Latest news with #JohnCassidy
CBC
17 hours ago
- Climate
- CBC
Another earthquake felt in the Fort St. John region
Earthquakes Canada reported a 4.4 magnitude quake in the Fort St. John area on Wednesday morning. It occurred about 74 kilometres northwest of the city just before 11:30 a.m. PT at a depth of five kilometres and was "lightly felt," according to the earthquake database. No damage was reported. It's the latest in a series of minor earthquakes that have struck northeastern B.C. this year, after four quakes of magnitude 3.1 or higher were detected in a single week in February. The quakes are "suspected industry-related" events, according to Natural Resources Canada — in other words, related to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the area. In this case, the B.C. Energy Regulator (BCER) has linked the quake to fracking in the Wonowon area. Fracking is a process that blasts water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure more than two kilometres underground to release natural gas trapped in rock formations. "Earthquakes can be induced by ... mining, by oil and gas extraction," Natural Resources Canada earthquake seismologist John Cassidy said in a February interview. Earlier this year, the BCER announced it had begun tracking all seismic events of magnitude 1.5 or higher to further understand the links between industrial activity and earthquakes. So far, it shows a seismic event nearly every day this year, though the vast majority were not felt.
New York Times
14-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
250 Years of Capitalism: Soulless, Exploitative and All but Unstoppable
Given how reliably Americans tend to favor promises of plenty, it has been curious to see a president inherit a humming economy and then proceed to gut the federal work force, start a chaotic trade war and celebrate the scarcity about to ensue. Asked about potential shortages of goods, President Trump has repeatedly offered versions of the same strange example. 'I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs — that's 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls,' he told NBC News. 'I think they can have three dolls, or four dolls.' (He added, 'They don't need to have 250 pencils, they can have five.') Trump makes a few cameo appearances in John Cassidy's new book, 'Capitalism and Its Critics,' for his demonstrated ability to brag about his riches while tapping into growing discontent with the global capitalist system. Some of the critics Cassidy features in this book wanted to replace capitalism entirely; others, like Trump, have sought to preserve a core of self-interest while remaking capitalism's rules. Rejecting a world financial order fueled by free trade and a bedrock American dollar, the president has been promoting a grab bag that includes both tariffs and crypto — a Trumpian hybrid of the very old and the very new. But then capitalism has always been a protean force. In the 18th century, merchant capitalism yielded to industrial capitalism; in the postwar era, Keynesianism yielded to neoliberalism. Cassidy, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, originally envisioned writing a 'shortish history' that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he soon realized that to properly understand the roots of capitalism's discontents, he needed to go much further back (some 250 years) and write much longer (more than 600 pages). Despite the obvious differences among the people in this book, they share some complaints. 'Over the centuries,' Cassidy writes, 'the central indictment of capitalism has remained remarkably consistent: that it is soulless, exploitative, inequitable, unstable and destructive, yet also all-conquering and overwhelming.' Cassidy begins in the early days of the Industrial Revolution and ends with some thoughts about the economic upheaval that may be wrought by A.I. In between he offers short chapters — 28 in all — dedicated to the life and work of figures both familiar and obscure. The result is an expansive history of capitalism that places less emphasis on economic abstractions like perfectly competitive markets and draws attention instead to how often capitalist systems have fallen short. 'It is barely hyperbole to say that capitalism is always in crisis, recovering from crisis or heading toward the next crisis,' Cassidy remarks. In 1857, a financial panic on Wall Street prompted Marx and Engels to believe that a collapse was imminent. 'The American crisis,' Marx wrote, 'is BEAUTIFUL.' Engels replied, 'The AMERICAN CRASH is superb.' But the state stepped in, as it usually does — averting wholesale disintegration by saving the capitalist system from blowing itself up. This habit of state intervention, of course, runs counter to laissez-faire orthodoxy, with its insistence that markets should be left to their own devices. Cassidy devotes a chapter to Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), the Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist who argued that free markets were such a 'stark utopia' that they required a strong state to lay the ground rules. They were also so disruptive that societies spontaneously tried to reassert some order in response: Writing during World War II, Polanyi described socialism (which he supported) and fascism (which he abhorred) as two disparate reactions to the same capitalist upheaval. As Polanyi put it, 'Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.' Polanyi was underappreciated in his day, when laissez-faire economics had been discredited by the Great Depression; he was rediscovered in the 1980s, when neoliberalism was ascendant and his grim view of unfettered capitalism served as a stinging rebuke. Cassidy shows how belated recognition was often the fate of capitalism's critics. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson (1903-83) was a colleague of John Maynard Keynes, who maintained that the state could get an economy out of a slump by spending money to stimulate demand. Robinson was a Keynesian who nevertheless recognized the limits of Keynesianism. Writing in the 1930s, she theorized about the possibility of unemployment getting so low that bargaining between employers and workers could lead to what was later called a 'wage-price spiral.' At the time, deflation was the biggest threat; it was only four decades later, when stagflation proved resistant to the Keynesian tool kit, that Robinson's analysis got its proper due. By then she was already frustrated by the state of the economics profession, including the 'bastard Keynesians' she accused of simplifying and deforming some of Keynes's 'acid' insights. Toward the end of her life, when asked by an economics student at Oxford if she would have done anything differently, she said she would have studied something more useful, like biology. Cassidy includes a number of thinkers like Robinson, who attacked capitalism from the left. He also writes about Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman — each in his own way a critic of what turned out to be a dying order, and who went on to become part of a new establishment. Those who have predicted capitalism's imminent collapse underestimate its ability to shape-shift into yet another configuration. But stability has always been tenuous: Resolving capitalism's many contradictions has also meant creating new ones. The most haunting figure in this book is an outlier: Thomas Carlyle, the 19th-century Scottish essayist, whose assumptions about both capitalism and humanity were so dark that he made no room for the possibility of social progress. He was an avowed racist and antisemite. He thought democracy was hopeless, and evinced utter contempt for 'the multitude.' But Carlyle's unrelentingly bleak vision, his insistence on hierarchy, his veneration of strongmen, don't look so out of place in today's reality. Nor does his ability to attract people who should have known better. Cassidy notes that Carlyle's admirers included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The Transcendentalists thought that Carlyle wanted the same future they did. They thrilled to his excoriations of a soulless 'mechanical age' and 'Mammon-worship.' They were willing to overlook some of his more unseemly 'exaggerations,' Cassidy writes, because, discounting all evidence to the contrary, they believed 'his intent was benign.'
Times
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Is capitalism doomed? (I wouldn't bet on it)
'Are economists human?' the economist Lord Crowther once asked in — where else? — The Economist, before mournfully adding that most people did not think so. In Capitalism and its Critics, the British-born John Cassidy takes the opposite view, although not all of his subjects, in fairness to them, would have identified themselves as economists. Across 28 chapters, Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker, aims to tell the history of capitalism through the eyes and lives of the system's critics. To normal people, economic theory is soul-crushing at the best of times. But Cassidy makes it all digestible by weaving together, in each chapter, the biography of each of his subjects with their key critique of capitalism, thus humanising otherwise dry debates
Auto Express
06-05-2025
- Automotive
- Auto Express
Electric car sales are still falling short of ZEV targets
Car registrations in the UK have fallen yet again for the sixth time in seven months, with EV sales still far away from the lofty targets still required by the ZEV Mandate following the conclusion of its review last month. Just over 120,000 new cars hit the road across the UK in April which, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), is 10.4 per cent fewer than in the same period last year. Crucially, however, although the popularity of electric cars continues to grow – the number of new examples registered last month was a modest eight per cent up on 2023, at 24,558 – market share still sits at around one in five new cars, which is eight per cent shy of what's required for 2025 by the ZEV mandate. Advertisement - Article continues below By way of explanation, the SMMT points towards the latest changes to VED (Vehicle Excise Duty) road tax in April. These saw electric cars now liable for the yearly charge of £195, as well as the hefty Expensive Car Supplement (also known as the Luxury Car Tax) of £425. Of course, it's not only EVs that were hit by the changes, because tax rises were seen across the board, notably with first-year tax rates seeing a big jump for the most polluting new vehicles. Such a wide-reaching tax increase meant many buyers brought their purchases forward in order to dodge some of the financial burden, but nevertheless the slump in sales is representative of a market full of uncertainty and lacking in support. Skip advert Advertisement - Article continues below The chief executive of the SMMT, Mike Hawes, described the latest figures as 'disappointing, but expected after March's surge.' Such a sentiment was backed up by John Cassidy, the managing director of sales at Close Brothers Ltd – one of the UK's largest car finance brokers and one of the firms caught up within the ongoing car finance scandal. 'Following a record month for electric vehicle registrations, April has proved to be something of a step back to normality in this regard,' Cassidy said. 'Numbers continue to fall well short of the zero emission vehicle mandate targets, and the Government needs to think seriously about how to incentivise uptake of electric vehicles.' Cassidy called for what he described as a 'funding boost for EV charging infrastructure', stating that '57 per cent of motor dealers believe there isn't enough time to improve the infrastructure for the ban to go ahead. Arguably, people are yet to be convinced that the 2030 target isn't unrealistic.' Hawes also called for Government action, noting that 'EV uptake is still being heavily and unsustainably subsidised by the industry, which is why a compelling package of measures from Government is essential if consumers are going to make the switch.' Auto Express has asked the Department for Transport whether it plans to introduce further measures to stimulate the market beyond what was announced at the end of the ZEV consultation, but it refused to comment, simply pointing to the changes it has already laid out. Come and join our WhatsApp channel for the latest car news and reviews... Find a car with the experts Ford Fiesta set to return? Icon could be reborn with a little help from Volkswagen Ford Fiesta set to return? Icon could be reborn with a little help from Volkswagen The Ford Fiesta could be coming back from the dead, and our exclusive image previews how it might look New Renault 4 2025 review: as good as the Renault 5 with the bonus of extra space New Renault 4 2025 review: as good as the Renault 5 with the bonus of extra space The new Renault 4 takes everything that's good about the Renault 5 and adds extra cabin and boot space New 2025 Kia PV5 van starts from a tempting £22,645 New 2025 Kia PV5 van starts from a tempting £22,645 All-new entry into the van market promises competitive pricing and comes with a range of up to 247 miles
Asia Times
06-05-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
AI-driven job loss is no cause for panic
Artificial intelligence (AI) software's uncanny ability to emulate some important human behaviors has sparked speculation about its impact on employment. Will increasingly intelligent robots replace human workers, creating massive unemployment with heavy social costs? Some writers, for example, The New Yorker's John Cassidy, recall the textile industry's tumultuous history in the early 19th-century United Kingdom, when sophisticated new automated equipment replaced then-highly skilled production workers. Many displaced workers became violent, including through attacks on the job-eliminating machines. Known as 'Luddites' after a leader of these activities, these rebels remain etched in the annals of industrial history for the ill social consequences caused by technology-driven unemployment. Fast forward to the present, John Cassidy asks if we can do better as AI job loss looms. To be sure, job losses in some activities are real. In fact, AI-driven employment changes are emerging in the writing of software code. Google and others are cutting by 20% the labor needed to write code by replacing low-skilled coders in the programming process with AI. This kind of productivity improvement is nothing new in software development. I recall early years in digital system development at RCA, when integrated circuit chips had several hundred active transistor devices that were laboriously interconnected with simple design rules to perform desired data processing functions. The process was so laborious that the floor of a room was used in the design process, with engineers writing the interconnections on blueprints. At RCA, we designed some avionic systems with such labor-intensive methods. This did not last long, as software was designed to automate the process. We soon built chips with thousands and then millions of interconnected transistor elements. So what happened to the engineers who were replaced by the improving software? Some moved into chip design software development, and some moved into system design. I don't recall that we had an employment problem because the company continuously invested in training the engineering force to allow people to move into different jobs as the technology improved. Today, chips with billions of transistors are designed with highly sophisticated equipment. There is a global shortage of chip designers capable of managing the process. That said, there will be employment dislocations as AI applications move into many business functions. Repetitive business operations are prime targets for AI implementations. Employees with such functions will, in fact, be replaced and need to be trained for jobs requiring new skills. But here again, we have seen such a job evolution process before. What happened to the many thousands of people who used to perform clerical functions or operations, such as telephone switchboard operators? New jobs emerged as technology matured. The simple but important answer is that technology can replace functions performed by humans only up to a point. In the end, human intelligence underwrites AI systems. The key to avoidance of technology-driven unemployment is national education that trains a technology-ready workforce. Henry Kressel is a technologist, inventor, author, and long-term private equity investor in technology companies. An industrial pioneer, he headed electronic device research at the RCA Laboratories, where he introduced the modern electro-optic technology.
