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5902a3a
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the state of the future will need to function more like the human immune system
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Niall Ferguson |
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330b6bb
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the secret of our success as a species 'resides . . . in the collective brains of our communities
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Niall Ferguson |
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ce24abb
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We must pose the familiar question about how far our civil liberties have been eroded by the national security state... Somehow it is always a choice between habeas corpus and hundreds of corpses.
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Niall Ferguson |
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b197fae
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Since de Soto published The Mystery of Capital, revolutions in countries like Tunisia and Egypt have provided compelling evidence in support of his approach. He sees the 'Arab Spring' primarily as a revolt by frustrated would-be entrepreneurs against corrupt, rent-seeking regimes that preyed on their efforts to accumulate capital. The prime example is the story of the twenty-six-year-old
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Niall Ferguson |
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e889d8a
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The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, was one of the few authentic geniuses among nineteenth-century statesmen.
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Niall Ferguson |
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d9e6cd2
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kulttuurien kamppailu Huntingtonin merkityksessa tuntuu edelleen kaukaiselta mahdollisuudelta. Pikemminkin naemme samankaltaisen siirroksen, joka 500 viime vuoden mittaan paattyi miltei aina lannen eduksi. Yksi sivilisaatio heikkenee, toinen vahvistuu. Ratkaiseva kysymys ei ole, ryhtyvatko ne taistelemaan, vaan heilahtaako heikompi heikkoudesta suoranaiseen kaaokseen.
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itä
kilpailu
kulttuurihistoria
länsi
sivilisaatio
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Niall Ferguson |
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c429c9c
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Sivilisaation ydin ovat tekstit, jotka sen kouluissa opetetaan, jotka sen oppilaat oppivat ja jotka muistetaan koettelemusten aikana.
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kilpailu
kulttuurihistoria
länsi
sivilisaatiot
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Niall Ferguson |
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110427f
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Unlike in the past, there are now two kinds of people in the world: those who own and run the networks, and those who merely use them.
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Niall Ferguson |
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7006ec3
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young people at Western schools and universities have been given the idea of a liberal education, without the substance of historical knowledge. They have been taught isolated 'modules', not narratives, much less chronologies. They have been trained in the formulaic analysis of document excerpts, not in the key skill of reading widely and fast.
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Niall Ferguson |
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887145a
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The Kissingers descended from Meyer Lob (1767-1838), a Jewish teacher from Kleineibstadt who in 1817 took his surname from his adopted home of Bad Kissingen (complying with an 1813 Bavarian edict that required Jews to have surnames).47 By his first wife he had two children,
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Niall Ferguson |
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066b3fa
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Outlandish ideas stand a better chance of success if they come with royal approval.
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Niall Ferguson |
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d462d52
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Primeiro, a atual populacao mundial corresponde a aproximadamente 7% de todos os seres humanos que ja viveram. Ha muito mais mortos que vivos, em outras palavras, 14 para 1, e ignoramos a experiencia acumulada de uma enorme maioria da humanidade por nossa conta e risco. Segundo, o passado e, com efeito, nossa unica fonte de conhecimento confiavel sobre o presente efemero e os varios futuros a nossa frente, so um dos quais ira de fato aconte..
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Niall Ferguson |
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545fb95
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The liabilities of the bank thus became its deposits (on which it paid interest) plus its reserve (on which it could collect no interest); its assets became its loans (on which it could collect interest).
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Niall Ferguson |
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1490ac5
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bear in mind when trying to compare housing with other forms of capital asset. The first is depreciation. Stocks do not wear out and require new roofs; houses do. The second is liquidity. As assets, houses are a great deal more expensive to convert into cash than stocks. The third is volatility.
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Niall Ferguson |
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f2fc67c
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Money, it is conventional to argue, is a medium of exchange, which has the advantage of eliminating inefficiencies of barter; a unit of account, which facilitates valuation and calculation; and a store of value, which allows economic transactions to be conducted over long periods as well as geographical distances. To perform all these functions optimally, money has to be available, affordable, durable, fungible, portable and reliable.
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Niall Ferguson |
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104d7f6
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The great thinkers of the eighteenth century were also pioneering tourists
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Niall Ferguson |
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14e96df
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Some problems can only be resolved by network analysis.
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Niall Ferguson |
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65e3d8e
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Russia's intelligence network did its utmost to damage his rival's reputation,
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Niall Ferguson |
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094c78b
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Sometimes, as in the case of the American Revolution, crucial roles turn out to have been played by people who were not leaders but connectors.
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Niall Ferguson |
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3761fc0
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From Boston to Bordeaux, revolution was in large measure the achievement of networks of wordsmiths, the best of whom were also orators whose shouted words could rally the crowd in the square and incite them to storm the towers of the old regime.
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Niall Ferguson |
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b70ce28
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Many historians still tend to assume that the spread of an idea or an ideology is a function of its inherent content in relation to some vaguely specified context. We must now acknowledge, however, that some ideas go viral because of structural features of the network through which they spread. They are least likely to do so in a hierarchical, top-down network, where horizontal peer-to-peer links are prohibited.
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Niall Ferguson |
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acd74e2
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Had the Illuminati remained faithful to Weishaupt's original blueprint, they would long ago have been forgotten, if they had ever been heard of at all. The key to their growth and later notoriety was their infiltration of German Masonic lodges
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Niall Ferguson |
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fcce64c
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when set in its proper historical context, the present time appears less unnervingly unprecedented and more familiar.
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Niall Ferguson |
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48bb9ad
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Trump won 'Trumpland
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Niall Ferguson |
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5cb50fa
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Ownership of real property is second only to ownership of intellectual property
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Niall Ferguson |
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8358717
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Is it better today to be in a network, which gives you influence, than in a hierarchy, which gives you power?
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Niall Ferguson |
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0c6c108
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resisting the temptation to build complexity when (as in the case of financial regulation) simplicity is a better option.
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Niall Ferguson |
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0fb9b31
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The first 'networked era' followed the introduction of the printing press to Europe in the late fifteenth century and lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. The second -our own time -dates from the 1970s, though I argue that the technological revolution we associate with Silicon Valley was more a consequence than a cause of a crisis of hierarchical institutions. The intervening period, from the late 1790s until the late 1960s, saw ..
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Niall Ferguson |
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d68e735
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Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fetes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; i..
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Niall Ferguson |
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fe700d5
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Cities with at least one printing press in 1500 were significantly more likely to adopt Protestantism than cities without printing, but it was cities with multiple competing printers that were most likely to turn Protestant.
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Niall Ferguson |
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bf14478
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The task assigned to the RAND* researcher Paul Baran in 1964 was to develop a communication system that would survive a Soviet nuclear attack. Baran suggested three possible structures for such a system. It could either be 'centralized', with one central hub and multiple spokes, 'decentralized', with multiple components linked loosely together by a number of weak ties, or 'distributed', like a lattice or mesh. In theory, the last option was..
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Niall Ferguson |
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e352f99
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You ask professors to study things, but you never put them in charge of anything.
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Niall Ferguson |
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374b519
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the Internet is merely 'the modern public square',
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Niall Ferguson |
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f92cd86
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Technologies come and go. The world remains a world of squares and towers.
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Niall Ferguson |
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bda242e
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The first paradox of Illuminism, then, was that it was a network that craved an elaborate hierarchical structure, even as it inveighed against existing hierarchies. In his 1782 'Address to the newly promoted Illuminati dirigenti', Weishaupt set out his worldview. In the state of nature, man had been free, equal and happy; division into classes, private property, personal ambition and state formation had come later, as the 'great unholy main..
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Niall Ferguson |
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eab4b3b
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until the archives of the Masonic lodges became accessible, researchers were heavily reliant on memoirs and documents confiscated and published by the Order's foes. Amongst the materials said to have been in Franz Xaver Zwackh's possession were impressions of government seals to be used for counterfeiting, dissertations in defence of suicide, instructions for making poisonous gas and secret ink, a description of a special safe for the safeg..
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Niall Ferguson |
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dfb7d26
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Drawing on the best modern scholarship, this book seeks to rescue the history of networks from the clutches of the conspiracy theorists, and to show that historical change often can and should be understood in terms of precisely such network-based challenges to hierarchical orders
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Niall Ferguson |
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1207453
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we cannot transmit ideas and behaviours much beyond our friends' friends' friends
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Niall Ferguson |
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d144e1c
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Giving the world's poor mobile telephony is proving easier than providing them with clean water - an argument, perhaps, for leaving the provision of clean water to the private sector rather than weak, corrupt governments.
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Niall Ferguson |
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b466a76
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six degrees of the mathematician Paul Erdos, himself a pioneer of network theory, as we have seen.13 Recent research suggests the number is now closer to five than six, which suggests that technological change since the 1970s has perhaps been less transformative than is commonly supposed.14 For the directors of Fortune 1000 companies, however, it is 4.6.15 For Facebook users it was 3.74 in 2012,16 and just 3.57 in 2016.
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Niall Ferguson |
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74ae063
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By the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible World discovered to the understanding. By this means the Heavens are open'd, and a vast number of new Stars, and new Motions, and new Productions appear in them, to which all the ancient Astronomers were utterly Strangers. By this the..
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Niall Ferguson |
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5d69908
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according to Christakis and Fowler, we cannot transmit ideas and behaviours much beyond our friends' friends' friends (in other words, across just three degrees of separation). This is because the transmission and reception of an idea or behaviour requires a stronger connection than the relaying of a letter (in the case of Milgram's experiment) or the communication that a certain employment opportunity exists. Merely knowing people is not t..
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Niall Ferguson |
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0f42884
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first networked polity. 'In no country in the world,' declared Tocqueville, 'has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America':
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Niall Ferguson |
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49eba94
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half of the American population agree with at least one conspiracy [theory] . . . Far from being an aberrant expression of some political extreme or a product of gross misinformation, a conspiratorial view of politics is a widespread tendency across the entire ideological spectrum . . . [M]any predominant belief systems in the United States, be they Christian narratives about God and Satan . . . or left-wing narratives about neoliberalism ...
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Niall Ferguson |