Who rules the world? That is the question examined by business consultant and political scholar David Rothkopf in his new book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.

The question itself - more often the territory of conspiracy theorists - is as old as the world itself but Rothkopf - familiar to AmCham Chile members from his participation in last year’s Business Future of the Americas Conference in Santiago - has a new and, in many ways, troubling answer. Just as the nation states of the past produced national elites so too, he argues, has globalization produced a new global elite or superclass, formed by people from different walks of life - financiers, central bankers, business leaders, heads of state, military chiefs, media barons, religious leaders, artists - for whom the world is their oyster.

Global communications help and so do Gulfstream private jets, which are part of the new elite’s basic equipment and one of their most visible giveaways. Being rich is useful - many members of the new elite are wealthier than any elite ever before, notes Rothkopf - but the bottom line is power, the power to affect the lives of people on a global scale.

Who are the members of this new superclass and how many of them are there?

I ended up with a core group of somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 people or, in other words, one in a million. As to who they are, 94% are men and 60% are from the U.S. or Europe, although the Asian segment is the one that’s growing fastest.

Where do I go if I want to meet them? Davos?

A lot of superclass people do go to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Gulfstream, for example, estimates that 10% of its 1,500 planes are parked at the airport during that meeting. But going to Davos doesn’t necessarily mean you’re superclass. Members of the superclass tend to have gone to the same universities - Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, the Sorbonne and the University of Tokyo, for example - and they often belong to the same clubs like the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Elites have always existed; what’s new about this one?

More than ever before, it affects the lives of millions of people across borders on a regular basis because, as compared to the elites of the past, it has a very large number of members who operate on a global scale. And, partly because of global communications, they have more in common with each other than with their own country people.

The new superclass is also more closely associated with the private, rather than public, sector and there’s an enormous concentration of power and wealth. Remember that the world’s 100 largest corporations are bigger than all but a handful of states. From the top, the world can look very small.

That’s worrying…

The power of national governments is waning in many parts of the world. Governments by their very nature are confined within borders whereas the members of the new superclass operate on a global scale. Governments are particularly weak when it comes to dealing with transnational issues. In that sense, the Westphalian system needs some fine-tuning or, perhaps, radical revision because it isn’t able to address issues like climate change or the regulation of international financial markets.

The superclass fills the void in this structure. It can step in to resolve a crisis - say, a financial crisis - fast and efficiently but, if a group of its members act together, they can advance their own interests. Elites in the past have overreached themselves but now there aren’t national mechanisms to counterbalance the power of the superclass. It has vastly more power than any other group on the planet.

So the new superclass is bad news?

I really can’t say. Some of its members do good, like Bill Gates, and some are downright evil. What I can say is that we live in a world of unparalleled excess in which equality is deteriorating. The top 10% now control 85% of all the wealth in the world. That’s really troubling and those with power have to answer for it. Chile, for example, has done well but inequality is a problem there.

And where does that leave democracy?

To start with, something is clearly wrong when 94% of the superclass is male. A political structure that isn’t representative is a source of tension. We need global mechanisms that reflect the will of ordinary people otherwise there’s the risk of a backlash.

And, even if corporate leaders were angels, they couldn’t act in the public interest because their obligation is to their shareholders. They’re also looking at quarterly earnings not the longer term because they’re not paid to do that and the new elite is more transient than those of the past. The age of inherent lifelong power has passed. You only belong to the new superclass as long as your power lasts and that’s often job-related.

One last question, are there any superclass Chileans?

I estimate that Latin Americans account for around 10-15% of the new elite and, of course, there are Chileans. I’d put President Bachelet, Foreign Minister Foxley and the country’s leading business owners there.

Who rules the world? That is the question examined by business consultant and political scholar David Rothkopf in his new book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.

The question itself - more often the territory of conspiracy theorists - is as old as the world itself but Rothkopf - familiar to AmCham Chile members from his participation in last year’s Business Future of the Americas Conference in Santiago - has a new and, in many ways, troubling answer. Just as the nation states of the past produced national elites so too, he argues, has globalization produced a new global elite or superclass, formed by people from different walks of life - financiers, central bankers, business leaders, heads of state, military chiefs, media barons, religious leaders, artists - for whom the world is their oyster.

Global communications help and so do Gulfstream private jets, which are part of the new elite’s basic equipment and one of their most visible giveaways. Being rich is useful - many members of the new elite are wealthier than any elite ever before, notes Rothkopf - but the bottom line is power, the power to affect the lives of people on a global scale.

Who are the members of this new superclass and how many of them are there?

I ended up with a core group of somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 people or, in other words, one in a million. As to who they are, 94% are men and 60% are from the U.S. or Europe, although the Asian segment is the one that’s growing fastest.

Where do I go if I want to meet them? Davos?

A lot of superclass people do go to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Gulfstream, for example, estimates that 10% of its 1,500 planes are parked at the airport during that meeting. But going to Davos doesn’t necessarily mean you’re superclass. Members of the superclass tend to have gone to the same universities - Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, the Sorbonne and the University of Tokyo, for example - and they often belong to the same clubs like the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Elites have always existed; what’s new about this one?

More than ever before, it affects the lives of millions of people across borders on a regular basis because, as compared to the elites of the past, it has a very large number of members who operate on a global scale. And, partly because of global communications, they have more in common with each other than with their own country people.

The new superclass is also more closely associated with the private, rather than public, sector and there’s an enormous concentration of power and wealth. Remember that the world’s 100 largest corporations are bigger than all but a handful of states. From the top, the world can look very small.

That’s worrying…

The power of national governments is waning in many parts of the world. Governments by their very nature are confined within borders whereas the members of the new superclass operate on a global scale. Governments are particularly weak when it comes to dealing with transnational issues. In that sense, the Westphalian system needs some fine-tuning or, perhaps, radical revision because it isn’t able to address issues like climate change or the regulation of international financial markets.

The superclass fills the void in this structure. It can step in to resolve a crisis - say, a financial crisis - fast and efficiently but, if a group of its members act together, they can advance their own interests. Elites in the past have overreached themselves but now there aren’t national mechanisms to counterbalance the power of the superclass. It has vastly more power than any other group on the planet.

So the new superclass is bad news?

I really can’t say. Some of its members do good, like Bill Gates, and some are downright evil. What I can say is that we live in a world of unparalleled excess in which equality is deteriorating. The top 10% now control 85% of all the wealth in the world. That’s really troubling and those with power have to answer for it. Chile, for example, has done well but inequality is a problem there.

And where does that leave democracy?

To start with, something is clearly wrong when 94% of the superclass is male. A political structure that isn’t representative is a source of tension. We need global mechanisms that reflect the will of ordinary people otherwise there’s the risk of a backlash.

And, even if corporate leaders were angels, they couldn’t act in the public interest because their obligation is to their shareholders. They’re also looking at quarterly earnings not the longer term because they’re not paid to do that and the new elite is more transient than those of the past. The age of inherent lifelong power has passed. You only belong to the new superclass as long as your power lasts and that’s often job-related.

One last question, are there any superclass Chileans?

I estimate that Latin Americans account for around 10-15% of the new elite and, of course, there are Chileans. I’d put President Bachelet, Foreign Minister Foxley and the country’s leading business owners there.