America is run by the rich and powerful in their own interest. To an extent that I think is hard to exaggerate, the intellectuals - academics, journalists and so on - are bought off. And that's a big change that happened in the United States in the last 30 or 40 years.

What we should do is require or at least permit innovators to license their green innovations free of charge in exchange for public payments based on the impact this innovation has on the environment - emissions averted or something of this sort.

If we offer a prize, so to speak, to anyone who manages to bring a country under his physical control - namely, that they can then sell the country's resources and borrow in its name - then it's not surprising that generals or guerrilla movements will want to compete for this prize. But that the prize is there is really not the fault of the insiders. It is the fault of the dominant states and of the system of international law they maintain.

We should not think of poverty eradication as a matter of collecting money and giving it to the poor so much as of reforming the global rules that are disadvantaging the poor and making it impossible for them to fend for themselves.

Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.

Large companies are very good at solving extremely complex problems in a globally optimal way.

We have the ability now to arrange global economic institutions so that poverty declines to a fraction of what it is now.