Tony Blair: recommendation

Transcript context

…Speaking of federalism, you advise dozens of governments. For any one leader you're probably giving very sensible advice for their country. It's a positive expected value. To the extent that limits variance and experimentation across countries in different ways to govern or different policies, are we losing the ability to discover a new Singapore? Western NGOs and other global institutions will give them good recommendations but is there maybe something missing that we don't understand that an experimentation would reveal? We really don't do that with our governments. One of the things governments should be able to do is experiment to a degree. Part of the problem with systems is there's always a bias towards caution. That's what I mean by saying that with systems, if there were conspiracy for anything, it's for inertia. What we do is we concentrate with governments on what is true no matter what government you're in. I describe four Ps of government when you get into power. Number one, you've got to prioritize because if you try to do everything, you'll do nothing. Number two, you've got to get the right policy, what we were talking about before. That means going deep and getting the right answer. That often means bringing people in from the outside, who can tell you what the right answer is. That has nothing to do with left or right, it's usually to do with practicality. Number three, you've got to have the right personnel. Number four, you've got to performance manage. Once you've decided something and you've got a policy, you've got to focus on the implementation. Whether you're running the United States of America or you're running a small African country, those things are always true. Let's talk about foreign policy for a second. This is not just you but every administration, especially Western administrations, has to deal with these irascible dictatorial regimes. They're right on the brink of WMDs. They make all these demands in order to put off their path towards WMDs. Obviously you had to deal with Saddam. Today we have to deal with Iran and North Korea. It seems like sanctions don't seem to work. Regime change is really expensive. Is there any fundamental solution to this kind of dilemma that we keep being put into decade after decade? Can we just buy them a nice mansion in Costa Rica? What can we do about these kinds of regimes?…

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