I am watching La Jornada streaming internet video in Spanish from Central America about the Egyptian people overwhelming the last Pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak. At 82 after 30 years in power, he and his family accumulated $5B – $50B in family wealth and property, in a country where the $GDP/person is $1430. The Egyptian people cheering are being watched around the world. This could be bigger than the World Cup.

It should be. Everyone on the planet is getting connected to the web.

The Networked Age is here!!!

In our new networked age,  we are on the verge of every human being on the planet affording a smartphone. A smartphone like the iPhone is not only a telephone but a camera, a printing press, a radio station, a tv station and so much more all rolled into one.  A country can use the network to self-mobilize to make things happen.  A tipping point has been reached when a critical mass of people have a smartphone in their pocket. All connected to the web of information greater than the greatest libraries.

With a trusted network of friends to spread the news,  it is getting hard for a dictator to act against the public interest without the people exposing it.

Watching the Egyptian government try to get a handle on the rapidly deteriorating situation since Jan 25 with lies, shutting off the net, kicking out journalists, and making a few concessions that would have been momentous merely a month earlier…and with every move, nothing works, including the last ditch  ‘Jedi mind trick’  at the end, to somehow put off the inevitable.

Tweet on 2/12:
“I resign as leader of Egypt. No, not RESIGN! I REIGN! REIGN! DAMN YOU AUTOCORRECT!” — Hosni Mubarak

The key to keep an oppressed population under control is to centralize and control the media. But it is the nature of the web to move control to the individual node.  A closed society suddenly becomes impossible.

The tactics that used to work so well in secret now look foolish.
• Torturing and killing troublemakers no longer has the desired impact.  As soon as such practices become public, the victims become martyrs, and 50 more rise to take their place.
• Putting lies in the newspaper or repeating them on tv only works if you have total control of the media to maintain that illusion.

When enough people see the illusion of their oppressive government and no longer believe in it, they imagine a better life and are empowered to act while they are still young. When one group succeeds in toppling a government without violence,  others will dare to dream of change.

An open society is dependent on the worldwide communication network.   To be part of the modern world the society must  be connected.  But being connected enables education and freedom of information.  And that means transparency, which uncovers hypocrisy. When most citizens have a camera and broadcasting capability, it becomes difficult to maintain order by secret  violence and intimidation.

Uncovering one area of corruption can lead to more.  The Economist reports “With increasing openness, Muslims accuse some of their elders as being stooges for the government.  Many Egyptians have been thrilled to see Christians and Muslims including their priests and scholars mingling cheerfully in Tarir Square.”

What’s next? The Economist published a shoe-thrower’s index measuring unrest factors such as population under 25, the number of years a non-democratic government had been in power, corruption, censorship and GDP per person.

The tipping point has been reached. We can expect more disruption of corrupt regimes.

With any luck, the United States will realize it can get by on a much smaller defense budget. There are fewer enemies in the connected network age.

“These are the days of miracle and wonder, this is a long distance call,
the way the camera follows us in slow-mo, the way we look to us all,…”
- Paul Simon, Rhythm of the Saints

Vermont is the state with the smallest GDP, but it is sparsely populated which raises its $GPD/person. Yemen has a population of 22.5 M, Vermont only has 600,000. It’s 34 times better to live in Vermont than Yemen if money is your only yardstick.

Idaho and Sudan have $GDPs of $54.1 B and $54.6 B. With a population of 45 M in Sudan to 1.5M in Idaho, it’s 34 times better on the money yardstick to live in Idaho.

California is the biggest state with the biggest GDP at $1.88 T. That’s trillion with a ‘t’. It ranks up with Italy at $2.1 T, a mere $200B difference. With similar populations, it is 1.5 times better to live in California than Italy, although when the ratios are that small, many other factors come into play. Venice CA or Venice Italy? You decide.

The Economist recently published an interactive map of the U.S. comparing states with countries on population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP*). The comparison on states and countries with nearest equivalent GDP figures is surprising. However, even more interesting is to compare the GDP per person in these matched pairs. While these numbers are higher than the average income per person (GDP includes more than that) it is a good indicator of relative wealth.  It also is an interesting comparison that challenges widely held beliefs and reinforces others.  For example it is easy to believe that Bangla Desh and Mississippi have similar GDPs, but would you guess that Mississippi is 50X wealthier per person? Would you have thought that Michigan in 2009 had the same GDP as Taiwan? Or that Michigan has 2.36 times more GDP$ per person?  Australia and New York are relatively equal in both GDP and population, but it is still rather amazing that one state equals an entire continent.

This comparison shows that not every US state has a higher GDP/per person than the $GDP-equivalent country.  Maine’s GDP of $52B is equivalent to Luxembourg, and with Luxembourg’s tiny population, they enjoy $104K each, 2.6 times more than $GDP/per Maine-iac. 8 other states including North Carolina(Sweden), Ohio (Belgium), Tennessee, Wisconsin, Missouri (Finland), Florida (Netherlands), and New Jersey (Switzerland) fall short of  GDP/per person in the GDP-equivalent country.

As one might expect, the largest states California and Texas have GDPs many times larger than the other states. But would you compare Texas to all of Russia? If you were from Texas it probably wouldn’t surprise you that it has 5.7 times as much money per person as Russia.

Considering it’s well known that the U.S. with 5% of the world population consumes most of the world’s resources, GDP$/per person in the US has to be generally higher. Now we know how high that is.   In mapping equivalent GDPs to the U.S., 311 million people produce as much as 1.8 Billion people do, with an average GDP/person over 6x higher. The average US GDP/person is $45,856 . For the GDP-equivalent countries, GDP/person is  $7,644.

And which state has the highest $GDP per person? Hint: It’s not a state. The GDP/person is $165000. The country with equivalent GDP is Kuwait which has a GDP/person of $32000 famous for free medical care, and college tuition for every citizen. Name this paradise on the Potomac. Just when you felt rich, you realized that you are not when compared to the few who are insanely rich. And considering what Kuwait does for its citizens on only $32K each, one wonders why we can’t do as well.

Below is the complete table. *GDP  is  the total market values of goods and services produced by workers and capital within a nation’s borders during a given period (usually 1 year).

Click to enlarge