Sheer brainpower, strength in numbers, and good old fashioned networking is how the nature of world influence is established. Skewed and disproportionate, modern power structures that regulate global problems happen only when the elite meet, says author David Rothkopf. And decisions made based on these meetings often do not adequately represent the people or the interests that they are meant to serve.

We can't legislate against historical trends in the global age, but we can look more closely at the well-networked superclass - those who have broad influence across international borders on a regular basis. The Superclass has money, power, and influence - but it's woefully short on ethics in the global interest. Author David Rothkopf (Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making) describes this influential core of the global power structure and stresses that economic prosperity can't be the only metric of a civilization's success.

If the people who set the prices are the same people who set the production levels, then it's not really a market, and true supply and demand are a farce. David Rothkopf, author of <i>Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making</i>, says that Europe is leading the planet in green energy technology thanks to government subsidies, including biofuels and wind energy. Rothkopf is optimistic that the US will eventually adopt these policies toward energy, though our current system is corrupted by nearsighted, pure financial interest.

If we don't recognize that the unequal distribution of wealth is unsustainable, then, perhaps, says author David Rothkopf, more sinister political tensions and divisions will ensue. He advocates that the planet needs to reflect upon why we have one set of rules for our geographic community, and a different set of rules for institutions, among them the for-profit sector. Only when we hold the powerful players in economics responsible for contributing to the welfare of our community as we would a neighbor, says Rothkopf, will the interests of the globe at large become balanced.

Just twenty percent of the members in any group or social system own eighty percent of the assets, indicative that scale indicates a growing concentration of power. The top 2,000 companies employ and influences a million people in the modern world, says author David Rothkopf. With cross-ownership and networking in all circles - business, military, religion, and the Internet among them - a few succeed, but the majority of participants within any given system are marginal.