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I myself, I love printed newspapers. I find it easier to absorb, and given a choice of a printed newspaper or electronic one in the morning, I'll always take the print. But it's a hard business because you need to move from a paper today with a given income to an uncertain future. You don't have to be electronic eventually, but to get there is pretty difficult because at the moment an advertisement on your electronic website gets you about one-tenth the income of your printed paper. That's the ratio that in the US applies. So if you have a hundred thousand circulation today as a printed paper, you need about ten times that — about a million readers a day — to have comparable income. So I think most of these papers will actually die. The field will survive in electronic form, but most along the way will go to business.

We innovate as fast as we can. Now, some sites are free, so they depend upon advertising income. But in certain sites where you have a unique feature — for example, high-quality business news or the local language, we have Afrikaans in South Africa, you have Holland Dutch here — there's a chance people might buy that. So we try to distinguish which sites should be free and try to move them as fast as possible. And then for some sites we try to build a pay audience.

I think it's entirely possible that in one language you'll have a limited number of sites, five or six, some small number. But if you take the Dutch-speaking world, I do not think those sites need to be owned by Pearson or the New York Times. They could be owned by Dutch and Belgian companies because language is definitive. If you give people an adequate product in their home language, it always knocks out a similarly adequate product in English. So language is a barrier, and behind that barrier I think the Dutch media groups can hide.

The biggest industry in the world is retail. It's bigger than banking, bigger than oil. It's the biggest single industry in the whole world. A very high proportion of retail will move to the internet. So just consider this: in the future, there'll be no travel companies with physical offices and desks where you could meet them. It'll all be done on the internet. It's just so much more effective. Likewise, certain types of advice, certain medical services — you can do a lot better on the internet. You have some services that will not move online. For example, hotel bookings will be done electronically, but the physical act of eating needs to be done in a restaurant. Virtual food isn't as good as real food. So if you try to predict what portion of any economy will move to the internet, my guess is about forty or fifty percent. And where are we now? Consider Britain — it's at about eleven percent. So eleven percent of the total retail activity in Britain goes on the internet. The consequence is that the main streets — as you drive through the British countryside — the main streets are empty. There are gaps: there's a shop, there's a gap, there's a shop, there's a gap. It's a tragedy for small towns, but I think it's a process that can't be stopped. It'll continue until some portion — fifty percent, forty percent somewhere there — of the total retail economy passes to the internet.

I think global news sites are too competitive. It's still hard to make money. There are so many of them. To be better than the Mail or the New York Times or Financial Times — just too hard. But you know, e-commerce is not far from a newspaper. Consider your local newspaper: makes a lot of money from advertising, the subscription fees usually less than half the income. That's exactly what we do on the internet. So if we run a classified site, all we do is bring a buyer and a seller together. We're not really a trader; we're a marketplace, like a newspaper used to be. If you take in Holland, Marktplaats, it's exactly the sort of thing we do. We don't own Marktplaats — we were too stupid, I guess, to buy it. But we are in other places — Poland, actually in eleven countries in Europe, from Switzerland all the way basically through the old Soviet bloc all the way east. We have e-commerce sites now that is not far from what the newspaper does: it brings buyers and sellers together in some sympathetic environment where we lead them to connect.

China fascinates me. I think China will become the biggest economy in the world. Not because they run sweatshops or do evil things, but just because they work hard. If I compare the typical engineer in China at seven o'clock on Friday evening — he's working. If you look at Holland, including our own companies, no one's working at seven o'clock on a Friday. I mean, give me a break, it's the weekend. So China simply outperforms the West with a better educational system, harder work — especially the Chinese mother. You know, she's got one child, she drives that child fanatically: homework till nine o'clock tonight, on Saturday morning extra maths, on Saturday afternoon extra violin class. So in the end when the kid gets to the final year of school, he's a year or two ahead of the typical European school. And then he goes to university and then he works in his career just harder. So China's got great entrepreneurs, great engineers, and some hard work. I think when I look at Europe, it's a wonderful place to live, but frankly, if you work thirty-five hours like the French government wants, you do well. I see the German government now saying when the Daimler manager gets back from holiday — 'I'm taking four weeks of holiday, they shouldn't face a whole lot of emails because that's stressful.' Emails should be wiped out. So then you can start... I mean, it's so idiotic what's happening in Europe that you just say: Europe cannot compete with Asia. And the net result, probably, is that Europe will first become poor before they turn around and recover, because China and India to some extent completely outperform Europe at the moment.

I think yes. It's the balance between Europe trying to create this apathetic, soft society where it's nice to live. And I have a house in Holland and I love living there. I think for example the Dutch — the quality of life in Holland is possibly the highest in the world. The transport, cheap and all-pervasive, medical services, safety, the fact that you have almost no poverty. I mean, it's such a wonderful place to live. And yet that comes at the cost of growth. There's a lack of edge, there's not that naked ambition. So mothers don't drive their children in a fanatical way, and consequently the children don't quite feel so compelled to perform. And every weekend everyone relaxes. So if you project it out for twenty years, you just say the energy of China will make them wealthy, and the good quality of life in Holland softens everything. And the net result is that a Dutch kid born today could end up flipping hamburgers in the Shanghai Hilton. It's a reasonable prospect.

Yes. And I think there's much benefit in it. For example, the reason people want to restrict working hours is an assumption that work is nasty, it's unpleasant — that's an old nineteenth-century Marxist view of the world. If you ask me, how many hours do I work? I don't know — sixty, seventy, something. Do I resent it? Not at all. I love it. My work is interesting. I fly — we do business in thirty countries in the world. I fly to interesting places, I drink expensive wine, I talk to interesting politicians. It's a wonderful life. So if you said to me, 'Okay, the alternative is you can cut down your hours by half,' I'd say: 'Now what the hell do I want to do? Do I want to sit and drink a glass on the canal and look at the swans?' I mean, it's miserable. I want to work. I enjoy it. So I think the problem in sort of ethical terms in Europe is that in China, if you live in a poor neighborhood in a very small flat on the thirteenth floor, work isn't so bad. It's not necessarily worse than being at home. So work becomes the place where you fulfil yourself. And often in Europe there's a perception that you fulfil yourself in your private life, with your family, at home, your own hobbies, and work is a slog. And if that's your attitude, you can lose.

Yes, it's true. But you have to create something interesting for yourself. Do you know there's a recent study in Britain, London School of Economics, that analyzes happiness. They check on what you have to do — well, what are the components of happiness? They say the two things: to have a purpose to your life and to have pleasure. Now, the purpose is to do something that you think worthwhile, and the pleasure is the enjoyment of everyday engagement. It's interesting — they ranked careers, they did analysis on a large sample, and at the very top of the pile, the most happiest people are gardeners and florists. And you can just see why: because you bring satisfaction to people. There's a sense of purpose — people get married, they need flowers, I deliver it, I feel good about that. There's a sense of pleasure participating in these relationships. Now, that's not a high-powered, highly paid career. That's meaningful to someone. So I think if a young person starts out in the world, ask yourself: what will give me a sense of purpose? What will make me feel that I've lived my life to some end? And secondly, what gives me joy? Try to compile it and try to find yourself a job. There are many interesting jobs in the world.

I think Holland has very good management talent. And we've recruited a lot of new managers. We have another headquarters at Hooftstad near Schiphol. In Holland there's a particularly good quality: if you have a gifted, talented manager, give him international exposure — send him to different countries in the world — they do particularly well. And I've often wondered why. I think it's because for three, four hundred years Holland was a trading nation. So you know, sometimes you get people who are so locked into their own culture — you often get with an American — they cannot see other people on equal terms. Very interesting thing about Dutch businesspeople — the international class that have travelled and seen the world — is that they know, well, it's a small country, and it's sort of a permeable, open society, that they can engage with almost every other nation on earth on equal terms and get along. So I think Dutch managers in general are one of the best cultures to recruit a manager from.

Yes, I think definitely. When I was young, the word 'entrepreneur' was still French — you know, it wasn't used. I think now there's a perception that it's very sexy to be an entrepreneur, and everyone should try to be. And I think that's a great mistake, because the economy does not need hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs. It needs about one or two percent of people to be an entrepreneur, and the rest will work in structures. I also think temperamentally, entrepreneurs may be some oddball. The best ones I know are somewhat defective. So someone's father's a drunk, say, and he has to prove that he's better. Another one is a total geek — he can't relate to girls — so he ends up working hard, develops an internet site, eventually becomes a sort of entrepreneur. They're often extremely competitive. They often also cause damage to their families because they're so unbalanced. The majority of entrepreneurs fade in the background. So to be an entrepreneur is not particularly attractive, and it's not something everyone should do. Not every temperament is suited to be an entrepreneur. It happens. I happen to like it — I like freedom, doing my own fortune. But I think for a great many people it's better to work in an existing structure, find someone who can lead the company, and slot in somewhere useful in the structure, supporting rather than trying to start.

Oh yes, yes. In what respect are they different? I get the sense that money is less important. People want fulfilment. And if you speak to young people, when you tell them that someone says 'my only purpose in life is to make money,' I think they say: 'I want to do something useful with my life.' And there's a consequence of that: if they're very good, then maybe I'll make money. That's quite a hopeful sign. I think young people are more idealistic in a sense, more positive than our generation.