Special report: Global leaders

In this special report

The few
More millionaires than Australians
Unloading the loaded
The rise and rise of the cognitive elite
Not for sale
The world's water-coolers
The global campus
Crazy-talking boffins
Tribes still matter
Asia's new aristocrats
They work for us
Sources & acknowledgementsReprints

The few

In the information age, brainy people are rewarded with

wealth and influence, says Robert Guest. What does this
mean for everyone else?
Jan 20th 2011 | from the print edition

TOMMY

GALLAGHER was working across the street when the planes hit the
Twin Towers. As we evacuated, we could see people jumping out of
windows, he recalls. Then the first tower collapsed. Everyone in the

street started running. A huge cloud of dust enveloped them. Mr

Gallagher could not see or breathe. He thought he was going to die.
Soon after he escaped, Mr Gallagher was told to put his banks
business back together at an office in uptown Manhattan. Plugging the
computers in again was easy enough, but the people in the office could
not simply be re-booted. After a month Mr Gallagher snapped. A guy
gave me shit. I threatened to beat him up. They fired me, he says.
He was 57 at the time. On Wall Street, youre an old man at 50, he
shrugs. He could not find another job. Financially that did not matter
much: he was a wealthy man. But emotionally he was a basket case.
He was embarrassed about having been fired, ashamed of his
behaviour and absolutely alone. He started worrying that the
doormen at his fancy apartment must be thinking: That guys a loser.
Then he joined a self-help group for rich people called Tiger 21. Only
those with more than $10m of investable assets are eligible for
membership, so no one assumes that, just because you have truckloads
of cash, your problems are trivial. Whether you are worried that your
kids might turn out like Paris Hilton, or fed up with your brother-in-law
wanting to borrow money for the umpteenth time, someone in the
room has faced a similar problem before.
Mr Gallagher credits Tiger 21 with helping him to find a new purpose in
life: philanthropy. Many other members are veteran givers, and advise
him on how best to support his pet cause, which is caring for military
veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. His son served as a
counter-intelligence officer in Afghanistan and had to calculate the
power of roadside bombs by measuring how far they threw pieces of
their victims bodies, so Mr Gallagher has a personal interest in this. He
is now on the board of Phoenix House, a mental-health charity, and is
involved in a programme to stop traumatised veterans from drifting
into divorce, homelessness and suicide.
The new elite
This special report is about global leaders, but mostly not the sort you
have heard of, such as presidents and pop stars. Instead, it looks at the
people who shape the world without anyone noticing: those with
enough brains, money or influence to affect the lives of large numbers
of others. These three things often go hand in hand, but not always.
Some people are influential because they have compelling ideas or are
skilled at popularising other peoples. The brainy toilers at think-tanks

in Washington, DC, do not earn nearly enough to be admitted to Tiger

21, but they wield immense influence over public policy. The
propagandists of al-Qaeda live in caves, but affect the lives of people
everywhere.
Societies have always had elites. For most of history and in most
countries, power was seized by force of arms and passed down from
father to son. Fear and heredity still play a role. Chinas ruling party
remains in charge because it jails and occasionally kills those who
threaten it. America elected two presidents named George Bush and
came close to electing two Clintons.
The big change over the past century is that elites are increasingly
meritocratic and global. The richest people in advanced countries are
not aristocrats but entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates (pictured above
with his wife and partner in philanthropy, Melinda). The most
influential are those whose inventions change lives in many countries
(think of Facebook) or whose ideas are persuasive (think of Amnesty
International).
This special report will examine how influence is wielded. It will look at
the minds that shape politics, business and technology, and it will
describe the gatherings where influential people swap ideas, from the
World Economic Forum in Davos to Nathan Myhrvolds invention
sessions in Seattle.
The global elite are a cosmopolitan bunch, yet they are far from
rootless. Indian tycoons forge deals with ethnic Indians throughout the
world. Chinese scientists in Beijing collaborate with Chinese scientists
in Cambridge. The report will show how money, ideas and influence
flow through the worlds diaspora networks.
It will also look at inequality, which has risen relentlessly in most rich
countries even as they have become more meritocratic. Clever, welleducated people are increasingly marrying each other and raising
clever, well-educated children. The children of ordinary households find
it hard to compete with them. A new aristocracy of merit is emerging.
That has social consequences for everybody.
Serious thinkers sometimes exaggerate the clout of the few. David
Rothkopfs book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World
They Are Making is thoughtful and well researched, but his breathless
description of how a mere 6,000 politicians, chief executives and other
bigwigs run the world misses an important point. In democracies at

least, the few are often at the mercy of the many. Voters can get rid of
politicians they dislike. Consumers will stop buying a companys
products the moment something better or cheaper comes along. In a
democracy with a competitive economy, power is hard to maintain
without pleasing others.
In China the rules are different. Economic growth has lifted hundreds of
millions of Chinese people out of poverty and made Chinas coastal
cities rich. But the Chinese elite depends too much on the coercive
power of the Communist Party for its wealth and influence. The system
of hukou (residence permits) creates two classes of citizen, urban and
rural. As in South Africa under apartheid, those on top dictate where
those at the bottom may live and work, suppressing their wages and
providing themselves with cheap servants. This cannot last.
As Mr Gallaghers story shows, the rich are as vulnerable as the rest of
us, yet they lead separate lives. In Richistan, a book written before
the financial crisis, Robert Frank observed that wealthy people have
built a self-contained world unto themselves, complete with their own
health-care system (concierge doctors), travel network (NetJets,
destination clubs), separate economyand language (Whos your
household manager?).
Rich folk affect the rest of us in two big ways. First, the way they spend
their money has all kinds of ripple effects. Their hunches move
markets. Their consumption supports a whole sub-economy of
hoteliers, watchmakers and financial advisers. And their philanthropy
funds schools, pressure groups and research into tropical diseases.
The second, and more important, way is that to become rich in the first
place, they typically have to do something extraordinary. Some inherit
their money, of course, but most build a better mousetrap, finance
someone elses good idea or at least run a chain of hairdressers in a
way that keeps customers coming back. And because they are mostly
self-made, todays rich are restless, dynamic and much keener on
change than the aristocrats of old.
from the print edition | Special report
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