I know this sounds like something that comes out of a 19-year-old’s brain after a bong rip, but I really am curious.
I personally believe most people are just “people.” They’re helplessly human. Even senators, congressmen, etc. are all VERY personable and regular people when you meet them in real life…so where does the corporate life come from? We talk about the people at the top, but who exactly are they and why are their corporate cultures so un-human?
When so many people believe in a certain radical change from our aggressive capitalist economy that is catered to the rich…who’s out there benefitting from the status quo?
I guess you could say the leaders of large corporations but that doesn’t seem quite on the nose. While they actively oppose progressives, I refuse to believe the CEO of HomeDepot is the guy controlling all the levers. Who is in the echelon above him? And then above him? How many levels higher does it go?
Bill Gates, Buffett, and Bezos don’t seem to be the answer. Bloomberg feels too public. The Kochs and Waltons seem to be close, but seems too obvious in some way. It was probably Cheney for a long stretch of time in the 2000s, but he’s not around anymore.
My personal theory is that the McKenzie Consulting group is at the center of this circle. Their corporate culture, shameless advocacy for the status quo, and promotion of the worst excesses of capitalism seem the infest each thing it touches…
What’s happening is a few tens of thousands of people with a lot of power and influence (business leaders, political leaders, military leaders, etc) shape the world according to their own self interest.
The self interest of one may or may not align with another.
To your point, I don’t think it’s just “one firm”. Certainly Bain and Boston Consulting Group would be competing in the same corridors of power as Mckinsey. But they are just management consultants. Think of them like the Tywin Lannisters and Davos Seaworths of the corporate world. Giving questionable advise to those in power, yet having little of their own.
You also have the major investment banks, in particular Goldman Sachs (the so-called “Vampire Squid”). Goldman executives have held a number of high-level positions in the Fed and other government agencies where they have had the ability to define and influence policy. Not to mention the companies themselves have a great deal of influence by what they choose to invest or not invest in.
The “Big-4” accounting/consulting/advisory firms (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) also wield a great deal of influence globally and have their hands into everything.
Let’s not understate the role of Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google as they gather every bit of information about everyone and everything.
Then of course, you have massive, controversial companies like Walmart, ExxonMobil, Monsanto, Haliburton, etc with their massive resources and political connections.
Don’t forget private lenders, non-public ‘banks’ that weird considerable power and influence. Some of these ‘companies’ go back hundreds of years and have assets well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. I heard about one a few years back that nearly controlled all of Europe’s forests via different paper and lumber companies and thru conservatory ownership as well, IIRC.
In addition, all of those people are less in control than they (or some other people) think they are.
That doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot of influence; they do. But even when most of their interests align, what happens isn’t always what they had in mind.
It is the few thousand people who own the major corporations and the dictators of the various dictatorships around the world. It seems to me that your underlying assumption is that because they are “helplessly human” that they are fundamentally decent. ISTM that most of the really reach, however, are mostly greedy SOBs who care only about their own personal benefit. The ones that you mention like Gates and Buffett, who are good guys, are outnumbered among multibillionaires by people like Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, the Mercers, Saudi royal family, the Russian oligarchs, third world dictators like Kim Jong Un, etc. Any single one of them runs only their slice of the global economy, and yes they may have different interests that are not alway the same. One of their interests that they do have in common, however, is that they do not benefit by trying to increase the living standards of the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Since helping out the poor is a progressive cause, this goes against the interests of the greedy members of the multibillionaire class. The reason this class has a higher number of greedy SOBs compared to other classes is because being a greedy, ruthless SOB is a beneficial trait to someone trying to build such a fortune.
Higher level social structures are emergent, in the same way the behaviour of a bird flock or an anthill is emergent. No bird or group of birds is in control of the flock, or influencing the flock to behave in a certain way. Rather, each bird simply flies according to its own internal rules, and flocking behaviour emerges from the interactions between them.
Society is a complex adaptive system. Individuals have instincts, goals, and rules of behaviour. When individuals interact with each other by the millions in a social system governed by those rules, culture emerges.
If you choose different rules, you change the way the system evolves. Unfortunately, you cannot predict the way in which the system evolves or what it will become, because the system is inherently complex, chaotic, and unpredictable.
These people are visible, and financially strong as individuals. But their combined financial assets don’t come close to the annual national budget of the US, which is funds being actually deployed, and not mere stock value. So the simple answer are those people who actually influence the amount and allocation of that money. That’s the US. Apart form the US, China is the only other country that can apply the principle of exceptionalism for its citizens and whose policies can influence other economies.
No one is calling the shots. Attributing “the shots” to individual people’s intentions shows a misunderstanding of how sociological processes work.
The institution we call the free market is calling the shots.
Go play a game of Monopoly (the Parker Brothers board game), in fact play several rounds of it with your friends.
Which of the players’ priorities and behaviors are responsible for the amassing of all the wealth in the hands of the winning player at the end? What horribly selfish person is making that happen?
In millions of small ways, it’s minor intellectuals. They’re people who teach our children, write books, make movies and tv shows, write the lyrics to songs, they all add up. Even politicians and comedians and tv’s talking heads. And it’s yesterday’s intellectuals who are driving today’s world. Today’s intellectuals, who are very different, haven’t hit their stride yet. But they will… until they’re replaced by tomorrow’s intellectuals.
This is really the right answer. There’s no one group or person, or shadowy cabal that’s deliberately causing big stuff to happen. It’s more the aggregate of all those small (and large) groups and their interactions with everything else that determines the net direction that things happen toward.