling along a common gradient of paternalism. Thaler and Sunstein argue powerfully for the desirability of staying on the choice-preserving end of that gradient, and this may succeed in making some of us less nervous about standing on the gradient at all. But the deeper point seems to be that we are on it, no matter what. Once that is accepted, we are left, as the old joke goes, “haggling over the price.”
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Mis oleks taoline huvitavamaid artikleid koondav postitus ilma viiteta vähemalt ühele New Yorkeri artiklile. Hiljuti ilmus Niccolo Machiavelli olulisemaid kirjutisis koondav kogumik, mis andis Machiavellit aastaid uurinud Claudia Roth Pierpont’ile hea võimaluse mehe mainet rehabiliteerida artiklis The Florentine:
Roberto Ridolfi’s landmark biography, of 1954, made a passionate case for its subject’s Italian warmth of spirit. Leo Strauss, a few years later, claimed that Machiavelli intended his most outrageous statements merely to startle and amuse. And, in full redemption, Sebastian de Grazia’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Machiavelli in Hell,” of 1989, argued for the quondam devil’s stature as a profoundly Christian thinker. There is today an entire school of political philosophers who see Machiavelli as an intellectual freedom fighter, a transmitter of models of liberty from the ancient to the modern world. Yet what is most astonishing about our age is not the experts’ desire to correct our view of a maligned historical figure but what we have made of that figure in his most titillatingly debased form. “The Mafia Manager: A Guide to the Corporate Machiavelli”; “The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women”; and the deliciously titled “What Would Machiavelli Do? The Ends Justify the Meanness” represent just a fraction of a contemporary, best-selling literary genre. Machiavelli may not have been, in fact, a Machiavellian.
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Virginia Postrel proovib artiklis The Politics of the Retouched Headshot vastata küsimusele, milline portreepilt on siiras ja vahetu, milline aga kunstlik ja võlts. Kas ajutine vistrik väärib eemaldamist photoshopis? Aga kassikriimustus? Ebaõnnestunud valgustus korrigeerimist? Hulgaliselt küsimusi, mille vastused kipuvad sõltuma konttekstist, kuid ka mõnedest universaalsematest põhimõttest:
If strangers’ snap judgments matter, you go for a bit more artifice. Take an attractive single friend of mine. When she moved to Los Angeles, she signed up with an online dating service, using a handy snapshot to illustrate her profile. She got no inquiries. Then she hired one of the many local photographers who specialize in actors’ headshots. With exactly the same profile information but a more professional photo, my friend was suddenly inundated with emails from prospective dates. She didn’t even use retouching or special makeup. The difference she says, “was the lighting, the camera angles, plus the sheer volume of shots.” She had hundreds to choose from.
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