From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
While the crisis made the problems of the euro-structure clear, they were present long before. Indeed, the euro helped create the crisis: for the markets seemed to have vastly overestimated the extent to which the single market/single currency had reduced risk (another example of market irrationality), leading to excessive lending to the afflicted countries.
New media conducive to fostering participation can indeed increase freedoms… just as the printing press, the postal service, the telegraph and the telephone did before.
There's a pervasive sentiment that silence or a lack of immediate response equates to complicity, and this is seen as an endorsement of a particular viewpoint. These demands for instant opinions are concerning as they overlook the individuals who are earnestly seeking to grasp the full picture, delving into the nuances of age-old issues before formulating a stance.
What we're seeing is a broad constellation of nominally independent subsets, even entire industries, that have now come under the umbrella of the foreign lobbying industry. All of these entities have been transformed into go-to vehicles and mouthpieces for foreign regimes.
There are two key advantages of thinking of guns as a public health issue. First of all, it removes some of the emotion from the issue. Secondly it moves the debate to be about evidence; where we can empirically show what works, at what cost.
Essentially therefore you have a three-pronged approach. Firstly privatisation, secondly cutting the size of the state and thirdly- collecting existing taxes (rather than imposing any new ones).
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.
We don't need to have CNN, NBC and their counterparts. Anybody can report on the most important news of the day. The best example recently was the video circulated of that young girl who got killed in Iran; that had an unbelievable impact on our knowledge of what was going on in that country.
Portugal is generally perceived as a symbol of tolerance, openness to the world and ability to interact with and serve as a bridge to different societies, cultures and religions.
I would essentially start by abandoning everything Osborne set out to do. I would be cutting taxes, not raising them. I would immediately reverse the VAT raise that he had. I would impose those within an hour of taking office.
If you or I buy an organic veggie-burger, that's great, but we're swimming against billions in subsidies. These are changes which will require government action at the highest level, consumer action alone will not get us there.
If Greece gets serious about privatisation, reducing the state sector and collecting existing taxes... if these things are done, whilst also reducing democracy? Then I believe Greece will emerge as a very significant success story. It could get the primary deficit eliminated in two years- creating a surplus.