Daniel Gross
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Articles by Daniel Gross
AI Slop Coming to a Library Near You
Truth is, university faculty and librarians interact infrequently, perhaps to wrangle obscure research material or to provide newbies with a library introduction. But now that collaboration must deepen on behalf of anyone who cares about authentic knowledge. As a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, I was recently shocked to learn that AI slop had breached our carefully curated—and expensive—library holdings. Most shocking was that the incursion wasn't marginal.
Focusing on missions
Courtesy of GreenShield Since its founding in 1957, GreenShield has been a nonprofit, focused on responding to the evolving healthcare and insurance needs of Canadians, while pursuing its social mission of Better Health for All. The fourth largest Canadian private health and dental insurer, with 7.5 million Canadians served, has a nonprofit structure that allows the organization to reinvest its earnings to extend its social impact.
How Solar Power Is Changing the World
Solar energy is powering more of our lives, but the Earth keeps getting hotter—and we’re nearing what has been called a “point of no return.” Plus: • Why bother posting on social media? • A marriage unfolding on the high seas • Amy Bloom recommends her favorite family novels Daniel A. Gross A story editor at The New Yorker.
Are We Living in a Dystopia?
8 hours ago There will be numerous opportunities to decrease your tax burden this year. As a CPA, here's the playbook I'm giving to my clients. Millions of Americans were in a holding pattern in 2024, waiting to make major decisions on business expansion, buying equipment, hiring, or even purchasing investment …
How Black Workers Challenged the Italian Mafia
A story of intrigue and power involving union organizers, Black laundry workers, the mafia, and the FBI. Melrose Linen was a hellhole in 1980. A large commercial laundry surrounded by cemeteries in the industrial wastelands of the northeast side of Detroit, serving the city’s elite hotels, restaurants, and factories; turning out truckloads of clean tablecloths, napkins, sheets, towels, uniforms, and all manner of linen daily.
How the Divestment Movement Can Fund the Revolution
A former student organizer proposes a strategy for the divestment movement to achieve victory while fundamentally transforming the organizing landscape in the process. Originally Published in Waging Nonviolence The Pro-Palestinian divestment movement has erupted across the country, after over a decade of bubbling and stirring under the guidance of organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine.
Reflection on the Power to Win Report: Organizing for a Just Future
Lifelong organizer Jennifer Epps-Addison shares crucial lessons on power and gives us a glimpse behind the Power to Win report and what she and hundreds of other organizers are thinking. I've been organizing my entire life—my mom might even say since I emerged from the womb. I’ve always had the desire to seek justice, whether it was cussing out a teacher who I felt was picking on a classmate, or taking on the playground bully.
A Departed Labor “Saint” Offers Vital Insights for This Moment
Staughton Lynd, worker-led unionism, and the total rejection of restraints on it. We’re in a union moment –– and that’s an understatement. The conditions to form or advance a labor union in the United States are as good as they’ve been in many generations. People who work in an array of jobs and geographies are turning towards unionism in staggering numbers.
West’s chip subsidy race will benefit China
Wealth Asia Connect Middle East Treasury & Capital Markets Europe ESG Forum TechTalk Sign in or register for free to view content Danielle Welsh-Rose head of the Sustainability Institute, APAC, and ESG investment director, Asia Pacific abrdn - JOINED THE EVENT - Webinar APAC Climate Change Progress & Obstacles in 2022 View Highlights Maxime Perrin head of sustainable investment Lombard Odier Investment Managers - JOINED THE EVENT - Webinar Sustainable investing - the new market standard
West’s chip subsidy race will benefit China
Wealth Asia Connect Middle East Treasury & Capital Markets Europe ESG Forum TechTalk Sign in or register for free to view content Bashar Al Natoor global head of Islamic finance Fitch Ratings - JOINED THE EVENT - 5th Global Islamic Finance Issuers and Investors Leadership Dialogue Opportunities beyond uncertainty View Highlights Nor Masliza Sulaiman group head investment banking, deputy chief executive officer CIMB Investment Bank - JOINED THE EVENT - 6th Global Islamic Finance Issuers and...
Can Seawalls Save Us From Rising Seas and Surging Storms?
Pacifica, California, just south of San Francisco, is the kind of beachfront community that longtime residents compare to Heaven. One of its streets is called Paradise Drive; local fishermen brag that Pacifica Pier is among the state’s best places to catch salmon, striped bass, and crab. Every few years, a superbloom blankets the coast with golden wildflowers. When the sun cuts through the region’s famous fog, the sky sometimes glows, as in a Turner painting.
Central bank asset buying real inflation culprit
Wealth Asia Connect Treasury & Capital Markets Europe ESG Forum TechTalk Robert Yap executive chairman YCH Group - WILL JOIN THE EVENT - 8th Asia Sustainable Infrastructure Finance Leaders Dialogue Leading the way in sustainable infrastructure Learn More Han Ming Ho partner & co-head of investment funds, Asia Pacific Sidley Austin - JOINED THE EVENT - In-person roundtable Asia and the future of funds
A Banker’s Journey: How Edmond J. Safra Built a Global Financial Empire
Edmond J. Safra, born and raised in Beirut, was the scion of a prominent Syrian Jewish family that had long been a stalwart of the community in Aleppo. At 15, he was sent by his father, Jacob, the owner of a Beirut bank, to Milan to seek out new business opportunities.
Are overly optimistic leaders forgetting their history?
When economic times are good, it’s easy to fall into the trap of expecting that growth will only continue. Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines, recently made a rather bold statement: “I don’t think we’re ever going to lose money again.” Such a declaration deserves points for confidence, but might get marked down for historical awareness. Superoptimistic projections after several years of positive results are both typical and something of a contrary indicator.
Innovating the Mundane
Space tourism and self-driving cars are exciting to ponder, but what about just making our current systems work better? Cars that drive themselves or run on fuel cells! Space tourism and manned missions to Mars! Tunnel-based loops that transport people at high speed in underground pods! Everywhere you look, futuristic whiz-bang technologies that promise to usher in a golden age filled with a higher quality of life are being promoted as potential near-term realities.
How Amazon Fuels Deflation
While central banks puzzle about the lack of inflation, the e-commerce giant’s swift move to slash prices at Whole Foods shows how business is keeping prices down. Last weekend, in Jackson Hole, Wyo., as they do every year, many of the world’s central bankers gathered to discuss vital economic matters that seize the attention of global markets. Amid the big topics of discussion at the annual shindig convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City was inflation, or the lack thereof.
Movie Theatres Take Steps to Disrupt Themselves
To address slow growth, multiplexes are replacing humans with machines, and popcorn and soda with gourmet treats. If you have a few spare hours, you can divert yourself by going to the local multiplex and watching a mindless but diverting movie.
Oath CEO Tim Armstrong Believes in the Promise of the Mobile Consumer
A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2018 issue of strategy+business. Tim Armstrong works in an open-plan office that sits at an extremely busy and often cacophonous intersection near Union Square in Manhattan. As the CEO of Oath, the unit of telecommunications giant Verizon that houses AOL, Yahoo, and the Huffington Post, among other brands, Armstrong is a key player in — and theoretician of — the convergence of content, mobile communications, and advertising.
Don’t Fret About “Gas Guzzlers”
When gas prices are high, and remain persistently high, U.S. consumers tend to choose smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. When gas prices are low, and remain persistently low, Americans tend to choose bigger, more muscular cars — especially pickup trucks and SUVs. Because cars are long-lived assets — the typical car on the road today is about 11 years old — this dynamic raises concerns that U.S. motorists are setting themselves up for big problems if gas prices were to rise.
Friction Complicates Tech Adoption
The electric vehicle and green energy industries show how rolling out innovations can be delayed in the face of time-consuming obstacles. Item: In a matter of a few years, we could have self-driving cars — brilliant machines that will whisk people to their destinations quickly and safely. Auto companies in Europe and the U.S. are pledging to roll them out in the next couple of years. Or not.
A Tale of Two Cities
Consider this story of two U.S. metropolises. On the one hand, there’s Detroit: a sad sack of the industrial Midwest, a few years removed from bankruptcy, hollowed out and struggling with a declining population. On the other hand, there’s Houston: a burgeoning urban sprawl that is one of the capitals of the global energy industry. The town’s surging growth in recent years has turned it into the nation’s fourth largest city.
The downside of the gig economy
In early March, the Wall Street Journal reported that a vital U.S. industry, trucking, is having difficulty hiring and retaining drivers. In 2015, according to the American Trucking Association, there was a shortage of 50,000 drivers. The turnover rate for drivers at large trucking companies stands at a crippling 81 percent. Nearly eight years into the U.S. economic expansion, and with 78 straight months of jobs growth, it is getting harder for employers to fill open positions of all kinds.
Economic Cycles Cut Both Ways
Life is procyclical. It’s a truism in the laws of physics: An object in motion acquires momentum, and hence becomes increasingly harder to stop — especially when it is going downhill. But the danger of procyclicality — particularly on the downside — is often overlooked in the economy and markets. That’s largely because broad-based economic downturns are so few and far between, and because we forget the influence of debt.
A Banker's Journey: How Edmond J. Safra Built a Global Financial Empire by Daniel Gross
New Biography, A Banker's Journey, Explores the Remarkable Life of Edmond J. Safra, a Leading Figure in Finance, Banking, Religion, and Philanthropy in the 20th Century A Banker's Journey: How Edmond J.
Pedal to the metal
We’re in a strange moment. There is a heightened sense of urgency and, well, energy, surrounding action and investment on climate change. From electric vehicles to solar panels, global industries are slowly scaling up, expanding, and increasing their market share and penetration. All of which points to a future in which the reliance on fossil fuels will decline and emissions can become more decoupled from economic activity.
It’s an ad, ad, ad, ad world Original
In recent years, advertising—or at least the advertising that baby boomers grew up with—has often been written off or pegged as a historical relic. The hit AMC television show Mad Men, whose seven-year run ended in 2015, painted Madison Avenue as a hotbed of drunken-office behavior, misogyny, and cynicism. In an age of DVRs and streaming, pundits have proclaimed the end of the 30-second spot.
Travelers Are Suffering from the “Last Mile” Problem
On a recent flight from Athens to Santorini, the 150-mile hop over the Aegean was a smooth 30 minutes. But upon landing at Santorini International Airport, the large jet of about 200 passengers sat on the runway for 45 minutes.
How to Make Talent Scouts Work for You
This is an excerpt from Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, May 2022). Cowen is an economics professor at George Mason University, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog, and co-founder of Marginal Revolution University. Gross is the founder of startup accelerator Pioneer, and was previously a partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of Cue, which Apple acquired in 2013.
How to Make Talent Scouts Work for You
This is an excerpt from Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, May 2022). Cowen is an economics professor at George Mason University, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog, and co-founder of Marginal Revolution University. Gross is the founder of startup accelerator Pioneer, and was previously a partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of Cue, which Apple acquired in 2013.
The brave, new world of work
Strategy+business contributors have been doing some deep thinking on the seismic changes that have shaken offices—and home offices—over the past two years. To say that the way we’re working is changing is one of the great understatements of our age. I’m not just talking about learning to add cool Zoom backgrounds and figuring out when to stop responding to emails.
When more is more
For eons, humans’ approach to making and consuming things has been governed by scarcity. What if we bet on abundance instead? For pretty much the entire stretch of history, humans have struggled to manage scarce resources. We’ve built the infrastructure to ensure we have what we need to survive because we’ve been socialized to know that there might not always be enough to go around. It’s why the Egyptians erected vast storehouses and ancient civilizations constructed networks of cisterns.
On the wisdom, and madness, of markets
Are markets efficient by nature, capable of solving problems on their own? Or are markets remarkably inefficient, prone to irrationality and breakdown? The answer is yes, and yes. So much of business and economic analysis depends on the idea that companies and the individuals that make them up are rational actors who make decisions in their own self-interest, and that the market tends to sort things out. That’s certainly true over the long term. But, of course, in the short-term, it’s another story.
Logistical feats
A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of strategy+business. Christopher Mims, a technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, is one of the leading chroniclers of the increasingly intense and complex tango between humans and the software and hardware that governs their lives as professionals and consumers.
Putting Electric Cars on Wisconsin Roads
Modern cynicism dictates that, without a substantial financial motivation for industry leaders, politicians and lobbyists, climate change would be allowed, possibly even encouraged, to run its wrathful course. It is no great comfort, either, that the wealthiest among us, those in a position to affect change on the largest scales, have begun jettisoning themselves off-planet, possibly under the misguided notion that wealth insulates, but the vacuum of space insulates completely.
Is vertical integration making a comeback?
In the headlines crawling across the screen, you can glimpse vertical integration’s revival, as companies reveal plans to control and own aspects of their business that they were until recently content to let suppliers handle. In November, Ford announced that it would partner with GlobalFoundries to develop and produce computer chips. Last summer, Home Depot chartered its own container ship. Ikea, not to be outdone, is purchasing its own shipping containers.
What did we learn from COP26? Consider the three Ms
The recently concluded COP26 in Glasgow was, among other things, a festival of acronyms. There’s COP itself (Conference of Parties). And also GFANZ (Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero), ISSB (International Sustainability Standards Board), and TSVCM (Taskforce on Scaling up Voluntary Carbon Markets). Watching from afar, I came up with my own acronym to define the key takeaways from the two-week confab: MMM. Momentum, money, and measurement. Related stories Momentum.
Best Business Books 2021: Read all about it
In recent years, there’s been a tendency to view books—those hefty stacks of paper, imprinted with ink—as a means of escape from a world that is, in the words of Wordsworth, too much with us. Curl up with a good book beside a roaring fire and forget, for a moment, the storms swirling outside. But for the people who write books, and for the large (and still growing) industry that supports their production, distribution, and sale, it’s exactly the opposite.
Aligning climate goals and business imperatives
The fanfare surrounding the opening of the UN’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow this week shows just how pervasive global concerns about the climate are. The backdrop, of course, is that while it seems like a great deal of progress is being made on decarbonization, it isn’t happening fast enough. That’s one of the findings of the PwC Net Zero Economy Index 2021, released last week, which tracks the growth—or decline—of CO2 emissions among the 20 largest economies in the world. The good news?
History lessons
For a historian, Adam Tooze spends a lot of time thinking about the present, and the immediate future, of our economic and geopolitical systems. Born and educated in Britain, the 54-year-old professor teaches at Columbia University. His early works included a definitive economic history of Nazi Germany, The Wages of Destruction, and a history of World War I. Of late, he has refocused his lens to take in more recent events at a global level.
Rethinking spare capacity
When Joni Mitchell sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” she was fretting about paving over green spaces to make parking lots. Today, many people wax nostalgic about something else that has vanished before our eyes, with devastating results: spare capacity.
Business digs deep for sustainability
Changes in the business climate—and the climate—can cause leaders to rethink the ways in which value is created and lost. In July, Patti Poppe, CEO of California utility PG&E, said that the company is undertaking a US$20 billion capital-intensive effort to bury 10,000 miles of power lines. Why? Doing so would help cut the risk of wildfires, which have ravaged the company’s service areas, and are becoming more common and dangerous due to drought and climate change.
Why bigger isn’t always better in banking
Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power by Zachary Karabell, Penguin Press, 2021 Businesses often find it difficult to sustain their positions over a long period of time. A large percentage of restaurants fail within a few years of opening. The average company in the S&P 500 lasts for about 17 years in that index, according to Innosight. And as big thinker Geoffrey West notes, it’s possible that companies, like animals, may have something of a natural life span.
Alex Brill: US spending and tax policy after the COVID recession
Podcast Ep. 227 — Political Economy with James Pethokoukis EconomicsPethokoukisPolitical EconomyTax ReformUS Economy March 24, 2021 Is spending $1.9 trillion as the economy emerges from the COVID recession a wise move? At what point will policymakers begin paying for their spending initiatives? And what kinds of taxation will we engage in to collect more revenue when the time comes? On today’s episode, I discuss these questions and many more with Alex Brill.
The political economy of immigration and institutions: My long-read Q&A with Alex Nowrasteh
By James Pethokoukis and Alex Nowrasteh Prosperous societies rely on institutions, including relatively high social trust, the rule of law, and respect for private property rights. These institutions help explain why immigrants become so much more productive when they move to developed countries. However, immigration restrictionists will argue that a large enough volume of immigrants will undermine such institutions, making everyone worse off.
Harvard Students Are Clueless About Fighting Fossil Fuels. They Could Learn a Thing or Two From Stanford.
The Juice Forget fossil-fuel divestment. Harvard could be greener—and save money—by doing what the California university already has. Stanford University in June, 2011. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Conny Liegl/Flickr Stanford and Harvard have long competed to be the most elite American university. Harvard may lead in longevity (379 years to 130 years) and the number of presidents it’s graduated (8 to 1).
Company That Relies on NAFTA and Supports the GOP Suddenly Regretting Both Decisions
Moneybox Oops. Susana Gonzalez/Getty Images Spare a thought for Kansas City Southern. One of America’s great railway companies, based in the heartland, it is the self-professed “NAFTA Railway”: Its network consists largely of railroads that reach deep into Mexico, through Mexico’s industrialized northeast, and extend to the Pacific’s Port of Lázaro Cárdenas and Gulf of Mexico ports like Tampico and Veracruz.
Pfizer’s vaccine machine
The Inside the Mind of the CEO interview series explores a wide range of critical decisions faced by chief executives around the world. For more insight, see PwC’s CEO Survey. Talk about a pivot. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was one year into his tenure. Bourla, born and educated in Greece, is a 27-year veteran of the company.
Pfizer’s vaccine machine
The Inside the Mind of the CEO interview series explores a wide range of critical decisions faced by chief executives around the world. For more insight, see PwC’s CEO Survey. Talk about a pivot. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was one year into his tenure. Bourla, born and educated in Greece, is a 27-year veteran of the company.
What Pick-Your-Own-Apple Orchards Teach About the American Economy
Moneybox Why pick-your-own orchards are a wasteful scam. A harvester picks apples by hand Photograph by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images. A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a poignant article about anguished fruit farmers in California. Because of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, they couldn’t find workers willing to pick their pears, even at $150 per day. And as a result, perfectly good fruit rotted in the fields.
Ensuring digital access for global youth
Ideas that work December 22, 2020 Share: USAA’s critical mission Wayne Peacock, CEO of the insurer for military members and their families, is building on a century of tradition while deploying new technology to reinvent the business. by Daniel Gross “I forgot I was in a Zoom room.” With our live online courses you will learn from MIT faculty in real-time, network with an intimate group of global peers, and gain skills that are immediately applicable. Learn more. advertisement Is the gig up?
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