Summary:Today’s interdependent world requires that all parties – developed and developing countries; private and public sectors; educators and philanthropists – work together to solve some of the world’s thorniest problems if we are to grow and thrive as a civilization.
That was the consensus at the conference’s opening night discussion – an extraordinary debate between four of the most respected voices on the future of civilized society over how to create prosperity for all the world’s population.
Not only is solving our critical problems – from the spread of communicable diseases to the growing gap between rich and poor – a moral imperative, “it’s a matter of our self interest,” said Jared Diamond, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Guns, Germs and Steel.
David Gordon, who studies the globe’s economic opportunities for America's intelligence agencies, said that Sept. 11 proved that we cannot look the other way at these problems. He described it as a defining moment for the country.
“Since Sept. 11, there is a new sensitivity about the need to do something about the fact that too much of the world economy is focused on too few of its population,” he said.
Hernando de Soto, whose work focuses on building prosperity in developing and transitional countries, said the most important thing for nations to do is create a rule of law giving their citizens to title to their assets – land, houses, stock, etc. –and to use those assets to build prosperity.
“When you create ownership, you create the rules that allow people to create value,” he said.
According to de Soto, five-sixths of the world’s population has not benefited from capitalism – mainly because they don’t have rights to their own property. These so-called “hidden assets” amount to $10 trillion in poor countries, he said.
“We must focus on the rule of law,” he said. “It’s what builds property rights.”
Barry Munitz, former head of the Cal State University system, pointed to the crucial role that education will play in the coming years. He pointed to the problem of education in the U.S., where “the higher you go in our education system, the more we are the envy of the world, but the lower you go, the less competitive we become.”
Things have improved since the release of the famous report on America’s education system, “A Nation at Risk,” but it will take the cooperation of private and public sectors, of for-profits and non-profits, to move us further ahead, he said.
The panelists agreed that globalization has helped improve economic conditions in countries throughout the world, but it has also made the spread of some problems, such as AIDS, easier.
Diamond offered his top 10 biggest challenges facing us in the next 50 years. These include global warming, population growth, a decline of fresh-water sources and deforestation, “any one of which could do us in,” he said.
Gordon agreed with some of Diamond’s list of challenges, but emphasized that the world in 2015 “will not be all gloom and doom” In fact, there are many opportunities for human growth in the decades ahead afforded by advances in technology and science, and the spread of the global economy.
“A lot of things push for the optimistic scenario of the world economy,” he said.
But, all of the panelists agreed, the world is too interdependent today to look the other way. It requires that we all work together to solve them; ignoring them will only make things worse – for all of us.
As Gordon said: “We have a stake in the world.”
