The 147 companies that run everything. It's only 'natural'

The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One)

For some reason, the scientists who have suddenly "discovered" that a relatively tiny group of corporations, funds and banks have amassed enourmous wealth and power, find a need to distinguish themselves from the Occupy Movement which has been saying the same thing for years.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs). -- New Scientist

But we're scientists, not ideologues, says one of the scientists.

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says another.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team that made the discovery.

Okay. So it's not a conspiracy and your discovery of the extreme concentration of wealth and power is complicated and transcends ideology. Agreed.

But neither a good nor bad thing?

It's the "natural" order of things?

Really?

Sounds ideological to me.