From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The only value that government paper provides you at this point is, basically, the fact that if everything goes to 'hell in a handbasket' that you have some assets of value.
Economics is like artificial intelligence, it's not really there… there's no physical invisible hand…. It's about people interacting with people against a social order, a set of ethics, principles and practices.
We can only solve our ecological problems by linking ecology and economy. If we can create the right economic environment, change will happen. If it's more profitable to be efficient than wasteful, we will be efficient.
And a country that stops its citizens having access to Facebook, say, or Google or Skype, faces real disadvantages – from inward investment to domestic discontent…
inequality [was] a better predictor of violence than economic development… Increasing inequality was found to predispose more to lethal violence
The World Bank states that growth in agricultural sectors is twice as effective at reducing poverty than other sectors.
We've been bamboozled into believing that love is found on the outside. Deep down, we're really trying to achieve peace, happiness, and love. It's not about the wealth itself; it's about what we perceive the wealth will bring into our lives.
Your corporate's social responsibility is to win. You cannot be generous from an empty wagon! This nonsense about giving when you're broke is ridiculous. Corporate responsibility, first and foremost, is to win. You can then take those resources from winning and allocate them as you see fit. That's not a popular statement, but it's the truth!
Essentially therefore you have a three-pronged approach. Firstly privatisation, secondly cutting the size of the state and thirdly- collecting existing taxes (rather than imposing any new ones).
At the end of this century 40-50 years from now, the proportion of our world's population who live in the developing world will have gone from 15%, 200 years ago, to over 85% – we'll be left with a very different planet.
The problem is you cannot achieve all three E's simultaneously. Early work in the subfield of market design shows it's very hard and very unlikely you'll get a hidden market that can successfully allocate things efficiently and equitably in a way that's also easy.
Transport, natural disasters, the distribution of resources, globalisation – engineers and inventors have the traits and skillset to solve the problems the world faces today. And therefore have the potential to impact the world and economy. The economy can be boosted by exporting tangible technology that is in global demand. This is the hands of engineers.