None of the richest people in the world is a European. Forty per cent of the billionaires people in the world are Americans
And this at a time that their society is struggling with crumbling infrastructure, the highest rate of incarceration in the world, an opiate crisis, literally unpayable debts (USD 20 trillion and counting) and unfunded pensions.
Six of the top ten are American technology billionaires (1. Jeff Bezos, 2. Bill Gates, 4. Mark Zuckerberg, 8. Larry Ellison, 9. Larry Page, 10. Sergei Brin). There are no European tech billionaires. SAP co-founder Hasso Platner is the first European technology billionaire at place 101.
The change among the richest people in the world indicates that the Americans are winning in the game of tilting the financial table in their direction. Just like as Hollywood dominates the motion picture industry due to corruption and distribution (not quality) so do American companies dominate tech, due to financial game playing, IP laws and crooked lawyers. Again, quality is not the issue and indeed due to versions of the Patriot Act and an absence of any privacy, the USA is the last place either Asians or Europeans should be buying their software.
Effectively, by tilting the table, the Americans are stealing from all of us.
And fellow Americans too.
PS. The Chinese make a significant appearance in the top fifty billionaires in technology. Like the Americans, the Chinese don’t really play by the rules, or rather write their own rules around IP. Based on American IP privateering, who can blame the Chinese?