George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930. He emigrated to England in 1947, where he graduated from the London School of Economics. In 1956 he moved to the United States, and it was here he commenced to accumulate his great fortune through an international investment fund he established and managed.
Mr Soros set up his first foundation, the Open Society Fund, in New York in 1979 and his first Eastern European foundation in Hungary in 1984. At the present date, he funds a network of foundations that operate in 31 countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Central Eurasia, as well as in Southern Africa, Haiti, Guatemala, and the United States. The scope of the foundations has been declared to be a "dedication to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society." Other major institutions that were founded by Mr Soros are the Central European University and the International Science Foundation. According to the financial releases by the foundations, the foundation network spent a total of approximately $300 million in 1994; in 1995, $350 million; and 1996, $362 million. Further, the monetary output for 1997 is expected to reach a similar level. While Mr Soros has received a lot of praise for his shown commitment and for the money generated by his foundations towards amending the social situation around the world and especially in Eastern Europe, he has also received a great deal of criticism. The accusations are that Mr Soros was a principal cause for the currency crises in both Sweden and the UK a few years back, and that he had a major role in devastating the Southeast Asian stock market less than a year ago. Some critics have gone as far as charging Mr Soros of utilising the generous donations from his foundations as a tool to obtain political influence in the countries in question in order to further his prosperity. Also, much complaint has been directed towards his policy of advocating for world liberalisation of drugs. In other words, his success and the means of procuring it have generated many emotions on opposite sides and created a lot of contention. Mr Soros' most lucrative enterprise has been the Soros Fund Management LCC. The organization, which he is the Chairman of, is a private investment management firm that serves as principal investment advisor to the Quantum Group of Funds. The Quantum Fund N.V., the oldest and largest fund within the Quantum Group, is generally recognised as having the best performance record of any investment fund in the world in its 28-year history. With such a track record, it is simple to understand how he managed to accumulate his wealth and spread his influence.

Mr Soros intended, with his seminar, to create a consensus that it is needed to complement the global economy with a global society.
His lecture dealt with the issue of what fallacies the current system possesses and what improvements are required in order for the new globalized society to work properly and even more importantly for it to become beneficial to all. The corner stone of such a social amendment on a global scale, according to Mr Soros, is the concept of "Open Society."
In the introductory part of his speech he stated he was troubled. This distress he felt was caused by the fact that, as he puts it, "people living in open societies don't seem to believe in the idea of open society..." He went on explaining that people are willing to fight for their own well-being, but that they are reluctant to intervene and help others. As an example he pointed to the conference in Potsdam, in the spring of 1989, when he suggested a new version of the Marshall Plan for the purpose of assisting Russia in its transition period towards an open society. The response given by the other members of the conference, Mr Soros stated, was that "I was literally laughed at." It is interesting to note, however, that while Mr Soros advocates for more empathy in society, when he was asked if it did not bother him that his currency dealings had caused the Swedish economy much harm he simply answered that he had followed the rules of the game. So much for caring for others.
His introduction was followed by an attempt to explain what the concept of open society actually means. The outcome was one characterised by vagueness and redundancy.
"It is based on the recognition that our understanding of the world in which we live is inherently imperfect. The ultimate truth is beyond our reach. It cannot be attained even by science. The key to the success of science is testing and theories that cannot be tested do not qualify as scientific. We must proceed by trial and error and we must be ready to correct our mistakes. This leads to a democratic form of government which allows the people to reject rulers with whom they are not satisfied. The perfect society is unattainable; therefore, we must content ourselves with the second best, a society that is inherently imperfect but holds itself open to be improved. That is the concept of the open society."

The assertion that a utopia is beyond our reach is not a novel one. Neither is the idea of a political system based on perpetual amending. After all, the role of any legislative body or the court system is to generate new laws and correct the old ones in order to better apply the rule of law and its institutions to the ever changing society. Thus, a "trial and error" mechanism is already built into western societies. Further, the notion of utilising political tools such as recall is not new either. In other words, the pillars of open society are old ones and not new inventions as portrayed by Mr Soros. Granted, Mr Soros does not take credit for these ideas himself, instead he delegates it to the scientist Karl Popper. Still, it seems like Mr Soros wants to make the claim that he is on to something original and revolutionary. An even greater complaint is, however, that by reading his definition one has a hard time differentiating an open society with what is generally thought of as being a democracy. And if they are the same, then why introduce a new concept that confuses matters more than clears them up?
The abstract account given of what an open society is was followed by the identification of some of the dangers to it both in the past and in the future. First, he explains, totalitarian regimes like communism and fascism were the opposite to the open society. Such regimes inherently imprisoned the society instead of allowing it to be open. On this account one can only agree with Mr Soros. After all, the agenda of such regimes was never to create a better society or one willing to amend. Instead, the intention of such regimes was to redistribute political power to a new group in society and to ensure the maintenance of the newly obtain authority. This issue, however, was addressed merely briefly. Instead, he focused to a much larger extent on the jeopardy of what he calls "market fundamentalism," which he contends is as great of a threat to the open society today as communism was in the past. Mr Soros explained that:
"Communism abolished the market mechanism. Market fundamentalism seeks to abolish collective decision-making and political control over markets. Both are wrong. What is needed is a correct balance between politics and the markets, between rule making and playing by the rules."
Mr Soros assertion is that market fundamentalism, which is his label for laissez faire , endangers the open society by misjudging how financial markets work and by allowing them to play a much too large role. His grievance with market fundamentalism can be summarised into two main points. First, he claims that the market mechanism is instable and that economists wrongfully use the concept of equilibrium, which generates a false model of the financial markets. Market fundamentalists, according to Mr Soros, believe that financial markets naturally move towards equilibrium, which Mr Soros claims is untrue. Mr Soros asserts that their idea that the market is like a pendulum that ultimately always comes to a rest at equilibrium is false. The Asian crisis, he argues, proves that the pendulum analogy and the concept of equilibrium is untrue. A possible objection to his claim, due to globalization which he himself acknowledges, is that the "market" in this case cannot just be thought of being the Southeast Asian economy. Instead, the correct application of the economic concept of equilibrium would be to consider the whole world economy as the market. The notion that a country or region constitutes the market was applied when international trade and interdependence was close to non existent compared to today. Thus, today's assertions about economic theory have to be made within the context that the aggregate market means the world economy, and it is within that market that equilibrium has to be met. Therefore, the collapse of Southeast Asia's economy does not function as a good example for proving that the concept of equilibrium is false. Further, it is intriguing that Mr Soros constantly refers to the Asian crisis as an example. Has he forgot that many blame him for it? Or, perhaps his strategy is simply to create a public perception that he is truly involved in the attempts to assist the Asian market so it can stabilise, and by such means be able to evade further criticism for his past actions?
As Mr Soros continued his lecture, he contended that "there is a two-way connection between present decisions and future events," which he calls reflexivity. He points out that market participants do not base their decisions on knowledge but instead a bias and "reflexivity will either correct the bias and create equilibrium or it might reinforce itself in which case markets can move far away from equilibrium." He points to Asia as an example of the latter. Further, he concludes that markets experience booms and busts, which will be determined by the mechanism of reflexivity and not equilibrium. Of course, the concept of reflexivity has reached far from acceptance within the economics community. Instead, which he himself points out, it is thought of being a very controversial notion. Still, the idea of reflexivity is an entertaining one, and I'm sure, especially with Mr Soros as its proponent, it will be the topic of conversation for some time to come. Mr Soros' second grievance with market fundamentalism concerned the "non-market sector," which is directed towards the failure of politics both nationally and internationally. His criticism was directed towards the fact that market mechanisms and the "profit method" have been allowed to penetrate deep into areas of activity where they do not belong. This problem, which he claims is more detrimental than the instability of the market mechanism, he attributes to failure in politics and the breakdown of social values. "The promotion of self-interest into a moral principle corrupts politics and the failure of politics is the strongest argument in favor of giving markets a free reign," stated Mr Soros. Here Mr Soros delved into an area filled with clichés. The topic of corruption in politics was run into the ground long ago. Sure, if he had conveyed any concrete solutions for combating corruption it would have been interesting to hear about them, but to just state that it exists is merely redundant.
Mr Soros emphasised that collective decision-making is vital to ensure a global open society in the future. The profit model, which is an offspring of market fundamentalism, states that if each individual concerns himself with his best interest, then every one will benefit due to such factors as comparative advantage and the trickle-down effect. Mr Soros, however, refutes that idea. He argues that there are social and economic areas in which individual decision making is not sufficient. Instead, in areas such as peace, justice, freedom, and environment the only viable forum is collective decision-making. Further, he makes a distinction between making the rules and playing by those rules. "Rule making," according to Mr Soros, "involves collective decisions or politics. Playing by those rules involves individual decisions or market behavior." In other words, he is stating that collective decision-making, and not individual ones, is essential in accomplishing the creation of an open society. Of course, Mr Soros is absolutely right on this point; however, once again he tends to overstate the obvious.
Another criticism is directed towards international institutions, and especially the IMF. Mr Soros argues that the IMF has not done enough to create relief for the Eastern European countries. IMF tried to stabilise the currencies, he asserts, but it did not attack the underlying problem of "the insolvency of the banking systems." Further, Mr Soros' criticism continues, IMF set conditions on the borrowing countries, but no restrictions were imposed on the international banks who lent the money.
Much reproach was directed towards the capitalistic system, yet Mr Soros stated he is despite all its faults for a continuation of that same system.

"I want to make it clear that I do not want to abolish capitalism. In spite of its shortcomings, it is better than the alternatives. I should like to prevent the global capitalist system from destroying itself. For this purpose we need the concept of open society more than ever."

In other words, he wants to keep capitalism and he wants an open society, which in accordance with his own definition is pretty much equal to democracy. At this point, I myself was confuses. After all, do not these two conditions already exist in the western world? Sure, his lecture would make sense if it declared the need of a spread of these systems to the rest of the world, but most of his speech dealt with the fallacies of the western society.