When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.
Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers - not governments - to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially...
Subsidies and mandates are just two of the privileges that government can bestow on politically connected friends. Others include grants, loans, tax credits, favorable regulations, bailouts, loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks and no-bid contracts.
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
In 1997, I was working with Greg Wilson of Red Ball Tiger, our ad agency at the time, when he came up with an addition to the famous slogan 'I guarantee it' that I was known for saying.
Thus, after finishing high school, I started with high expectations and enthusiasm to study chemistry at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
The most important question we have to deal with is a combination of population control and the control of our environment - how to utilize the world in as effective a way as we can for the future of mankind.
No one has ever been able to stop the process and evolution of technology, not even I.B.M. That is going to continue. Those who grab it and move ahead with it will determine the future in this industry.
As I say to our own team: 'Never protect your past, never define yourself by a single product, and always continue to steward for the long-term. Keep moving towards the future.'
I don't compare shows. It's very simple. I don't live in the past. If there's any secret to my longevity, it's living in the future. And a little bit in the present.
I have learned that nothing is certain except for the need to have strong risk management, a lot of cash, the willingness to invest even when the future is unclear, and great people.
Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.
It is not just disposable income but whether people feel good about their immediate future that drives sales. It is this feel-good factor that drives the purchases more and more than mere economic wealth.
We are too quickly losing important landscapes in this country to development - and I worry that if we do not act to protect them now, future generations will grow up in a profoundly different world.
We have CBS.com, we have our stuff on iTunes. We feel the wave of the future is getting as much distribution as we can. We feel that we should be nonexclusive and get our content out there.
If you ask me what I worry about every morning when I wake up, it's that I don't understand future mainstream Internet users' habits.
So while I can't tell you if bringing a child into this world is the morally-responsible to do, I can say that the future, much like the present, is going to be a whole lot better than you think.
I've found that when the market's going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy. You won't get there by reading 'Now is the time to buy.'
My idea to bridge the world together with music starting in Asia and going to the West is something that is new, untapped and leading to the future of bringing the worlds together.
Some people say hybrid vehicles such as the Prius are only a bridge to the future ... but we think it could be a long bridge and a very sturdy one. There are many more gains we can achieve with hybrids.
The net's future is far from assured, and history offers much warning. Within a few decades of Gutenberg's creation, princes and priests moved to restrict the right to print books.
