Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba: “Economic strength is not just nice to have in the current global environment, it may be existential in some ways. The stronger our economy, the more we will be able to spend on protecting ourselves, the more countries will attempt to seek our favour. Economic growth will also be the means by which our soft power and values can be projected on a global scale…A single-minded focus on the economy will enhance not just our growth but also our security. It will also take us away from more divisive, dangerous and ultimately self-destructive pursuits. That itself is a worthwhile outcome.”
Albert Wenger: “…Permissionless data was a crucial missing piece – its absence resulted in a vast power concentration. As such Web3 can, if properly developed and with the right kind of regulation, provide a meaningful shift in power back to individuals and communities. And if widely adopted Web3/crypto technology will also start to improve along other dimensions. It will become faster and more efficient. It will become easier and safer to use. And much like the PC was a platform for innovation that never happened on mainframes or mini computers, Web3 will be a platform for innovation that would never come from Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc.”
FT: “Why do some countries remain poor while others stumble on a path to growth and development? This has been the subject of much academic study and many popular books. Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty emphasises the role of aid to deliver a “big push”, while Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson sees a country’s institutions as a critical determinant of success or failure. Stefan Dercon, a Belgian-British economist at Oxford university and an international development practitioner, is the latest to try to crack the mystery. The result is an important book, Gambling on Development, both scholarly and grounded in experience. It may come as close as any to answering this critical question. Its thesis is brutally simple. “The defining feature of a development bargain is a commitment by those with the power to shape politics, the economy and society, to striving for growth and development,” writes Dercon. Growth happens, in other words, when elites try to bring it about. To do so, they must gamble on increasing the size of the economic pie rather than carving up the one that already exists. This is risky. Their gamble may fail and they may be blamed. Or it may succeed and they may be pushed from power by new entrants.”
