Tổng hợp một số bài báo tiếng Anh hay (T112013 đến T82014)

L.M.H
FREEMAN
TỔNG HỢP MỘT SỐ BÀI
BÁO BẰNG TIẾNG ANH HAY
TRÊN MẠNG
Từ T11/2013 đến T8/2014
LỜI GIỚI THIỆU
Tác giả sưu tập những bài báo tiếng Anh về những chủ đề về kinh tế, khoa học, xã hôi, thể thao ở
trên những trang web báo nước ngoài (ví dụ: www.economist.com, www.asiasentinel.com,
www.wired.com, www.foreignpolicy.com).
Các bài báo là những sự kiện cập nhập nhất theo thời gian, ngoài ra cũng có một số bài là những
phát biểu của người nổi tiếng trên mạng xã hội (ví dụ: Facebook) bằng tiếng Anh.
Mục đích sưu tầm là để có thể luyện đọc tiếng Anh để chuẩn bị cho các kì thi tiếng Anh quan
trọng. Chú ý là đề thi IELTS thường lấy các bài báo ở trên trang economist làm đề thi của mình.
Thời gian sưu tầm các bài báo từ tháng 11 năm 2013 đến tháng 8 năm 2014.
Tác giả
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CONTENTS
Gift-giving in rural areas has got out of hand, further impoverishing
China’s poor
Nov 30th 2013 | POPU VILLAGE, GUIZHOU PROVINCE
IT WAS a big week for Wang Wei. On a recent Wednesday she had two weddings to attend,
then on Saturday, two funerals. Each involved a banquet, and by custom she was obliged /bat
buoc, cuong bach/ to bring cash gifts. That was no hardship a decade ago, when the going rate
for four banquets was the equivalent of $5-10. And a decade before that, she would have just
brought rice or corn from the family plot.
It is a hardship now. The cost of gift-giving in rural China has gone up much faster than incomes.
This week Ms Wang’s outlays added up to 350 yuan, or close to $60—about a month’s income.
A pleasant, open-faced woman of 41, she says it is money she could have used to buy basic
appliances. A water heater would be nice, she says, so her husband, in-laws and two teenage
children wouldn’t have to boil water to bathe. A fridge would be splendid. But these are

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extravagances/hang dat do/. Giving gifts for big occasions is an inescapable, and increasingly
onerous, obligation for hundreds of millions of China’s farmers.
Much attention has been paid recently to gift-giving in urban China. In the past year the
Communist Party under Xi Jinping has cracked down on excessive official banqueting. Such
unseemly displays of consumption are well-known opportunities for bribery/su dut lot/. But the
banqueting culture in rural and small-town China is a more vexing problem. If officials’ lavish
parties are a symbol of social inequality, they are not a significant cause of it. The gift-giving
practices of everyday weddings (such as the one pictured above), funerals and milestone
birthdays are doing much more to deepen actual inequality.
Exchanging gifts at such occasions has been a part of village life in China for centuries. The
practice survived Mao’s political campaigns and indeed took on more importance. Yunxiang
Yan, an anthropologist at UCLA, observes that Mao’s attacks on clans as bases of power
broadened the network of gift-giving to friends and, in the post-Mao reform era, to guanxi, or
connections, outside the village. As Chinese incomes rose, the widening networks for giving
gifts—and the obligation never to give less than you last received—have fed a sharp upward
spiral in gift amounts, a ruinous development for the poor.
An academic study of gift-giving in Guizhou, a poor south-western province, found that from
2005 to 2009 average gift amounts in three rural villages grew by 18-45% annually, compared
with 10% annual income growth. The average share of income spent on gifts more than doubled
—from 8% to 17%—while the share of income spent on food dropped, from 48% to 42%. One
of the study’s authors, Xi Chen of the Yale School of Public Health, concluded that this had a
detrimental/co hai/ impact on antenatal health, as poor pregnant mothers cut back on food to
keep pace with gift-giving.
The root of the problem is that the social model of rural gift-giving ignores income, and
conforming is not simply a matter of saving face /du the dien/. The rural poor continue to give
even when they cannot afford it, says Mr Yan, because of a powerful imperative of renqing, or
personal feelings. Failure to fulfil the obligation of reciprocity, or to show consideration for
others’ feelings and emotional responses, is regarded as “an immoral act and thus a violation of
renqing ethics,” he says.

The burden /trach nhiem/imposed by renqing is a painfully public one, since the giving is done
publicly. At a typical banquet guests line up to give cash at a reception table, where someone
records the amount and the name of the guest in the family’s gift ledger. No matter how little you
earn, you are expected to give the prevailing /chiem chu yeu/ amount. And if your guanxi with
the host is close, you must give more, regardless /khong quan tam/of income.
The careful record-keeping system also puts pressure on people to match previous gifts, a
dynamic that ensures the prevailing standard will only keep rising. Any factor that channels more
income to some in a village but not all—migrant workers’ remittances, a windfall from
government compensation for using local land, or, as with some of Ms Wang’s neighbours, from
farming a cash crop like tobacco—increases the obligations for everyone. In Popu village, where
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the average annual income is less than $1,000, close friends and relatives must give at least 100
yuan ($16), compared with 10 or 20 yuan a decade ago.
There is not necessarily a benefit for those who host banquets either: the study on which Mr
Chen worked found that banquet expenses have increased too. They can cost the hosts several
times as much as they collect in gifts. Still, some banquets can be moneymakers, and in bigger
towns there are more of them, with many more guests, than in the past: 80th birthdays, one-
month birthdays for babies, parties for children going to college, housewarmings. (In the
mountains of Hubei province, some farmers hold banquets when their pigs give birth.)
If Ms Wang wants to try earning her money back, she is out of luck for now, lacking an
occasion. Her oldest son is 17, and sons are costly to marry off anyway: the bride’s family
expects a house in the bargain /khe uoc, keo uoc/. She has not held a banquet since 2005—when
her family moved into its new house—and the take was a pittance, a few hundred dollars before
expenses.
She expects she will give more in gifts this year (perhaps $1,000 in all) than she earns in income
from odd jobs and farming her third of an acre of corn and rice, and that she will have to borrow
to make up the difference. Attending banquets without giving is not an option, she says. Not
attending is the only way to avoid giving. That is possible in big cities, where relations are more
fragmented, but not in a village, says Ms Wang. The ties that bind more tightly can pinch more
tightly too.

A giant passes
Dec 5th 2013, 22:22 by The Economist
The greatness of Nelson Mandela challenges us all
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AMONG Nelson Mandela’s many achievements, two stand out. First, he was the world’s most
inspiring example of fortitude/su kien cuong/, magnanimity /hao hiep/and dignity /thai do duong
hoang/in the face of oppression /su dan ap/, serving more than 27 years in prison for his belief
that all men and women are created equal. During the brutal/hung ac, tan bao/ years of his
imprisonment on Robben Island, thanks to his own patience, humour and capacity for
forgiveness, he seemed freer behind bars than the men who kept him there, locked up as they
were in their own self-demeaning prejudices /y kien, thanh kien/. Indeed, his warders/cai tu/
were among those who came to admire him most.
Second, and little short of miraculous/huyen dieu, than dieu/, was the way in which he
engineered and oversaw South Africa’s transformation from a byword for nastiness and
narrowness into, at least in intent, a rainbow nation in which people, no matter what their colour,
were entitled to be treated with respect. That the country has not always lived up to his standards
goes to show how high they were.
Exorcising/tru ta (ton giao)/ the curse /loi nguyen rua, tai uong, tai hoa/of colour
As a politician, and as a man, Mr Mandela had his contradictions/su mau thuan/ (see article). He
was neither a genius nor, as he often said himself, a saint/vi thanh/. Some of his early writings
were banal Marxist ramblings /su ko mach lac sao rong cua chu nghia Max/, even if the sense of
anger with which they were infused /ngam/was justifiable. But his charisma /me luc/was evident
from his youth. He was a born leader who feared nobody, debased himself before no one and
never lost his sense of humour. He was handsome and comfortable in his own skin. In a country
in which the myth of racial superiority was enshrined in law, he never for a moment doubted his
right, and that of all his compatriots, to equal treatment. Perhaps no less remarkably, once the
majority of citizens were able to have their say he never for a moment denied the right of his
white compatriots to equality. For all the humiliation/su lam nhuc, lam be mat/ he suffered at the
hands of white racists before he was released in 1990, he was never animated /co vu, lam cho
song/ by feelings of revenge /bao thu/. He was himself utterly without prejudice /phien dien/,

which is why he became a symbol of tolerance and justice across the globe.
Perhaps even more important for the future of his country was his ability to think deeply, and to
change his mind. When he was set free, many of his fellow members of the African National
Congress (ANC) remained dedicated /cong hien/ disciples /mon de/ of the dogma /tin
nguong/promoted by their party’s supporter, the Soviet Union, whose own sudden /thinh
linh/implosion/am khep, su dinh huong vao trong/ helped shift the global balance of power that
in turn contributed to apartheid’s demise/su chet, ket thuc/. Many of his comrades were
simultaneously members of the ANC and the South African Communist Party who hoped to
dismember /chia cat/ the capitalist economy /nha kinh te tu ban/ and bring its treasure trove /vat
tim ra/of mines and factories into public ownership. Nor was the ANC convinced that a
Westminster-style parliamentary democracy/dang dan chu/—with all the checks and balances of
bourgeois institutions/thiet lap giai cap tu san/, such as an independent judiciary /tu phap/—was
worth preserving, perverted as it had been under apartheid.
Mr Mandela had himself harboured /nuoi duong (y nghi xau)/such doubts. But immediately
before and after his release from prison, he sought out a variety of opinions among those who,
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unlike himself, had been fortunate /tot so/ enough to roam /di choi rong, di lang thang/ the world
and compare competing systems. He listened and pondered /tram tu, suy nghi, can nhac ve/—and
decided that it would be better for all his people, especially the poor black majority, if South
Africa’s existing economic model were drastically altered but not destroyed, and if a liberal
democracy /dang ty do/, under a universal franchise /quyen tham chinh/, were kept too.
That South Africa did, in the end, move with relatively little bloodshed to become a multiracial
free-market democracy was indeed a near-miracle for which the whole world must thank him.
The country he leaves behind is a far better custodian of human dignity than the one whose first
democratically elected /duoc chon/ president he became in 1994. A self-confident black middle
class is emerging. Democracy is well-entrenched, with regular elections, a vibrant /chan dong/
press, generally decent /dung dan/ courts and strong institutions. And South Africa still has easily
sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest and most sophisticated /nguy bien ?? having a lot of experience and
knowledge about the world/ economy.
But since Mr Mandela left the presidency in 1999 his beloved country/dat nuoc yeu quy cua ong/

has disappointed under two sorely flawed/nhuoc diem/leaders, Thabo Mbeki and now Jacob
Zuma. While the rest of Africa’s economy has perked up, South Africa’s has stumbled. Nigeria’s
swelling GDP is closing in on South Africa’s. Corruption and patronage within the ANC have
become increasingly flagrant. An authoritarian and populist tendency in ruling circles has
become more strident. The racial animosity /chau han/that Mr Mandela so abhorred is infecting
public discourse/thao luan chinh thuc/. The gap between rich and poor has remained
stubbornly /kho chua, buong binh, ngoan co/wide. Barely two-fifths of working-age people have
jobs. Only 60% of school-leavers get the most basic high-school graduation certificate.
Shockingly for a country so rich in resources, nearly a third of its people still live on less than $2
a day.
Without the protection of Mr Mandela’s saintly aura /tinh hoa phat tiet (nguoi)/, the ANC will be
more harshly /khac nghiet, cay nghiet/judged. Thanks to its corruption and inefficiency, it
already faces competition in some parts of the country from the white-led Democratic Alliance.
South Africa would gain if the ANC split, so there were two big black-led parties, one composed
/ket hop/of communists and union leaders, the other more liberal and market-friendly.
Man of Africa, hero of the world
The ANC’s failings are not Mr Mandela’s fault. Perhaps he could have been more vociferous/to
tieng, am i/ in speaking out against Mr Mbeki’s lethal misguidedness on the subject of
HIV/AIDS, which cost thousands of lives. Perhaps he should have spoken up more robustly
against the corruption around Mr Zuma. In foreign affairs he was too loyal to past friends, such
as Fidel Castro. He should have been franker /thang than, boc truc/in condemning /chi
trich/Robert Mugabe for his ruination of Zimbabwe.
But such shortcomings—and South Africa’s failings since his retirement from active politics—
pale into insignificance when set against the magnitude of his overall achievement. It is hard to
think of anyone else in the world in recent times with whom every single person, in every corner
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of the Earth, can somehow /ly do chua xac dinh/ identify. He was, quite simply, a wonderful
man.
Very good on paper
Dec 12th 2013, 9:40 by M.I. | HANOI

Education in Vietnam
ON SATURDAY morning, December 14th, America's secretary of state, John Kerry, will travel
to Vietnam. One of his talking points, according to the State Department, will be the
"empowering /tang them /role of education”. But it seems like Vietnam has already taken the
message.
On December 3rd, the OECD released the results from its Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA), an exam administered every three years to 15- and 16-year-olds in dozens of
countries. Vietnam recently joined the test for the first time, and it scored remarkably well—
higher in maths than America and Britain, though not as high as Shanghai or Singapore. Nguyen
Vinh Hien, a deputy minister for education, characterised Vietnam's overall 17th-place ranking
out of 65 countries and economies as a pleasant “surprise.”
The PISA scores, as they are known, measured how a half-million students from randomly
selected schools answered written and multiple-choice questions in a two-hour test. Mathematics
was the primary focus, but students were also evaluated on reading, science and problem-
solving. Coverage /viec dua tin/ of the scores by the Western news media suggested that the
impressive maths performance by Vietnam, where per-capita GDP is only about $1,600, was
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perhaps a bit humbling /xau ho/ for education officials in Washington, London and other self-
regarding world capitals.
What explains Vietnam's good score? Christian Bodewig of the World Bank says it reflects,
among other positive things, years of investment in education by the government and a "high
degree of professionalism /trinh do chuyen mon, nghiep vu/ and discipline in classrooms across
the country”. But Mr Bodewig adds that the score may be impressive in part because so many
poor and disadvantaged Vietnamese students drop out of school. The World Bank reports that in
2010 the gross enrolment rate at upper-secondary schools in Vietnam was just 65%, compared
with 89% and 98% in America and Britain, respectively. South Korea's rate was 95%.
A chorus of Vietnamese education specialists say that Vietnam's PISA score does not fully
reflect the reality of its education system, which is hamstrung by a national curriculum that
encourages rote memorisation over critical thinking and creative problem-solving. "Every child
in this country learns the same thing," and nationwide tests merely reinforce the intellectual

homogeneity that results, in the lament /loi than van/of To Kim Lien, the director of the Centre
for Education and Development, a Vietnamese non-profit in Hanoi. Ms Lien reckons that instead
of catalysing educational reform, the score might provide a convenient excuse for complacency
in matters of policy. And the old-fashioned, inward-looking /tu dong cua/ Ministry of Education
and Training, she adds, is a past master at complacency /tu man/.
Another systemic problem is a general lack of “integrity” in Vietnam's education sector, in the
words of Nguyen Thi Kieu Vien of the Global Transparency Education Network, a new initiative
of Transparency International, a watchdog based in Berlin. In a recent survey the organisation
found that 49% of Vietnamese respondents perceived their education sector to be "corrupt" or
"highly corrupt”. The percentage was higher than that found in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia
and Cambodia. Corruption is plainly evident /bang chung ro rang/ at elite Vietnamese schools,
where slots for pupils are routinely sold for $3,000 each. Yet it also exists on a smaller scale, in
subtler forms. Many Vietnamese teachers hold extra tuitions, outside of regular school hours, for
a small fee of between $2.50 and $5 per lesson. Not all parents can afford to pay these fees, and
so the practice tends to exacerbate inequality /lam te hai them su khong cong bang/.
In November some top-ranking national officials passed a resolution calling for reform in the
education sector /cai cach giao duc/. Kim Ngoc Minh, an education researcher in Hanoi, says the
resolution is the most comprehensive and ambitious /tham vong/ in a generation. Other education
specialists however wonder whether the resolution, which calls for reform in broad stokes, will
translate into actual policy changes.
Actual changes are badly needed /nhung su thay doi da khong duoc quan tam/. In 2008,
researchers from Harvard reported that Vietnam's higher-education system was in "crisis", and
that it lagged far behind the systems of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, to say nothing of
those in China, Taiwan and South Korea. As a warning, they pointed to the comparative lack of
articles published by Vietnamese researchers in peer-reviewed international journals. The
Harvard memo also said the government was awarding research funding "uncompetitively”, and
that there was a vast difference between what graduates had learned and what prospective
employers wanted them to know.
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These shortcomings can be linked to others in primary and secondary schools. Ms Lien of the

Centre for Education and Development says that a basic reform package might begin with the
younger age group, by including parents in a decision-making process that has long been
dominated by the education ministry. Nearly two years ago, she was among a dozen senior
educators who submitted paperwork to the ministry requesting permission to establish a national
parent-teacher association. Their group still has not received an official response. Perhaps the
ministry is afraid of what Vietnamese parents might say, if they had a platform.
(Picture credit: AFP)
/>Leonardo da Vinci’s Resume
On January 29, 2010 by Marc Cenedella
“Most Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who
proclaim /tuyen cao/ themselves skilled contrivers /nguoi phat minh/ of instruments of war, and
that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different from those in
common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice /phien dien/to anyone else, to explain myself to
your Excellency/cac ha/, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best
pleasure and approbation /n. phe chuan, tan thanh/to work with effect at opportune moments
/thoi gian thich hop/on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.
1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and
with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and
indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning
and destroying those of the enemy.
2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless
variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining/quan he/ to
such expeditions./quan sat/
3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is
impossible, when besieging a place, to avail /loi ich/oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have
methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc.
4. Again, I have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling
small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the
enemy, to his great detriment/ton hai/ and confusion/hoang loan/.
5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and

defense; and vessels which will resist/chong lai/ the attack of the largest guns and powder and
fumes.
6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a
designated spot/diem xac dinh/, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.
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7. I will make covered chariots/chien xa/, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the
enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And
behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance/ton hai/.
8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance /phao lon/of fine and useful
forms, out of the common type.
9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive/thiet ke, phat minh/
catapults/may lang da/, mangonels/may ban da/, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous
efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive
various and endless means of offense and defense.
10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in
architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one
place to another.
11. I can carry out sculpture/dieu khac/ in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting
whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.
Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal
honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza.
And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most
ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency –
to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility/long khiem ton cuc han/, etc.”
By all means question climate policies. But facts are facts
Climate science/ Stubborn things
Oct 5th 2013 | From the print edition
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IN 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of scientists, said the
glaciers of the Himalayas could melt by 2035. This was complete fiction. It also said global

surface temperatures would go on rising by about 0.2°C a decade for the next 20 years. They
have been more or less flat since 1998. The IPCC has now issued its sextennial check-up on the
health of the global climate (see article). Why would anyone believe what they say?
Because there are climate facts—and facts are stubborn things. One is that the upper 75 metres of
the oceans have warmed by 0.1°C a decade in the past 40 years and there is no sign of this
slowing down. Water expands, and ice melts, as temperatures rise, so sea levels have risen 19cm
in the past century and the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by about 500,000 square kilometres a
decade since 1979.
These facts matter because the oceans cover seven-tenths of the Earth’s surface and are its
primary heat sink (90% of the extra warming over the past 40 years has gone into the oceans).
By most measures—though not all—global warming is continuing.
But what about the pause in air temperatures? Isn’t that a fact? Indeed it is. But right now it
matters more to climate science than climate policy. The extent of the pause is sensitive to the
starting-point chosen when defining it. The recent temperature peak was 1998. The world has
warmed by 0.05°C a decade since then, only a quarter of the rise the IPCC forecast. But in 1998
El Niño, an occasional warming of the Pacific Ocean which boosts temperatures around the
planet, was unusually large. If you start in 2000 and compare the decade of the 2000s with the
1990s, you find that the IPCC estimate was close. This does not mean the pause does not exist.
But it is more or less striking depending on where you view it from.
More important, it is not clear yet how much weight to give to a 15-year period. Half a
generation is long enough to come to a judgment on most things. But climate cycles last
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hundreds, or tens of thousands, of years. It used to be a rule of thumb that climate scientists
wanted 30 years of observations before judging that something was a trend, rather than a
fluctuation. Partly for that reason, they were slow and reluctant in taking the temperature hiatus
seriously.
The decade-and-a-half to 2013 was unusual because it also saw a big rise in carbon-dioxide
emissions, which, all things being equal, should have pushed up temperatures everywhere, and
didn’t. And that raises important questions: why have sea temperatures risen but not air
temperatures? Is more heat going into the deep oceans? Is the climate reacting more slowly to

rising concentrations of CO2? But these are questions about how the climate is changing, not
whether it is. They do not yet mean global warming itself has hit the pause button.
Don’t shoot the messenger
Imagine an economy that has been overheating for a decade and suddenly experiences two
quarters of flat growth. All other indicators—household debt, employment, the trade deficit—are
still signalling a boom. How should one react? Policymakers might say the situation needs
watching or that the relationship between GDP and debt or employment might be changing. But
it would be reckless to declare that overheating is at an end or to abandon attempts to cool the
economy.
Some worries about global warming are prompted by the extravagance of some climate policies.
In particular, European subsidies for solar and wind, which are hugely expensive, are doing little
to cut emissions. But reservations about the policies should not be used as reasons for denying
the facts.
Who really owns the Senkaku islands?
Dec 3rd 2013, 23:50 by D.Z.
The Economist explains
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OVER the past year the Senkaku islands, a clutch of five uninhabited islets/nhung dao nho/ in
the East China Sea, have shown their ability to convulse /kich liet chan dong/relations between
China and Japan, Asia’s two biggest powers. They have even raised the spectre /xung dot/of
military conflict, which America fears it might be dragged into. The stakes /loi ich/ are high. So
who actually owns the Senkakus?
If possession is nine-tenths of the law, the answer is simple: Japan. It claims to have
“discovered” the islands, a terra nullius belonging to no one, in 1884. In early 1895 it annexed
/phu them/ them, shortly after Japan had defeated a weakened China in a brief war and seized
Taiwan, which lies just to their south, as war spoils/chien loi pham/. One Tatsushiro Koga was
licensed to develop the islands. He set up a bonito-processing station /tram ca ngu/whose 200
employees also killed the once-abundant short-tailedalbatross /duoi ngan cua chim hai au/ for its
feathers. The Koga family’s last employees left during the second world war. Upon Japan’s
defeat in 1945 control fell to the Americans, who used the islands for bombing practice. In 1972,

at the end of the American occupation, the Japanese government resumed responsibility for the
Senkakus.
By then, however, oil and gas reserves had been identified under the seabed surrounding the
islands. China, which calls them the Diaoyu islands, asserted /tuyen bo/ its claim, as did Taiwan,
which is closest to the islands (and which is also claimed by China). China’s claim is vague/ho
do/, and is based on things such as a Chinese portolano from 1403 recording the islands. It all
speaks to an earlier world in which China lay at the heart of an ordered East Asian system of
tributary states—an order shattered /vo vun/ by Japan’s militarist rise from the late 19th century.
What this history tells you is not—contrary to modern Chinese claims—that China controlled the
Diaoyus, for it never did. Rather, the islands were known to the Chinese because they served as
navigational waypoints for tributary missions between the great cosmopolitan/mang tinh the gioi/
Chinese port of Quanzhou and Naha, capital of the Ryukyu island kingdom, China’s most loyal
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vassal. In 1879 Japan snuffed out/ket thuc/ the ancient kingdom. Naha is now the main town on
the main island of Japan’s archipelago prefecture of Okinawa/dia hat cua Okinawa/. Some
Chinese nationalists call not only for the Senkakus’ return, but for Okinawa too.
In the late 1970s China and Japan agreed to kick the dispute into/dam phan, tranh luan/ the long
grass. But China’s attitude has hardened, especially since September 2012, when the Japanese
government bought from their private owner three of the islands it did not already own. It was in
order to prevent them falling into the hands of an ultranationalist/chu nghia dan toc cuc doan/,
Shintaro Ishihara, then governor of Tokyo. But China saw it as a provocation /tuyen chien/and
sent vessels and aircraft to challenge Japan’s control of the Senkakus. China’s announcement on
November 23rd of an East China Sea “air defence identification zone” which covers the
Senkakus is further evidence of its attempt to alter the status quo. Much more than presumed/gia
dinh/ oil and gas reserves, emotion is now driving China’s actions, in particular notions of
national honour and a desire to regain the centrality in East Asia that it for centuries enjoyed.
This dispute is a microcosm of that desire, which makes it so potentially dangerous.
A surprise appointment by Angela Merkel hints at who may succeed
her one day
Dec 21st 2013 | BERLIN | From the print edition

Germany’s new government/A guide to future chancellors?
TWELVE weeks after its election, followed by the longest coalition negotiations in its history,
Germany has a new government at last. And although there was never any doubt that Angela
Merkel would continue leading it as chancellor, the cabinet she chose contained a surprise:
Germany’s new defence minister will be Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman in that job. Mrs
von der Leyen (centre, above), who at 55 is four years younger than Mrs Merkel, is now the most
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obvious member of Mrs Merkel’s party, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to
run for chancellor when Mrs Merkel, who is now starting her third term, steps down.
Mrs von der Leyen’s most likely opponent would be Sigmar Gabriel (left, above), leader of the
centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). Since the SPD’s poor showing in the election (it got only
25.7% of votes, against 41.5% for Mrs Merkel’s camp), he has skilfully manoeuvred his party
into another “grand coalition” with Mrs Merkel, wrangling concessions out of her in the process
and winning a referendum of party members to approve the pact by the huge margin of 75% to
25%. Now he is vice-chancellor and minister with a newly combined portfolio of energy and the
economy. This puts him in charge of Germany’s biggest domestic challenge, the transition from
nuclear and coal to solar and wind.
As defence minister, a challenging portfolio that includes managing a continuing reform of the
army, Mrs von der Leyen could build up her stature for a future run against Mr Gabriel. She will
have few rivals, because the most senior cabinet posts are staying in the hands of veterans from
the preceding generation. The CDU’s Wolfgang Schäuble, 71, remains as finance minister
(suggesting that little change can be expected in Germany’s management of the euro crisis). The
SPD’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier becomes foreign minister again, the same job he held in Mrs
Merkel’s first term, from 2005 to 2009. Thomas de Maizière, whom Mrs von der Leyen replaces
and who will now become interior minister, a job he has had before, is still damaged by a
procurement scandal from his time as defence minister.
Petite and sprightly, Mrs von der Leyen has been close to politics her whole life, as the daughter
of Ernst Albrecht, a former premier of Lower Saxony. But she personally entered politics only at
42, after living in Belgium, Britain and America, learning fluent English and French, studying
and then practising gynaecology and having seven children. Since Mrs Merkel became

chancellor in 2005, Mrs von der Leyen has had stints as minister of families and women, then of
labour and welfare.
During these years, she has proved herself unfailingly loyal to Mrs Merkel, even after a personal
disappointment in 2010, when the chancellor did not nominate her for federal president as she
had hoped. She also cultivated an image as the social conscience of her party. With rare bravura,
she demonstrated personally how to combine work and family but also pushed policies that
would help other women do the same. These views have made her popular with voters but at
times less appreciated by conservatives in the CDU. To become a plausible candidate to succeed
Mrs Merkel, she will first have to shore up her support within the party’s base.
Women are gaining a higher profile in Mrs Merkel’s government more generally. Four of the
SPD’s cabinet positions have gone to women, with some of the portfolios dearest to party
members: labour, women and integration of foreigners. In another surprise, Jörg Asmussen, a
Social Democrat who has the German seat on the board of the European Central Bank (ECB),
will return to Berlin. Mr Asmussen will be missed in Frankfurt, having acted as a bridge between
the bank and the German government and voters in the euro crisis. The candidate to replace him
at the ECB is another woman, Sabine Lautenschläger-Peiter, the number two at the German
Bundesbank. She belongs to no party, but is an expert on bank regulation who often talks out
against bankers with big bonuses.
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Mrs Merkel has given no hints about her own career plans beyond denying some speculation that
she might step down in mid-term, around the time of her tenth anniversary as chancellor. The
previous CDU chancellor, Helmut Kohl, served four terms but then lost the 1998 election.
Thinking of him and Konrad Adenauer, Germany’s first post-war chancellor, Mrs von der Leyen
has in the past evaded questions about her ambitions by saying that in the CDU “each generation
has its chancellor,” and hers already has Angela Merkel. If Mrs von der Leyen does her new job
well, she may reconsider.
China’s new air-defence zone suggests a worrying new approach in
the region
Nov 30th 2013 | From the print edition
China, Japan and America/Face-off

THE announcement by a Chinese military spokesman on November 23rd sounded bureaucratic:
any aircraft flying through the newly designated Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the
East China Sea must notify Chinese authorities in advance and follow instructions from its air-
traffic controllers. America’s response was rapid. On November 26th Barack Obama sent two B-
52 bombers to fly through the new zone without notifying China (see article). This face-off
marks the most worrying strategic escalation between the two countries since 1996, when
China’s then president, Jiang Zemin, ordered a number of exclusion zones for missile tests in the
Taiwan Strait, leading America to send two aircraft-carriers there.
Plenty of countries establish zones in which they require aircraft to identify themselves, but they
tend not to be over other countries’ territory. The Chinese ADIZ overlaps with Japan’s own air-
defence zone (see map). It also includes some specks of rock that Japan administers and calls the
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Senkaku islands (and which China claims and calls the Diaoyus), as well as a South Korean reef,
known as Ieodo. The move is clearly designed to bolster China’s claims (see article). On
November 28th Japan and South Korea sent aircraft into the zone.
Teenage testosterone
Growing economic power is bound to go hand-in-hand with growing regional assertiveness. That
is fine, so long as the behaviour of the rising power remains within international norms. In this
case, however, China’s does not; and America, which has guaranteed free navigation of the seas
and skies of East Asia for 60 years, is right to make that clear.
How worrying China’s move is depends partly on the thinking behind it. It may be that, like a
teenager on a growth spurt who doesn’t know his own strength, China has underestimated the
impact of its actions. The claim that America’s bombers had skirted the edge of the ADIZ was
gawkily embarrassing. But teenagers who do not realise the consequences of their actions often
cause trouble: China has set up a casus belli with its neighbours and America for generations to
come.
It would thus be much more worrying if the provocation was deliberate. The “Chinese dream” of
Xi Jinping, the new president, is a mixture of economic reform and strident nationalism. The
announcement of the ADIZ came shortly after a party plenum at which Mr Xi announced a string
of commendably radical domestic reforms. The new zone will appeal to the nationalist camp,

which wields huge power, particularly in the armed forces. It also helps defend Mr Xi against
any suggestions that he is a westernising liberal.
If this is Mr Xi’s game, it is a dangerous one. East Asia has never before had a strong China and
a strong Japan at the same time. China dominated the region from the mists of history until the
1850s, when the West’s arrival spurred Japan to modernise while China tried to resist the
foreigners’ influence. China is eager to re-establish dominance over the region. Bitterness at the
memory of the barbaric Japanese occupation in the second world war sharpens this desire. It is
this possibility of a clash between a rising and an established power that lies behind the oft-used
parallel between contemporary East Asia and early 20th-century Europe, in which the Senkakus
play the role of Sarajevo.
Seas of troubles
Tensions are not at that level. Japan’s constitution bans it from any military aggression and
China normally goes to great lengths to stress that its rise—unlike that of Japan in the 1920s and
1930s—will be peaceful. But the neighbours are nervous, especially as the establishment of the
ADIZ appears to match Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea.
Chinese maps show what is known as the “nine-dash line” encompassing all the South China
Sea. In the wake of the global financial crisis, perhaps believing its own narrative of Chinese rise
and American decline, it began to overreach in its dealings with its neighbours. It sent ships to
disputed reefs, pressed foreign oil companies to halt exploration and harassed American and
Vietnamese naval vessels in the South China Sea. These actions brought a swift rebuke from
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America’s then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and China appeared to back off and return to
its regional charm offensive. Some observers say that the government is using the ADIZ to
establish a nine-dash line covering the East China Sea as well. They fear China’s next move will
be to declare an ADIZ over the South China Sea, to assert control over both the sea and the air
throughout the region.
Whether or not China has such specific ambitions, the ADIZ clearly suggests that China does not
accept the status quo in the region and wants to change it. Any Chinese leader now has an excuse
for going after Japanese planes. Chinese ships are already ignoring Japanese demands not to
enter the waters surrounding the disputed islands.

What can be done? Next week Joe Biden, America’s vice-president, arrives in China. The timing
may be uncomfortable, but it is fortuitous. Mr Biden and Mr Xi know each other well: before Mr
Xi became president, he spent five days in America at Mr Biden’s invitation. Mr Biden is also
going to South Korea and Japan.
America’s “pivot” towards Asia is not taken very seriously there: Mr Obama is seen as distracted
by his domestic problems. Mr Biden could usefully make clear America’s commitment to
guaranteeing freedom of navigation in the region. Japan and South Korea, who squabble over
petty issues, need to be told to get over their differences. As for China, it needs to behave like a
responsible world power, not a troublemaker willing to sacrifice 60 years of peace in north-east
Asia to score some points by grabbing a few windswept rocks. It should accept Japan’s
suggestion of a military hotline, similar to the one that is already established between Beijing and
Washington.
The region must work harder to build some kind of architecture where regional powers can
discuss security. If such a framework had existed in Europe in 1914, things might have turned
out differently.
How does Colorado's marijuana market work?
Jan 6th 2014, 23:50 by T.N. | DENVER
The Economist explains
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ON JANUARY 1st, 420 days after the citizens of Colorado voted to legalise marijuana, around
37 pot shops across the state opened their doors to all-comers. Stoners in Denver and other cities
braved freezing temperatures and two-hour queues to be part of this historic moment, for
Colorado has become the first jurisdiction anywhere in the world to oversee a legal, regulated
market for recreational marijuana (20 states plus Washington, DC, allow patients with doctors'
recommendations to buy the stuff). Some customers were turned away, some shops have been
forced temporarily to close while they replenish stocks, but "Green Wednesday", as it was
inevitably dubbed, was generally considered a big success. How exactly does Colorado's
marijuana market function?
Amendment 64, the measure approved by 55% of voters in November 2012, set certain
parameters for Colorado's marijuana regime, including maximum tax rates and the rights of cities

and counties to exclude pot shops from their jurisdictions. But the details were worked out by
officials and legislators over the course of 2013. Unlike many states (including Washington,
which has also legalised marijuana but not yet licensed recreational outlets) Colorado's medical-
marijuana system is well regulated; not only did that make full legalisation an easier sell to
voters, it provided a foundation for the recreational industry. Until October only licensed medical
outlets "in good standing" can serve recreational customers, which is why lots of the shops that
opened on January 1st have names like Citi-Med and Medicine Man. Colorado's system of
"vertical integration", under which retailers must cultivate most of the stuff they sell themselves,
will also remain in place until October; this makes monitoring easier for the state, even if one
irritated observer likens it to a supermarket owning apple orchards.
One challenge is to set prices at what Mark Kleiman, an analyst, calls the "Goldilocks point": too
low and you encourage excessive consumption and out-of-state exports; too high and you leave
room for illicit dealers. The market has not settled in yet, but prices for recreational marijuana,
currently around $250-$300 for an ounce of good weed, will be significantly higher than the
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medical stuff, thanks to hefty taxes: a 15% excise tax levied on "average market rate" and a
special 10% sales tax (the state's general 2.9% sales tax will also apply). Only those aged over 21
may buy, possess and use marijuana in Colorado; they may consume it only on private property
with the consent of the property-owner, and they may not transfer it across state lines. Residents
may purchase up to an ounce at a time; out-of-staters are limited to a quarter-ounce, and, if
buying weed rather than edibles, face the extra challenge of finding somewhere to smoke it:
Amsterdam-style "coffee shops" are banned. Locals can grow up to six plants at home, and give
away (but not sell) the proceeds. (The full rulebook extends to 136 pages.)
Implementing all this will be hard enough. But Colorado's officials must also keep the federal
government happy. Marijuana remains illegal under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, and the
feds have been more than willing to crack down on some medical-marijuana operators in recent
years. In August James Cole, the deputy attorney-general, issued a memo suggesting that the
federal government will allow the experiments in Colorado and Washington to proceed so long
as they do not impede eight "enforcement priorities", including the diversion of marijuana to
minors and to other states. But that is not a foregone conclusion: Colorado-sourced medical

marijuana has been turning up in neighbouring states. The American public is beginning to reject
prohibition and its attendant injustices. If Colorado and Washington manage not to screw things
up, more states will surely follow them in legalising—including California, probably in 2016.
But if it all goes wrong, as it may, the whole thing could go up in smoke.
Let’s unite as Team Humanity to revive degraded land: A
conversation with TED Books author Allan Savory and rancher
Gail Steiger
Allan Savory is a biologist who has spent a lifetime trying to save degraded land. Gail Steiger is
a rancher and filmmaker who has long followed his work. Below, what happens when the two
talk. Make sure to read to the end for the stab-you-in-the-heart final question.
All over the world, land is turning into desert at an alarming rate. Biologist Allan Savory has
dedicated a lifetime to figuring out what’s causing this “desertification.” Finally, after decades of
work in the field, Savory discovered a radical solution—one that went against everything
scientists had always thought. He used huge herds of livestock, managed to mimic the behavior
of the natural herds that roamed grasslands centuries ago, and saw degraded land revert to robust
ecosystems.
Here, Savory talks with rancher, performer and acclaimed filmmaker Gail Steiger about his new
TED Book The Grazing Revolution: A Radical Plan to Save the Earth, detailing his remarkable
and often difficult journey to discovery—one that ultimately ends with great hope for the future.
Gail Steiger: First of all, I’d just like to thank you for all that you’ve done for—actually,
for the world. I’ve been familiar with your work since your book in ’88. Lots of my friends
here in Arizona attended your school, and you’ve just made a great contribution to all of
us. Can I ask you for some historical information? Tell me a little bit about the most
valuable experiences that informed your thinking today.
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Allan Savory: Oh, gosh. That goes back a long way. Let me just start before I left university and
joined the Game Department, in what was then Colonial Service, in Northern Rhodesia. (It’s
now Zambia.) I was very passionate about wildlife, elephants in particular, but also rhino and so
on— the big game of Africa. And I had this new, shiny degree, and training as a botanist,
zoologist and ecologist. But when I went into the field, I hit reality. What I’d been taught just

simply wasn’t making sense. It didn’t match with what I was seeing. To give you an example:
We were taught that overgrazing caused desertification. More specifically, that desertification
was due to too many livestock, and that the answer was reducing the numbers of animals and
burning the grass to keep it healthy.
Well, I was soon engaged in burning massive areas of land to keep the grass healthy. This was
land that was to become our future national parks. I couldn’t help but observe the fact that we
were baring the soil, and that the bare soil was subsequently being carried away by the rainfall.
And as I mention in my TED Book, I actually took to walking in the rain so that I could see what
was happening for myself. And just found it was wrong, you know? Of course, I didn’t have
answers, but I began very seriously looking for them.
Then came one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Because the land degradation was so bad, but
there wasn’t any livestock on it, I proved the problem must be that there were too many
elephants. And the government, after investigating my book and approving, shot 40,000
elephants. But the desertification only got worse, and it’s still getting worse to this day. As I look
back, one my biggest findings came from trying something, making a mistake and saying, “Well,
why did it go wrong?” So actually some of the biggest findings came from the failures.
Another big finding for me was when I happened to pick up a farming magazine off a coffee
table in a farmer’s house and read an article by John Acocks. John was a botanist studying the
extension of the Karoo Desert bushes taking over what had been grassland. He had concluded
that the land was understocked—was carrying too few animals—but was overgrazed. So he said
South Africa was deteriorating because of overgrazing and understocking. This caused a furor in
the scientific community. Acocks was ridiculed, but to me it was brave new thinking. I actually
drove all the way down to the Cape to go and see him personally and was able to visit some of
the ranchers he was working with.
Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
Now, I’m always looking for places where something different is happening. Some people call
that “positive deviance.” I spotted one such deviance while I was visiting a ranch: A patch of
land that was visibly much better than the rest. I got very excited and asked the rancher what had
happened in that spot. He told me the sheep he was using had crowded there for a short time.
That was a big moment for me, the moment when I suddenly realized connection between what I

was seeing there, and what I had first observed with large wildlife herds. That’s when I realized
we could possibly use livestock to mimic the wild animals. It was a big turning point.
But the most difficult piece of the puzzle, the one I still believe we never could have discovered
in Africa, was that the greatest single cause resulting in desertificaion is overresting the land.
And I really believe we could only have discovered that in America. Because when I got here, I
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found such vast areas of land with nothing on them. I mean, it was almost like being at sea.
There was not a sound — not a bird chirp, nothing. In Africa, India, South America, anywhere
else I’d been, it was hard to find silence. There were birds, monkeys, something all around you.
But when I struck national parks in America with not a sound, and still saw terrible
desertification taking place, that was a big horror moment.
GS: In Holistic Management, you talked a bit about your experiences trailing both humans
and wildlife, and how that enabled you to see what was actually happening. I appreciate
that. The ranch I’m on is pretty rough country, and sometimes we just can’t find our cattle.
If you can’t trail, you’re not going to do much good out here.
AS: I spent a lot of my life—20 years of it—in war, training army trackers and commanding a
tracker unit, and then in the Game Department, tracking lions, and elephants and poachers. So
I’ve spent literally thousands of hours tracking people or animals, and training others to do it.
And yes, that was an incredible opportunity; rarely do scientists have the opportunity to be trying
to solve a problem on the land, and then spend so many thousands of hours tracking. I mean, we
couldn’t dictate where guerrilla gangs would penetrate the country, but wherever they came, we
had to go and track them down. And so we tracked in every imaginable sort of county.
Then you have the long nights where you sit and think about it: Why the hell was it easy today?
Why was it so difficult yesterday? What sort of land are we on? What sort of climate are we in
here? Am I in a national park or on communal land or on a commercial ranch? You’re thinking
about it all every night, and the next day you’re tracking again all damn day.
Only many years later did I read the book by Liebenberg, where he explains pretty logically that
tracking was probably the origin of science. I think his argument was very good, because a good
tracker is not just following tracks. A good tracker is interpreting all the time, from every little
sign, you know? Not just interpreting the age of the tracks but also: Is it wounded? Is it hungry?

A good tracker is interpreting a lot.
Allan Savory gave a talk with a solution for land degradation that set TED2013 abuzz. Today, he
releases the TED Book, The Grazing Revolution.
GS: It certainly led to good work! Can you tell me a little bit about your TED Book? Your
earlier works have been specifically targeted to land managers. But of course TED casts a
much broader net, and I’m wondering what do you think urban dwellers can bring to the
land-management table? What’s your intention there?
AS: Urban dwellers are the only ones that can save the situation. Let me explain that: The bulk
of the populations of almost every country have moved to the cities, or are moving there. That’s
where the voting power is — the mass of public opinion is. Now the stuff I talked about at TED,
we’ve talked about for years. Now you might ask: Well, why did nothing change? At first, I too
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could not understand. It did not seem logical. But as I grappled with it, I went back to
researching other fields to see if there was any reason for this, and I found there was.
Hard systems are everything we’re using right now — computers, phones, planes, the clothes
you’re wearing, the room you’re in. Everything there involves 100% use of technology and
expertise to make it, and nothing we make — including space exploration vehicles and so on —
is complex. Everything we make is complicated. Nothing is self-renewing. If the computer is
missing a part, it doesn’t work, or the plane is missing a part, it doesn’t work. It can’t self-
organize.
But if we look at human organizations, they are complex. In other words, they do what they’re
designed to do, and can be very efficient, be they a university, a hospital, etc. But they—because
they’re complex, self-organizing, composed of hundreds of individual humans all interacting—
they have what are called emergent properties, things that emerge that weren’t planned or
intended. And these can result in what system science calls “wicked problems.” This doesn’t
mean they’re amoral — just that they’re extremely difficult to solve.
There are two wicked problems of human organizations. One is that they cannot—they simply
cannot—accept new scientific insights ahead of society in general. And so that is why my TED
Talk in 20 minutes did more than 50 years of struggle within the scientific community. Because
it was seen by—as far as I can make out— over a million people. And so the information is now

getting to society. And already organizations that have been aloof or blocked us or resisted are
beginning to collaborate with us and change.
So it’s only the people in the cities that can begin to change public opinion or societal view.
When there’s a sufficient groundswell, then our institutions can change. We’re not going to be
able to stop the desertification of the United States when so much of the land is federal-owned
land under government agencies that are trying to save the wildflowers or the horses or stop the
terrible droughts and floods that are occurring in America. We’re not going to be able to stop
those until the public opinion is deeper, until people understand that there is no option but
livestock over most of that land, and that these policies need to be developed holistically.
GS: It would seem like a holistic approach would require us to rethink the entire scientific
method. I mean, if you look at education in this day and age, there’s ever more pressure to
specialize. The higher level you attain, the more it requires you to focus on ever-narrower
subjects, and it seems like we would really have to rework everything.
AS: That’s very much part of the problem. John Ralston Saul points out — after studying what’s
happened since Voltaire’s time, the Age of Enlightenment, where we were no longer going to
have massive blunders because organizations would be headed by professional-trained people
and you could no longer buy or inherit your position — that following that period in history, the
blunders increased. He notes that no matter how brilliant the people, no matter how well-
meaning and caring, if they’re in an institution or organization, because of complexity, what
emerges very often lacks common sense and humanity.
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So you can—as I’ve done—talk to city audiences almost anywhere and say: Does it make sense
for the United States to produce oil to grow corn to produce fuel? And people just laugh and say:
No, that’s stupid and it’s inhumane. Well, thousands of scientists employed and paid salaries by
organizations signed off on that. I was in Australia recently and I found it’s a greater crime with
heavier penalties for a farmer to sell you fresh, clean raw milk than it is to sell drugs. See, it
doesn’t make sense.
Saul attributed that to the education system. And quoting Saul here, he said, “The reality is that
the division of knowledge into feudal fiefdoms of expertise has made general understanding and
coordinated action not simply impossible but despised and distrusted.”

GS: I remember back in the ‘80s, as ranchers we were under a lot of pressure from
environmental groups—they really wanted to remove all livestock from public lands.
AS: Yeah, “cattle-free by ’93.”
GS: Exactly. The idea that industrial agriculture could somehow save us: Could you
comment on that at all?
AS: Those environmentalists, they’re trained in the same universities. I understand them,
because I also once believed that if we could get rid of the livestock and return to just wildlife,
we might be able to stop the degradation of the land. But again, I was wrong, because that
became a major multi-billion dollar industry, mainly in places like Texas and South Africa. But
every single game ranch without exception that I’ve been on, the land is still deteriorating. I held
those same beliefs — that we just had to get rid of livestock — so I understand those
environmentalists. In my case, I just saw that I was wrong. And I loved the land and wildlife
more than I hated livestock. So I changed.
GS: I have a personal question to ask. Most of us who are involved in agriculture, who are
not landowners, have kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that the rewards come in other
than financial ways. It seems to me like the best thing about being able to manage livestock
on a big piece of land is that every day you get a chance to appreciate just what a gift it is to
get to come and live on this planet, you know? And it seems like we operate under this
economic system that measures everything in terms of dollars and cents. I mean, most
economic theory would say we could measure all goods in those terms, and that doesn’t
appear to be a defensible assumption. And the other assumption is that all growth is good,
the more the better. It seems like a holistic approach would require that we rethink those
things, particularly the one that equates happiness with dollars and cents.
AS: You’re absolutely right. But again, we will not solve this by just taking a holistic approach,
although that is necessary. We’ll only solve it by actually developing policies holistically. The
things you mentioned just cannot go on. I mean, constant growth in a finite world is just simply
not scientific. The use of fiat money — where money makes money—and wealth is
accumulating ever more in the 1% — that’s inevitable with the monetary system we have. And
then the development, or the measurement of growth on gross domestic product, is just
ridiculous. For example, how can it possibly be holistically sound, or scientifically sound, or

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