Simon Johnson
speaker
295 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Simon Johnson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Well, turns out if you give
control of your assets, oil assets to five or 10 people.
You don't get democracy.
You get a very rich five or 10 people and they have other ideas about who to support and so on.
So building democracy is hard.
And I think, you know, to the credit of the European Union, Robert, it's provided a bit of an institutional anchor and a benchmark for lots of countries.
I also spent time in Poland, for example, and I wrote a book in 1995 predicting that Poland would do well relative to other countries
places in part because they'd created a framework in which entrepreneurs could flourish and build new businesses.
And that book is now very expensive on Amazon because there's not many of them.
And I think you were right.
Joseph Schumpeter has reportedly said, although I've not actually been able to find this quote, everyone has elites.
The important thing is to change them from time to time.
So, you know, it's a little bit of the paradox of entrepreneurship, but in the paradox of opportunity, right?
That you allow these companies to be created, you facilitate their ability to raise capital and to attract talent from around the world.
And that's a good thing.
And that...
certainly raises your income per capita.
And if you can share it, then other people can feel good about this too.
But of course, when you allow that to happen, they become big.
And when they become big, they get political power.
Showing 201–220 of 295 · page 11 of 15
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