Just suppose the
videos you are about to WATCH may be the
best used minutes and seconds you have ever spent in your life....
Cheers, Sysop
Share This page-> http://TeamInfinity.com
The Age of Recreation via the
Emancipation of Humanity from the Machinery of Economy
via the "ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY"
Transform the Economy, the World, your Life
ALGAE
the Original Source of Oil
View each of the following videos...via ALGAE, in a backyard pond, you can produce diesel fuel....
http://youtube.com/watch?v=L_tGkvec8ww
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EnOSnJJSP5c
http://youtube.com/watch?v=i82CXQX4yq4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_ToojK_MJd0
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hGcLgE52rzw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4DRIg-K6kZs
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/06/05/washburn.230.mpg.car.kfmb
This just shows how badly our leadership has failed us...
It took individuals to come up with this technology which was ALWAYS possible...
It staggers the imagination how much time, lives, and money has been wasted under the rule of know-nothing posers...
Entire Universities, the DOE, and Oil Industry, with huge budgets could not figure this out...
So many followers, so few true leaders.
Everyone waiting around for someone else to take the initiative and think & act creatively...
COMMUNICAE 12556
SUPERCLASS
BOOK RECOMMENDATION, Table of Contents, and Excerpts BELOW these COMMENTS
All I can say is go and reserve this book @ your Public Library and read it ASAP, it is a great book and will give you perspective.
COMMENT 1
Bottom line question you want to ask yourself when reading SuperClass is, when will these highly influential players accelerate the "ROLLOUT of the ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY" which will "Emancipate Humanity from the Machinery of Economy" once and for All ?
Jewish scripture has long pointed to "Economies of the Future" where labor will end once and for all, and we are obviously on the cusp of this reality, if we can only get these Billionaire Babies to make the subtle changes necessary to Roll Out The ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY sooner rather than later.
This inevitable transition to The ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY will help everyone, since robots are the cheapest labor of all, and it has always been the case that when you give the people what they want and need, i.e. freedom from meaningless toil and meaningless vicious pathetic lives, everything improves with almost lightning fast "phase change-like" speed, just look @ what refrigeration, telephones, and the works of people like Moses, and Amadeo Pietro Giannini did by enabling and believing in the sanctity of the common human.
COMMENT 2
aidan & ian: thanks for your thoughtful comments re: the Book SUPERCLASS !
the key to understanding is to realize that those who control the money supply are "real" people, and those who do not are people attempting to become "real".
those attempting to become "real" are robots for the "real" people...
repeat that to yourself as many times as it takes to understand and get over your pride about yourself if you happen to be in a state of "becoming" real, as most are.
It is better to know where you really are versus being a fool for one second longer, which would prevent you from ever being "awake".
the notion of creating money out of nothing is not far from the reality of "people" being created out of nothing, not unlike crops or cattle...
Don't worry if this does not make sense to you, just know this,
that real ROBOTS can do the work that human ROBOTS have being doing for eons for the elites.
Then all humans can join the Elite Ranks
read how this will happen hopefully in your lifetimes:
http://RoboEco.com/SuperClass
Be well !!!
Read more about the ROBOTIC WAGELESS ECONOMY here:
http://RoboEco.com/SuperClass
SUPERCLASS Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Introduction: The Power Elite on the Promenade 3
Acknowledgments 357
Index 363
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT "SUPERCLASS":
Superclass
The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
By Rothkopf, David Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2008
Rothkopf, David
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780374272104
Excerpt
Gentiana is a small restaurant that would scarcely warrant a second glance in any other village in Europe. It is rather traditional, only slightly more charming than the bland shops and modest hotels around it. One nearby storefront offers a remarkable array of Swiss Army knives, another boxes of chocolates, another fur hats and mountain gear. The restaurant has a cozy, neighborhood feel to it. Beside the door there is a blackboard highlighting a few specials, and on the ground floor there may be seating for twenty if they are both thin enough and friendly enough. Upstairs there are a few small rooms for private parties, the biggest of which seats ten people squeezed in on either side of a long narrow table. Most of its character comes from a feel of woody intimacy, the dark wood façade, dark wood floors, dark wood tables. In fact, for all its charm, it is definitely not a place for claustrophobes—or people with an extreme fear of splinters. The reason to go to Gentiana is the fondue, especially the cheese fondue, which is offered in robust portions that recall an era before cardiologists. My wife, Adrean, has a special weakness for fondue, and every year that we have gone to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos we have gone to Gentiana for her birthday. We make reservations long in advance because during the week of theJanuary meetings, which are attended each year by more than 2,000 business and government leaders from around the world, getting a table at Gentiana is not much easier than getting one at renowned eateries like Aragawa in Tokyo, Gordon Ramsay in London, or Le Bernardin in New York. Perhaps more surprisingly, for that one week the clientele at this humble Swiss bistro looks pretty much the same as what you might find at those world-class restaurants. Of course, even during that week, there are still a few tables at Gentiana occupied by locals. One regular is a particularly garrulous drunk who loves to hobnob with the CEOs, heads of state, and rock stars who are wedged in, elbow to elbow, spinning hunks of bread on long forks in the pots of bubbling Gruyère. The local speaks only Swiss-German to the polyglot crowds around him, and few understand him, although judging by his demeanor the casual observer is not sure whether that has to do with the language he speaks or the local beer that he favors. No matter. He smiles and they smile, and the general effect is cheerful and relaxed. One afternoon during a recent Davos, my wife and I were hurrying along the sidewalk on our way to Gentiana. This can be dangerous, as the locals do not shovel away the snow and ice lurks just about everywhere. In fact, attendees at Davos can see with some regularity central bank governors and senior executives of the IMF and other distinguished middle-aged men and women swaddled in cashmere, calfskin, and politically incorrect pelts of many origins launched skyward, only to land on their broader, softer regions. We walked gingerly, therefore, but with purpose, knowing we were meeting our friends in just a few minutes. The weather was typical. A light snow was falling. It was very cold. But the Alpine air was crisp and dry and invigorating. We chatted about the meetings, who we had seen and who we hoped to run into. As we walked, we reflexively did what most of the visitors to this small mountain town do: We glanced at the people passing us in the street, trying to determine who they were. (Given the nature of Davos, they were likely to have been somebody.) It’s a ritual made easier by the fact that everyone at the meeting has to wear a badge around his or her neck at all times. The badge is used to get through the many security checkpoints—there are at least two Swiss soldiers and policemen in Davos for every delegate who attends the meetings—to register for sessions, and to let everyone know who you are. Your name is on the badge, along with the organization you represent. So too is your picture. People tend to walk with their badges dangling in plain sight so they don’t have to fumble with them getting in and out of buildings or past police. That’s how it was for everyone except for the universally recognizable—people like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Bono, or Angelina Jolie. The badge-scanning move is so ubiquitous you might call it the Davos dip: Bend the knee slightly, cast a subtle glance downward, assess and move on. Leaving the Congress Centre and walking along Davos’s main street, the Promenade, we passed Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of Total; a small cluster of Harvard professors; a senior executive of Saudi Aramco; and a woman pulling her two small children on a sled. (She was local and the sled seemed to hint at the reason they don’t shovel the sidewalks.) We stopped briefly to chat with Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who happens to be my wife’s boss, then paused a few steps later to chat with an Indian-born U.S. venture capitalist with whom I had some business. It was a typical sample. Five minutes along the Davos Promenade in January offered a cavalcade of freeze-dried economic leaders from three continents. About two blocks from Gentiana, I was grousing about how one of the conversations that I had most wanted to have had resulted in a frustrating series of near misses. The objective was a long-delayed chat with Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian author of The Alchemist. Coelho has sold more than one hundred million copies of his books worldwide and is, after the Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, the second-best-selling author on the planet. He is also one of the few cultural regulars at Davos, one of a handful of people who might offer a different perspective on the Davos zeitgeist. We had intended to meet almost a year earlier but, due to a series of scheduling mishaps, had repeatedly failed to do so. Finally, we aimed for Davos, but I had yet to lay eyes on him. What did I expect from a man who lived on the other side of the world and was constantly in motion—a Brazilian who lived much of the time in Europe and sold many of his books in Russia? There was a little bit of hubris in thinking we might ever be able to end up in the same place at the same time. And then: “Oh, my God,” said a voice I did not recognize, “it’s you.” A smallish man in a fur hat was staring at my name badge. He had a graying goatee, and he greeted me like a long-lost cousin. It was Coelho, appearing almost miraculously out of the Alpine mist as if conjured by our conversation. Passing along the sidewalk from the Congress Centre where we had just heard an address by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and comments from the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, through the stream of big name boulevardiers, and then walking directly into this icon of the global literary scene—it was made clear again that Davos was truly the incarnation of Marshall McLuhan’s global village. It was like small-town Planet Earth, or the once-a-year Brigadoon of globalization: a community connected to everywhere and, in one way or another, to everyone. Indeed, during the course of this meeting, top trade ministers would caucus to try unsuccessfully to rescue global trade talks, Africa activists would meet with corporate chiefs and political leaders to seek funding for medical aid programs, global warming would “go mainstream” as mostly American skeptics were persuaded by session after session of expert views, and proponents of different solutions for dealing with everything from anxiety about immigrants to anxiety about terrorism would present their views directly to those in a position to implement them. If, as Hillary Clinton has asserted, it takes a village to raise a child, this seemed to be the village it took to run the world. Coelho and I had never met, but thanks to the wonders of the information age we had enough e-mail history that our conversation was familiar and fairly ebullient. He offered to have lunch, but we gestured toward Gentiana, explaining that we had a prior engagement. I eagerly made an appointment to sit down with him later that afternoon at the Kongress Hotel. Over the three and a half decades of its existence, this mountaintop gathering clearly had done more than merely transform Davos from sleepy ski town to cosmopolitan hub. More than a meeting place for international business, government, media, and cultural leaders, it now was a symbol for the knitting together of the world, literally and figuratively a summit of summits. The concept of what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called “Davos man”—the global citizen, the leader for whom borders were increasingly irrelevant—described a new leadership class for our era. When founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, the organization that would become known as the World Economic Forum had a narrower mission. It was focused on convening European business leaders for a discussion of that continent’s rather uncertain economic fortunes. To put the moment in context, it is worth recalling that in 1971, Europe was still living in the aftermath of World War II and was on the front line of the cold war, still more the self-anointed seat of civilization than the “modern” Europe of more modest, less imperial, more multilateralist inclinations. In fact, it was not until three years later that the first of Europe’s great colonial powers, Portugal, granted independence to Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. The United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark did not join the European Union until 1973. Though the Treaty of Rome had initiated the creation of Europe’s Common Market in 1957, it would be more than two decades before the Maastricht Treaty institutionalized the idea of a true single market among the nations of the continent. Europe was clearly in transition at the moment of the forum’s birth. I was in high school at the time, and in college when the World Economic Forum was really gaining its sea legs in the late 1970s. I’ll admit, international conferences didn’t really capture my imagination when I was a teenager, but my education was absolutely colored with the Western worldview of those times, with classical education built on the presumed superiority of European ideas and the history and cultural contributions of other regions seen as exotic and secondary. At Columbia University, we were required to take the “core curriculum,” which was built around two major courses. One, Humanities, was a survey course of the defining works in literature. The second, Contemporary Civilization, was a survey of the great works in political philosophy and related disciplines, beginning with the Greeks and continuing through the modern era. The two courses, in retrospect, were undoubtedly the highlight of my education and have benefited me probably every day of my life since I took them. (Of course, I did not recognize this at the time.) In Contemporary Civilization, we read—at the pace of one significant, sometimes mind-blowing, occasionally mind-numbing book a week—the writings of everyone (male and white) from Plato to Descartes to Darwin. Somewhere around Max Weber and other analysts and critics of modernity, the curriculum got more varied, with different professors assigning different texts, as it was harder to agree on what qualified as essential reading. One of the more popular assignments at that point in the course was The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, a 1956 book that explored the national power structure in the United States. Mills, a former Columbia professor of sociology, wrote the book as a study of how America really worked. His central claim was that at the top tier of the business, government, and military communities, there was a remarkably small and overlapping echelon of “deciders.” This national “power elite” wascomposed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences . . . They are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.Mills asserted that these elites took similar paths to positions of privilege, ensuring that many among their homogeneous numbers knew one another. In addition, they often crossed sectors: from top roles in government to top roles in business, from the the White House cabinet to the boardroom, from military commands to politics, from one position of great responsibility to another. Thus, Mills claimed, they created a kind of interlocking directorate for the United States of America. Mills’s book was as much a critique as it was a description of this group and America’s midcentury leadership. It explored, in meticulous detail, the concentration of power among a comparatively few corporations and individuals, and the manifold links of American leaders to key institutions. The book then veered into polemic, lamenting the disproportionate influence of this group. One of the men who no doubt inspired many of Mills’s points, President Eisenhower, also best illustrated them. A former supreme allied commander in Europe as well as a former president of Columbia University, Eisenhower captured much of Mills’s spirit in his farewell address as president in 1961:[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. One little-remembered aspect of Eisenhower’s speech is that it contained not one but two central warnings. While the first, concerning the military-industrial complex, is more often cited, he also expressed equivalent concerns about the emergence of what he called the “scientific-technological elite.” His concerns, like Mills’s, reflect the zeitgeist of the 1950s, in which the predominant historical memory was of World War II and the subjugation of all U.S. political, financial, and industrial efforts to the goal of military victory. The predominant fear of the moment was of technology run amok as manifested in the growing threat of global thermonuclear war. Since Eisenhower spoke in 1961, technological innovation has not only fueled America’s unprecedented growth but it has empowered people in new ways; it perhaps even helped to bring down the United States’ cold war adversary, as the rise of the information age made it impossible for a closed society to compete. Yet, despite the resilient strength of America’s military-industrial establishment, defense spending and manpower have receded from their highs during World War II and the cold war years. In his speech, Eisenhower speaks of a 3.5-million-person military; today the U.S. military is only 1.5 million men and women strong (with nearly 1 million more in the reserves). He also notes that at the time of his speech the U.S. military budget exceeded the total net income of all U.S. companies. Today, while the defense budget exceeds $425 billion, the earnings of only the fifty most profitable U.S. companies top that number and, indeed, the combined revenues of just the top two, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart, dwarf it, beating it by more than 50 percent. Without a doubt, corporate economic clout has grown dramatically. Mills’s book is still read and is now considered a classic critique of America’s power structure, but it is also clear that the world has changed profoundly in the fifty years since its publication. Excerpted from Superclass by David Rothkopf. Copyright © 2008 by David Rothkopf. Published in March 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
Continues...
Excerpted from Superclass by Rothkopf, David Copyright © 2008 by Rothkopf, David. Excerpted by permission.
Introduction: The Power Elite on the Promenade 3
- Each
One Is One in a Million: Meet the Superclass
- The Corporate Side of the Superclass
- Vilfredo Pareto's Enduring Insight: The 80/20 Rule and the Superclass
- A Snapshot of the Superclass
- What Does Disproportionate Power Look Like?
- What the People Who Have Everything Really Want
- Six Central Issues Associated with the Superclass
- Not All Boats Are Lifted
- Not a Country But a Country Club
- Not Just a Chilean Paradox
- And After the Easy Part ...
- Ceteris Non Paribus: Inequality of Power, Inequality of Wealth
- War of the Rich and the Superrich?
- The Inequitable Distribution of Luck
- Premium Pay in the Executive Suite
- Inequality Revisited
- The Power of History
- The Power of Institutions
- The Power of Money
- The Power of Politics
- The Power of Force
- The Power of Networks
- From the Wanaxes to the Robber Barons: The Rise and Fall of Elites
- Stirrings of Democracy: Greece from 2000 to 323 BCE
- The Forbidden City Opened from Within: China in the Seventeenth Century
- Robber Barons or Inventors of Modernity: America After the Civil War
- The Corporate Cluster Within the Superclass
- The Interlinked Corporate Elite
- What Global Power Can Do
- Energy Elites: A UniquePublic-Private Network
- From the "Sun King" to the "God Pod"
- Global Industry, Global Leadership
- The Power Vacuum
- Gangsters for Capitalism?
- The Rules Change But the Game Stays the Same: Political Elites Worldwide
- Behind the Scenes: The Globalization of the Smoke-Filled Back Room
- Tangled Webs and Tottering Institutions
- An Informal Affair: The Sovereignty vs. Democracy Trade-Off
- The Global Network of Antiglobalists
- The Terrorist Threat in Perspective
- The Roots of Global Networks
- Green Is Not Just the Color of the Uniforms
- Consolidation and Concentration of Military Power
- Networks Among Defense Firms
- They're All in a Tiny Room
- The Privatization of the Military: A Two-Way Street
- Permanent War's Bottom Line: A Country and an Alliance Beyond All Others
- The Fly and the Lion
- Fresh and Yet Strangely Familiar
- An Ascendant Voice of Change in the Middle East
- New Media Monkey-Gland Injections: A Quick Shot of Sizzle
- Pro Bono
- Saving the World One Idea at a Time
- The Reenchantment of the World
- Pastor of Partying
- The Telemuslim
- Dissident Spirituality or Subversive Cult?
- The Pragmatic Fanatic
- A Very Short History of Things That Didn't Really Happen-And Their Very Real Consequences
- When Is a Trowel Just a Trowel?
- Can It Be Considered an Academic Elite Society If George W. Bush Was a Member?
- The "Ex-Presidents' Club"
- The Big Events: Less Than Meets the Eye?
- The Clinton Global Initiative and the Power of Global Philanthropy
- California's Superclass Summer Camp
- Asian and Latin American "Wannabes" or Harbingers of the Supermeetings of Tomorrow?
- How to Become a Member of the Superclass
- The Psychopathology of Success
- In Praise of Our Elites vs. Their Elites
- Disproportionate Concentration of Power
- Agenda-Setting
- Informal Mechanisms of Governance
- Elites vs. the Disenfranchised
- Elites vs. Women
- Elites and Mobility
- Institutions vs. Individuals
- The Emerging Superclass: A Coming Culture Shock?
- Global Governance vs. Global Government
- Is a Crisis Inevitable?
- On Balance
Acknowledgments 357
Index 363
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT "SUPERCLASS":
From the Publisher
Each
of them is one in a million. They
number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our
governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international
finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world's
most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the
global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time.
Today's
superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. They
have globalized more rapidly than any other group. But do they have
more in common with one another than with their own countrymen, as
nationalist critics have argued? They control globalization more than
anyone else. But has their influence fed the growing economic and
social inequity that divides the world? What happens behind closed door
meetings in Davos or aboard corporate jets at 41,000 feet? Conspiracy
or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the
rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that
shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates
beyond national laws?
Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews and extensive original
reporting, Superclass answers
all of these questions and more. It draws back the curtain on a
privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it
profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth
examination of the connections between the global communities of
leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and
control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of
the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our
politics, our institutions, and the shape of the world in which we
live.
Andrea Sachs - Time
There
are just over
6,000 people in the superclass. So says the author of this fascinating
book, a field guide to the world's most élite citizens. See the
rich
and powerful in their natural habitats, from Davos and Bilderberg to
the Bohemian Grove....
sysop@TeamInfinity.com,
April 30, 2008, SuperClass is a Must Read If you want to be all you can be, you need to understand what the world looks like through the eyes of those at the top. SuperClass is an excellent book that will help you to know yourself better as you get to know the elites better. Once you better understand the Elites, you can then proceed to reach out to them, because they are in the best position to change the world in directions that perhaps only those NOT at the top can fully appreciate the need for. You must let them know you exist and are important and that with their reach and leverage, while adopting the correct approach, they can change the world in ways few fully appreciate. Specifically you want to understand the coming 'Robotic Wageless Economy', and then reach out to the elites and persuade them to steer the world in the direction where the 'Robotic Wageless Economy' can become a reality in our lifetimes, emancipating humans from the machinery of economy and ushering in an Age of Recreation never before possible, and more likely if the SuperClass realizes its potential to achieve it, so READ the book SuperClass, you will enjoy it, and you will be better positioned to change the world by leveraging the SuperClass yourself ! Also recommended: Tragedy and Hope - Professor Quigley, True Believer - Eric Hoffer, All Franz Kafka Works, Mao: The Untold Story |
Kirkus Reviews
Some 6,000 people, about one for every million in the world's population, drive the decisions that directly affect the global economic climate in which our governments, corporations, military leaders, technocrats and workers must strive. In other words, they run our lives. So declares Rothkopf (International Affairs/Columbia Univ.; Running the World: the Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, 2005, etc.), who dubs this elite the "Superclass." Members may be found in places like Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum convenes annually, or at gatherings in California's Bohemian Grove, where Republican powerbrokers howl and grunt like Neanderthals. Though international in origin, they share a number of traits: wealth (sometimes mega-wealth), blue-chip educations garnered at world-renowned universities and access to networked ways of getting things done that few of us can even imagine. Key clusters of these individuals comprise the top functionaries of national governments and those who peddle influence among them, the corporate elite, the power media and the military/industrial complex (now far more integrated and tightly knit across national borders). Together they are essentially herding the industrialized nations, including Asian giants China and India, into a corral that the author labels "global governance." His book details the means by which they acquire, negotiate and exercise the clout to do this. "It is hard to ignore the many ways they are the primary beneficiaries of the global order that they shape," opines Rothkopf, partner in an international consulting firm and a Washington insider in the Clinton Administration who boasts firsthand experience of how power is wielded. An impressively knowledgeable guide to the world's elite and how they have coalesced as a kind of natural order. Agent: Esmond Harmsworth/Zachary Shuster Harmsworth
What People Are Saying
Richard Holbrooke
"Whether
you like it or not, there is no way to deny the enormous,
disproportionate, concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a
relatively small number of people in the world today. David Rothkopf
has described who they are, and how they operate and interact, vividly
in his valuable (and often disturbing) new book."--(Richard Holbrooke,
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations)
Lawrence Summers
"The activities of a
growing cosmopolitan elite are having profound effects. They can be
highly desirable when they promote international cooperation or more
problematic when the interests of the elites diverge from those of
their citizens. David Rothkopf's Superclass skillfully probes these
issues and many more and should be read by all those concerned with the
international economy and the evolving global system."--(Lawrence
Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury)
Ernesto Zedillo
"Thanks to Rothkopf's
special blend of analysis, direct interaction with his subjects and
vivid writing, this is a must read book for people interested in
understanding the genesis of leadership in the new global
economy."--(Ernesto Zedillo, Director of the Yale Center for the Study
of Globalization and Former President of Mexico)
Clyde Prestowitz
"David Rothkopf has
written a super book about the people presently executing an historic
shift of world economic and political power and about how they are
doing it and why. If you want to know how your choices are being
determined and the circumstances of your life conditioned, you must
read this book."--(Clyde Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy
Institute and author of Three Billion New Capitalists)
Alan Blinder
"No, no vast conspiracy
runs the world. But, according to Rothkopf's book, a tiny but diverse
global elite, a Superclass, comes close. His finely-honed prose takes
the reader on a joyous, entertaining, and erudite romp around the globe
in search of that class."--(Alan Blinder, Former Vice Chairman of the
Federal Reserve Bank of the United States)
EXCERPTs
from SUPERCLASS:
Page:
48
Overwhelming
and
perhaps confusing as this list [of 6000] may be, it reveals the complex
nature of connections among members of the SuperClass. It is, by
necessity, a partial list for a small cross section of people, but
already illustrates how tangled a web of relationships between
individuals is. For all its twists and turns and intricate
linkages, it explains in the clearest way possible how Schwarzman and
others in the SuperClass have come to see their group as such a "small
world", with everyone just a connection or two away from everyone else.
So
among the roughly
six thousand members of the superclass there are countless threads
linking members to one another. Business associations. Investments.
Board Memberships. Old school ties. Exclusive
neighborhoods. Aviation terminals. Meetings.
Restaurants. Hotels.
In
fact, spread
around the world though they are, rare as they may be among the teeming
billions on the planet, it is easy to see them as a community and to
see the geography of that community take shape at least in the mind's
eye - a geography that stretches from South Kensington to the Upper
East Side of Manhattan; from St. Tropez to Dubai; from the breeding
grounds at Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Tokyo University to meeting
place on the boards of cultural institutions, banks, and political
bodies. Linked together by common interests, a common culture,
and private aircraft, these islands become a glittering, superpowered
archipelago amid oceans of aspirants and of the disenfranchised -
oceans of people who work for them, are buffeted by their market
decisions, are swept along by their political impulses, are profoundly
influenced by their views.
It
is not a geography
visible on any map, [except perhaps in books like
this] yet it touches the lives in the global era more
surely than do the fading borders and old distance scales found on any
common globe. Over the course of the next several chapters, I try
to put that geography into context - in terms of issues, history, and a
more detailed look at the membership of this emerging SuperClass.
Synopsis
Each
of them is one in a million. They number six
thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our
largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the
media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world's most
dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global
superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time.
Today's
superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. They
have globalized more rapidly than any other group. But do they have
more in common with one another than with their own countrymen, as
nationalist critics have argued? They control globalization more than
anyone else. But has their influence fed the growing economic and
social inequity that divides the world? What happens behind closeddoor
meetings in Davos or aboard corporate jets at 41,000 feet? Conspiracy
or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the
rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that
shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates
beyond national laws?
Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews and extensive original
reporting, Superclass answers
all of these questions and more. It draws back the curtain on a
privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it
profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth
examination of the connections between the global communities of
leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and
control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of
the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our
politics, our institutions, and theshape of the world in which we live.
Read a Sample Chapter
Superclass
The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
By Rothkopf, David Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2008
Rothkopf, David
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780374272104
Excerpt
Gentiana is a small restaurant that would scarcely warrant a second glance in any other village in Europe. It is rather traditional, only slightly more charming than the bland shops and modest hotels around it. One nearby storefront offers a remarkable array of Swiss Army knives, another boxes of chocolates, another fur hats and mountain gear. The restaurant has a cozy, neighborhood feel to it. Beside the door there is a blackboard highlighting a few specials, and on the ground floor there may be seating for twenty if they are both thin enough and friendly enough. Upstairs there are a few small rooms for private parties, the biggest of which seats ten people squeezed in on either side of a long narrow table. Most of its character comes from a feel of woody intimacy, the dark wood façade, dark wood floors, dark wood tables. In fact, for all its charm, it is definitely not a place for claustrophobes—or people with an extreme fear of splinters. The reason to go to Gentiana is the fondue, especially the cheese fondue, which is offered in robust portions that recall an era before cardiologists. My wife, Adrean, has a special weakness for fondue, and every year that we have gone to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos we have gone to Gentiana for her birthday. We make reservations long in advance because during the week of theJanuary meetings, which are attended each year by more than 2,000 business and government leaders from around the world, getting a table at Gentiana is not much easier than getting one at renowned eateries like Aragawa in Tokyo, Gordon Ramsay in London, or Le Bernardin in New York. Perhaps more surprisingly, for that one week the clientele at this humble Swiss bistro looks pretty much the same as what you might find at those world-class restaurants. Of course, even during that week, there are still a few tables at Gentiana occupied by locals. One regular is a particularly garrulous drunk who loves to hobnob with the CEOs, heads of state, and rock stars who are wedged in, elbow to elbow, spinning hunks of bread on long forks in the pots of bubbling Gruyère. The local speaks only Swiss-German to the polyglot crowds around him, and few understand him, although judging by his demeanor the casual observer is not sure whether that has to do with the language he speaks or the local beer that he favors. No matter. He smiles and they smile, and the general effect is cheerful and relaxed. One afternoon during a recent Davos, my wife and I were hurrying along the sidewalk on our way to Gentiana. This can be dangerous, as the locals do not shovel away the snow and ice lurks just about everywhere. In fact, attendees at Davos can see with some regularity central bank governors and senior executives of the IMF and other distinguished middle-aged men and women swaddled in cashmere, calfskin, and politically incorrect pelts of many origins launched skyward, only to land on their broader, softer regions. We walked gingerly, therefore, but with purpose, knowing we were meeting our friends in just a few minutes. The weather was typical. A light snow was falling. It was very cold. But the Alpine air was crisp and dry and invigorating. We chatted about the meetings, who we had seen and who we hoped to run into. As we walked, we reflexively did what most of the visitors to this small mountain town do: We glanced at the people passing us in the street, trying to determine who they were. (Given the nature of Davos, they were likely to have been somebody.) It’s a ritual made easier by the fact that everyone at the meeting has to wear a badge around his or her neck at all times. The badge is used to get through the many security checkpoints—there are at least two Swiss soldiers and policemen in Davos for every delegate who attends the meetings—to register for sessions, and to let everyone know who you are. Your name is on the badge, along with the organization you represent. So too is your picture. People tend to walk with their badges dangling in plain sight so they don’t have to fumble with them getting in and out of buildings or past police. That’s how it was for everyone except for the universally recognizable—people like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Bono, or Angelina Jolie. The badge-scanning move is so ubiquitous you might call it the Davos dip: Bend the knee slightly, cast a subtle glance downward, assess and move on. Leaving the Congress Centre and walking along Davos’s main street, the Promenade, we passed Thierry Desmarest, the CEO of Total; a small cluster of Harvard professors; a senior executive of Saudi Aramco; and a woman pulling her two small children on a sled. (She was local and the sled seemed to hint at the reason they don’t shovel the sidewalks.) We stopped briefly to chat with Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who happens to be my wife’s boss, then paused a few steps later to chat with an Indian-born U.S. venture capitalist with whom I had some business. It was a typical sample. Five minutes along the Davos Promenade in January offered a cavalcade of freeze-dried economic leaders from three continents. About two blocks from Gentiana, I was grousing about how one of the conversations that I had most wanted to have had resulted in a frustrating series of near misses. The objective was a long-delayed chat with Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian author of The Alchemist. Coelho has sold more than one hundred million copies of his books worldwide and is, after the Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, the second-best-selling author on the planet. He is also one of the few cultural regulars at Davos, one of a handful of people who might offer a different perspective on the Davos zeitgeist. We had intended to meet almost a year earlier but, due to a series of scheduling mishaps, had repeatedly failed to do so. Finally, we aimed for Davos, but I had yet to lay eyes on him. What did I expect from a man who lived on the other side of the world and was constantly in motion—a Brazilian who lived much of the time in Europe and sold many of his books in Russia? There was a little bit of hubris in thinking we might ever be able to end up in the same place at the same time. And then: “Oh, my God,” said a voice I did not recognize, “it’s you.” A smallish man in a fur hat was staring at my name badge. He had a graying goatee, and he greeted me like a long-lost cousin. It was Coelho, appearing almost miraculously out of the Alpine mist as if conjured by our conversation. Passing along the sidewalk from the Congress Centre where we had just heard an address by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and comments from the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, through the stream of big name boulevardiers, and then walking directly into this icon of the global literary scene—it was made clear again that Davos was truly the incarnation of Marshall McLuhan’s global village. It was like small-town Planet Earth, or the once-a-year Brigadoon of globalization: a community connected to everywhere and, in one way or another, to everyone. Indeed, during the course of this meeting, top trade ministers would caucus to try unsuccessfully to rescue global trade talks, Africa activists would meet with corporate chiefs and political leaders to seek funding for medical aid programs, global warming would “go mainstream” as mostly American skeptics were persuaded by session after session of expert views, and proponents of different solutions for dealing with everything from anxiety about immigrants to anxiety about terrorism would present their views directly to those in a position to implement them. If, as Hillary Clinton has asserted, it takes a village to raise a child, this seemed to be the village it took to run the world. Coelho and I had never met, but thanks to the wonders of the information age we had enough e-mail history that our conversation was familiar and fairly ebullient. He offered to have lunch, but we gestured toward Gentiana, explaining that we had a prior engagement. I eagerly made an appointment to sit down with him later that afternoon at the Kongress Hotel. Over the three and a half decades of its existence, this mountaintop gathering clearly had done more than merely transform Davos from sleepy ski town to cosmopolitan hub. More than a meeting place for international business, government, media, and cultural leaders, it now was a symbol for the knitting together of the world, literally and figuratively a summit of summits. The concept of what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called “Davos man”—the global citizen, the leader for whom borders were increasingly irrelevant—described a new leadership class for our era. When founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, the organization that would become known as the World Economic Forum had a narrower mission. It was focused on convening European business leaders for a discussion of that continent’s rather uncertain economic fortunes. To put the moment in context, it is worth recalling that in 1971, Europe was still living in the aftermath of World War II and was on the front line of the cold war, still more the self-anointed seat of civilization than the “modern” Europe of more modest, less imperial, more multilateralist inclinations. In fact, it was not until three years later that the first of Europe’s great colonial powers, Portugal, granted independence to Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. The United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark did not join the European Union until 1973. Though the Treaty of Rome had initiated the creation of Europe’s Common Market in 1957, it would be more than two decades before the Maastricht Treaty institutionalized the idea of a true single market among the nations of the continent. Europe was clearly in transition at the moment of the forum’s birth. I was in high school at the time, and in college when the World Economic Forum was really gaining its sea legs in the late 1970s. I’ll admit, international conferences didn’t really capture my imagination when I was a teenager, but my education was absolutely colored with the Western worldview of those times, with classical education built on the presumed superiority of European ideas and the history and cultural contributions of other regions seen as exotic and secondary. At Columbia University, we were required to take the “core curriculum,” which was built around two major courses. One, Humanities, was a survey course of the defining works in literature. The second, Contemporary Civilization, was a survey of the great works in political philosophy and related disciplines, beginning with the Greeks and continuing through the modern era. The two courses, in retrospect, were undoubtedly the highlight of my education and have benefited me probably every day of my life since I took them. (Of course, I did not recognize this at the time.) In Contemporary Civilization, we read—at the pace of one significant, sometimes mind-blowing, occasionally mind-numbing book a week—the writings of everyone (male and white) from Plato to Descartes to Darwin. Somewhere around Max Weber and other analysts and critics of modernity, the curriculum got more varied, with different professors assigning different texts, as it was harder to agree on what qualified as essential reading. One of the more popular assignments at that point in the course was The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills, a 1956 book that explored the national power structure in the United States. Mills, a former Columbia professor of sociology, wrote the book as a study of how America really worked. His central claim was that at the top tier of the business, government, and military communities, there was a remarkably small and overlapping echelon of “deciders.” This national “power elite” wascomposed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences . . . They are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.Mills asserted that these elites took similar paths to positions of privilege, ensuring that many among their homogeneous numbers knew one another. In addition, they often crossed sectors: from top roles in government to top roles in business, from the the White House cabinet to the boardroom, from military commands to politics, from one position of great responsibility to another. Thus, Mills claimed, they created a kind of interlocking directorate for the United States of America. Mills’s book was as much a critique as it was a description of this group and America’s midcentury leadership. It explored, in meticulous detail, the concentration of power among a comparatively few corporations and individuals, and the manifold links of American leaders to key institutions. The book then veered into polemic, lamenting the disproportionate influence of this group. One of the men who no doubt inspired many of Mills’s points, President Eisenhower, also best illustrated them. A former supreme allied commander in Europe as well as a former president of Columbia University, Eisenhower captured much of Mills’s spirit in his farewell address as president in 1961:[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. One little-remembered aspect of Eisenhower’s speech is that it contained not one but two central warnings. While the first, concerning the military-industrial complex, is more often cited, he also expressed equivalent concerns about the emergence of what he called the “scientific-technological elite.” His concerns, like Mills’s, reflect the zeitgeist of the 1950s, in which the predominant historical memory was of World War II and the subjugation of all U.S. political, financial, and industrial efforts to the goal of military victory. The predominant fear of the moment was of technology run amok as manifested in the growing threat of global thermonuclear war. Since Eisenhower spoke in 1961, technological innovation has not only fueled America’s unprecedented growth but it has empowered people in new ways; it perhaps even helped to bring down the United States’ cold war adversary, as the rise of the information age made it impossible for a closed society to compete. Yet, despite the resilient strength of America’s military-industrial establishment, defense spending and manpower have receded from their highs during World War II and the cold war years. In his speech, Eisenhower speaks of a 3.5-million-person military; today the U.S. military is only 1.5 million men and women strong (with nearly 1 million more in the reserves). He also notes that at the time of his speech the U.S. military budget exceeded the total net income of all U.S. companies. Today, while the defense budget exceeds $425 billion, the earnings of only the fifty most profitable U.S. companies top that number and, indeed, the combined revenues of just the top two, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart, dwarf it, beating it by more than 50 percent. Without a doubt, corporate economic clout has grown dramatically. Mills’s book is still read and is now considered a classic critique of America’s power structure, but it is also clear that the world has changed profoundly in the fifty years since its publication. Excerpted from Superclass by David Rothkopf. Copyright © 2008 by David Rothkopf. Published in March 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
Continues...
Excerpted from Superclass by Rothkopf, David Copyright © 2008 by Rothkopf, David. Excerpted by permission.
BOOK RECOMMENDATION
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The global ruling class
Billion-dollar babies
Apr 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition
From The Economist print edition
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John Paulson, power personified |
WHO rules the world? The most familiar answers to this question are so poisoned by paranoia that it is tempting to dismiss the question itself. If the Jews are so powerful, then why have they had such a dreadful time of things? If the men and women of Davos are so mighty, then why do they keep messing everything up?
Yet the fact that so many people give foolish answers to a question does not discredit the question. The rise of nation states produced national ruling classes. It would be odd if the current integration of the world economy did not produce new global elites—business people and financiers who run global companies and global politicians who steer supra-national organisations such as the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund.
David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that these elites constitute nothing less than a new global “superclass”. They have all the clubby characteristics of the old national ruling classes, but with the vital difference that they operate on the global stage, far from mere national electorates.
They attend the same universities (Mr Rothkopf calculates that Harvard, Stanford and the University of Chicago are now the world's top three superclass producers). They are groomed in a handful of world-spanning institutions such as Goldman Sachs. They belong to the same clubs—the Council on Foreign Relations in New York is a particular favourite—and sit on each other's boards of directors. Many of them shuttle between the public and private sectors. They meet at global events such as the World Economic Forum at Davos and the Trilateral Commission or—for the crème de la crème—the Bilderberg meetings or the Bohemian Grove seminars that take place every July in California.
Mr Rothkopf makes a fascinating tour of the world of the superclass. He opens the door to the office of the head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, on the top floor of Goldman's tower on New York's Broad Street. He visits the factory that customises Gulfstream jets (every year nearly 10% of Gulfstream's clients attend Davos). He calls on the Carlyle Group where financiers and former presidents get together to make each other richer. And he offers a tour of the weird proceedings of the Bohemian Grove meetings, which Richard Nixon described as “the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine.”
“Superclass” is such a wide-ranging book that it inevitably also raises quibbles. Mr Rothkopf never quite defines the boundaries of his subject. Is he talking about the super-rich? Or about the super-influential? Do the people he talks about really constitute a “class”? Or are they an agglomeration of competing elites with different agendas? Mr Rothkopf adds to the confusion by chasing all manner of hares, including the rise of internet-enabled jihadists.
Mr Rothkopf, whose CV includes a spell working for Kissinger Associates and a period as the deputy under-secretary of commerce for international trade, is much better informed about America than he is about the rest of the world. He is fascinating on the revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry, for example, but he says next to nothing about the rise of the EU, one of the great building blocks of the trans-national world. His exposition of the wonders of Davos is more breathless than illuminating.
Still, none of this should put off potential readers: “Superclass” is a pioneering study of a subject that has often been the preserve of conspiracy theorists. Mr Rothkopf is anything but a crank, and he is right when he says that, these days, the most influential people around the world are also the most global people.
He is also admirably ambivalent about his subject. He worries about surging inequality—the richest 1% of humans own 40% of the planet's wealth—and about the rumbling backlash against so much unaccountable power. But he points out that, in a world where most global institutions are lumbering and antiquated, members of the superclass have repeatedly stepped in to put the global system to rights. Let us hope that they have not lost their touch.
Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.By David Rothkopf.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 400 pages; $26. Little, Brown; £20
we take no position on this material, you decide what it means
Questions to ask: Who is behind this new "Obedience" Push, Why Now, What's Next, Why so Blatant ?
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Eric Hoffer Quotes:
"...The basic tenet of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible. Those addicted to action do not probably feel unfree in active totalitarian regime. Hitler won over the generals, technicians and scientists not by preaching to them but by giving them more than they asked for and encouraging them to go the limit..."
BOTH "Faith" and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect.
Terror crushes the autonomy of self-respect, while "Faith" obtains its more or less voluntary surrender.
In both cases the result of the elimination of individual autonomy is - automatism.
Both "Faith" & Terror reduce the human entity to a formula that can be manipulated at will.
MAN is indeed a fantastic creature; and nothing about him is so fantastic as the alchemy of his crushed soul which transmutes shame and weakness into pride and faith.
IT HAS been often said that power corrupts. But perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it. Woe to the weak when they are preyed upon by the weak. The self-hatred of the weak is likewise an instance of their hatred of weakness.
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