When a small fraction of one percent controls well over 2/3 of the world's assets - explain how the "current power brokers/structure" is ending.
This article is nothing but pie in the sky fantasy.
This article is nothing but pie in the sky fantasy.
The world is getting better for everyone and the point of the article is that the luxuries that come with increased wealth (internet, mobiles, greater political awareness, travel) make old power structures harder and harder to maintain, in almost every facet of society.
It's easy to get lost in the massive problems and doom and gloom facing everyone but if you step back and look at the forest, it's not all that gloomy.
This is why smart dictators keep their populations in constant poverty and either war, or war-readiness.
Whether we're talking cartels, the Fed, Congress, oligarchs, big corporations, or good 'ol fashioned free market billionaires. They dictate ultimately whether your phone 'works,' whether you can get on a plane, whether you can use Google or the Internet, or drive a car, or draw power when you plug into an outlet (at least for 99.9% of the population).
None of that has changed one bit, and none of it is going to. You can swap one power broker for another, but what you can never do is remove them. You can start by asking who has the military weapons, who has the control over money standards, who controls taxing authorities - and then you can follow the chart of money / power on down.
The author. The article is about power and it's safe to say that he who controls the majority of the world's assets holds the power (and vice-versa).
Citation for that? Wikipedia says that the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of global assets[1], though that figure is from 2000.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#21st_cen...
As it turns out, a lot of the "wealth" that is owned by that small percentage you describe is actually just paper wealth, the sort of wealth that goes away the easiest. It's also worth remembering that the world's economy is doubling about every 15 years or so. So the wealth of the elite can easily become a much smaller portion of the whole if they don't keep up.