From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
If you have a bottle of water in your house, it belongs to you. Nobody can touch it without your permission, nobody can get into your house without your permission. This doesn't apply to the internet world. Facebook can access your room and your house without your consent. They can tear down your house, they can delete and block your digital life.
Other components of liberal democracy—civil liberties, rule of law and free markets—may play a larger role as long-term deterrents than simply having free elections. If the country goes all the way to a more complete liberal democracy, then it is likely to significantly decrease terrorism and political violence.
While it may seem an altogether preposterous notion that people should have to pay for air, a very basic component of life- one must read this hypothetical tale in context of the fact that over 1.7billion people cannot afford food (also a very basic component of life)- and a similar amount have little access to clean drinking water (another very basic component of life).
We need to give women the freedom and confidence to believe and be whatever they want to. This isn't just about business, but about social conditioning in all cultures. Even now I experience inequality- I see it when I go to external meetings and I see two solicitors, both equal, and a female pouring the tea.
Since citizens' militias are anachronistic, gun owners now use the second amendment merely to defend individual gun ownership, as if that somehow offers protection against tyranny. A reckless, right-wing Supreme Court has agreed with them. As a result, gun ownership has become perversely linked to freedom in the vast gun-owning American sub-culture. But, instead of protection of freedom, Americans nowadays are getting massive bloodshed and fear.
Today's world reveals a sad truth: impunity for international crimes is more common than prosecutions. Justice and accountability remain the exception rather than the rule.
The world would be a different place today if we would find a way to really empower girls and women globally. It is the solution, and I'm definitely not the only person that thinks that.
There were people transferred to Guantánamo who were sold for bounties, transferred there because of the watch they wore, where they slept or even just because they were Arabic men in Afghanistan. They were rounded up, brought to Guantánamo and many of them have remained there over 11 years.
Unless women have the chance to take up an active role in our economies and fulfil their potential, our ambitions for a fairer and more prosperous world simply won't be realised.
Firstly, pay has to be high enough to give people agency in their own lives and secondly, humans have to be treated like humans. Those are the minimum conditions for good jobs – there also needs to be a career path that enables people to learn and grow in their jobs.
We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that....
I firmly believe that a society cannot heal from the wounds of war without accountability for serious international crimes. How can a society move towards a shared future while fundamental disagreements about the past and about responsibility for past crimes persist?