Word: levers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What Gates understands better than anyone else is that control over the standards that others must adhere to is the great lever of wealth and power in the digital age. Just as the value of a telephone network increases with each new phone added to the system (because it gives everyone on the network one more person to call), so does the value of a computer system increase with each program that runs on it. This is what Stanford economist Brian Arthur calls the law of increasing returns-a twist on the classic law of diminishing returns...
...Year's ideas about what can be accomplished differ from those of most mortals. They are far grander, informed by a vision as vast as the human determination to bring them into being. After discovering the principle of the lever and the fulcrum in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes wrote, "Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth." John Paul knows where he stands...
...Financial aid is the single most important lever in ensuring that Harvard attracts the best students," he said. "[It is] the single most important goal [of the campaign...
When the goal is changing behavior rather than changing governments, the results are mixed. The U.S. has abandoned the trade weapon as a lever to improve human rights in China, yet years of sanctions helped end apartheid in South Africa. Even there, however, it was the possibility of revolution, which prompted foreign banks to stop lending for fear their money would be lost, that was mostly responsible for the white minority's finally ceding power. If, as it seems, North Korea's nukes have become central to the Kims' sense of themselves, no sanctions will deter their desire to expand...
...Mele to New York City to brief company executives on their research. According to Mele, however, when DeNoble explained that the rat experiment was a strong indication of the addictiveness of nicotine, one executive said, "Why should I risk a billion-dollar industry on a rat pressing a lever?" (In 1992 the Cipollones dropped the case...