American Journal of Economics and Sociology最新文献

In the era of the digital economy, companies strive to promote green innovation by enhancing their ESG performance, aiming to create new advantages for high-quality corporate development. We investigate the influence and mechanism of corporate digital transformation, ESG performance, and green innovation using data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed enterprises in China between 2012 and 2021. The study reveals that good ESG performance significantly fosters green innovation. Additionally, digital transformation plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between ESG performance and green innovation, which remains consistent even after conducting a series of robustness tests. The findings of this study offer valuable insights for improving the top-level planning of “Digital Nation,” promoting the development of ESG concepts, and achieving “carbon peaking,” and “carbon neutrality.”

The effect of endowment equality on trust may stem from outcome inequality aversion or changes in expected trustworthiness. Here, we measure trust as the expectation of honesty in a sender-receiver game, where participants must make trust decisions without knowing the outcome. Our design enables us to isolate the effect of initial endowment inequality on trust. Our results show that endowment inequality reduces trust regardless of whether it favors the sender or the receiver. We further find that the frequency of lies is insensitive to endowment inequality. Our results amplify the importance of equal starting positions in promoting trust.

COVID-19 put to the test the understanding of the meaning of “science” by the medical profession, the media, and the public. Unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals were misled by those who spoke on behalf of science but who confused plausible stories with scientific explanation. Scientific understanding comes from theories, which generate hypotheses, which are, in turn, confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical evidence that is evaluated using statistical methods. In our daily lives, we may judge the validity of a hypothesis based on its plausibility, and for most trivial cases that is sufficient. But it is a mistake to imagine that science can proceed on that basis. Yet, scientists themselves are often confused about the foundations of the scientific method. “Evidence-based medicine” is now being used to discredit all medical evidence other than randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the supposed “gold standard” of medical research. This insistence on a single method that is deemed “best practice” has the ironic effect of replacing science with plausibility in medicine. RCTs fail to live up to their vaunted status because of frequent insufficiencies in randomization related to confounding errors and their magnitudes. When randomized trials were compared with observational studies in a meta-analysis of thousands of studies, the differences in conclusions were negligible. The entire framework of COVID-19 policy has been based on plausible hypotheses, not backed by genuine scientific evidence. Critics are correct in claiming that COVID-19 policies have been based on politics, not science.

The Great Reset, as envisioned by the World Economic Forum, involves another step in the evolution toward a system of close cooperation between the national security state and key corporations that can manage information and limit dissent. In return for allowing state control of many facets of personal life, the state offers to take care of the needs of citizens who are in compliance with their assigned place in the social order. Already citizens have given up considerable autonomy and allow constant surveillance, mostly through smartphones. The only true alternative to a paternalist trajectory is to imagine a different kind of great reset, one in which society is organized around genuine principles of self-governance and self-reliance. This idea can be traced to the American social theorist Henry George and further back to roots in ancient China of the philosophy of wu wei. The main idea is that higher-order systems are designed to offer both stability and freedom to lower-order systems. Rather than trying to abolish an intrusive state apparatus, the aim is to create systems that obviate the need for a welfare state or a warfare state. This is a tall order to fill, but it is worth striving for as a way of preserving the distinctive human capacities for both individual initiative and social bonding. Unless millions work to create a decentralized world order, we are almost surely doomed to endure a technocratic future of increasing surveillance and management of our private lives.

Digital infrastructure considers the advantages of traditional infrastructure and high-tech information technology and can optimize the allocation of green resources in the service industry to a large extent. Based on the calculation of the level of digital infrastructure in 30 provinces and cities in China from 2011 to 2020, this study analyzes the impact of digital infrastructure on the resource allocation efficiency of the service industry from a theoretical and empirical perspective. The study found that digital infrastructure can improve the efficiency of green resource allocation in the service industry; however, at the subdivision level, only its operation dimension has a significant and positive impact on the efficiency of green resource allocation in the service industry, and the improvement effect of the construction dimension is insignificant. Analyzing the mechanism of action shows that digital infrastructure can indirectly optimize the allocation of green resources in the service industry by deepening the degree of informatization and improving the level of innovation. Further analysis shows that the impact of digital infrastructure on the efficiency of green resource allocation in the service industry presents a complex nonlinear trend and regional heterogeneity. The research conclusions provide a policy reference for optimizing the allocation of green resources in the service industry and promoting high-quality economic growth under the background of digital infrastructure.

Four think tanks with close ties to the highest levels of government have shaped American foreign policy for decades. They are the Council on Foreign Relations, the RAND Corporation, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission. With direct ties to government officials who have engaged in various covert operations, these organizations provide a space within which advocates of global control can share ideas and develop new policies. Among the groups that have bravely questioned the consensus-forming character of these think tanks are groups of people whose relatives died on 9/11. Because of their investigations into the government officials whose careers have blossomed as a result of 9/11, these ordinary citizens have become sharp critics of the expansionist ideology that was seemingly legitimized by 9/11.

False flag operations are acts of deception carried out by government officials to blame other countries or political groups for an attack against the nation with the aim of stirring up a desire for retribution against the supposed perpetrator. Since the effectiveness of a false-flag operation depends on preventing the truth from becoming widely known, it is impossible to know how often such operations have been carried out. Nevertheless, some historical events have been revealed in time, so we can better understand how they operate. The focus here is on false-flag operations in Western Europe and Turkey, carried out as part of the Gladio program during the Cold War under the supervision of the CIA. In each case, the CIA persuaded NATO members to recruit right-wing operatives to engage in terrorist actions and then blame the resulting deaths on left-wing groups, mostly communists. In this way, the United States used deception and terror to prevent communists from gaining power in Europe after World War II.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) was established in 1971 with the nominal purpose of bringing together leaders to discuss global problems. However, it is well on its way to becoming the most powerful institution in the world, merely by setting forth an agenda for global management that is attractive to many political and business leaders. Two of the central issues on which the WEF has focused are climate change and the pandemic. The first has a depth of scientific support, but the WEF's stance and official pronouncements on the latter were never based on normal scientific review procedures. Since the WEF was a catalyst in the rush to judgment on COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates, this suggests that the WEF is primarily guided by political motives, not by science. In fact, the way the WEF approaches the climate issue—as an excuse to restrict freedom without promoting renewable energy sources—makes evident the true motives of the WEF. As a result of the WEF's political use of the climate issue, the validity of climate science has been tarnished in the public mind. If there were true political will to solve the existential problem for future generations, the following could be undertaken immediately: To convert the oil industry to renewable energy, national governments of the world could agree to require that the fossil fuel companies receiving tax dollars convert to renewable energy at a rate of 7%–8% per year. Compounded, within 10 years, these companies would still be dominating the energy game, but with safe sustainable alternatives.

The World Health Organization's broad definition of health embraces physical, mental and social well-being. Expressed in its 1946 constitution alongside concepts of community participation and national sovereignty, it reflected an understanding of a world emerging from centuries of colonialist oppression and the public health industry's shameful facilitation of fascism. Health policy would be people-centered, closely tied to human rights and self-determination. The COVID-19 response has demonstrated how these ideals have been undone. Decades of increasing funding within public-private partnerships have corroded the basis of global public health. The COVID-19 response, intended for a virus that overwhelmingly targeted the elderly, ignored norms of epidemic management and human rights to institute a regime of suppression, censorship, and coercion reminiscent of the power systems and governance that were previously condemned. Without pausing to examine the costs, the public health industry is developing international instruments and processes that will entrench these destructive practices in international law. Public health, presented as a series of health emergencies, is being used once again to facilitate a fascist approach to societal management. The beneficiaries will be the corporations and investors whom the COVID-19 response served well. Human rights and individual freedom, as under previous fascist regimes, will lose. The public health industry must urgently awaken to the changing world in which it works, if it is to adopt a role in saving public health rather than contributing to its degradation.