Any society has to delegate the responsibility to maintain a certain kind of order. Enforcing regulations, making sure people stop at stoplights. We can’t function as a society without rules and regulations, and the enforcement mechanism of those rules and regulations.

One has to always ask the question: Where can one be most effective in helping shape policies? It is always difficult when you're inside because you're very constrained.

This Iraq war has been the most "privatized" war in America's history. It has seen the most extensive use of contractors. The contractors have increased the costs; but they have been necessary - the military simply could not have done it on their own. we would have had to increase the size of the military. But the George W. Bush Administration wanted America to believe that it could have a war, essentially for free, without raising taxes, without increasing the size of the armed forces.

When I said "the pocket of the banks," it is not necessarily a mercenary relationship. It is a mindset.

As a rich country, we can, in some sense, "afford" the war. But spending money on the war means that we are not spending money on other things that we could have spent the money on.

Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research, more on research on lifestyle drugs than on life saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases that affect developing countries only. This is not surprising. Poor people cannot afford drugs, and drug companies make investments that yield the highest returns.

Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.