Everybody knows that the dice are loaded; everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over; everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed; the poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes…
Everybody knows.
—’Everybody Knows’ by Leonard Cohen
Somebody once said, “If you can’t trust your government, who can you trust?” I have no idea who said it, or why. (Apparently, even Google doesn’t know who said it.)
…but I would like to propose a cogent response.
“Almost anyone.” I would trust almost anyone before I would trust the government. I would trust my ex-wife before I would trust the government.
I’m not alone, apparently. The experts at the Pew Research Center have been surveying ordinary Americans since the late 1950s (or so they tell us) and they claim that, in 1958, about 75% of Americans trusted the politicians in Washington. The latest figure (March 2019) is about 18%.
But while we can’t trust the politicians, we should trust The Elites. That’s the conclusion reached by Tomas Casas and Guido Cozzi, in their 100-page research paper written for The Foundation for Value Creation in St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Much of the research, it seems, was conducted in the Abby Library in St. Gallen.
If you can’t trust a report coming from a library like this, who can you trust?
The researchers looked at The Elites who dominate the economic and political landscapes in 32 separate countries. They begin their report by proposing:
Elites are an empirical inevitability, dominating all political economies. They provide necessary coordination capacity for the economy’s resources, whether human, financial or knowledge-based…
…To sustain their position, elites run business models that accumulate wealth. High-quality elites run Value Creation business models that give more to society than they take. Low-quality elites do the opposite and operate Value Extraction models.
The report attempts to identify those countries with Good Elites, and those with Bad Elites, by handing out what they call “EQx Country Scores”.
Everybody knows, as did songwriter Leonard Cohen, that the poor stay poor and the rich get rich. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows.
What everybody doesn’t know, I guess, is that it’s an empirical inevitability that Elites — through their accumulated wealth — will rule your country, whether you live in the US, or China, or Russia, or Egypt. The same way loaded dice are an empirical necessity.
So don’t keep us in suspense. Who are the Good Elites?
1. Singapore. Elite Rating: 68.5
The clear leader, so successful that it is a stand-alone outlier. Singaporean elites base their business models on Value Creation. They are also significantly more powerful than their Western counterparts; precisely because of this feature, Singapore’s EQx Country Score is strongly penalized (because Power is potential Value Extraction). Yet, Singaporean elites refrain from rent seeking activity. … The Asian city state is the gold standard of elite governance. One must then ask: how can the world learn from Singapore’s elite governance?
The Elites of Singapore are relatively Powerful, and could — if they wanted — royally screw everyone. But instead, they run their businesses to “create value” rather than extracting money from everyone’s pockets. They are the “gold standard” (even though the gold standard was officially abandoned by the US in 1971.)
Other ‘pretty good’ Elites run the countries of Switzerland (where the researchers live) and also Germany, the UK, and the US.
Yes, folks. It’s official. The Elites in the USA rate a score of 63.4. Not bad, for a country that fielded Joe Biden and Donald Trump as our choices for President. (I personally blame The Elites for that particular selection.)
And coming up fast on the backstretch: China, with a score of 58.4, which — according to the St. Gallen researchers — puts them firmly in the “Good Elites” category. Not too many countries that only recently got indoor plumbing can claim to have “Good Elites”.
Bottom of the barrel? Egypt. Score 40.0.
They have really bad Elites in Egypt. Which I find somewhat surprising, considering Elites were running that country already back in 3000 BC. You would’ve thought they’d have things figured out by now. I guess you have to stay on top of this Elites business, or things can really go to hell.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.