A book excerpt and interview with David Runciman, author of "How Democracy Ends" History provides uncomfortable lessons. Among them is that systems of governance are not immortal and that democracies can devolve into autocracy. As institutions decay and social norms fray, democratic processes and practices are prone to apathy, demagoguery and disintegration. One scholar ringing the loudest alarm..
Success turned liberals into a complacent elite. They need to rekindle their desire for radicalism Liberalism made the modern world, but the modern world is turning against it. Europe and America are in the throes of a popular rebellion against liberal elites, who are seen as self-serving and unable, or unwilling, to solve the problems of ordinary people. Elsewhere a 25-year shift towards freedo..
Their armies of content moderators are expanding Every other Tuesday at Facebook, and every Friday at YouTube, executives convene to debate the latest problems with hate speech, misinformation and other disturbing content on their platforms, and decide what should be removed or left alone. In San Bruno, Susan Wojcicki, YouTube's boss, personally oversees the exercise. In Menlo Park, lower-level ..
Great success has brought high costs and structural change The garage in which Hewlett-Packard was started in 1939 is now a private museum - a modest monument to the cut-price creativity and bare-knuckle entrepreneurship that made Silicon Valley famous. Drive south from Palo Alto through 20 minutes of inevitable traffic to Sunnyvale and you will find a landmark of a different kind. Nothing of te..
Its primacy as a technology hub is on the wane. That is cause for concern "Like Florence in the Renaissance." That is a common description of what it is like to live in Silicon Valley. America's technology capital has an outsize influence on the world's economy, stockmarkets and culture. This small portion of land running from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world's five most v..
An exodus of Korean-Chinese has changed them Tall jars filled with rice beer await customers by the riverside in Yanji, a city in north-eastern China close to the border with North Korea. Servers in aprons fork out spicy salads from rows of red plastic bowls. Atop a nearby trestle table a butcher has laid out three skinned dogs. The early-morning market exudes the distinctive character of Yanbia..
In a flawed and complex world, we must err on the side of life, writes Emilie Yerby There is so much we get wrong in the provision of health and care services. Everyone has a story: of misdiagnosis, of receiving the wrong treatment, of hopeless gaps in communication or care. Sometimes such things happen through deliberate cruelty or neglect, but more often through ordinary human fallibility, and..
Canada's example has lessons for other countries, says Steven Fletcher What it means to be alive versus living a full life are not abstract thought exercises to me. In 1996, at the age of 23, I became a quadriplegic. As a recent engineering graduate from the University of Manitoba, driving to work at a mining job, I hit a moose with my car. In an instant I was completely paralyzed from the neck ..
Increased competition between suppliers means buyers have the upper hand Only a few months ago, Canadians were earnestly debating whether or not the country's Liberal administration was right to go ahead with executing a $12bn contract to deliver armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. The government said it would, but acknowledged its critics' concerns by agreeing to adopt a version of an internatio..
Liberals who repress speech to prevent harm risk inviting authoritarianism, writes Claire Fox of the Academy of Ideas If ever there was a vivid illustration of illiberal liberalism, it was the response to one of the essays in this very series. After The Economist published an article by Kathleen Stock, reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, which sensitively questioned whether "self-d..
Many parents also find them a struggle The summer holidays have just begun, but it is a busy morning at Cadoxton Primary School, in Barry, an industrial town in Wales. It runs a summer programme for hard-up children, providing meals and activities over the holidays. As youngsters run laughing and screaming into the school cafeteria for breakfast, their parents saunter out, some visibly relieved...
Rising energy demand means use of fossil fuel is heading in the wrong direction Earth is smouldering. From Seattle to Siberia this summer, flames have consumed swathes of the northern hemisphere. One of 18 wildfires sweeping through California, among the worst in the state's history, is generating such heat that it created its own weather. Fires that raged through a coastal area near Athens last..
Apple's new headquarters has created 13,000 new construction jobs A common way to describe the history of the technology industry is by product cycles. The 1990s was the era of the PC; then came the internet and related services, followed by mobile; and now artificial intelligence looms. But there is a different way to think about tech: it is switching from an era of hoarding profits to one of r..
Not as much as people think The increasingly severe trade and other sanctions the UN has imposed on North Korea have the aim of getting its dictator, Kim Jong Un, to give up his nuclear weapons. That the sanctions were causing pain plausibly played some part in bringing Mr Kim to suspend his nuclear and missile testing, and to extend a hand first to South Korea and then to the United States, at ..
Worryingly, such weather events may not remain unusual Sodankyla, a town in Finnish Lapland just north of the Arctic Circle, boasts an average annual temperature a little below freezing. Residents eagerly await the brief spell in July when the region enjoys something akin to summer. This year they may have wished for a bit less of it. On July 18th thermometers showed 32.1°C (89.8°F), which is 12..