The Few a Special Report on Global Leaders January 22Nd 2011
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The few A special report on global leaders January 22nd 2011 LeadersCOV.indd 1 05/01/2011 15:58 The Economist January 22nd 2011 A special report on global leaders 1 The few Also in this section More millionaires than Australians Taking stock of the world’s plutocrats. Page 4 Unloading the loaded Catering for the whims of the rich is big business. Page 6 The rise and rise of the cognitive elite Brains bring ever larger rewards. Page 7 Not for sale Cash seldom buys political power. What counts are ideas and the ability to inspire. Page 10 The world’s water•coolers Where the inuential people meet and talk. Page 12 In the information age, brainy people are rewarded with wealth and inuence, says Robert Guest. What does this mean for everyone else? The global campus OMMY GALLAGHER was working brother•in•law wanting to borrow money The best universities now have worldwide across the street when the planes hit for the umpteenth time, someone in the reach. Page 14 T the Twin Towers. As we evacuated, we room has faced a similar problem before. Crazy•talking bons could see people jumping out of win• Mr Gallagher credits Tiger 21 with help• dows, he recalls. Then the rst tower col• ing him to nd a new purpose in life: phi• The surest way to wield inuence is to invent lapsed. Everyone in the street started run• lanthropy. Many other members are veter• something useful. Page 16 ning. A huge cloud of dust enveloped an givers, and advise him on how best to Tribes still matter them. Mr Gallagher could not see or support his pet cause, which is caring for breathe. He thought he was going to die. military veterans with post•traumatic How global leaders tap into diaspora net• Soon after he escaped, Mr Gallagher stress disorder. His son served as a counter• works. Page 17 was told to put his bank’s business back to• intelligence ocer in Afghanistan and had gether at an oce in uptown Manhattan. to calculate the power of roadside bombs Asia’s new aristocrats Plugging the computers in again was easy by measuring how far they threw pieces of What Indians and Chinese make of their enough, but the people in the oce could their victims’ bodies, so Mr Gallagher has a tycoons. Page 18 not simply be re•booted. After a month Mr personal interest in this. He is now on the Gallagher snapped. A guy gave me shit. I board of Phoenix House, a mental•health They work for us threatened to beat him up. They red me, charity, and is involved in a programme to In democracies the elites serve the masses. he says. stop traumatised veterans from drifting Page 20 He was 57 at the time. On Wall Street, into divorce, homelessness and suicide. you’re an old man at 50, he shrugs. He Acknowledgments could not nd another job. Financially that The new elite Besides those mentioned in the text, the author did not matter much: he was a wealthy This special report is about global leaders, would like to thank: Paul Adamson, Andrew Belfer, man. But emotionally he was a basket but mostly not the sort you have heard of, Steve Braverman, Dick Costolo, Clive Crook, Sulai• case. He was embarrassed about having such as presidents and pop stars. Instead, it man al•Hattlan, Mazen Hayek, Kathrin Hille, Jona• been red, ashamed of his behaviour and looks at the people who shape the world than Hova, Ronald Howes, Mishal Kanoo, Jonathan Kempner, Glenn Hubbard, Andrew Likierman, Iyad absolutely alone. He started worrying without anyone noticing: those with Malas, Ed Merchant, Arif Naqvi, Ahmed Nassef, that the doormen at his fancy apartment enough brains, money or inuence to af• Sooud al•Qassemi, Jesse Scott, Michael Sonnen• must be thinking: That guy’s a loser. fect the lives of large numbers of others. feldt, Miles Varn, Evan Williams, Tarik Youssef, and Then he joined a self•help group for These three things often go hand in hand, several others who must remain nameless. rich people called Tiger 21. Only those with but not always. more than $10m of investable assets are eli• Some people are inuential because A list of sources is at gible for membership, so no one assumes they have compelling ideas or are skilled at Economist.com/specialreports that, just because you have truckloads of popularising other people’s. The brainy cash, your problems are trivial. Whether toilers at think•tanks in Washington, DC, An audio interview with the author is at you are worried that your kids might turn do not earn nearly enough to be admitted Economist.com/audiovideo/specialreports out like Paris Hilton, or fed up with your to Tiger 21, but they wield immense inu• 1 2 A special report on global leaders The Economist January 22nd 2011 2 ence over public policy. The propagandists tists in Cambridge. The report will show of citizen, urban and rural. As in South Af• of al•Qaeda live in caves, but a ect the how money, ideas and inuence ow rica under apartheid, those on top dictate lives of people everywhere. through the world’s diaspora networks. where those at the bottom may live and Societies have always had elites. For It will also look at inequality, which has work, suppressing their wages and provid• most of history and in most countries, risen relentlessly in most rich countries ing themselves with cheap servants. This power was seized by force of arms and even as they have become more merit• cannot last. passed down from father to son. Fear and ocratic. Clever, well•educated people are As Mr Gallagher’s story shows, the rich heredity still play a role. China’s ruling increasingly marrying each other and rais• are as vulnerable as the rest of us, yet they party remains in charge because it jails and ing clever, well•educated children. The lead separate lives. In Richistan, a book occasionally kills those who threaten it. children of ordinary households nd it written before the nancial crisis, Robert America elected two presidents named hard to compete with them. A new aristoc• Frank observed that wealthy people have George Bush and came close to electing racy of merit is emerging. That has social built a self•contained world unto them• two Clintons. consequences for everybody. selves, complete with their own health• The big change over the past century is Serious thinkers sometimes exaggerate care system (concierge doctors), travel net• that elites are increasingly meritocratic and the clout of the few. David Rothkopf’s work (NetJets, destination clubs), separate global. The richest people in advanced book Superclass: The Global Power Elite economyðand language (‘Who’s your countries are not aristocrats but entrepre• and the World They Are Making is household manager?’). neurs such as Bill Gates (pictured with his thoughtful and well researched, but his Rich folk a ect the rest of us in two big wife and partner in philanthropy, Melinda, breathless description of how a mere ways. First, the way they spend their mon• on the previous page). The most inuential 6,000 politicians, chief executives and oth• ey has all kinds of ripple e ects. Their are those whose inventions change lives in er bigwigs run the world misses an impor• hunches move markets. Their consump• many countries (think of Facebook) or tant point. In democracies at least, the few tion supports a whole sub•economy of whose ideas are persuasive (think of Am• are often at the mercy of the many. Voters hoteliers, watchmakers and nancial ad• nesty International). can get rid of politicians they dislike. Con• visers. And their philanthropy funds This special report will examine how sumers will stop buying a company’s pro• schools, pressure groups and research into inuence is wielded. It will look at the ducts the moment something better or tropical diseases. minds that shape politics, business and cheaper comes along. In a democracy with The second, and more important, way technology, and it will describe the gather• a competitive economy, power is hard to is that to become rich in the rst place, they ings where inuential people swap ideas, maintain without pleasing others. typically have to do something extraordi• from the World Economic Forum in Davos In China the rules are di erent. Eco• nary. Some inherit their money, of course, to Nathan Myhrvold’s invention ses• nomic growth has lifted hundreds of mil• but most build a better mousetrap, nance sions in Seattle. lions of Chinese people out of poverty and someone else’s good idea or at least run a The global elite are a cosmopolitan made China’s coastal cities rich. But the chain of hairdressers in a way that keeps bunch, yet they are far from rootless. Indi• Chinese elite depends too much on the co• customers coming back. And because they an tycoons forge deals with ethnic Indians ercive power of the Communist Party for are mostly self•made, today’s rich are rest• throughout the world. Chinese scientists its wealth and inuence. The system of hu less, dynamic and much keener on change in Beijing collaborate with Chinese scien• kou (residence permits) creates two classes than the aristocrats of old. 7 More millionaires than Australians Taking stock of the world’s plutocrats OST people would describe a dollar Credit Suisse, another bank, uses a less ly through their own e orts. Only 16% of Mmillionaire as rich, yet many million• stringent (and more obvious) denition: a high•net•worth individuals inherited their aires would disagree.