When I and most other historians talk about parallels between the Gilded Age and today, the comparisons are structural. They reflect broad conditions affecting millions of people. It's when pundits pull particular examples from the past to explain the actions of individuals today that trouble arises. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens casts Thompson as a character out of a Horatio Alger novel: a working-class hero who pulled himself up by the bootstraps. Also writing in The New York Times, sociologist Zeynip Tufekci comes close to making Luigi Mangione a reincarnation of Alexander Berkman, the anarchist who tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Over in The New Yorker, Dhruv Khullar suggests that in its arbitrariness and callousness, the prototype for the U.S. medical system, which Mangione excoriated in his manifesto, originated somewhere in the Gilded Age. Today's historians and journalists obviously think the past has much to teach their fellow citizens. And their motives are sensible: They want to push back against the idea that the past is irrelevant, that everything important has occurred in the past 15 minutes ' a view reflected in a favorite phrase of President-elect Donald Trump to describe whatever crisis du jour is afflicting the United States: 'We've never seen anything like it.'...
The murder of Brian Thompson ' and the public's reaction to it ' shows that frustration with corporations has reached a fever pitch. We seem to have moved from a world of 'I don't trust you' to 'I hate you,' and, many Americans feel a great antipathy toward capitalism and capitalists. This is due, in part, to the failure of business, at large, to deliver value to customers, employees, and communities (as well as shareholders) simultaneously. Corporate leaders should step back in this moment and reflect on what role their organizations play in society and what trade-offs they'll need to make to ensure that their businesses work for everyone, not just investors. Three case studies show that such strategic, socially responsible thinking pays dividends....
The murder of Brian Thompson ' and the public's reaction to it ' shows that frustration with corporations has reached a fever pitch. We seem to have moved from a world of 'I don't trust you' to 'I hate you,' and, many Americans feel a great antipathy toward capitalism and capitalists. This is due, in part, to the failure of business, at large, to deliver value to customers, employees, and communities (as well as shareholders) simultaneously. Corporate leaders should step back in this moment and reflect on what role their organizations play in society and what trade-offs they'll need to make to ensure that their businesses work for everyone, not just investors. Three case studies show that such strategic, socially responsible thinking pays dividends....
Earlier this week, life sciences venture firm Dimension Capital announced it had raised a new $500 million second fund ' just two years after its first ' to hunt for startups that are using artificial intelligence to develop new medicines. Venture funding to AI-related biotech and healthcare startups hit only $4.8 billion in 2023, a significant decrease from 2022. But in 2024, funding to the area has bounced back ' with such startups raising $6.7 billion through early December, per Crunchbase data. !function(e,n,i,s){var d="InfogramEmbeds";var o=e.getElementsByTagName(n)[0];if(window[d]&&window[d].initialized)window[d].process&&window[d].process();else if(!e.getElementById(i)){var r=e.createElement(n);r.async=1,r.id=i,r.src=s,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,"script","infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js"); While you might think the general fervor around all things artificial intelligence means 2024 is a new high for the intersection of AI and biotech/healthcare, both 2021 and 2022 were strong funding years for the space. In 2021 ' which was a record year for venture capital investment overall ' $12.5 billion was raised by AI-related biotech/healthcare related startups....
