As a global society, we should ensure that the international rules of the game in economic management do not advertently or inadvertently set snares along the lower rungs of the ladder in the form of inadequate development assistance, protectionist trade barriers, destabilizing global financial practices, poorly designed rules for intellectual property, and the like, that prevent the low-income world from climbing up the rungs of development.
-- Jeffrey D. Sachs
I believe that the single most important reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them. Even more important than having specific resources in the ground, such as coal, was the ability to use modern, science-based ideas to organize production. The beauty of the ideas is that they can be used over and over again. Economists call ideas nonrival in the sense that one person's use of an idea does not diminish the ability of others to use it as well. This is why we can evnvision a world in which everybody achieves prosperity. The essence of the first Industrial Revolution was not the coal; it was how to use the coal.
-- Jeffrey D. Sachs
Progress is hard enough to achieve in the world without being perceived as a danger.
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