Some consumer and environmental movements have flourished in rich countries, even though Olson's theory suggests that firms and polluters should have a strong organisational advantage over consumers and inhalers of dirty air.

ECONOMIST: POLITICS BRIEF

At the same time the anti-globalisation and green movements have stirred a consumer backlash against a surfeit of choice.

ECONOMIST: The tyranny of choice

Enabling consumer electronic devices to respond to natural hand movements all around a screen, Elliptic's breakthrough technology is the first of its kind commercially available and has been incorporated in the Windows 8 Gesture Suite, introduced today.

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The newer CPI methodologies are designed to report not just on price movements, but on spending patterns, consumer choices, substitution bias, and product changes.

FORBES: Doubting The Big Lie That Inflation Is Not A Threat

Some consumer-research companies also employ goggle-mounted cameras to track eye movements so they can be sure what their subjects are looking at.

ECONOMIST: Facial monitoring

In the Alabama case, a consumer took Reglan and developed tardive dyskinesia, which causes incurable and involuntary muscle movements, and accused Wyeth, which is now owned by Pfizer, of failing to warn of the risk of long-term use.

FORBES: Pfizer Wants Court To Rehear Generic Labeling Case And Avoid Tort Hell

Now, with Purpose, my team and I are in the business of building and sustaining social movements around major global issues, and thinking about how that translates to collective consumer power.

FORBES: Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

Worse, with consumer prices sticky in concert with commodity prices that are most sensitive to dollar-price movements, the beneficiaries of the money illusion tend to be the hard, unproductive assets of yesterday (think housing, art, rare stamps, and oil) that are least vulnerable to currency weakness, and which in fact do best when the unit of account is devalued.

FORBES: Price Stability Is An Economically Dangerous Fad