The Superclass

Kings and Queens and Millionaires may never know what I have known. Thus goes the line from an untitled track on the Social Distortion album White Light, White Heat, White Trash. Which may be true, but it doesn't stop people from trying to tell us the way things are going to be whether we like it or not.

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making

"Superclass" makes a case that today's elites are an improvement on those of the past: Instead of inherited aristocracy or sheer military might, power is more likely to go to the smart, ambitious and hardworking. Membership is fluid to an unprecedented extent, with new people muscling their way into the inner circle and slackers dropping out of the bottom all the time. Still, as Rothkopf points out, the ranks of this elite are overwhelmingly older males of European descent who graduated from prestigious Western colleges. Critics have been complaining for years that Davos is too Eurocentric, one reason why the Boao Forum for Asia was started for Eastern financial honchos in 1998.

Above all, like anybody else -- in fact, more than anybody else, given the obsessive, often narcissistic energy required of moguls, politicians and would-be messiahs -- these people are self-interested. However gifted, they should not be allowed to operate in a vacuum. The difficulty is that most of them exercise their power transnationally, while laws and regulations are confined within the borders of nation-states (which Rothkopf, in classic Davos-man style, regards as doomed). "We must resist the temptation to reflexively attack elites," he writes, since human societies need leaders and this is an able bunch, but elites ought to be more accountable to the millions of people whose lives they affect. Otherwise, as history (and the current upsurge in religious extremism) shows, they may provoke a violent and chaotic backlash.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Superclass. I'm smart and hardworking so it must be because I'm not ambitious enough. (I also never attended a prestigious Western college.) Fine by me. Egocentrism unchecked is a nasty vice. It can make the privileged feel as though they have some sort of right to power.

Bullocks to that! My brand of egocentrism is different. By recognizing that I am a self-absorbed bastard I can apply that knowledge to my opinions and see them as such. Some times. Not always. Even I get swept into the elitism of egocentric thoughts. So far I have always managed to pull myself back down and continue to harbor the notion that my answers are no better than anyone else's. Of course I might be wrong about that. See? Humility.

And while I often find myself in leadership positions, I categorically reject the idea that we need leaders. Everyone who agrees should follow me and Vote Jake!