Here are the leaders on Forbes’ 2014 List of the World’s Most Powerful People: #1 Vladimir Putin #2 Barack Obama #3 Xi Jinping #4 Pope Francis #5 Angela Merkel #6 Janet Yellen #7 Bill Gates #8 Mario Draghi #9 Sergey Brin #9 Larry Page #10 David Cameron #11 Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud #12 Warren Buffett #13 Li Keqiang #14 Carlos Slim Helu & family #15 Narendra Modi #16 Jeff Bezos #17 Francois Hollande #18 Jamie Dimon #19 Ali Hoseini-Khamenei #20 Rex Tillerson #21 Jeffrey Immelt #22 Mark Zuckerberg #23 Michael Bloomberg #24 Charles Koch #24 David Koch #25 Timothy Cook #26 Benjamin Netanyahu #27 Lloyd Blankfein #28 Li Ka-shing #29 Doug McMillon #30 Jack Ma
I don’t think Central Bank directors deserve such high rankings. Yes, if they set policy based on their arbitrary purpose or whim, but in fact they’re constrained by specific legislated directives.
Time has a Most Influential Persons of 2014 List, but I was unable to find the actual list with rankings, except to note that #1 was … Beyoncé !
Google is important sure, but if Brin and Page decided to do a Dr. Evil, and Google and all their services were down for a month, it wouldn’t even begin to have the same effect on the world if Al Saud decided to cut off the Saudi oil supply for a month.
About the only thing I can think of for ranking them ahead of Al Saud and Cameron is that Page and Brin are relatively unfettered compared to the rest, with Cameron having Parliament and the Monarchy keeping him in check, and Al Saud would have to deal with coups and being deposed.
Brin and Page would probably just get hauled in front of Congress at worst.
I have a hard time imagining how any businessman can be considered remotely as powerful as the leader of even a moderately size country. On any sane top 100 list of powerful people, the most “powerful” businessmen will start appearing somewhere in the 50s or 60s, in my opinion, not in the top 10.
That Forbes list is particularly ridiculous. The idea that Page, Brin and Bezos are more powerful than the French President, and the idea that Gates is more powerful than the Eurozone’s central banker, are just plain stupid.
Speaking as a fairly devout Catholic, I don’t think most Popes belong on any list of the most powerful people, mainly because we’re LONG past the point at which most Catholics pay much attention to anything a Pope says.
It doesn’t matter whether the Pope is perceived as a “liberal” or a “conservative.” No American Catholic who favors abortion rights is going to change her mind because the Pope proclaims that abortion is evil, any more than Catholics who support a war will change their minds because the Pope tells them the war is immoral and unjustified.
John Paul II briefly belonged on the list of powerful people because he once had great infleunce in Eastern Europe. But today? Francis I is widely liked, but he has no real power.
Don’t think of the the Pope as a religious leader; think of him as the CEO of the largest corporation in the world, with a million and a half employees and hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.
Sure he could. If the pope announced that Catholicism was a fraud or declared a holy war on muslims or something, the results would be world-changing (although you could argue that the pope has less moral agency because he’s constrained by only doing what he thinks is God’s will, and therefore has less power than someone like Obama).
Again, the Pope demonstrably CAN’T make his own followers
… abstain from premarital sex
… refrain from using birth control
… stop living together outside of wedlock
… oppose gay marriage
… stop getting divorced
… stop having abortions
… stop converting to other religions (usually fundamentalist or pentecostal Protestantism in South America) or to NO religion (in much of the Western world)
… go to Confession
… oppose war and/or the death penalty
But somehow you think his followers WOULD gladly go to war with Islam if the Pope told them to? Think again.
Whoops, I just checked the distance from Karachi to Moscow and noticed it was >5000km, then mistakenly assumed that would be sufficient. Thanks for pointing that out.
Just because he can’t control everyone in America doesn’t mean he has no influence anywhere. And the Catholic Church is very much an unimaginably powerful force against those who want to change society; it is one of the biggest reasons that anyone doesn’t do the things you listed above.
Power to do what? Kill the most people? Influence certain things?
Yes, Obama could unleash thousands of ICBM’s across the world, but he wouldn’t do it, and if for some crazy reason he did, he would lose all of the power he has. Does that count? Or does the exercise of that power have to be one that the person would retain such power after he used it?