The Great Debate UK
from Felix Salmon:
Will the world ever have open borders?
My favorite bit in this video comes towards the end, when I ask Charles about the wonderful tweet he sent out last Friday, after the gay marriage bill passed the New York senate.
One day we'll see legal discrimination by *place* of birth as evil as discrim. by other features of birth --gender, orientation, color.less than a minute ago via web 
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Charles Kenny
charlesjkenny
I wanted to know, was this just a lovely sentiment, or does Charles really think this is going to happen? The answer is the latter, and Charles gives two strong reasons why that might be the case.
One is the way that the world is getting smaller and more interconnected. Countries make hundreds of agreements with each other, they set up organizations like the UN and the EU, and in general behave much more pleasantly towards each other than they ever have in the past. And at some level that has to be because doing so is what their people want.
Charles's second point was about mobility and immigration, and it's a great one. Greater levels of immigration aren't just a fantastic idea from a national-security standpoint and a fiscal standpoint, they're also demographically necessary for an aging America which has a lot of labor-intensive needs in a service sector which can't be outsourced. "The self-interest of people will weaken the effects of borders," says Kenny, which is surely true. Americans don't like immigration, but they love the low prices that immigration brings for their golf courses and swimming pools and McMansions.
from Felix Salmon:
Debating financial speculation with speculators
On Tuesday I moderated a panel at the New York Forum which featured, inter alia, Duncan Niederauer, the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, and Richard Robb, the CEO of Christofferson Robb, a money management firm which does its fair share of speculation.
My question at the beginning of this clip, for Niederauer, didn't come entirely out of the blue. Amar Bhidé had previously talked about the casino aspect of markets, and Andrew Ross Sorkin had talked about the distinction between speculation and investment. But Niederauer was not happy when I pushed him on these concepts. Wall Street is increasingly a game of speculation rather than investment, I said, and asked how a casino operator pushing people to make bets over the course of a millisecond was not part of the problem. Rather than engaging with the question, he simply shut me down: "I thought my job description was quite different than what you just described," he said. "So you must be talking to someone else."
Silver Web surfers face unique challenges
-Matthew Bath is technology editor at Which? The opinions expressed are his own.-
Today’s children take PCs for granted. Comfortable with cursors and wonderful with Windows, children use PCs for everything from watching video clips on YouTube to logging onto school networks to virtually hand in homework.
iPod Nano redesign challenges Flip
- Will Findlater is deputy editor of Stuff magazine. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” launch held a few surprises. Most were expecting major updates to the whole line of iPods, but it was only really the iPod Nano that got a thorough going-over.
