What happens when the whole world votes? | Simon Anholt | TEDxFrankfurt

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“The only remaining superpower is international public opinion,” says Simon Anholt, an independent policy advisor who has helped more than 50 countries engage more productively with the rest of the world. He believes that public opinion cannot be shifted on the surface, but only moves when a government makes real changes in its values and behavior by rolling out enlightened policies, developing dynamic exchanges with other nations and committing to global betterment.

Twitter: @SimonAnholt

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

As many of you know, the results of
the recent election were as follows:

Hillary Clinton, Democratic Candidate
went a lenghts loud victory,

with 52% of the overall vote.

Jill Stein, the Green Candidate,
came a distant second with 19%.

Donald J. Trump, the Republican Candidate
was caught up on our hills with 14%.

And their remainder of the vote was shared
between abstainers and Gary Jonhson,

the Libertarian Candidate.

(Astonishing silence and then
laughters in the audience)

What parallel Universe
do you suppose I'm living?

I don't live in a parallel
Universe, I live in the world.

And that is outer world verdict.

Let me take you back and
explain what I mean by that.

In June this year, I loaned
something called 'The Global Vote.'

And the Global Vote, does
exactly what it says on the tin.

For the first time in history, elects
anybody, anywhere in the world

vote in the elections of
other people's countries.

Why would you do that?

What's the point?

Let me show you what it looks like.

You go to a website, rated beautiful
website and then you select an election

here's a bunch of what
we've already covered,

we do about it one a month or there about

so you can see by gallery
the United States of America,

Secretary General of the United Nations,

the Brexit Referendum at the end head.

You select the election that you're
interested in and you pick the candidate.

These are the candidates for the recent
Presidential elections in the tiny

Island Nation in São Tomé and Prìncipe,
under 99 of thousand inhabitants,

off the coast of West Africa.

And then you can look at the brief
summary of each of those candidates,

which I dearly hope it's very neutral,
very informative and very succinct.

And when you find the
one you like, you vote.

These were the candidates in the
recent Islandic Presidential election.

And that's the way it goes.

Why not would you do want to vote
in another country's election?

The reason you wouldn't want
to do it, let me reassure you,

is in order to interfere in the
democratic process of another country.

That's not the purpose at all.

Infact you can't, because usually
what I do is I release the results after

the elector in each individual
country has already voted,

so there's not way that we
can interfere in that process.

But more importantly, I'm
not particularly interested

in the domestic issues
of individual countries,

that's not what we are voting on.

What Donald J. Trump or Hillary Clinton
propose to do for the Americans,

it's frankly none of our business.

That's something that only
the Americans can vote on.

Now, In the Global Vote you are
only considering one aspect of it

which is: "What of those leaders
are going to do for the rest of us?"

And that's so very important,

because we live, as nonart of
your seeker people tell you,

in a globalized, hyperconnected,
massively interdependent world,

where the political decisions
of people in other countries

can unwill have an impact on our lives,

no matter who we are,
no matter where we live.

Like the wings of the butterfly,
beating on one side of the Pacific,

that can apparently create
a hurricane on the other side,

so it is with the world
we are living today.

And the world of politics.

There is no longer a dividing line between
domestic and international effect.

Any country, no matter how small,
even if it's São Tomé and Prìncipe,

could produce the next Nelson
Mandela, or the next Stalin.

They could pollute the atmosphere in
the oceans which belong to all of us.

Or they could be responsible
and they can help all of us.

And yet, the system is so strange
because the system hasn't caught up

with this globalized reality.

Only a small number of people are
allowed to vote for those leaders,

even though their impact is
gigantic and almost universal.

What number was it? A hundred and
forty million of Americans voted for the

next President of The United States

and yet, as all of us know,
in a few weeks time,

somebody is going handle over the
Nuclear Launch Code to Donald J. Trump.

Now if that isn't having a
potential impact on all of us,

I don't know what it is.

Similarly the election for the
Referendum on the Brexit Vote

a small number of millions of
British people voted on that

but the outcome of the vote,
which every way it went

would define a significant impact

on the lives of tens, hundreds of
millions people around the world

and that the only tiny
number that could vote.

What kind of democracy is that?
Huge decisions that affects all of us,

being decided by relatively
very small numbers of people

and I don't know about you, but
I don't think that sounds very democratic.

So I'm trying to clear it up.

But as I say, we don't ask
about domestic questions.

Infact, I have only ever asked two
questions of all of the candidates.

I'm sending the same two
questions every single time.

I say: 1. If you got elected, what are
you going to do for the rest of us,

for the remainder of the 7
billion who live on this planet?

Second question: What is your vision
for your country's future in the world?

What role do you see it playing?

Every candidate, I send the most
questions and all of that answers,

don't get me wrong, I reckon
if you're standing to become

the next President of the United States,

you' re probably pretty
tied up most of the time,

so I'm not altogether surprised that
they don't answer us, but many do.

More every time. And some of
them do much more than answer.

Some of them answer
in the most enthusiastic

and most exciting way you could imagine,

I just wanna say a word of
it for Saviour Chishimba,

which was one of the Candidates in the
recent Zambian Presidential election.

His answers to those two questions
were basically an 18 page dissertation

on his view of Zambia's
potential role in the world

and in the International Community.

I posted it on the website
so anybody could read it.

Now Saviour, won the global vote,
but he didn't win the Zambian election.

So I found myself wondering,

what am I going to do with this
extraordinary group of people,

I brought some wonderful people
here who want the global vote,

we always are getting wrong, by the way.

The one that we elect is never the person

who is elected by the
domestic electorate

- maybe Palin because we
went to see to go for a women -

but I think it may also be a sign
that the domestic electors

are still thinking very nationally,
they're still thinking very inwardly,

they're still asking themselves:
"what's in it for me?"

instead of what they should be asking
today, which is: "what's in it for we?"

But there you go, so suggestions please,
not right now but send me an e-mail

if you got an idea about we can do with
this amazing team of glorious losers.

We've got Saviour Chishimba
who I mentioned before,

we got up at Tómasdóttir
who was running up

in the Islandic Presidential elections,
many of you may have seen her in

an amazing talk at TED women
just a few weeks ago,

where she spoke by the need for
more women to get into politics.

We got Maria das Neves
from São Tomé and Prìncipe.

We got Hillary Clinton,
I don't know if she's available.

We got Jill Stein, and we
covered also the election

for the next General Secretary
of the United Nations

and we called the ex
Prime Minister of New Zealand

who'll be a wonderful member of the team.

I think maybe those
people, the glorious losers,

would like to travel around the
world, wherever there's an election,

and remind people of the
necessity in our modern age,

of thinking a little bit outwards

and thinking of the
international consequences.

What comes next to the global vote?

Obviously the Donald and Hillary show
is a bit of a difficult one to follow,

but there's another really important
election that's coming up.

Infact they seemed to be multiplied,
there's something going on,

I'm sure you've noticed in the world

and the next roll of elections
are all critically important.

And just a few days time we got the reveal
of the Australian Presidential election

with the prospect of nobody offer
becoming commonly described

as the fast far right outer station
europe since the Second Worlds War.

Next year we got Germany, we got France,
we got Presidential election in Iran,

and a dozen of others.

It doesn't get less important.
It gets more and more important.

Clearly, the global vote is
not a stand alone project.

It's not just there on its own.

It has some background. It's part of the
project which I've launched back in 2014

which I called 'The Good Country.'

The idea as a good country
is basically very simple.

It's my simple diagnosis of
what it's wrong with the world

and how we can fix it.

What's wrong with the world
I've already went into that.

Basically we face an enourmous
and growing number of gigantic

existential global challenges: climate
change, human rights abuses,

mass migration, terrorism, economic
chaos, weapons proliferation,

all of these problems is
threatened to wipe us out

all by the very nature
of globalized problems

no individual country has the
capability of tackling them on its own.

And so very obviously, we have to
cooperate and we have to collaborate

as nations if we're going
to solve these problems.

It's so obvious.

And yet we don't-

We don't do it nearly after enough.

Most of the time countries
still persist in behaving

as they were worring selfish tribes.

Battling against each other,

much as they have done since the Nation
State was invented hundred of years ago.

And this is got to change. This is
not a change in political systems

or a change in ideology.
This is a change in culture.

We, all of us, have to understand,

that thinking inwoods is not the
solution to the world's problems

we have to learn how to cooperate
and collaborate a great deal more

and compete just a tiny bit less.

Otherwise things we are
carrying on are getting bad,

and are going to get much worse
much sooner that we anticipate.

This change will only happen if we,
ordinary people, tell our politicians

of things to change. We have to tell
them that the culture is changed.

We have to tell them
they got a new mandate.

The old mandate was
very simple and very single.

If you're in a position of power
or authority you're responsible

for your own people and your
tiny slice of territory, and that's it.

And if, in order to do the best
thing for your own people,

you screw over everybody else
on the planet, that's even better,

that's considered to be a big macho.

Today, I think everybody in a
position of power and responsibility

has got a dual mandate,

which says if you are in a position
of power and responsibility,

you're responsible for your own people and

for every single man, woman,
child and animal on the planet.

You're responsible for your
own slice of territory and

for every single square of mile of the
outer service and the atmosphere above it

and if you don't like that responsibility,
you should not be in power.

That for me, is the rule of the modern age

and that's the message that we're going
to get across through our politicians

and show them that that's the
way things are done these days

otherwise, we're all screwed.

I don't have a problem actually with
Donald Trump's credo of America first.

It seems to me that this it's a pretty
banale statement of what politicians

have always done and
probably should always do.

Of course, they're elected to represent
interests of their own people,

but what I find so boring
and so old-fashioned,

and so unimaginative
about his take on that,

is that America first
means everyone else last.

The making America great again means
making everybody else small again.

And it's just not true.

Images of all the policy advisor
of the last twenty years or so,

I've seen so many hundreds of
examples of policies that harmonize

the international and the domestic needs.

And they make better policy. I'm
not asking nations to be altruistic

or self-sacrificing. That
would be ridiculous!

No nation would ever do that.

I'm asking to wake up and understand
that we need a new form of Government

which is possible and which
harmonize those two needs

those good for our own people
and those good for everybody else.

Since the US elections and since Brexit,

it's become more obvious to
me that those old distinctions

of left wing and right wing
no longer make sense anymore,

they really don't fit the pattern.

What does seem to matter, today, is very
simple, whatever your view of the world

is if that you take comfort from
looking inwoods and backwards

or rather, like me, you find hope
in looking forwards and outwards.

That's the new politics. That's the new
division that is splitting the world

right down the middle.

That may sound judgmental
but it's not meant to be.

I don't a tall misunderstanding
why so many people

find the comfort in looking
inwoods and backwards.

When times are difficult,
when you are short of money,

when you are feeling
insecure and vulnerable,

it's almost a natural human tendency to
turn inwoods to think of your own needs

and to discard everybody else's.

And perhaps to start to imagine that the
past was somehow better than the present

or the future could ever be.

But I happen to believe
that that's a dead end.

History shows us that is a dead end.

When people turn inwoods and turn
backwoods human progress becomes reverse

and things get worse for
everybody very quickly indeed.

If you align me, and you
believe in forwards and outwards

and you believe that the best
thing about humanity is its diversity,

and the best thing about globalization is
the way that it starts up that diversity,

that culture will mix up, to make
something more creative, more exciting,

more productive as ever been
before in human history.

Then, my friends, we've
got a job in our hands

because the inwoods and backwoods
regained are uniting as never before

and that creed of inwoods and backwoods

that fear, that anxiety plained
on the simplest instincts

is sweeping across the world.

Those of us who believe, as
I believe in forwards and outwards

we have to get ourselves organized because
time is running out very, very quickly.

Thank you.

(Applause)