What degree of influence do corporations really have in the power politics of the world? James Glattfelder asserts that ownership is related to control, and claims that by looking at ownership networks it may be possible to answer questions like, “who controls the world?”.
In this talk, Glatterfelder explains potential power, systemic risk, pipes of control, and everything you never wanted to know about the influence and interconnection of corporate entities; you may also enjoy his pleasing Swiss accent and rather neutral perspective on GLOBAL CONSPIRACY. Mining and analyzing an enormous dataset of international corporate associations, Gatterfelder and his collaborators identified 43,000 transnational corporations (TNC) with significant ownership links and the potential to exert a high degree of influence over the total value of the TNCs within the network. Could a high degree of self-organizing global financial connections and associations lead to extreme, systemic risk to the global economy? Spoiler alert… basically, Yes… and people are just like birds.
Potential power: the probability of imposing ones own will despite opposition of others.
Systemic Risk: the measure of how vulnerable a system is overall. High interconnectivity can mean high potential for stressors to rapidly spread through the system.
Ref: The network of global corporate control, Sept 2011, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf
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