When the State Runs the Numbers Game
In the second half of the 20th century, as raising taxes came to spell political suicide, states looked to a new source of revenue: lotteries.
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Too Rich to Fight?
American labor’s finances have never been stronger. And yet its horizons have never been narrower.
Market Mania
The history of speculation is replete with burst bubbles.
The Impossible Film
In the late 1920s, the great Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein made notes for a dream project: Das Kapital, the film.
Selling Settlement
Real estate developers make massive profits off Israeli land seizures — and encourage brazen settlement building deep in the West Bank.
Holy Profits
The mirage of Islamic banking.
Gambling on the Green Transition
The EU’s market for carbon credits is still a market — and it’s plagued by fraud and speculation.
A Sweatshop in Your Pocket
Crypto-based video games like Axie Infinity are no fun for the Filipinos who play them for a living.
Japanese Pop’s Secret Utopians
Bright, ironic, and tuneful, Yellow Magic Orchestra provided the soundtrack to Japan’s bubble economy in the 1980s. But the band’s work also contained hidden depths and the memories of East Asia’s political struggles.
Where Will Canada’s Workers Go After the Election?
Nationalist backlash against Donald Trump helped stall right-wing populism. But Canadian workers are still drifting rightward, and the social democratic NDP is in shambles.
Rwanda’s Raiders
The linchpin of Rwanda’s booming mineral sector is the violent paramilitaries it finances in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Return of Decadent Conservatism
One of the most energetic factions of today’s Right flirts with monarchy, myth, and high-tech transcendence. Drawing on the anti-modern sensibility of the fin de siècle Decadents, they reject democracy and seek to use imagined pasts to shape the future.