People who live in poor countries have to be entrepreneurial even just to survive.
Ha-Joon ChangRead
Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Opportunities are useless without the necessary skills or capabilities to utilize them.
The quote highlights the importance of not just providing equal opportunities but also ensuring that individuals possess the abilities and resources needed to benefit from those opportunities. It suggests that true equality requires addressing the disparities in capabilities, which allows everyone to fully engage with the possibilities offered to them.
Themes
EqualityOpportunityCapabilitiesEducationSuccess
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a speech about educational reform to emphasize the need for skill development.
More from Ha-Joon Chang
All quotes βThe widely accepted assertion that, only if you let markets be will everyone be paid correctly and thus fairly, according to his worth, is a myth. Only when we part with this myth and grasp the political nature of the market and the collective nature of individual productivity will we be able to build a more just society in which historical legacies and collective actions, and not just individual talents and efforts, are properly taken into account in deciding how to reward people.
Ha-Joon ChangRead
Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rick as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.
Ha-Joon ChangRead
The higher education system in these countries (US, Korea etc) has become like a theatre in which some people decided to stand to get a better view, promoting the others behind them to stand. Once enough people stand, everyone has to stand, which means no one is getting a better view, while everyone has become more uncomfortable.
Ha-Joon ChangRead
There is no such thing as a free market.
Ha-Joon ChangRead
[Good managers] know that people have 'good' sides and 'bad' sides and that the secret of good management is in magnifying the former and toning down the latter.
Ha-Joon ChangRead
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I strongly recommend that students with autism get involved in special interest clubs in some of the areas they naturally excel at. Being with people who share your interests makes socializing easier.
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