The thing that's really important to understand is, the last thing an empire traditionally does is drive itself into bankruptcy. You've seen that with the great empires. Juan Enriquez More Quotes by Juan Enriquez More Quotes From Juan Enriquez As countries appear and disappear, then I began to ask, what makes countries successful? And it turns out, after a long slog through geographies and ethnicities and all kinds of variables, it's the ability to adapt and adopt, what Darwin talked about. Juan Enriquez ethnicity successful country The definition of who's literate and who's not keeps changing. So, in Neanderthal times, if you painted on a cave wall, that was enough to transmit how you hunt, how you eat, how you cook, how you dress, and we can read about that. Juan Enriquez neanderthals wall dresses It's not fear that keeps me up. I mean, every generation has thought, this is the worst generation; the world's going to hell in a hand basket. The reality is, people are living longer, and they're living better. Juan Enriquez mean hands reality There is a massive ecosystem that has to get built that looks like a biosphere. And the various parts of that biosphere better be there. Juan Enriquez biosphere ecosystems looks There's always a question when you invest. Are you too early, are you too late, or are you just right? And there was a lot of hype about life sciences, around the sequencing of the human genome and a lot of people concluded that's not really there. But by the way, there was a lot of hype around the digital revolution just about the time of 2000 and the human genome, and it turns out that some of the world's biggest, most powerful companies are the survivors post that crash. Juan Enriquez digital-revolution hype powerful Not only are we reading life code, we're beginning to copy it through cloning, and we're beginning to write, and in the measure that we do that, boy, you can build a lot of very powerful companies in a short period of time. Juan Enriquez powerful reading writing There is so much extraordinary opportunity if you're curious, if you're interested. Juan Enriquez extraordinary curious opportunity Try to live without something digital - without digital code for about two hours, very hard to do if you're awake. Juan Enriquez digital trying two It's actually very hard to find an area of the economy that doesn't fundamentally change in the measure that we are able to read and write life code. Juan Enriquez economy able writing It is important that New York, in addition to its fashion, and finance, and tourism, and communications infrastructure, also begin developing venture infrastructure that's for real. Juan Enriquez fashion real new-york If you depend on a single industry, if you don't continuously upgrade it, if that industry is not producing real wealth, if it's simply shuffling paper from here to here in a very efficient manner sometimes, that's not enough and that's not where you begin to get the rest of your jobs. Juan Enriquez real paper jobs One of the lessons that I hope people will take out is the extreme dependence simply on the financial sector is really dangerous. Juan Enriquez financial lessons people We traditionally in this world didn't have enough calories to feed all of us and had huge famines, not just in Africa, but had them across India, across Southeast Asia, and across China. Because of Borlaug's work at Simit and because of this we have huge excess, until very recently, in agricultural produce and the prices went through the floor. Juan Enriquez excess india world After a lot of debate and a lot of work, what people decided is, it makes a great deal of sense to be open in the system and allow people to begin to build better flu vaccines. I mean, we're still making them in eggs that come out of chickens. And we can see the consequences of that with the current H1N1 lack of vaccines. Juan Enriquez vaccines eggs mean When you brought the digital revolution in, all of a sudden, you could build a country like Singapore and take that country, which had the income per capita of Ghana in 1965, and make it something similar to the United States in one generation. Juan Enriquez digital-revolution ghana country The Americas has been a relatively stable continent. The last truly new border we have is Panama in 1903. Juan Enriquez panama borders lasts During a period of time when Italy is talking about splitting northern and southern Italy, France is talking about splitting with Corsica and Normandy, England is talking about splitting with Wales and Scotland and England. And it goes on and on and on. Juan Enriquez scotland southern-italy talking The U.S. started with no stars. In fact, it started with a completely different flag. The last two were added in 1959, Hawaii and Alaska. Juan Enriquez alaska stars two Anytime you bring a really powerful new technology to market there are multiple implications. You start changing the relative position of countries. Juan Enriquez technology powerful country I've always been interested in why countries appear and disappear. And the curious thing is how often it happens. Juan Enriquez curious disappear country
