EconBytes

    TRADEOFFS BETWEEN ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION           ~by Shireen Banerjee "We've been given a warning by science and a wake-up call by nature. It is up to us now to heed them." With increasing awareness about climate change and the need to protect the environment, we are also becoming aware of how economic activities contribute to environmental degradation. After generations of putting economic growth first, climate change now poses a significant threat to our economy. Although it is not yet possible for us to eliminate environmental degradation, we see businesses working hard to consider the social costs and externalities to help control climate change. Just as Greta Thunberg said, "I'm sure the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe."  The impact of environmental protection will become prominent if we continue on our current path together. We already see ris...

My Understanding Of The Scholarly Book ' A World Of Three Zeroes' The book mainly focuses on how social business is a viable alternative to the conventional business framework – Capitalism. Adam Smith laid down the framework of Capitalism which was later improved on throughout history, however, the fundamental problem remains: It is not a complete system. The capitalist system is recognised to have been the cause of the growing inequality in the world. The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Adam Smith may be heavily biased toward pushing wealth to the rich, as quoted by Mohammad Yunus. He argues for a reevaluation of capitalism and encourages the addition of ‘Social Business’, to account for the ‘Real Man’, one who wants society to flourish as well. He talks of the many successes of social business and how this has also empowered poor women and students all around the world to look at social business as an opportunity. He begins the story of social businesses with the help of his own Grameen ...

  Identity and Violence: The illusion of Destiny The book: Identity and Violence, written by the Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen, expresses the arguments against a reductionist approach to identity. It explains how this rigid and inflexible sense of identity, can be a cause for comfort and belonging to those part of a community, while it also acts as the cause for violence and oppression against those outside it. The author argues that the misconceptions we hold on various civilisations, and the idea of civilisational clashes, which is the basis for most of the violence prevalent, is misleading and adds to the distortion and manipulation of history. It makes for a more politically combustible society. For example, how the world is thought to be divided between the West and the Anti-West. Many believe science and technology, and democracy are Western ideas although India and the Middle East have huge contributions towards those concepts. Due to this misconception, many strongly oppose t...