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Does sprawling Indonesia really need a new capital?

Even as he awaits official confirmation of his election to a second term, Indonesian President Joko Widodo appears to be thinking about his legacy. He’s proposing a $33 billion plan to relocate the capital far away from clogged Jakarta. The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. That doesn’t mean it’ll work. Jokowi, as the Indonesian leader is known, is ...

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Google reminds rapid growth isn’t guaranteed

Google investors may have had a flashback to the company’s bad old days of 2015. That year may feel like a distant memory. That was before news cycles were measured in seconds. It was before people were talking in earnest about FAANG stocks and before Mark Zuckerberg had sat through multiple rounds of congressional hearings. Back then, Google’s growth looked ...

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What we want doesn’t always make us happy

Much of modern economic theory is based around a simple idea: Human beings maximise utility. But what is utility? Many people think of it as happiness or pleasure; British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the inventor of utilitarianism, conceived of it this way. But this isn’t how modern economists think of the concept. To an economist, utility simply means how much people ...

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