As we have seen in last couple of centuries, every few long decades the world undergoes some kind of stability shift. This may mean a shift in how government works, or how economy works or can be a change is global power dynamics, as we have most recently seen with the conclusion of cold war and with two world wars before that. Last few decades, that is, for my entire life, I have lived in a world which is mostly politically and economically stable, with sudden hiccups here and there.
Today we live in extremely connected world, not only with internet connecting half of world’s seven billion people, but with economies from easternmost part of the world to the westernmost interacting, affecting and actively impacting each other. Today a company in America owns a shell in Cayman Island, that does business in Japan; in turn another Japanese investment corporation controls major share of that very American corporation with one of the major investors of that Japanese corporation being from Arabia. Okay, this might not be an exact case, but yet, if you start looking, not even closely, just vaguely, you would see how complexly the world economy, politics and geography is intermingled.
Yet, we see a world wide disparity of wealth. At some part of the world, people starve and die from lack of basic healthcare, and in contrast some people waste so much. We know that the world now have plentiful resources to provide for each of its human members and we are some steps away from evenly distributing them.
With all being said, I can without a doubt state that, there is a universal rise in resentment and agitation in people about many things; to be blatant, about everything political and everything economic. There are agitation about how governments function, how wealth is distributed, about how people immigrate to different metropolises and to different countries, about how education is working and foremost,about life’s uncertainties.
For these reasons outlined above, people are acting out; people are acting out in various forms. We see countries like Greece fail miserably, we see English people trying to disconnect itself from rest of Europe en mass, we see Catalonia hastily declaring independence. We see Arab spring happen without a summer following it, and we see the fertile crescent burn in everlasting fire of instability.
With economic powerhouses growing at Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai, we see influence of London and New York, and Washington significantly diluted. Yet we saw a massive rise of totally different kind of economic power house at San Francisco bay area, better known as the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is often dubbed not just as a geographic area but as an ideology which surpasses its physical boundary. In last half century we have seen concepts like super nations and mega metropolises realize, if not formally, virtually indeed. All of these are also complemented with reprise of Moscow and significant empowerment of Beijing and Delhi.
With all of these happening all the time, a news caught my attention and spur all of these though I just scribbled: the arrest of Saudi prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, along with ten other high ranking members of the Saudi royal family, by newly appointed crown prince’s order. This is a unsurprising but a shocking news, not unexpected from an absolute monarchy. The forty first richest person of the world was not always in best terms with ruling members of the family. It however asserts one significant fact, that even in this heyday of businessmen’s influence, rulers and not the businesses hold real power.
Today, I have realized more than ever that, we, as humans, are going to see a gradual change of world order; hopefully a better one.
inside the insight 