Prior categorizations of world development were not flexible to changing technology or changing geopolitics. The Second world of the first, second and third world referred to the countries under Soviet control. The third world referred to the undeveloped world. There are non-controversial measurements of progress around access to basic needs.
I will categorize as follows:1. Struggling for the basics2. Engaged and useful for world economy3. Create Corporate giants and competitive with innovation4. Leading and creating major change for the future.
Access to clean water, food, clean toilets, electricity, literacy and basic education, basic medicine are absolutely essential for a healthy population. This is greatly captured by tracking the World Bank sustainable goals.
However, in ten to twenty years the population without basic needs could shrink to 100 million people or less. Currently, it is down to about six hundred million to one billion people. This is now about ten to twelve percent of world population. This is down from 50-70% of world population in the 1950s. Increasing the standard to those who are poor and not extremely poor increases the number of people still needing higher per capita income to 2 billion or 25% of the world population.
Those are basic needs that are needed for a development foundation and to overcome extreme poverty. This is what is needed for a population to not waste their days struggling to survive. The poor people without the basics have to spend days getting food, water, wood and other basics.
Country Engaged in the Basic Global Economy
The next level correlates to industrialization and a country capable of engagement in the global industrial economy. In 2010, Li Keqiang, now premier of China’s State Council, told the US Ambassador to China that China had bad GDP statistics. Li, used three data points to evaluate Liaonings economy: electricity consumption, rail cargo volume and bank lending.
Having industrial infrastructure and transportation means that people are not restricted in getting goods for their business. It is not the individuals or family but the business they can create that has basics.
This is the level where the country is useful to the powers in the global economy.
The requirements for this level have increased with the need for a high bandwidth communication system, high levels of smartphone usage and a workforce that can use and create software.
Almost all of Asia, South America and parts of Africa are fairly completely engaged in the global economy.
This level is having a significant market, capable workforce and an interesting consumer economy.
Able to Create Global Tech Giants and Lead Major Innovations
In the 1980s, Japan was considered a true global competitor because they created corporate giants.
Those companies are now tiny compared to the US giants. Toyota ($220B), Sony ($120B) and NTT ($90B) vs $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion for Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.
China has two big tech companies (Alibaba, Tencent) which are each around $700B in market cap.
Saudi Arabia has Saudi Aramco at about $1.7 trillion in market cap.
Taiwan has Taiwan Semiconductor. This is a $550 billion company that has the world lead in semiconductor lithography.
Korea has Samsung with a market cap of $540 billion.
Europe has three $300B+ market value companies. They are Nestle, Roche and LVMH (LV bags).
The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia added $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020.
India has Reliance and Tata which are around $150B-200B in valuation.
Europes largest firms, including Skype ($2-3B), Spotify ($60b), Lovefilm and Klarna ($11B fintech) are fuelling the next-generation of startups, scale-ups and unicorns.
Players Dominating the Near and Mid Future
It is not just the value, growth and current market cap of these global companies. The countries and companies need to be creating the innovation that will make the 2020s and 2030s.
The biotech giants in gene editing (Crispr, Editas, Intellia) and companies on the path to cancer vaccines and antiaging.
Opening up space is dominated by SpaceX. China and Europe are a generation or two behind in Space technology.
SOURCES- Wikipedia, Value TodayWritten By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
