James B. Glattfelder: Who controls the world?

James Glattfelder studies complexity: how an interconnected system -- say, a swarm of birds -- is more than the sum of its parts. And complexity theory, it turns out, can reveal a lot about how the economy works. Glattfelder shares a groundbreaking study of how control flows through the global economy, and how concentration of power in the hands of a shockingly small number leaves us all vulnerable. (Filmed at TEDxZurich.)

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

[jamesaspinall]

9 years later and it's gone so much farther than was back then. Would be hard to get something like this published today with current systems.

[IamMANnumber]

Good tactics go hand in hand with good strategy.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

[mathmusicstructure]

This is my favorite type of TED talk. The type done by a smart person.

[martinladley]

Those cynics who decry James B for just trotting out stuff we already knew.   That is not the point.   He has infact, uniquely configured these well known facts about the economic hegemony, and he needed to present it this way.  Remember, it's always about the audience. Even Tedx is relatively conservative and this presentation merely adopts a conservative tone to satisfy the audience. 
Some comments seem scepitcal about him because he didn't mention names or give hint to any of the NWO operations.  But he would gain no credibilty in that environment for doing so.  Winning hearts and minds requires tact.  He is tactful and I am grateful to him for putting this out  for the benefit of the intellectual, conservative liberals, who might take the hint from a fellow intellectual such as James B. I commend him for his strategy rather not fulfilling your perspective.  Get wise, commonality not disparity. 
Wake wakey middle classes -)

[richardthompson]

Honestly, one doesn't need to be a master of complexity theory to understand that owners of trans national corporations (TNC) rule the world. Thats almost common knowledge. What are we going to do about it is a TED  talk worthy of study and applause. This talk served to reinforce the pervading ethos.

[Orf]

10:58 The 737 shareholders have potential to collectively control 80% of TNC value. That's 0.1% of players/shareholders, mostly financial institutions in US. Top 146 players in the core have potential to control 40% of TNC.

[REICapital]

This gentleman and his team quantified the power core, bravo, fantastic work!!! We all suspected and knew the results, the point is that they encoded this information into mathematical equations, that you can take to court. that's the point and well done!

[Ramezml]

All I was waiting for through the entire video is the word "Jews"

[angrysammo]

I wonder if this video would still be up if he named those big players

[NsaneNtheNbrane]

I've been saying this for a long time. If we had stronger monopoly, usury and antitrust laws that were phased into the system, we could prevent too big to fail from happening ever again.

[arimcbrown]

Good subject, I'm sure we're about to hear more about this topic in the future. Probably for the best interest and regulation of global economics and finally ascend to the next stage of civilization. Loved it.

[MrWunterslausch]

Its good to see that more and more people are getting aware of the actual situation. I can see big changes in our world coming soon.

[srimansrini]

James B. Glattfelder gives a nice talk about Who controls the World? Bit academic but overall we should appreciate for its unique idea. Those who are interested in sociology, economics must watch this talk.

[Fastlan]

It actually speaks of it not being a conspiracy around 12:20. Though it lacked excitement, it was very interesting to me, and I enjoy the fact that it was no "stupid conspiracy, with aliens artifacts", plans of domination and control. It was a well done scientific review of tangible data on who has control of certain aspects of the world.

[AufBerghofNAM]

this presentation has all the right vocabulary. and it is very fitting. the question now, is: In history when paradigm shifting events approached, academia was only made cognisant of the probabilities, scales and presence too late to prevent the manifestation of the event or allow, at least, an informed and long term approach to it's resolution. Now, with the ability to model entire hierarchies will we act with the intention to resolve? The Renaissance continues.

[benoitctr]

The line of simplicity that contains the healthy handling of complex power control is found in the organic relating of nodes who proceed to live together by owning up to the task at hand of sharing equitably the use of each one's time, energy, talents and natural resources among all present on the territory... That is the basic premise of "owning up to with integrity"...

[chuckwiller]

Excellent work James. Economist Steve Keen talks about this all the time. He's on the same page as you.

[Bernadettefull]

I think its very brave and innovative, courageous. I like the idea of social investigations, publicly looking at power and dominance, subversion of systems to better serve the majority. I appreciate this presentation.

[marioserpico]

He mentions that the analysis of networks can be found anywhere, including your own brain.
He focuses on a portion of the economic aspect of control, with an attempt to analyze a small network into getting a bigger picture.
He proceeds to explain that whoever controls the flow of that economy, regardless of currency, controls the network.
Then he points that the few shareholders/top players who have the most control of the flow, due to the high interconnectedness of their companies, are not the ones who conspiracy theorists suspect they are. . .

He hints, that his research of these networks can help figure out how the top players compete with each other and how this affects the world economy, analytically.
Then the data can be used to create a better system, based on the observations of how nature does it. With trial and error, a few economic crises where everyone gets to pay for the stress, and voila! a perfect new network.
. . .Where the few top players become many, but still play by those simple rules, and the scientist gets control over emergence. . .

[seekerfound]

brilliant analysis. i think that if you collected data on the ultimate income sources of those companies, you find they only exist inside of an infrastructure. another peculiar thing about complex systems is that they all rely on organized infrastructure. a person's mind is complex in a way that if a part of that infrastructure collapses, others arise to perform the function of the collapsed portion. ultimately though and arguably, the mind only exists within the infrastructure of the body. one limitation in this study is in the analogy of the pipes. when a hole is made, the entire fluid leaks. but it doesn't in blood or finance. therefor it' reasonable to assume that money and power can coagulate like blood. blood ceases to be useful to an organism when it has struck ground. maybe recruit a few biologists and see what analogies you might be able to draw in regards to diagnostics and pathologies and how they relate to current economic crisis?
so i do take it with a grain of salt, because of emergence resulting from multiple emergence of many complex systems woven together in multiple dimensions(by dimension for example, differentiating how we interpret analogies between the mind and financial institutions, and the mind and the motion of a bicycle. adequate analogies can be drawn in either case, but the vectors of each and any analogy will differ by dimension).