While it is important to discuss the world, it is essential to see it from the viewpoint of what most of the world’s population is getting from those who lead their countries. Throughout history, there have truly been some horrible leaders (Genghis Khan – Asia, Adolf Hitler- Germany, Pol Pot-Cambodia, Augusto Pinochet-Chile). Still, the world progressed, and billions of people moved from absolute poverty and devastating squalor to merely languishing in poverty. Not a great accomplishment, but a movement in a positive direction. In the current world leadership, there seems to be some slippage backward in improving the economic well-being of billions of people in the world. The U.S. has shown decades of leadership but has been losing that role in the world over the past 20+ years.
The world has become increasingly interconnected with the influx of advanced technology. The rapid pace of technology advancement has both very positive and negative implications for societies throughout the world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will likely change the world in unimaginable ways over the next few decades. The big question is whether humans will limit the intrusion of AI into societies to the point where humans still flourish and progress as a species or allow AI to usurp their control of societies across the planet. A world where AI produces better AI that relegates humans to irrelevance does not bode well for billions of people who are not valued or seen as essential to life on the planet.
The world has entered, over the past few decades, the era of the extremely wealthy and everyone else. For hundreds of years, the world has had very wealthy individuals and families; however, never has so much wealth been concentrated in so few hands. As of 2026, the world has 3,428 billionaires, with an average net worth of $5.8 billion and an accumulated net worth of over $20 trillion. There are only 400+ women in the world who are billionaires. A disproportionately low number of women have been allowed to become billionaires due to decades-old male dominance and sexual discrimination.
The wealthiest person in the world is Elon Musk, with a net worth of $684 billion, more than double that of the second-wealthiest person, who has a net worth of $337 billion. Elon Musk will likely become the first trillionaire. In the past few years, the accumulation of extreme wealth has become easier and can be increased at a much faster pace than at any time in recent history. We are quickly approaching a time when those with immense wealth will monetarily control most governments in the world, doing so increasingly openly. Dark money will ultimately become inconsequential because purchasing politicians will become commonplace and readily known by the voting public.
We are entering a period not that much different from the Middle Ages, where aristocrats ruled kingdoms and a small number of nobles controlled most of the wealth. The current-day self-proclaimed nobility are the billionaires, the so-called Epstein Crowd, who may not have a birthright claiming ultimate power, but use their massive wealth to buy their access to power and societal control. This Epstein Crowd believes that rules, laws, and the normal operations of society do not apply to them. Transparency and accountability are what they decide is allowed. The public has no right to know how they use their massive resources to influence government and legally bribe (thanks to the Supreme Court) politicians to disregard the needs of the many and focus on the needs of the few. While the Founding Fathers may have had their faults and considered women second-class citizens, they clearly understood how an aristocracy rules in a manner that benefits only the aristocracy. They could have established a form of government that favored the ruling class, but instead, they chose to form a government that was of, for, and by the people, even if that was only for men.
It is important to stress that while the current president is accelerating the demise of the democratic republic, there are powerful interests with great wealth who have been working toward this goal for decades. Most of the wealthiest Americans have little interest in adherence to the U.S. Constitution. Forming a more perfect union and providing for the general welfare of citizens mean nothing in terms of their self-serving influence over how the country is governed. The saying is that money is the root of all evil, and in our current era, money rules almost everything. Money controls and influences government operations and much of society. The level of evil has perhaps never been higher in the U.S. and much of the world. There are countries in the world that seem to have a balance between greed and a progressive society. The U.S. is not one of those countries and is trending in the wrong direction.