From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Why does torture happen? There are a variety of reasons, paramount is the role of torture as a 'shortcut' to investigating crime- many investigators and police have used this from time immemorial, and the efforts to abolish and curb it have been progressing over the years.
We're talking about massive amounts of money that have been shifted from poorer countries to richer ones. Almost all of this constitutes a permanent outward transfer. In our estimate, only about 10-20% of global illicit money ever finds its way back into the country of origin.
I think it's down to what Jeremy Bentham said which is, '…the question is not can they reason? Or can they talk? …But can they suffer?'
The displacement that people face is now over generations not just years. The old model was to keep people alive until they go home. That model is broken, less than 3% of the world's refugees went home last year.
Crime itself can increase inequality. A doubling in crime increases the Gini coefficient by 3% to 4%. When crime increases twofold the share of the rich tercile drops by 1.3%, and the share of the population in the poorest tercile increases.
There's a joke within Facebook that if you want to know which countries will have a genocide in the next couple of years, look at the ones that have Facebook free basics.
We are talking about three million people who, in effect, are the property of another person and in many cases could be killed, by their owner, with immunity.
Working for international organisations, I was caught up in the belief that we could fix broken systems simply by introducing the right resources, processes, and intentions. However, I've come to realize that good intentions alone are insufficient. The lack of access to essential services isn't a matter of moral failing but rather a systemic inability to assess risk and generate profit from these assessments.
On the court, there was no prejudice, just your contribution to the team. Off the court, teamwork seemed like a parody of what we did. So, the lesson I eventually learned was to distinguish between which teams are sincere in promoting true teamwork, and which are jingoistic self-serving pretenders.
Even the most untrained eye can sense the degrees of discrimination seen in foreign policy responses to natural disasters and conflict. Discrimination which can only rationally be explained by morally abhorrent flaws in foreign-policy.
It shocks me that our society has not caught up with the fact that mental illnesses should be treated like any other disease, and not relegated to the justice system. We have so many different therapies and medicines, and people can make significant recoveries.
Unfair taxation cripples economic development in a manner not dissimilar to third-world economic corruption.