ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Simon Anholt - Policy advisor
After 20 years working with the presidents and prime ministers of 54 countries, Simon Anholt has a plan to make the world work better.

Why you should listen

For 20 years, Simon Anholt has worked with the presidents, prime ministers and governments of more than fifty nations, devising strategies and policies to help them to engage more imaginatively and productively with the international community. 

In 2014, impatient to do better, Anholt founded the Good Country, a project aimed at helping countries work together to tackle global challenges like climate change, poverty, migration and terrorism, by mobilizing "the only superpower left on the planet: global public opinion."

According to The Independent, Anholt's aim is to change the way countries, cities and companies work "...by us all encouraging their leaders to think about the global impact of their actions, rather than cut-throat self-interest."

Measurement of Good Country progress is done through Anholt's Good Country Index, the only survey to rank countries according to their contribution to humanity and the planet rather than their domestic performance. According to The Guardian, "He has built his career in part as a formidable cruncher of data." Since 2005, his research into global perceptions of nations and cities has collected and analyzed over 300 billion data points. 

In 2016, Anholt launched the Global Vote, a project that enables anybody in the world to vote in other countries' elections, choosing the candidate who is likely to do most for humanity and the planet: three months later over 100,000 people from 130 countries took part in the Global Vote on the US Presidential Election. The Global Vote now covers an election somewhere in the world almost every month.

Anholt is an Honorary Professor of Political Science and the author of five books about countries, cultures and globalisation. He is the founder and Editor Emeritus of a leading academic journal focused on public diplomacy and perceptions of places.

 

More profile about the speaker
Simon Anholt | Speaker | TED.com
TEDSalon Berlin 2014

Simon Anholt: Which country does the most good for the world?

Filmed:
6,237,290 views

It's an unexpected side effect of globalization: problems that once would have stayed local—say, a bank lending out too much money—now have consequences worldwide. But still, countries operate independently, as if alone on the planet. Policy advisor Simon Anholt has dreamed up an unusual scale to get governments thinking outwardly: The Good Country Index. In a riveting and funny talk, he answers the question, "Which country does the most good?" The answer may surprise you (especially if you live in the US or China).
- Policy advisor
After 20 years working with the presidents and prime ministers of 54 countries, Simon Anholt has a plan to make the world work better. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:13
I've been thinking a lot about the world recently
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and how it's changed over the last 20, 30, 40 years.
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Twenty or 30 years ago,
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if a chicken caught a cold and sneezed and died
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in a remote village in East Asia,
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it would have been a tragedy for the chicken
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and its closest relatives,
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but I don't think there was much possibility
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of us fearing a global pandemic
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and the deaths of millions.
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Twenty or 30 years ago, if a bank in North America
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lent too much money to some people
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who couldn't afford to pay it back
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and the bank went bust,
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that was bad for the lender
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and bad for the borrower,
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but we didn't imagine it would bring
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the global economic system to its knees
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for nearly a decade.
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This is globalization.
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This is the miracle that has enabled us
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to transship our bodies and our minds
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and our words and our pictures and our ideas
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and our teaching and our learning around the planet
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ever faster and ever cheaper.
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It's brought a lot of bad stuff,
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like the stuff that I just described,
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but it's also brought a lot of good stuff.
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A lot of us are not aware
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of the extraordinary successes of
the Millennium Development Goals,
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several of which have achieved their targets
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long before the due date.
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That proves that this species of humanity
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is capable of achieving extraordinary progress
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if it really acts together and it really tries hard.
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But if I had to put it in a nutshell these days,
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I sort of feel that globalization
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has taken us by surprise,
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and we've been slow to respond to it.
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If you look at the downside of globalization,
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it really does seem to be sometimes overwhelming.
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All of the grand challenges that we face today,
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like climate change and human rights
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and demographics and terrorism and pandemics
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and narco-trafficking and human slavery
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and species loss, I could go on,
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we're not making an awful lot of progress
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against an awful lot of those challenges.
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So in a nutshell, that's the challenge
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that we all face today
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at this interesting point in history.
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That's clearly what we've got to do next.
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We've somehow got to get our act together
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and we've got to figure out how to globalize
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the solutions better
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so that we don't simply become a species
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which is the victim of the globalization of problems.
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Why are we so slow at achieving these advances?
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What's the reason for it?
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Well, there are, of course, a number of reasons,
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but perhaps the primary reason
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is because we're still organized as a species
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in the same way that we were organized
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200 or 300 years ago.
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There's one superpower left on the planet
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and that is the seven billion people,
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the seven billion of us who cause all these problems,
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the same seven billion, by the way,
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who will resolve them all.
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But how are those seven billion organized?
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They're still organized in 200 or so nation-states,
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and the nations have governments
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that make rules
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and cause us to behave in certain ways.
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And that's a pretty efficient system,
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but the problem is that the
way that those laws are made
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and the way those governments think
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is absolutely wrong for the
solution of global problems,
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because it all looks inwards.
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The politicians that we elect
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and the politicians we don't elect, on the whole,
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have minds that microscope.
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They don't have minds that telescope.
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They look in. They pretend, they behave,
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as if they believed that every country was an island
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that existed quite happily, independently
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of all the others
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on its own little planet
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in its own little solar system.
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This is the problem:
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countries competing against each other,
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countries fighting against each other.
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This week, as any week you care to look at,
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you'll find people actually trying to kill
each other from country to country,
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but even when that's not going on,
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there's competition between countries,
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each one trying to shaft the next.
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This is clearly not a good arrangement.
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We clearly need to change it.
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We clearly need to find ways
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of encouraging countries to start working together
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a little bit better.
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And why won't they do that?
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Why is it that our leaders still persist in looking inwards?
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Well, the first and most obvious reason
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is because that's what we ask them to do.
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That's what we tell them to do.
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When we elect governments
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or when we tolerate unelected governments,
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we're effectively telling them that what we want
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is for them to deliver us in our country
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a certain number of things.
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We want them to deliver prosperity,
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growth, competitiveness, transparency, justice
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and all of those things.
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So unless we start asking our governments
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to think outside a little bit,
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to consider the global problems that will finish us all
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if we don't start considering them,
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then we can hardly blame them
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if what they carry on doing is looking inwards,
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if they still have minds that microscope
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rather than minds that telescope.
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That's the first reason why
things tend not to change.
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The second reason is that these governments,
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just like all the rest of us,
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are cultural psychopaths.
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I don't mean to be rude,
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but you know what a psychopath is.
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A psychopath is a person who,
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unfortunately for him or her,
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lacks the ability to really empathize
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with other human beings.
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When they look around,
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they don't see other human beings
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with deep, rich, three-dimensional personal lives
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and aims and ambitions.
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What they see is cardboard cutouts,
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and it's very sad and it's very lonely,
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and it's very rare, fortunately.
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But actually, aren't most of us
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not really so very good at empathy?
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Oh sure, we're very good at empathy
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when it's a question of dealing with people
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who kind of look like us
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and kind of walk and talk and eat and pray
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and wear like us,
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but when it comes to people who don't do that,
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who don't quite dress like us
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and don't quite pray like us
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and don't quite talk like us,
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do we not also have a tendency to see them
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ever so slightly as cardboard cutouts too?
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And this is a question we need to ask ourselves.
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I think constantly we have to monitor it.
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Are we and our politicians to a degree
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cultural psychopaths?
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The third reason is hardly worth mentioning
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because it's so silly,
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but there's a belief amongst governments
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that the domestic agenda
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and the international agenda
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are incompatible and always will be.
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This is just nonsense.
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In my day job, I'm a policy adviser.
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I've spent the last 15 years or so
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advising governments around the world,
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and in all of that time I have never once seen
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a single domestic policy issue
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that could not be more imaginatively,
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effectively and rapidly resolved
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than by treating it as an international problem,
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looking at the international context,
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comparing what others have done,
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bringing in others, working externally
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instead of working internally.
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And so you may say, well, given all of that,
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why then doesn't it work?
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Why can we not make our politicians change?
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Why can't we demand them?
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Well I, like a lot of us, spend
a lot of time complaining
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about how hard it is to make people change,
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and I don't think we should fuss about it.
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I think we should just accept
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that we are an inherently conservative species.
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We don't like to change.
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It exists for very sensible evolutionary reasons.
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We probably wouldn't still be here today
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if we weren't so resistant to change.
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It's very simple: Many thousands of years ago,
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we discovered that if we carried on
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doing the same things, we wouldn't die,
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because the things that we've done before
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by definition didn't kill us,
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and therefore as long as we carry on doing them,
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we'll be okay,
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and it's very sensible not to do anything new,
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because it might kill you.
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But of course, there are exceptions to that.
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Otherwise, we'd never get anywhere.
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And one of the exceptions, the interesting exception,
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is when you can show to people
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that there might be some self-interest
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in them making that leap of faith
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and changing a little bit.
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So I've spent a lot of the last 10 or 15 years
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trying to find out what could be that self-interest
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that would encourage not just politicians
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but also businesses and general populations,
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all of us, to start to think a little more outwardly,
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to think in a bigger picture,
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not always to look inwards,
sometimes to look outwards.
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And this is where I discovered
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something quite important.
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In 2005, I launched a study
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called the Nation Brands Index.
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What it is, it's a very large-scale study that polls
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a very large sample of the world's population,
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a sample that represents about 70 percent
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of the planet's population,
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and I started asking them a series of questions
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about how they perceive other countries.
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And the Nation Brands Index over the years
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has grown to be a very, very large database.
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It's about 200 billion data points
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tracking what ordinary people
think about other countries
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and why.
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Why did I do this? Well, because
the governments that I advise
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are very, very keen on knowing
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how they are regarded.
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They've known, partly because
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I've encouraged them to realize it,
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that countries depend
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enormously on their reputations
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in order to survive and prosper in the world.
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If a country has a great, positive image,
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like Germany has or Sweden or Switzerland,
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everything is easy and everything is cheap.
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You get more tourists. You get more investors.
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You sell your products more expensively.
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If, on the other hand, you have a country
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with a very weak or a very negative image,
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everything is difficult and everything is expensive.
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So governments care desperately
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about the image of their country,
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because it makes a direct difference
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to how much money they can make,
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and that's what they've promised their populations
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they're going to deliver.
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So a couple of years ago, I thought I would take
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some time out and speak to that gigantic database
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and ask it,
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why do some people prefer one country
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more than another?
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And the answer that the database gave me
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completely staggered me.
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It was 6.8.
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I haven't got time to explain in detail.
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Basically what it told me was —
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(Laughter) (Applause) —
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the kinds of countries we prefer are good countries.
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We don't admire countries
primarily because they're rich,
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because they're powerful,
because they're successful,
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because they're modern, because
they're technologically advanced.
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We primarily admire countries that are good.
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What do we mean by good?
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We mean countries that seem to contribute
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something to the world in which we live,
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countries that actually make the world safer
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or better or richer or fairer.
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Those are the countries we like.
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This is a discovery of significant importance —
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you see where I'm going —
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because it squares the circle.
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I can now say, and often do, to any government,
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in order to do well, you need to do good.
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If you want to sell more products,
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if you want to get more investment,
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if you want to become more competitive,
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then you need to start behaving,
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because that's why people will respect you
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and do business with you,
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and therefore, the more you collaborate,
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11:02
the more competitive you become.
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2845
11:04
This is quite an important discovery,
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1778
11:06
and as soon as I discovered this,
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1080
11:07
I felt another index coming on.
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2245
11:10
I swear that as I get older, my ideas become simpler
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2346
11:12
and more and more childish.
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1296
11:13
This one is called the Good Country Index,
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3968
11:17
and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
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4053
11:21
It measures, or at least it tries to measure,
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2354
11:24
exactly how much each country on Earth contributes
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671875
2763
11:26
not to its own population but to the rest of humanity.
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3155
11:29
Bizarrely, nobody had ever thought
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1267
11:31
of measuring this before.
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1689
11:32
So my colleague Dr. Robert Govers and I have spent
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2047
11:34
the best part of the last two years,
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1743
11:36
with the help of a large number
of very serious and clever people,
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3654
11:40
cramming together all the reliable data in the world
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2686
11:43
we could find about what countries give
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690879
2643
11:45
to the world.
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1593
11:47
And you're waiting for me to
tell you which one comes top.
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2378
11:49
And I'm going to tell you,
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1728
11:51
but first of all I want to tell you
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1530
11:52
precisely what I mean
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2705
11:55
when I say a good country.
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703456
2059
11:57
I do not mean morally good.
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705515
2224
11:59
When I say that Country X
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707739
1962
12:01
is the goodest country on Earth,
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709701
2013
12:03
and I mean goodest, I don't mean best.
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711714
1309
12:05
Best is something different.
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1453
12:06
When you're talking about a good country,
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1294
12:07
you can be good, gooder and goodest.
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715770
2134
12:10
It's not the same thing as good, better and best.
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3472
12:13
This is a country which simply gives more
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721376
2501
12:16
to humanity than any other country.
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2326
12:18
I don't talk about how they behave at home
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726203
1742
12:20
because that's measured elsewhere.
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2400
12:22
And the winner is
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2060
12:24
Ireland.
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732405
1811
12:26
(Applause)
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5674
12:32
According to the data here,
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739890
1905
12:33
no country on Earth, per head of population,
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741795
2890
12:36
per dollar of GDP, contributes more
324
744685
2925
12:39
to the world that we live in than Ireland.
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1636
12:41
What does this mean?
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749246
1095
12:42
This means that as we go to sleep at night,
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750341
2222
12:44
all of us in the last 15 seconds
before we drift off to sleep,
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752563
3068
12:47
our final thought should be,
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755631
1995
12:49
godammit, I'm glad that Ireland exists.
330
757626
2317
12:52
(Laughter)
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2198
12:54
And that — (Applause) —
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762141
7097
13:01
In the depths of a very severe economic recession,
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769238
3000
13:04
I think that there's a really important lesson there,
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2518
13:06
that if you can remember
your international obligations
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2116
13:09
whilst you are trying to rebuild your own economy,
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776872
1970
13:11
that's really something.
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778842
1038
13:12
Finland ranks pretty much the same.
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1655
13:13
The only reason why it's below Ireland
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781535
1265
13:15
is because its lowest score is
lower than Ireland's lowest score.
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782800
3083
13:18
Now the other thing you'll
notice about the top 10 there
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785883
1797
13:19
is, of course, they're all, apart from New Zealand,
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787680
2860
13:22
Western European nations.
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790540
1710
13:24
They're also all rich.
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792250
1680
13:26
This depressed me,
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793930
1740
13:27
because one of the things that I did not want
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795670
1512
13:29
to discover with this index
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797182
1578
13:30
is that it's purely the province of rich countries
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798760
2356
13:33
to help poor countries.
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1025
13:34
This is not what it's all about.
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802141
2056
13:36
And indeed, if you look further down the list,
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1576
13:37
I don't have the slide here, you will see
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805773
2326
13:40
something that made me very happy indeed,
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2289
13:42
that Kenya is in the top 30,
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810388
2531
13:45
and that demonstrates one
very, very important thing.
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2885
13:48
This is not about money.
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815804
1863
13:49
This is about attitude.
357
817667
1397
13:51
This is about culture.
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819064
1466
13:52
This is about a government and a people that care
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820530
3447
13:56
about the rest of the world
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823977
1194
13:57
and have the imagination and the courage
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825171
1992
13:59
to think outwards instead of only thinking selfishly.
362
827163
3237
14:02
I'm going to whip through the other slides
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830400
1780
14:04
just so you can see some
of the lower-lying countries.
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832180
2948
14:07
There's Germany at 13th, the U.S. comes 21st,
365
835128
3282
14:10
Mexico comes 66th,
366
838410
1741
14:12
and then we have some of
the big developing countries,
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840151
2118
14:14
like Russia at 95th, China at 107th.
368
842269
3140
14:17
Countries like China and Russia and India,
369
845409
3004
14:20
which is down in the same part of the index,
370
848413
2553
14:23
well, in some ways, it's not surprising.
371
850966
2353
14:25
They've spent a great deal of time
372
853319
1539
14:27
over the last decades building their own economy,
373
854858
2163
14:29
building their own society and their own polity,
374
857021
2686
14:31
but it is to be hoped
375
859707
1666
14:33
that the second phase of their growth
376
861373
1367
14:34
will be somewhat more outward-looking
377
862740
1985
14:36
than the first phase has been so far.
378
864725
2527
14:39
And then you can break down each country
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867252
2108
14:41
in terms of the actual datasets that build into it.
380
869360
3356
14:44
I'll allow you to do that.
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872716
849
14:45
From midnight tonight it's going
to be on goodcountry.org,
382
873565
2662
14:48
and you can look at the country.
383
876227
1183
14:49
You can look right down to the
level of the individual datasets.
384
877410
3868
14:53
Now that's the Good Country Index.
385
881278
2218
14:55
What's it there for?
386
883496
1369
14:57
Well, it's there really because I want to try
387
884865
2285
14:59
to introduce this word,
388
887150
2451
15:01
or reintroduce this word, into the discourse.
389
889601
4323
15:06
I've had enough hearing about competitive countries.
390
893924
2189
15:08
I've had enough hearing about
391
896113
1795
15:10
prosperous, wealthy, fast-growing countries.
392
897908
3786
15:13
I've even had enough hearing about happy countries
393
901694
3248
15:17
because in the end that's still selfish.
394
904942
2041
15:19
That's still about us,
395
906983
1504
15:20
and if we carry on thinking about us,
396
908487
1868
15:22
we are in deep, deep trouble.
397
910355
2542
15:25
I think we all know what it is
398
912897
1631
15:26
that we want to hear about.
399
914528
1123
15:27
We want to hear about good countries,
400
915651
3045
15:30
and so I want to ask you all a favor.
401
918696
3630
15:34
I'm not asking a lot.
402
922326
1596
15:36
It's something that you might find easy to do
403
923922
1953
15:38
and you might even find enjoyable
404
925875
1025
15:39
and even helpful to do,
405
926900
1603
15:40
and that's simply to start using the word "good"
406
928503
3282
15:43
in this context.
407
931785
1682
15:45
When you think about your own country,
408
933467
2187
15:47
when you think about other people's countries,
409
935654
2129
15:49
when you think about companies,
410
937783
1783
15:51
when you talk about the world that we live in today,
411
939566
2211
15:53
start using that word
412
941777
1898
15:55
in the way that I've talked about this evening.
413
943675
2768
15:58
Not good, the opposite of bad,
414
946443
1904
16:00
because that's an argument that never finishes.
415
948347
2276
16:02
Good, the opposite of selfish,
416
950623
2344
16:05
good being a country that thinks about all of us.
417
952967
3183
16:08
That's what I would like you to do,
418
956150
1410
16:09
and I'd like you to use it as a stick
419
957560
1385
16:11
with which to beat your politicians.
420
958945
2643
16:13
When you elect them, when you reelect them,
421
961588
2307
16:16
when you vote for them, when you listen
422
963895
1412
16:17
to what they're offering you,
423
965307
2535
16:20
use that word, "good,"
424
967842
1712
16:21
and ask yourself,
425
969554
1484
16:23
"Is that what a good country would do?"
426
971038
2073
16:25
And if the answer is no, be very suspicious.
427
973111
3293
16:28
Ask yourself, is that the behavior
428
976404
2425
16:31
of my country?
429
978829
1436
16:32
Do I want to come from a country
430
980265
2132
16:34
where the government, in my name,
431
982397
1567
16:36
is doing things like that?
432
983964
1862
16:38
Or do I, on the other hand,
433
985826
1756
16:39
prefer the idea of walking around the world
434
987582
1628
16:41
with my head held high thinking, "Yeah,
435
989210
2154
16:43
I'm proud to come from a good country"?
436
991364
2491
16:46
And everybody will welcome you.
437
993855
1988
16:48
And everybody in the last 15 seconds
438
995843
1624
16:49
before they drift off to sleep at night will say,
439
997467
2670
16:52
"Gosh, I'm glad that person's country exists."
440
1000137
2881
16:55
Ultimately, that, I think,
441
1003018
2187
16:57
is what will make the change.
442
1005205
1754
16:59
That word, "good,"
443
1006959
1717
17:00
and the number 6.8
444
1008676
1647
17:02
and the discovery that's behind it
445
1010323
2258
17:04
have changed my life.
446
1012581
1668
17:06
I think they can change your life,
447
1014249
1887
17:08
and I think we can use it to change
448
1016136
1859
17:10
the way that our politicians
and our companies behave,
449
1017995
2420
17:12
and in doing so, we can change the world.
450
1020415
3865
17:16
I've started thinking very differently about
451
1024280
1550
17:18
my own country since I've been
thinking about these things.
452
1025830
2693
17:20
I used to think that I wanted to live in a rich country,
453
1028523
2087
17:22
and then I started thinking I
wanted to live in a happy country,
454
1030610
2400
17:25
but I began to realize, it's not enough.
455
1033010
2614
17:27
I don't want to live in a rich country.
456
1035624
2045
17:29
I don't want to live in a fast-growing
457
1037669
1933
17:31
or competitive country.
458
1039602
2683
17:34
I want to live in a good country,
459
1042285
3118
17:37
and I so, so hope that you do too.
460
1045403
3493
17:41
Thank you.
461
1048896
2584
17:43
(Applause)
462
1051480
4000

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Simon Anholt - Policy advisor
After 20 years working with the presidents and prime ministers of 54 countries, Simon Anholt has a plan to make the world work better.

Why you should listen

For 20 years, Simon Anholt has worked with the presidents, prime ministers and governments of more than fifty nations, devising strategies and policies to help them to engage more imaginatively and productively with the international community. 

In 2014, impatient to do better, Anholt founded the Good Country, a project aimed at helping countries work together to tackle global challenges like climate change, poverty, migration and terrorism, by mobilizing "the only superpower left on the planet: global public opinion."

According to The Independent, Anholt's aim is to change the way countries, cities and companies work "...by us all encouraging their leaders to think about the global impact of their actions, rather than cut-throat self-interest."

Measurement of Good Country progress is done through Anholt's Good Country Index, the only survey to rank countries according to their contribution to humanity and the planet rather than their domestic performance. According to The Guardian, "He has built his career in part as a formidable cruncher of data." Since 2005, his research into global perceptions of nations and cities has collected and analyzed over 300 billion data points. 

In 2016, Anholt launched the Global Vote, a project that enables anybody in the world to vote in other countries' elections, choosing the candidate who is likely to do most for humanity and the planet: three months later over 100,000 people from 130 countries took part in the Global Vote on the US Presidential Election. The Global Vote now covers an election somewhere in the world almost every month.

Anholt is an Honorary Professor of Political Science and the author of five books about countries, cultures and globalisation. He is the founder and Editor Emeritus of a leading academic journal focused on public diplomacy and perceptions of places.

 

More profile about the speaker
Simon Anholt | Speaker | TED.com