I feel we may be disagreeing about one or both of "very" and "powerful", because otherwise that question makes no sense?
Some random member of the, say, Australian parliament, someone I've never heard of, is (relatively speaking) much more powerful than 99% of the planet.
A journalist who has an audience of millions, likewise.
A software developer whose work is economically valuable either through a broad audience or through being used to control something of great value, also powerful.
Very powerful would mean someone can effect a lot of change if they so desire (change what a lot of people do, have a new and material law put in, change large financial flows, ...).
Not sure I agree with the 99% of planet. Even if a single member of the Australian parliament could command all of Australia, it would still only amount to commanding 0.3% the global population (or maybe 2% of NATO plus Japan). Maybe within Australia the individual member's power is more than 99% of population?
I don't know much about Australian politics, but in some places vanilla members of parliament or not very powerful within the parliament (compared to party leadership, whips, etc.).
Software developers need people that sell stuff, admin for larger organizations etc. They also very rarely have unchecked ability to change things when those things are high risk etc. Zuckerberg, for example, is a huge exception, not the norm.
Journalists, even with a large readership, typically would not have much ability to get their readership to just act a certain way. There is not a great command relationship.
> Not sure I agree with the 99% of planet. Even if a single member of the Australian parliament could command all of Australia, it would still only amount to commanding 0.3% the global population (or maybe 2% of NATO plus Japan). Maybe within Australia the individual member's power is more than 99% of population?
I think that's the wrong way to calculate the value?
OK, so, how to phrase this…
Imagine we were talking about money rather than power (because money can be quantified more easily, and is an imperfect token of power).
I believe the base salary for Australian MPs is AU$211,250/year, which is ~ USD 140,700/year. This means they earn more than 99% of the world precisely because:
> Most individuals just don't hold much power.
Still works when substituting in "money" for "power".
Saying that each random MP has more power than 99% of the world population, is very different than saying that each of them individually controls 99% of the power, which would be tautologically impossible.
Earning in the top 1% globally doesn't mean that the power is more then someone in top 1-2% percentile. That just doesn't translates that well across the globe. I'd also say it needs to be done in wealth terms, not income and then locally (because ability for some Austrilian member of parliament to reach far around the globe is limited).
I'm saying the ranked list of people by power, random* MPs are in the 99th percentile.
I mean, is there even a single politician in the world who represents less than 99 people? (There used to be**, but any current examples?)
* OK, so that doesn't work over literally all polities — a Tuvalu MP might not have as much power as the parking attendant nearest to the Australian parliament building — but hopefully this at least helps clarify? Perhaps?
If you count simple representation as power and disregard other representations of the same people for different things or by different people (basically, everone will be represented mulitple times), then 99 is enough. Otherwise might need quite a few more.
Some random member of the, say, Australian parliament, someone I've never heard of, is (relatively speaking) much more powerful than 99% of the planet.
A journalist who has an audience of millions, likewise.
A software developer whose work is economically valuable either through a broad audience or through being used to control something of great value, also powerful.