From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
No nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
We're creating a different type of work. The average Dasher dashes for about four hours a week, and very often they're trying to save-up for something and use it as a supplement to their income. We believe that flexibility should exist, and that benefits earned should be portable and proportional to the amount of work you're doing on each platform.
The end of an X-Prize is the beginning of a new market, or a new market opportunity. We are nothing more than a distinct channel to that market.
I don't have to outrun the Tiger, I just have to outrun you. When you look at many of the financial centres such as The City of London, Wall St, and their counterparts, they think of things in Economic terms.
A lot of businesses these days are markets. Companies like Google make markets for advertisements, Amazon is a market in and of its own right. Uber, AirBnB and many more are becoming big businesses by creating markets.
It's clear to me that small businesses, particularly micro-enterprises, have been responsible for the majority of the gross job creation in the last five years… particularly through the recession.
China for example, aims to increase their buying by 400,000 barrels a day in the last quarter of 2012, and will be adding over 750,000 barrels of new refining capacity. That economic engine is still turning.
The industry is so big that it's difficult to give a general read of its state. It's a bit like saying 'what's the state of the global banking industry?' You could do a broad-brush and say that the banking industry is full of corrupt individuals intent on defrauding the world, or you could say that in some markets banking is doing very well- and in others it's doing terribly.
We have lived through an era where success has been defined only in financial terms- leaving out any consideration of the impact of business on communities or the world. Just because accounting standards don't require you to measure certain things, doesn't mean those things aren't real.
You cannot say you support a values based human rights agenda and have your defense industry dictate the terms of your relationships between states to the extent that you won't criticize states who you sell weapons to. People see this for what it is, they recognise the internal and external inconsistencies and are tired of it.
They should be stress-testing their balance sheets and portfolios under a range of negative scenarios, and have sufficient capital and liquidity to withstand scenarios that are far out on the tail of the distribution of possible outcomes. The stress tests should account for potential bubbles in global asset markets.
To be a billionaire in America today is less a matter of merit than it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and being a beneficiary of a set of rules designed to benefit billionaires.