The most powerful people in the world are not who you think.

I type “most powerful people” into today’s most powerful internet search engine, google. Seven of the top ten references are made to Forbes’ annual rich list, ranking people according to their estimated net worth. But are rich people really as powerful as they claim to be?

YES they say that money talks. Money can buy people’s opinions. Money can corrupt. Money can certainly get people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. In that way, money can definitely change people’s behaviour. But why have we come to regard money as synonymous with power?

For sure, the more you own, the more you have to lose. The more you can be manipulated and blackmailed. But there’s much more to it that that…

P is for power.

Where did the word power come from? It’s related to the adjective ‘potent’. Potent also means ‘persuasive’. In Spanish*, the word for power –poder– means both power and ability. So power is also the ability, or capability, to do something.

1250-1300; Middle English pouer (e), poer (e) < Anglo-French poueir, poer, noun use of infinitive: to be able < Vulgar Latin *potēre (replacing Latin posse to be able, have power). See potent¹

Powerful things are strong. They can produce a great force. And what is force? A force can moves things. A force can displace something (change an object’s location). A very powerful force can squash or distort things, change their shape. I am reminded of the Shimadzu concrete testing machine. That was a very powerful hydraulic beast! So when I think of the word ‘power’ I think that power is the ability to exert some kind of change.

That to me is what this lust for power is all about. It’s not about absolute wealth. It’s not about what you can buy. It’s the ability to make things happen. The power to influence. To persuade other people to do what you want them to do. To move and change the world. So power is not about what you can buy for yourself, or even your net worth, it’s about how much change you can exert over time. Case in point, horrible people too can be powerful. Adolf Hitler, Ghengis Khan et al. that. I don’t worship them at all, so that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Buying people the traditional way

So. What is a person’s worth? Not what they are worth. What is their willingness to change actually worth? What does it cost to pay someone to either speak up or shut up? I think that very much depends on their net worth and income. Assuming we aren’t asking people to do something immoral or illegal, I reckon for most average people it’s the cost of buying an average home¹. Mainly because that means you wouldn’t have to work again. That seems to be everyone’s dream, doesn’t it?

One of my fears is public speaking. That, and dancing. Pay me a million bucks though, and sure enough, I’d probably speak or dance in front of as many people as you want me to, for a while at least. Not just about what I’d like to talk about, but for that sum, I’d get up on stage and talk about almost anything. But note that I said almost. Almost.

But what if I already owned my own home? What if I owned ten homes? What if you tried to influence me then? I’d just tell you to get stuffed, wouldn’t I?

What if I wanted to ‘influence’ more people? What if I wanted to get a whole load of people to do something they didn’t really want to do? Let’s find out how much money I’d need to do that.

By all accounts, Walmart is one of the largest companies in terms of the number of its employees. As of today, 2.2 million, in fact. Now imagine that I am the owner. I want to get buy out all of my special employees to do something different. Not just to do something differently. To do something else completely different.

Not just “stack these shelves this way” or “I want you to act like a robot and serve these customers crap that they don’t need while standing in the same place all day long and pretending to smile” but “if you do exactly what I say right now I’ll give you enough money to retire on”. Whatever I want.

Like grow a moustache, bleach it and dye it bright brandeis blue, or –for the ladies and transgenders incapable of growing their own moustaches– get a skullet haircut, bleach that and dye it bright brandeis blue.

Most people wouldn’t want to go around looking like that for very long, would they? Given enough pasta, you might be able to get most people to walk around with a bright brandeis blue moustache and skullet for a day or a month or even a year. But what if you wanted them to look like that for the rest of their lives? They’d be sitting in their own home, but not happy because they have to wear a bright blue moustache which they didn’t really want. So they wouldn’t be very happy for very long. What if they didn’t want to live like that? How much would you have to pay them then?

As of today, the world’s richest family is the Walton family. Between them, they have $149 billion to spend. That works out as $67,727.27 for each and every one of their Walmart employees. Yes, it’s a shit-load of money. But it’s hardly going to get 2.2 million employees to do anything for a substantial period of time, is it?

Who has the power to change the entire world?

Say I am now the richest person on the planet. I am now the world’s first trillionaire. And I want to change not just one or two million people, but everybody. Let’s just say the whole of society. And I want to do it with money. I look in my multiple Swiss bank accounts, I add it all up and I calculate that I can afford $142.86 for each person on this Earth. That’s not going to buy much change, is it?

If I had to pay everybody to do whatever I wanted, pretty soon I’d be broke. And how much of my persuasive powers would remain after I spent all that money? Well, the answer is none. So for me, having wealth is all about having potential power. Potential power is not absolute power.

Money is alright for ‘influencing’ people to do unwanted things for a limited amount of time.  But you can see that not even the richest person alive has enough buying power to get what they want for very long.

There are plenty of changes that all the money in the world cannot buy. What if I wanted everybody to grow blue moustaches even after my death? No amount of money is going to make that happen. The only way to do that would be to convince people that wearing a bright brandeis blue moustache or skullet haircut is somehow going to be good for them. Money doesn’t –can’t– buy people’s values and opinions.

I think the truly powerful people in this world have the ability to influence others without the use of force; I think they can challenge others’ thoughts and gradually pursuade them to change their own belief systems over time.

Time’s list of influential people is much more interesting; for one thing, because I have actually heard of half the people on the list (not just the brands behind the people on the list). Take a look at the Dalai Lama. The scientists. The artists. Van Gogh has influenced many artists, even a full century after his death. Musicians. Those people have changed the world and it continues to be different even after they are long gone. Some of the world’s most influential people are actually very poor in terms of monetary wealth. So I don’t think power has anything to do with money, because you can be powerful and still be flat- broke.

If you know how the world works, how people think, then you stand a greater chance of changing it [or keeping it the same]. So in my opinion, knowledge is power. If you read and assimilate information, you have the ability to do more with less. So it may well be that the most powerful people are people like you and me. Readers and writers. Illustrators. Comedians. People like that.

But it goes further than that. The more money you have, the less freedom you have to speak and say whatever you want. Witness how a CEO can lose their job with a single tweet. The richest people in the world also have some of the biggest obligations and responsibilities. And the ultra-rich often don’t display their wealth. They have to conceal it. Those kind of people actually live in fear. Really powerful stuff! On the other hand, the poorest of people can say and do whatever they want. Poor people have more freedom to act in that sense.

Truly powerful people can do what they want, when they want, where they want, how they want, why they want.

For me, the most powerful people are people like Chris Rock. Or Axl Rose. When they get up on stage, they can say and do whatever they please. People like Malcolm Gladwell. Or even Bradley Manning. People that are quoted.

I don’t think that rich people are incredibly good at fundamentally changing the world, because there is a lot at stake and they stand to lose by it. I think that many rich people are incredibly good at not changing the world. Rich people want to stay rich. And one way to stay rich is to keep everybody buying your products and services — to keep the status quo. The way I see things, the richest people are very good sellers and very lousy buyers and ‘power’ really has nothing to do with it. I’d like to see how much Trump, Murdoch or Rhinehart think they can influence me! I’m likely to do the exact opposite of what they want.

And lastly, I think that the richer people are, the less they can be influenced by other rich/powerful people, meaning they aren’t so easily pursuaded to change their own opinions – they can be rather inflexible and “closed-minded”. So in conclusion, I don’t think rich people are anywhere near as ‘powerful’ as Forbes makes them out to be.

1. Here in Sydney right now, it’s AUD$900,000. Nine hundred grand. That’s a lot of money. I wish I had that amount of money.