n this photo released by Carnegie Endowment For International Peace shows David Rothkopf author of 'Superclass'Posted on 03/18/2008 6:45:39 PM PDT by BGHater
"Superclass — The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 379 pages, $26), by David Rothkopf: It's not just trade and finance that's being globalized these days, it's sheer power — the power of about 6,000 distinguished people to get big things done across national frontiers, says author David Rothkopf.
Trouble is, he complains, this "Superclass" isn't helping 2 billion powerless people who get along on $2 a day or less. He warns that unless those 2 billion get a voice, globalization will be in danger.
The 6,000 are a scattered lot. Americans know about President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI. But how about Wu Xiaoling, who controls $1.3 trillion worth of foreign reserves from her post as deputy governor in the People's Bank of China? It's a hoard that Communist Chinese leaders have hung over the head of the world's financial markets.
Then there's Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian writer who has sold more than 100 million copies of his books. And Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil. Know about them?
Rothkopf takes pains to show in "Superclass — The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making" that he has long experience with members of, and aspirants to, this "superclass."
He includes:
_Heads of 120 governments that impact other countries, by war or otherwise.
_Ccommanders of the most powerful militaries.
_Key executives of 2,000 big corporations, 100 richest financial institutions and 500 investment firms.
_Executives of international bodies, governmental and non-governmental.
_Authorities of the biggest religious groups, terrorist leaders, criminal masterminds, the most widely read bloggers, thinkers, scientists, academics and artists who also impress the world.
Before serving President Clinton as deputy undersecretary of Commerce for international trade, Rothkopf founded a company that arranged events for executives of influential organizations. He recalls sitting at a dinner next to Henry Kissinger, who ignored him throughout except for one remark before getting up to speak.
"Mr. Rothkopf? ... Let me give you some advice," said Kissinger. "When you are having an after-dinner speaker, it is best if you eliminate the salad course."
The remark foreshadows one of the author's key contentions: The 6,000 have the power to obtain almost anything they want — except more time. That's why they spend so much of it spanning the world in customized private planes. He devotes some space to that privilege.
"For private jet travelers," he writes, "globalization is not an abstract concept but a day-to-day reality. ... For them, the greeting card platitudes of globalization are truths proved by their daily existence: Borders have disappeared and world is truly one global community."
The Swiss resort of Davos used to be known for sanatoria, skiing and its attraction to writers including Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Mann. Since the 1970s, it has become famous for annual meetings of the World Economic Forum. Members of the superclass gather there from all over the world in January to talk about great problems and generate news about their discussions.
Such figures as the pope and Osama bin Laden don't appear, for reasons of their own, though their huge power is just as real. But as a "forum" Davos is known more as a talking shop than as a source of decisive action.
Rothkopf says power across national borders is not enough.
"If the people at large do not become stakeholders in globalization, then they will become its enemies — and its undoing," the book concludes.
n this photo released by Carnegie Endowment For International Peace shows David Rothkopf author of 'Superclass'
EEEEELumiNATTI BILDERBooger FreeeeMASOOOONS!!!!! GET A ROPE!
GET A LOTTA ROPE!!!!!!!!!!
What about them? Superclass globalist oppressors? Nonsense.
Here's a glimpse of hope for the 2 billion who get by on 2:
That really breaks my heart.
Well, if I believed his assumption was true, I’d say I hope the 2 billion living on $2 a day or less, would never get helped.
There’s a lot of other reasons to be against globalization. The UN is a prime example.
What those 2 billion need is freedom and democracy.
I have a developing theory that posits a return to an aristocracy form of government. It seems that the experiment of democracy is fading and we are returning to a form of Nobility. It isn’t called that, yet, but it does seem to be happening. One need only look at Brussels and its unelected buracracy, at the lineage of leaders in the US, Europe and Asia. It may be another hundred years before it is out in the open, but it is coming.
This is the same kind of tripe that was spewed before the start of WWI.
Modern agriculture and medicine has defied natural selection for a long time. However, this does not mean that mankind will continue to be able to do this, and nature may cause a massive culling of people on general principles.
Or, as some kind individual put it:
“Nature abhors a peasant.”
By the end of the 20th Century, almost all of the primitive cultures on Earth had been wiped out, for the sole reason that they could not compete with modernity. In fact, they could even coexist or be exposed to modernity without being placed in lethal jeopardy.
The same force applies to people making $2/day. There is no place left for them. Either they adapt and change or they are destined to die out in some way.
The same force applies to people making $2/day. There is no place left for them. Either they adapt and change or they are destined to die out in some way.
I suggest you look at Salgado’s images from the book Workers. Modern society is addicted to cheap labor.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_janfeb_2006/endoftheline1.html
Ship wrecking in bangladesh. $2.00 a day would be like a corner office to the folks who take ships apart by hand.
I believe your observation to be true. It's been happening slowly for some time now. There are people working to stratify the world's population into a rich noble class with the rest of the population as the a working middle class who serve the nobility.
Except for the spin you put on it with words like “nobility,” etc., how is this situation different than mankind’s lot since the dawn of civiliization?
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