Leadership History Archive: George Soros

and because in the in the financial field I was not a leader I was a critic it's contrast so most people that say you count in the in the financial sector I was always a loner and and and my role was that of a critic of the system not not not a leader didn't fit in the system in fact I pride myself on being the highest-paid critic in the world but how did you what lessons did you learn about how to succeed versus how one fails and the role of critic obviously your criticism was intended to bring change no my criticism had a philosophical foundation which is the same as the foundation of an open society the recognition you know of our failed ability and and the fact that most concepts or most trends have a flaw so you can recognize the trend and then you can recognize the flaw within the trend then you are definitely ahead of the game and that was really the key to my to my approach think about the activity for example I would think that that is an example of sort of conceptual leadership I mean the question is of course how do you actually transmit it to the you know economics discipline yeah I wasn't transmitting it I was practicing it you know I wanted to transmit it the philosophical concept and and then I happened on the financial markets as a as a laboratory in which to test the the the idea so I tested it and and then of course I had a sort of a final flourish as a fund manager recording my test in in the form of which then became part of a book they might which was the first book they are coming of finance you see so that was in a way my I would say they my final flourish as a fund manager and and in fact I the challenge of recording it and using it as a demonstration of my theory kind of gave me the interest that contributed to the success of the experiment so it did it came together there and and shortly after that I kind of phased out of the the real fund management business but what was the next step after the fund management I want to bring you over to the puppet about anything yeah so so I mean the alchemy of finance was an attempt to communicate a philosophy and I it was the theory of reflexivity and so that was that I started a set up the my foundation a little bit before that there was they set it up in in 79 1979 and I wrote the book in a 84 85 and then I was getting more and more involved in experimenting and what what can one do with them if they live the foundation but it at that point I had made a deliberate choice not to put my ego into the foundation it was at that time I have my idea was that if a philanthropy is meant to serve a goal then it should not serve the ego of the donor so they did you've got to consciously the divorce yourself from the work of the foundation how would you do that how would you like by being faceless and an anonymous and in in my activities and basically I was helping dissidents who were on the line so it was really their show and they were the ones who were taking the risks and I was really merely providing some material support and my first was a major effort that did not involve dissidents was in South Africa where I went in 1980 81 82 and I set up scholarships Open Society scholarships in in so that was also a kind of a passive passive role and I started negotiating with the Hungarian authorities about setting up a foundation in Hungary in in 84 and in fact we set up the foundation in Hungary in 84 but there again you see I was sort of behind the scenes and and then I extended my my activities in China and Poland and other places and since the changeover from communism was in various stages publicity would have killed me in my activities because certain things that could be said in one country it couldn't be said in another country and so so keeping quiet was very very important and I remember when the first first article appeared in one of the worst news or whatever it annoyed me because he blew my cover it exposed me and the people who trying to help then came the the collapse of the Soviet system and I became increasingly personally involved and in Hungary in Poland I thought it you know me it traveling there meeting with leaders you know when I set up the foundation in Poland that was in Haiti 89 for instance I had a meeting with the IRA Celski that kind of I think moved him a little bit to open up and a discussion with solidarity but by that time I knew the leaders of solidarity so and then Russia and then really when I went to Russia in in 87 actually then when Gorbachev called sahar off and said returned to Moscow took that as a signal that you know he wasn't pushed out of Russia but he was allowed to go back to Moscow that's when I went to Russia and that's that's when I really became very much engaged and and and also that's when I found someone else to run my business so I could disengage from my business and and engage and so the day that the changeover was between 87 and 89 that's when you disengage these are then I disengaged from my business in fact the man whom I found said to me that I really can't do it with you around here you know I and so I said I mean he basically was ready to quit and I said to him no no you stay and I quit and so we then developed a very good working relationship where he became the the the champion and adverse his trainer or or you know I was in his corner but he was the one who was in the ring and so that worked very well and that was a wonderful partnership for until quite recently so that helped me because that gave that gave me the platform you see of having a successful hedge fund he was he continued the the performance indeed he had a very good performance so I that gave me the platform which allowed me to to grandstand as a you know man of Finance somebody else doing the work I don't mean to pry but it also mean it it also provides you with a continuing source of very well yeah absolutely so I used I use the income than to I was more involved spending it and then making but you had accumulated wealth that a-plus-plus you have this new infusion of money coming through right which helps your great deal gave you that also give you a financial platform yeah absolutely yeah yeah so it was a really a very fortunate sort of and what have you called yourself when you think of yourself since 89 what do you think of yourself has a philanthropist actually a if a philanthropist is a bit of a misnomer because because well I'm a stateless statesman I think that's probably another first here I think that I like that this came from a from a prime minister of Macedonia who at the time as a young man and I think was well-meaning he later became very corrupt and like all the others but he said you know you got a stateless Statesman because states have have interests but no principles and you have principles but no interests play on the old Kissinger life right today so I bet he told ya I accept that I understand now tell me as you went down this path what counsel do you have for other people out of the business community who want to work with governments or work with emerging leaders about how to be effective at this people you know you've been this you've had this unique role but what has worked best for you well I do think I do think that my position is is a bit unique so I don't think it's really quite applies to other businessmen but I do also run into a lot of businessman who genuinely want to make a contribution to society right and I think there's a new breed particularly connected with technology the the internet billionaires in if the a billionaires if they manage to sell out in time or whatever I think never have a real contribution to make because they bring a sort of a creative not not just business approach but a sort of creativity you know was it's not a zero-sum game it's not you know not a matter of haggling or or it's a matter of creating and they were rewarded for that in in in business and are sort of ready to apply that I do run into them and I want to go black right yeah what works I know it's case by case it is really a case by case I mean I that's one man who somebody have invested some money with they sold out the company and then he set up a an organization called a Duke dot are originally came from Argentina and he set up a foundation to provide curriculum on the on the internet instead of textbooks and that's a that's a viable business you know a save on the textbook that pays for for the preparation of the curriculum and they in that said that says as that's really a social invention I guess it's not doing so well now in because of Argentina but for instance I tried to move that into Russia you know because it's good good so I mean that's it that's invention I mean that's innovation and so there is room for social in in a social interpreter ship I used to be very leery of it had the position that you really can't combine making money with with giving money away because you mess up both they interfere with each other the business is efficient because you have a single criterion which is the bottom line but tells you what the performance is and the social entrepreneurship is different is that more it's a it's a more difficult a task because you have different lines because different people are affected differently then you actually can't add it together because you've got all kinds of unintended consequences then you can't really measure one against the other because you know what you do to one group of people it cannot be offset but what you do for others so because of that I used to be leery of it I've changed my view I think it's a much more difficult Enterprise than private enterprise but that's a good reason for it's a it's a greater challenge and therefore the success should be more highly respected because it's it was more difficult to achieve and and I think when you look at you know let's say microcredit which was invented in Bangladesh I think it's a it's a great it's a great invention so is the the probably the number one example of social entrepreneurship in the world right now you know Grameen Bank itself has run into some difficulties like any business you know with the entrepreneur ages or whatever or the business becomes too big you run into difficulties so did so did a Grameen Bank but it is a great social invention mm-hmm so this is this is for instance one very important area where entrepreneurs can make a contribution but now you've gone a different direction you've made your money over here and taking money there and I try to keep it entirely separate because of the because of the inherent conflicts so mine was you make it and you give it away and that in a way is if you like this is old-fashioned philanthropy yeah you know that's what Carnegie did and and that's what Gates is doing and so on so it's actually the old-fashioned stuff and there is this more innovative thing where you actually invent social mechanisms that that work for society and ourselves sustained self-sustaining right that's what I like that yeah tell me about those well I don't know too much about them because know that I do and in fact in fact we made it a rule not to considerin ventures actually the other you know when we set up the foundation in Hungary we advertised that you know inventions will not be considered because we didn't we were not set up for it and and the foundation of my kind is actually ill suited for this kind of activity we do get involved in it and we usually fail I mean you don't you don't have inventions within the foundation now what we do actually get involved for instance we were pioneers in Internet we started introducing Internet in the countries where the foundations operated 8990 when internet was before internet really became as widespread as it is before he became commercialized actually and it's it's a funny thing because actually I lost I miss T the business aspect of it I was I was I was an investor in a company called bolt Beranek in human here in Boston which was the designer of ARPANET which was then became Internet but then I didn't actually do very much on the commercial side and I spent large amounts of money introducing it and the introduction had sort of a business a part of it so or business potential so for instance we spent large amount of money in Romania in providing connectivity and then then service and and so on and eventually we hived it off and sold it for peanuts so as a business it didn't furnish if we had looked at it as a business we could have with that money we could have really done something so it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't mix very well the the foundation mentality with the business mentality and that's why an entrepreneur let's say who conceptually starts it as an enterprise can be more successful than a foundation that tries to create something that becomes self-sustaining density the foundations you set up so you set up one in Poland you set up another one in Hungary and they were locally based and they were run primarily by the the formula is a local board and the local executive director and local staff in some countries that that where conditions are to this okay that our corruption is to endemic they need an external executive director for protection because they can't protect themselves not so much against the state or the authorities but against their friends so you need a foreign presence in in Central Asia for instance but in the in the in Russia also and but the idea is that it should be people in the country who share the objectives of open society who then designed the strategy and start the programs and and most of the successful programs were started by people in the foundations and I didn't necessarily know about it so it's a certain degree of autonomy but the people in the foundations are not businessmen they are tend to be intellectuals professors publicists and so on so they all they know is to give money away but they don't know how to make money how do you judge the success of your foundations how do you know whether it's doing good work it's it's entirely intuitive there is no there is no criterion we have as we became very ties we have all kinds of evaluation things I actually don't look at it that way and it's it's it's really is an intuitive thing because you can't I don't think that that I mean I we have a method I have a method of rating the kind of foundations and and I have mission impact and efficiency as the three criteria and they are not they're not actually identical because you may have great sense of mission without having with a much impact and and and you can be very efficient or you can have a big impact without being efficient so even even conceptually you've got more than one criterion by which to judge and the the reason for that is that that in business your objective is to to be successful whereas in this field of you know social justice or whatever social concern you have to fight losing battles and and losing battles is is the winning strategy so the less successful you are that's it the less impact you make that or the the more you need to do it in certain circumstances if you if you are up against an oppressive regime standing standing up against that regime is very important even though you end up in jail or lose your life or whatever as long as you've got people willing to fight losing battles you know freedom is not lost so you don't have because you really have to have it's crucial that everyone really you know journalize is this mission this is an idea this philosophy of the Open Society and then clearly you're being visible as an important leadership role as an important role in spreading this message and this philosophy but we'd be of course more interested also in the mechanisms how do you actually do this how do you get this to work well in we are facing that issue you know universe our success really consisted of people committed to a set of ideas combined with a donor who gave them their head and and supported them in what they were trying to do nothing but he was trying to do so is it that was very important and then the supplier saw the supply of money and I think now where we are also I guess my persona I mean I should I do not underestimate you know my personal charismatic role now we have to adjust for the future we will currently at this this is a strategic decision point and because we have to prepare for less money because I've stopped making money if my money making days are over so we now have a certain amount of money but that's cannot sustain the present level of funding so we have to cut the funding by half that's a big it's right it's a big task so we have to do do it with less money and eventually we also have to think of you know without me so I'm not sure whether anything will remain and but I'm willing to give it a try too to reform the foundation and we are now in the process of trying to implement that in the countries which are candidates for membership in the European Union because they their funding should face out so I'm cutting them off as of night as of 2004 and we're now they have to design a strategy for to decide what should remain and also on another very important value of the network is that it's a network in other words that people connect you see that we've got a foundation but they interrelate with the other foundation so the networking aspect is an important a part so how can one maintain that Network when you cut and my concept is to unbundle the activities of the foundation so we have from a network I want to take it into a network of networks so that the the various activities that we support can form their own and network so let's say working with the mentally let's say this human rights or whatever they they can have their own net women we have a network women's program so the women that network can continue and they would have to look for support from other sources then and then us and that we can contribute some because we have got some money to contribute but obviously they cannot rely on support from us alone so you then have these these network of networks to bring them these networks to bring them together in the network of networks you need something like a an association and open society Association that is a membership Association so certainly people belong to it it's like a bit of an alumni organization if you like people who have been connected with the foundation support the goals of the foundation and then you have at the center something like a think tank that is concerned with preserving strengthening open society within the country helping development of open societies in other countries because that's an important element and let say be concerned with a global open society that is the international institutions that you need you know whether this will happen without the the constant injection of money it depends on the people it may work in some countries it may not work in in other countries the chances of success are not more than 50/50 but you know we've got to we've got to go there keep encouraging officers so to speak so when the Guardian of principles that inspires and at the same time getting the right structures in today's really getting getting the right structures into place setting up the networks we put in the right half of people yeah it's a strategy I mean I I would say the right I am the strategist but when it comes to to the actual implementation I've been known not to be the best you know on the implementation well even even under strategy in other words I'm not an organization man I'm basically a loner and I'm a thinker but I'm not not a leader of men as such and also I am NOT definitely not an administrative genius so how to structure it see I've never never knew how to make an organization work when I set up the foundation in Hungary and I would go there from time to time and to decide that certain things would need to be done I come back and it was done and I was amazed how could they do it I don't know how they did they were self-starters I say they they that was the that was the spirit and that was the genius of the foundation that you know people who are motivated and they got it done but if the sound so you had to have a great deal of self understanding self self understanding you had you know who you yes yes it are your strengths and your weaknesses yes no I mean you see I'm a very critical I mean I'm I am best paid critic right so I should be able to apply that to my own activities in fact I had a partner in my business and I used to say that well we both knew another other people what when other people were doing something wrong it was we knew we were both nude of the flaws in in the world but I also knew the flaws in us as opposed to him who thought that we were always right so so since my theory is that markets basically are always wrong but most of the time they can validate their their biases I also know that most of the time and wrong so I am an extremely critical person that is the that is my my say my particular characteristic and it is in fact the philosophy in which I failed to kind of get across which is the this the the inherent variability of our understanding the Fertile fallacies and so on which make history so that's the that's my core that's my your core belief is the fal ability of my own feather your own fala billion societies fell ability yes and an open society is one which then can correct yes because it has a feedback system as a feedback mechanism which tells people when things are going badly right and important societies and imperfect that holds itself open the improvement because it has a feedback mechanism break yeah and you try to live your own life in the same way yeah yes yes with a lot of feedback internal feedback from within yourself yes on the theory that you're fallible you're yes yes most the time you're right yeah and how do you know when to correct is that intuition there's well I think it's when there's a divergence between what you expect and what happens right then there's then you know that you're wrong so this approach is particularly useful in saying market in marketable securities or because there you have a pretty immediate feedback it's less less valuable when it comes to venture capital and even less valuable when it comes to politics that's very interesting I want to come back to your a couple things losing you said it was often the right strategy and that comes in and in a society in which you're in the minority I assume is yes then if you lose it's okay to keep losing if you if you keep your issue alive and gradually win people over on the moral argument I would have so okay well gradually you couldn't win the argument if you keep alive is at what point you're bad it appointees morality right you see business or the markets are amoral morality doesn't come into it it's a matter of winning when it comes to morality then you've got to believe in some values that take precedence over the immediate benefits of that concern you so you know the Christians in the catacombs right by their standards or you know the fact that they were eaten by liars and for that matter the guys who flew the the the planes into the towers in from that perspective they they were winning I mean they were you know they were taking a stance okay we have it's abhorrent to us I mean this is the difficulty that when it comes to belief in right and wrong you may be wrong right so so you may be sacrificing your life for a false idea you know my particular version of it which is based on recognizing that you may be wrong it can can protect you against some of the excesses of that but it is it is a it is a serious problem about morality that that if you may be just plain wrong in what you believe in but if you believe in it then you you you it has to take precedence over your narrow self-interest and for whatever reason I think we do have a need for for that kind of belief because you know we are mortal I mean that has a lot to do with it because the fact that you died well there's always a desperation for something beyond death I mean that's why all religions are somehow focusing on life after death or whatever so there is a need for for for this kind of belief and and we as a society have managed to eliminate it actually and we've got enough feedback from success that that we can just pursue success but that's a very hard to say breakable ground because because for one thing if you if you're not successful it kind of puts the rock from under you you see so it's great as long as you have to are in the boom phase but it's very hard to deal with the with the master or you if you get it come in with your foundation into a society you let me go back to this proposition you've argued that there are two great causes of poverty one is bad location and the other bad government you can't change the location frequently which can change the government what have you found through your foundational work are the most effective ways to help move the country encourage countries stimulate the country move from bad government to workable or good government and a good leadership well one is educating an elite can be very effective in providing the ingredients of good government you know people that say Stern Europe who are educated in abroad go back and then they can bring something so or or in Mexico let's say D the the changeover of us basically by people educated in business schools in Chile it was the Chicago School and that wasn't so good you know because of market fundamentalist but but that so that's an important element I think educating that you creating a new elite it can be very powerful and then you look at when you look at the activities of some of the other old fashioned foundations like the Ford Foundation when I went back to Hungary some of the people that I worked with for people who had scholarships from the Ford Foundation in the in the 50s and had been spent some time abroad they might be in the might have been in the Communist hierarchy see but nevertheless that was a very good basis so I think educating an elite is it's a long you know that's a generational thing but that I think is very very important we we also for instance give great priority to the problem of gypsies Roma in in that part of the world because it's a one minority that is really a real minority issue education I think will you know a new leadership in men it's already having some effect and then the education and lumina leadership I didn't get that connect that's that's not it takes it like it goes away from your question because you asked about the government right so coming back to government then the empowering that then you basically can agitate against bad government and then you can reinforce a good government you can't really overturn bad government I think that goes beyond the capacity of the foundation but but when you then have a change a democratic change the new government lacks capacity and that is the worst aspect of it and that's because of that it fails mm-hm and in fact if you look at what happened practically every country where you had this break with the the old regime new government people coming in who had no experience in government well-meaning idealistic academic no administrative skills etc messed it up and usually the pendulum then swung back and you had a return to reform socialists or even not so reformed socialists and then they would fail and then maybe you'd get a new so adding capacity to the two well-meaning well-intentioned reform-minded the government can be very powerful how do you do you do it partly by providing them with where the foreign experts who work for them as distinct from foreign experts working for the international organization or for a donor like so because that enables them to negotiate with those institutions and protect the interests of the country against the interests of the is the institutional interests of the donors that that is a very very important element even if you have a foreigner working for you as an expert he can be a mediator or be able to give you a give you an example in Ukraine which is not a success story but when there was a change of government I offered them to brought in actually somebody called and as a salon was a who then worked for for the government negotiating with the IMF and so within six weeks they had a program see otherwise it might not have happened so that can be very and I'm trying that in also in Africa but that I'm doing it with you and DP and that is not working so well for whatever reason you know UNDP and so on but that's not so successful Marc Marc Brown not because he's someone you've worked with before yeah he was he was sort of part of mine he was very much my in my team then now reset UNDP so we try to work together and we work very well and some we are doing some things but then the bureaucracies don't mesh quite so quite so well RIA for instance given fellowships to people returning from abroad who take a public position the path of public service they work in a ministry or local government or whatever in countries like for instance Albania or Romania you give them a fellowship to come study to come back we give them fellowships to go out maybe or to go to the Central European University but then you also have to give them a fellowship to come back because because they otherwise they couldn't be they wouldn't be properly paid right so you have to give them enable them to come back I mean it's not we don't give them princely salaries but sufficient for a graduate to attract him back if his if his interested that is also very successful so you now have you know several ministers in Albania let's say you came back that way I think the foreign minister and so on so that's another that's another effective way of this is now recognized actually it for instance the British are doing it the British are quite good and in foreign aid and they are giving this kind of support establishing a judiciary essential for for a open society but you have to pay them and otherwise they they have to take payment so so you have to have a particular to be corrupt otherwise they have to take money yeah they have to it's a very since in Georgia they did it with World Bank help but the World Bank is not allowed to pay salaries if against their rules and so they actually had a very successful judicial reform where they had professional selection testing for for the position and then a decent salary and you know since Aid is fungible they could you know pay the salaries by getting paid for other things but they couldn't maintain it and so the whole thing is now eroding and it's it's a very interesting situation because there was a major effort at anti-corruption which corruption is atrocious there was a major anti-corruption effort supported by the foundation but also supported inside the government yet the Minister of Justice who was I guess a very good guy and and other people in the government young people who had come back from abroad partly you know Soros for scholars and so on and he came to very close to success in that it it didn't didn't make it so they left the government now that they resigned from their post but they were they were really introducing reforms but one of the problems that they faced is that the judicial system which had been reformed was crumbling because the salaries could not be people were not the judges were not being paid so so this kind of effort can be very very successful and then you can have joint ventures with the better government reform minded government which is what we did for instance in Russia where we would contribute money and they would contribute the the franchise let's say of education so we had new textbooks competition for new textbooks responsive the sponsored and vinay and it was managed by a joint task force which had a ministry represented and the foundation represented so it was a it's a much more intrusive way of providing assistance than what international institutions are willing to do what difference does it make what difference is the quality of the head of the government make for this effort it's it's okay it's night and day I mean you know if you've got a a it makes all the difference but the good guys know that they don't have a bureaucracy in which they can rely so for instance the Minister of the people in the education in in Russia they were eager that this thing should happen outside the ministry because if they did it to meet the ministry it wouldn't get done or in Albania let's say we had a program for building schools they effectively built schools and and it was outside the ministry because the ministry even though let's say you had a reform-minded minister in the bureaucracy which is not paid has to do its own thing and so it's so the idea that just because you've got a new government that's in Ghana now you've got a new governor it doesn't mean that they have got the mechanism mm-hmm for delivery in other words they don't have civil service right how do you help that individual come takes over the government of Ghana or takes over the Ministry of Education in Russia and you do you try to help that if you you find somebody's a good guys yeah yeah I'm very basic you know and and you know good guy bad guy good guy you help a bad guy you don't have it what do you do to helmet hmm what do you do to help them what can what what can be done at most oh well first you meet his needs you know was what he wants to accomplish and you helped him do it you may give him some ideas of what him what he may want to do and he may internalize it because you know he didn't think of it but he can see they see the merit of it so actually you know we have kind of penetrated some some governments quite quite a sudden quite some extent with let's say in Russia they had a proposal to train people abroad and was a great idea Yeltsin launched it but they didn't know how to implement it so we actually gave a fellowship to somebody in the government to work on that and m'as alt it was actually more useful they would have been otherwise so that's cause that's quite a bit of leverage now you can't do that as a or you can't do it maybe but it's not another government bureaucracy is not well designed not well positioned to do it because it is a matter of personal judgement and and and relationship also there was a relationship of trust and and the bureaucrats can't develop that relationship because they don't have the ability to deliver so you know what have you found to be effective in dealing with corruption is it is it and how serious a problem is is for developing nations I have not yet found anything that really is effective in dealing with corruption I mean if we came closest to it in Georgia where you know extremely corrupt regime well-meaning presidents have an answer you know but exhausted and and and also be Holden and and captured in some ways and personally at risk the main source of corruption in interior in the empower ministries the interior ministry and if we cannot afford to offend because it depends on them for his own security so it was the most comprehensive well developed implementable program which failed but you know it was really it's involving civil society and everything but it failed your program for open society well that was his schefren Aziz perfectly valid this was the program that we worked out we were sorry and you know I used to vent to do through Georgia and finally the day I arrived he signed a decree but it wasn't implemented so now the people who were doing it left the government I guess they'll contest and maybe in two years time they'll be able to implement it but that was from my perspective actually where I was the most deeply involved and where the Foundation's was most deeply involved for instance one of the board members became the head of the Prison Service and so he was trying to break corruption inside prisons and it was very interesting what he told me about it he didn't succeed so the answer is so far I mean we have you know we're working on it but we have not we are not actually I haven't seen any anti-corruption program that I could say really worked now you know maybe in Hong Kong there was you know that's I don't know about but in my personal experience we have not succeeded it's alive its alive it do you know it's it can you know but it I think it would require political these guys have to actually one of them has to become president he has to run for president and I think he will they'll do it but you know they're not there how serious a problem do you think corruption is so that the tremendous the system end associate with the other is in another case where I saw a success but but but it's not acknowledged in Bulgaria the the Prime Minister actually made it a top priority to break some of the mafia type structures and he described to me in detail how he did it he did it in sugar and alcohol and natural gas but and and I think he he he actually did it nevertheless the government remained itself corrupt there was corruption at lower levels the Ministry of Minister of economics had to resign because of corruption I personally believe he was not corrupt in fact I know he was not corrupt because he is working in an institute that I support and if he had been corrupt he wouldn't be working in an institute that I support so I am convinced he was not corrupt he had to take responsibility for corruption in his in his department so there is a country that has not shaken the the image of corruption and has probably also not broken the reality of corruption yet considerable success was achieved in breaking certain elements obviously mafia thing and he described to me how he didn't use he didn't use the judiciary system because it was a it would leak it would you couldn't rely on it he had a task force that was kind of following the shipments and and interdicting them on the ground so I believe it was a successful program and yet it didn't break corruption as such it just had some particular points of success so that's the okay we should we should let you know yes this is very good III we can continue this but I yeah we can contain it if you Roger sighs well I've had I just had a couple questions about your own life if I might autobiographical questions I'm curious I know you don't call yourself a leader but in fact you really have become a statesman perhaps without a state about your own life your own development what what moved you in the direction of wanting to bring social change wanted to change and what was the sort of what I think that is that was that came from it's an adolescent that's another lesson dream yeah what are you what is it come from adolescent dream do you maybe you had some we also I would say I would say that you know that was adolescent stuff and then I got quite far away from it and when I had been successful in making money and I really reflected on what I you could care about that's when I moved back to to this area so there was a an in-between period of 30 years let's say or 25 years when I was not at all engaged in doing good mmm-hmm at all it was not that did but coming back to that dream was it something that came out of your childhood and yeah in Buddha poster which I would my father my father there's also a book my father's memoirs are published now and it's a very good read so yeah he comes alive in that he was a very it was a formative figure in my life and he's he should shape me as father's often do and and the the experience of your studying at LSE how much influence does that have on you so much is traced back to those days and we're discovery of Carl but of course popper and and it wasn't just popper right the philosophy this reflectivities that that of course came in student years and even when I went into business I kept on working on it so I wrote philosophical treatise called the burden of consciousness when I was working in here in the States as a trader you know so during the day I was another day at night I was training but on weekends I was I was writing so I had that interest a philosophical interest but that still came from from a childhood hmm your father's influence no no that's more my mother's influence because my father was not a philosopher no he had a certain practical he was a play he was a pragmatic person with strong moral values but with a very personalized translation of those moral values in other words he went through a formative experience in the Russian Revolution if they threw the refer Russian Revolution in Siberia and and that you know living in that chaos and turmoil shaped him which then prepared him mentally for the traumatic experience of the German occupation and then the German occupation when I was 14 was the formative experience in my life in what sense but well because you know 14 years old your life is in danger so you it's adventure you know it's Raiders of the Lost Ark good fighting against evil you know my father being good David and Goliath outwitting the the the the this so it's a Fanta it's a beautiful fantasy life if you come out ahead which we did so that was that and you know they know your crucible yeah that was that was it that was the formative experience and that's where most of my ideas also come you see with this or with this you know far from equilibrium reversal you know it's on so it's it's that well there's a clear line between your phone your family facing Russian military doesn't be facing German occupation and then you're moving to an open society yeah yeah that's clear line it's a clear line and even you know my particular involvement in Russia yes it has to do with the fact that a new Russia from so the more or less from my father's milk not as he lived through it and so on if I had certain affinity with Russians yeah so it's a personal thing okay yeah many young people today grow up in much more comfortable circumstances they're not challenged in that same way how do we encourage the next generation to have this kind of commitment to social good to social change you came through it you had to come through it the hard way many people of the Second World War generation the war was there to find a variant thing and it changed forever their view and how one changes society what the importance of protecting and building is a civil society the Manoa had this discussion with my children I said two unfortunate creatures you you know you - good and they feel it in a way you know that that because they had their I think they have their own problems how to do how to relate to their father how to you know and so on but it's not it doesn't have this heroic quality when you are actually up against reality right and it's it's it's it's it's very hard and I I don't know I think that that probably we can trust to history that things won't be that good you see that the envy of every opportunity injustice and and and and people do actually in their in their personal life I mean you know in my case it was sort of historical things but an abusive father for instance can be a or take Clinton alphas Clinton form formed you know there was a clear family situation right so I think and and people react to it in different ways some want to be different and others want to emulate the so I don't I don't think there is an answer I don't I don't think and i think that that unless people feel feel it I don't think you can really inculcate it but it's interesting for instance in in England which is a very comfortable society there is a orange in Sweden it is also very there's it it real real interest in problems in other parts of the world exactly because for some people prosperity can be very dull so if you look at it the Nordic countries have been the best in their in their engagement in development problems and and and the British have been very receptive to dissidents and so on so I don't think it's so bad to be prosperous I'm not I wouldn't be worried too much okay thank you

Channel: HarvardCPL

Views: 14,928

Rating: 4.5588236 out of 5

Keywords: cpl, harvard, kennedyschool, hks, leadership, soros

Id: qTqxJca-UPE

Length: 77min 1sec (4621 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 09 2008