[mountainlion]

There are something like 300 families that own most of the worlds business and land. They sometimes work together to scam a government out of Billions and sometimes the try to scam each other.

[wideawake]

There are something like 300 families that own most of the worlds business and land.

A ridiculous statement.

There are about 1500 billionaires in the world. Together they have assets worth approximately $5.4T.

For comparison, global GDP for 2012 was $85T.

So they have wealth that amounts to 6% of a single year's worth of global wealth.

Another comparison: the combined wealth of these 1500 billionaires could fund the US federal government for 18 months.

That's right: the US government spends, in one year, two-thirds of the wealth that these 1500 billionaires have spent decades if not centuries accumulating.

So saying that 300 families "own most of the world's business and land" - when the 1500 richest barely own 6% of one year's worth of global production from all the world's businesses and all the world's land - is a statement clearly based on no research or insight whatsoever, but is a random number you made up.

[Veto!]

There are something like 300 families that own most of the worlds business and land. They sometimes work together to scam a government out of Billions and sometimes the try to scam each other.

I understand the dynamic, tho on a different scale. I lived for a year in a gorgeous (rented) house on a mountaintop overlooking the Pacific. 26 houses on the hill, mine at the top. So in a sense, it was a very rare, privileged community. Oh, those views!

I was amazed to discover, as I became acquainted with the neighbors, how very many of them were suing each other, scheming against one another, and fully cooperating at the same time. Socially, they were "best friends."

They were thrown together by geography, as the 300 families are by wealth. And making the best of it.