From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Thanks to monetary policy, business cycles are far less volatile today than they were in the 19th century, when we had huge swings. But if cryptocurrency takes over the way its proponents would like, we could return to the ups and downs of the pre-monetary policy era.
And the overall picture that's emerging is that the controls which still work operate more along corporate boundaries than along national boundaries. In order to censor YouTube, for example, countries like Turkey and Pakistan had to block access to the whole site; it's not practical just to block selected content.
Concepts like democracy and human rights will always remain fairly abstract if you cannot feed your family. It is therefore important to ensure that job creation, and protecting livelihoods occurs early on in the process.
Concepts like democracy and human rights will always remain fairly abstract if you cannot feed your family. It is therefore important to ensure that job creation, and protecting livelihoods occurs early on in the process.
We're afraid of living under constant terrorism, and the constant threat of a neighbour who wants to kill you and destroy everything you care about. The escalation is already here. He has already reached a point of escalation that we must not tolerate – he is already doing everything he is capable of.
Cyber-threat is the single most serious threat faced by the markets. Many countries cannot complete with the United States in conventional military warfare, but in the cyber wars? They can go toe to toe. This is what we call 'asymmetric' warfare where adversaries have been able to level the playing field.
Kuznets (who developed the measure) was highly skeptical about the assertion that all government spending contributed to people's economic well-being. He wanted the measure of output to be more relevant to people's well-being and he lost-out on this argument to the UN and partner economies of the USA.
The first thing we need is activism. Corruption is a system, and to fight it we must first change the mindset of the population, and that can only happen through activism, through being present in politics, through being elected. You have to be in the media, you have to have a voice, you have to be able to convey your message strongly.
We can't only rely on consumers making individual choices. If you switched your energy to someone who told you they are selling you 100% renewable energy, that's great, but it doesn't shift the energy system to renewables. You need to have energy markets that are designed to encourage investment into renewable energy.
We're starting to realise that business is a major force in deciding the sort of society we live in- and so the role of business must be more in tune with political, social and moral norms of the day.
When politicians refer to 'our nation's best interest' they must realise our economy is globalised.. this means that their nation's best interest is inextricably linked to the best interest of their neighbours- and nations further afield.
Society feels broken because society is broken. When the most powerful nations in the world are spending billions of dollars on ways to kill each-other, and a fraction of those resources on ways to heal each other, we're broken.