Exactly Who Is In Charge Here?

Ever consider who is really in charge? By in charge, I mean who's calling the shots on the planet, at the controls, pulling the reigns - that sort of thing.

There are 206 recognized countries/sorta self-ruling political entities on this planet, and each and everyone of them has a Head of the Government, and quite a few of those have both a Head of State along with a Head of the Government.

The Queen of England, for instance, is the head of state of 16 sovereign countries, and two other allied countries. That's a puzzle right there - it's 2014 and there are still Queens and Kings, Sultans and Emperors. Mind-boggling, actually.

Only a few of those unelected types remain though, as since the late 1780's, the right of people to chose their leaders by electing them has become quite popular. There are still countries that haven't quite got the hang of fair and open elections, but by and large there has been a lot of improvement over the inherited (or acquired via conquest) method of becoming a country's leader.

  That leader - Chief Executive, President, Prime Minister, Chancellor, Premier...the big cheese by any other name or title, is usually surrounded by a staff of Diplomats, Ambassadors, Secretaries. Attaches who advise or inform, help out in making the tough decisions, etc.

And the majority of those leaders have an Assembly, Parliament, Congress, Cabinet, etc., that deals with the creation and implementation of laws, policies, regulations, etc., and those are in turn supported by bureaucracies that do the actual work.

Of course, there are also military leaders - Generals and Admirals with some significant power/influence of their own.

There are over 7 billion people on the planet. The two countries with the largest populations, China and India, account for over 2.5 billion of 'em. The other 4.5 billion live in the remaining 204 countries/sorta self-ruling political entities.

Since I have no desire to attempt to figure out the mean average for population and determine what percentage of that population is running the show, I will use the United States as my average, Sure, it's actually the 3rd most populous country on the globe, but with only 317 million (+/-) people, it only represents about 7% of the remaining 4.5 billion, so somewhat of a happy medium.

The 317 million people in the United States have 1 President and 1 Vice President. There are 15 members of the President's cabinet, and 7 cabinet-level officers (well, 8 when you include the Vice-President, who by law is a cabinet-level officer).

That's 24 people right there. 17 men and 7 women.

There are also 100 Senators (2 from each state, regardless of population) and 435 voting members of the House of Representatives plus 6 non-voting members (each state is allotted a number of representatives based on population, btw), who collectively make up the U.S. Congress, so 535 people with some serious power right there.

That's 559 people running the show on the Federal level. If that number is extrapolated for all 50 states (all 50 states have Governors, Lt. Governors, State Senators, Representatives, etc.) we get 27,950 Grand Poohbahs. 559 is probably a little high for most states, but what the heck, it's a convenient number - so 27,950 people on the state level calling the shots.

Add that to the Federal bigwigs, we have 29,068 people. Throw in the Supreme court (9 Judges) and the DOD Chiefs (Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff - 6 more people). and we are at 29,083 people.

Let's give the remaining 205 countries/sorta self-ruling political entities, regardless of population, that same number of Big Kahunas and multiply. We now have five million nine hundred sixty two thousand and fifteen Big Kahunas.

On a planet of 7 billion people.

That's about 3/4 of 1 percent of the world's population calling the shots.

Plus or minus a tenth of a percent.

Of course, there are other people who wield influence - Business and Religious leaders, Academics, Media Barons, Performing artists, etc.

However, influence is vastly different than power - it's as simple as this; People with influence sometimes have power, but people with power always have influence.

If being rich is considered being powerful, we can add the 10 million people on the planet who are worth 1 million dollars or more to the total...wait a minute, most of the powerful people in the total are part of the 10 million people that are worth a million or more, so let's be fair and only add half of the 10 million.

That would give us 10,962,015 Big Kahunas.

So, 1.5% of the population of the planet telling the rest of us how it's going to be.

My math is more approximate than exact, but it's close. Close enough to give one reason to ponder the nature of the human condition and why it seems so imperative for humans to have a leader.