From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Generally power is diffusing. New corporations such as Google and Facebook are also examples of power diffusing from nation states and moving to new forms of entities. Technology will only accelerate this trend.
These policies are, in the long term, very dangerous for productivity, growth, entrepreneurial spirit and wealth generation and will create further issues within the developed economies.
As a collective, we tend to look at progress as being linear, especially where it concerns women's rights. This is a huge mistake and breeds complacency because we risk losing the hard-won gains.
Nuclear weapons were invented out of fear. The United States was afraid that Hitler was developing an atomic weapon, and they had to get one to deter him from ever using it. When the U.S. Manhattan Project that built the bomb began, no-one ever thought we would use a weapon like this; it was considered beyond the pale—a weapon that would indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
Over half have changed national policy within five years of launch.
Governments need to use their money to develop the future, not recover the past. We have to take this chance, if we don't, we're really going to be in trouble.
I think transparency in this sense is a red-herring. A multi-strategy hedge fund could give an investor or the SEC it's daily trade blotter and accomplish 'transparency,' and the recipient would have no idea what to make of the trades.
People are now talking of a new 'Cold War' with China. This is a very misleading use of history. If you look at the relationship between China and the US today, there is half a trillion dollars of trade, and some 350,000 Chinese students and 3 million Chinese tourists are in the US. It's more complex than the Cold War.
Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed. They either come randomly (in the case of war) or they are governed by power-laws (pandemics and earthquakes). That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.
They forced me to undress. Then they started squeezing my fingers with pliers. They put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take them out if I spoke. The nails in the ears were the most painful.
In all institutions from which the cold wind of open criticism is excluded, an innocent corruption begins to grow like a mushroom – for example, in senates and learned societies.
Corruption destroys societies, hinders development and undermines security. Note what happened in the Middle East and North Africa… corruption was one of the triggers of unrest in these countries. It appears that people are fed-up of corruption, they want change, and they want it now.