Duncan Green

Born :

1922

In the end, that's a blind alley - we have to get back to being able to think on our feet and react.

able feet thinking

Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.

floundering inevitable failing

People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.

people enemy thinking

There's a diversion between economic reality - integration, global village, everybody depending on everybody else - and cultural reality, which is people feeling invaded, undermined, threatened, wanting to have "stand-your-ground" legislation all over the place. It's alarming because at the moment, the fear is outweighing the benefits, and that's partially because the benefits have been so unequally distributed that lots of people don't feel better off. They feel threatened, angry and despairing.

feel-better reality people

What you don't do is just say, "I've got all the ideas and all the knowledge, and listen to me."

listen-to-me ideas

Activists can get very preachy about things. It's more about understanding people's own experiences and tapping into them.

activist understanding people

The magic formula is there is no magic formula.

Often we're having an argument with something imaginary - a fixed idea of the "enemy" and the good. We need to get beyond that and actually develop a deep curiosity about people and systems and understand them better.

curiosity people ideas

Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.

senior growth views

There's a tendency for people who believe passionately in something to be so convinced of their rightness that if they just repeat themselves a lot at the person, that will convince them. And that hasn't worked on things like immigration or trade deals.

immigration believe people

We should look at how "the enemy" - people that you wouldn't necessarily agree with - have done change and see whether there's bits in there that we could learn from.

done people enemy