Do we still need Davos?
It’s that time of the year again and all the great and the good – or at least those who have a large enough PR staff to make the rest of us believe that that is what they are – have defied their own many assurances that saving the planet is their highest priority, have boarded their private jets, descended on Zurich and from there travelled on to Davos for the 54th World Economic Forum.
I have never been to the WEF. I have never been invited although I do know several people – even excluding journalists, stringers and general hacks – who have been, one of whom quite recently confided in me that he now treats his no longer being invited as something of a badge of honour. Let’s face it, it’s a cracking annual getaway for many hundreds of members of the fourth estate and far be it from them to undermine their own little boondoggle by suggesting the trip might be a waste of their time as well as of their employers’ money. May the myth of Davos and TV interviews against a whiter-than-white backdrop live in perpetuity.
Year after year we see the same old media faces interviewing the same old executives who assure us that once they have cashed in their multi-million dollar pay cheques and even more multi-million dollar bonus cheques and have updated the spreadsheet which records the value of their accumulated deferred compensation, their principal interest is to protect the environment, make life better for the multitudes in underdeveloped and struggling nations and to altruistically contribute to the wellbeing of all of humanity, irrespective of colour, creed or gender. “Did you get that? Good. Now, where’s my glass of champagne and is there any more of that most excellent air-dried Grison beef left?”
Please don’t get me wrong. When Klaus Schwab founded the WEF in 1979, almost half a century ago, it was a great idea. Globalisation was still in its romper suit and the thought of bringing people of economic influence together with those in political power so that the former could impress upon the latter how much could be achieved if they all treated each other as allies rather than enemies was visionary. At the same time Davos, a tiny town that balloons during the skiing season grabbed the main chance. It is not far from Zurich and becomes a sort of temporary extension of Switzerland’s largest city over Christmas and New Year and again during the late February half-term skiing holidays. But after the year-end wave of full hotels and apartments, there follows a hiatus when everything is tooled up and fully staffed but there are not that many guests. Eureka! Let’s have a conference and fill the place. What started as a discreet assembly has turned into a money-spinning jamboree of epic proportions.
Winston Spencer Churchill is associated with the phrase that jaw-jaw is better than war-war and since the end of the Cold War, brought about by the 1989 de facto and 1991 de jure collapse of the Soviet Union, it has held good. The Pax Americana dominated and the path forward appeared to be accompanied by a constant trajectory of economic growth. China and Russia were getting richer and with the three superpowers doing fine, the trickle down would inevitably drag even the poorest out of the poverty trap. What was not to like?
In 1979, trade was still largely conducted by ship. Since then, huge trade flows have taken place by floppy disc, by CD and now by microchips. Most of the greatest fortunes have been accumulated in the technology space where the barriers to global trade have been the lowest. It might be true that the difference between the richest and the poorest has never been wider but then again the poor have never been better off. Globalisation has widened the field for entrepreneurs and innovators so that a geek in Auchtermuchty can, if offering something clever and new, at the push of a button instantly and simultaneously access buyers in Edinburgh, Prague, San Francisco, Hanoi, and the Solomon Islands. The extraordinary spread of ChatGPT and the precipitous rise of Open AI again bear witness to what Microsoft, Intel and Apple have already taught us.
This year’s WEF is taking place under the title of “Rebuilding Trust”. Not a bad idea at a time when the Russians and the Ukrainians are lobbing stuff at one another, as are the Israelis and the Palestinians and, by way of their Houthi proxies, the Iranians and the Americans. Now Iran has begun to fire rockets into Iraqi Kurdistan in what it claims to be an act of reprisal against Israeli intelligence headquarters. Huh?
The image of the powers of the Coalition in 1815 dancing at the Congress of Vienna while Bonaparte was sailing from Elba to Villefranche sur Mer at the beginning of his 100 days springs to mind, as does the desperately misplaced belief in the summer of 1914 that, given the ongoing economic boom, nobody would be mad enough to risk everything by going to war. Who in Davos is supposed to be rebuilding what trust and in whom can only be speculated upon? No Putin and no Xi, although China’s Prime Minister Li Qiang is on the guest list along with Volodymyr Zelensky, Isaac Herzog, Emmanuel Macron and Argentina’s new President Javier Milei. Of those five alone, one can only speculate as to which of them, if any, believes they have more to contribute than to benefit from being there.
The subject of the moment is AI which no amount of panel discussions will succeed in putting back into the Pandora’s box from which it has been released. In the past few days, the IMF has published a paper which speculates that only 50 per cent of the global workforce will benefit from it while the rest will see their jobs negatively impacted or in many cases replaced and redundant. And what impact on that will Davos 2024 have? Answers please on a very, very small postcard.
It’s not long ago and in the aftermath of the Covid crisis that “build back better” was all the rage. In 2022, Davos spoke of a unique opportunity for a reset, for a kinder and more altruistic world. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Since time immemorial, human progress has been driven by ruthless competition and by dog-eat-dog. Hanging out in Davos and feigning altruism isn’t going to make any difference and in all likelihood will fool nobody.
But would we be better off without it? Probably not. If the WEF achieves just a hundredth or even a thousandth of what it purports to be striving for, it is better than nothing at all. Is the huge monetary cost worth it? If you’re a hotel or restaurant owner or a taxi operator in Davos, there is no doubt that it is. The rest of us can but shrug our shoulders and turn to the sports pages.
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