Go on, admit it. You thought Microsoft was so last century, didn’t you? In the late 80s and 90s, the company’s Windows operating system ruled the world.
Bill Gates Says Poverty Is Decreasing. He Couldn’t Be More Wrong
This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system, which is failing the vast majority of humanity. Our world is richer than ever before, but virtually all of it is being captured by a small elite.
Meet the Folk Hero of Davos: The Writer Who Told the Rich to Stop Dodging Taxes
One of the biggest stars to come out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week wasn’t a CEO or a head of state or a venture capitalist.
American Triumphalism
Although George W. Bush is a man without intellectual pretensions, his departure from office brings down the curtain on a distinctive era of American political thought. Ideas that recently qualified as smart have suddenly become passé. Propositions once alluringly au courant now appear not simply obsolete but absurd. The bubble of American triumphalism has burst.
That bubble first appeared as the cold war was ending. Triumphalist thinking derived from two widely held perceptions.
- The first was that the unraveling of the Soviet empire had brought history to a definitive turning point. According to this view, the annus mirabilis of 1989 truly was a year of wonders, sweeping aside the old order and opening the door to vast new possibilities.
- The second conviction was that it was up to the United States to determine what was to come next. Basic arithmetic told the story: there had previously been two superpowers; now only one remained. Henceforth, the decisions that mattered would be Washington’s to make.