From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Osborne lacked gravitas and was seen as a political lightweight because of his high-pitched vocal delivery according to private Conservative polling before the election.
I've sat in front of the chief ideologue in the Moscow Kremlin, and I remember him saying to us in so many words, that 'you cannot govern Russia unless you have a one-party state: Our job in the Kremlin here and now, is not to recreate the communist party, but it's to recreate the one party which will be the natural choice'. He didn't say it would be the only choice, (but I think that's what he meant), of the Russian electorate.
Apartheid did not develop because of 'race'. Instead, race was used to justify the domination/exploitation of Apartheid. Once you understand the order, the mechanism, you understand the purpose.
We are no longer sovereign-islands protected by fortified walls and arbitrary map-lines- we are an interconnected global family who depend on each other in incredibly profound ways.
the overall picture that's emerging is that the controls which still work operate more along corporate boundaries than along national boundaries.
When you're trying to understand the motivations of people, quite often understanding the emotional drivers is at least as important as understanding the facts that took them there. In the case of Putin and the people around him, it's resentment and it's anger and it's determination to recover something they believe they lost.
Many entrepreneurs are deluded about their odds of success, that evidence is very clear. This creates problems… Should a government subsidise entrepreneurs who greatly over-estimate their chances of success?
So many of us think that we don't have power as individuals; and that makes us unwittingly complicit. Every time someone doesn't do the right thing in any given situation, it allows that situation to go on longer, and in that way, there's complicity – and that's dangerous culturally, and dangerous to our forward momentum as we try to move towards being the free people we're meant to be.
We've entered a geopolitical recession, where the old US led world-order is unwinding. This isn't just a Trump issue- it's about Europe, BREXIT, about Russia undermining the US and the West, the rise of China and its alternative political and economic models.
The ability for hedge funds and other private investment product to advertise is certainly a big deal that will have lasting impact on the manner which these products are distributed and marketed.
Power is the ability to affect others and get the outcomes you want – and that's true whether on the individual, national or international level. You can exert power in three ways. You can do it with coercion (sticks), you can do it with payments (carrots) and you can do it with soft power – through attraction.
All conflicts are different with their particular history and reasons. I think that inequality within societies and between regions has become a key cause for conflict, exacerbated by rapid information dissemination, as people are now more aware of inequalities.