The year 2019 is witnessing a profound global political instability. The confusion over the Brexit deal continues and so does the weekend protests by ‘Yellow Vests’ in France. Trump Administration in the US is reeling under shutdown while the Chinese economy is slowing down.
Amid these pressing issues, the media attention this week shifted to a small Swiss resort of Davos where World Economic Forum (WEF) hosted its annual event popularly known as ‘Davos’. The name of the town has become synonymous with WEF itself. The glitzy invite-only event is attended by over 3,000 decision makers, top CEOs, civil society representatives, and more than 60 heads of state who come together (in thousands of private jets) to “build a better version of globalization”. Every year Davos becomes the world’s largest concentration of billionaires.
Founded in 1971 as “European Management Forum”, WEF is a brainchild of an obscure Swiss business professor Klaus Schwab. The importance of the meeting gained prominence with the expansion of globalization. The high-altitude setting in one of the most expensive country and leading safe haven for illicit funds only added to its charm among the jet-set corporate overlords.
Davos not only emerged as a neutral political platform but also an opportunity for emerging economies to showcase their ‘efforts’ in deregulating labor markets and opening local economies for global investments. The location of the forum ensures that it is mostly free from large scale street protests seen during WTO or G-20 summits.
In 2017, President Xi Jinping became the first Chinese head of the state to attend the meeting. In 2018, India’s Modi gave the keynote address. The 2019 gathering was rather low-profile. The US President Trump, French President Macron, India’s Modi and British Prime Minister Theresa Mayor decided to stay home prioritizing their domestic concerns.
Every year Davos picks up a new glowing theme (sounding not different from the last ones). This year’s hot theme was ‘Globalisation 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. Davos employs a caste system of tiered badges determining access to sessions and segregating attendees into different categories. There were hundreds of vacuous panel discussion on the relevance of globalization and its challenges.
Gloomy Times
But an inconvenient question remains: Will the powerful Silicon Valley elites and philanthrocapitalists assembled in Davos hear the angry cries recently raised by working poor in Champs-Elysées?
Davos is essentially a symbol of crony capitalism camouflaging as a pro-globalization voice. In recent years, the summit has included social activists, environmental groups, and even trade unionists within its folds. But its core group is made by the ultra-billionaires and multinationals indulging in transnational tax avoidance fuelling income and wealth inequality.
The annual meeting’s hidden objective is to argue in favor of a corporate run world and speed up retreat of the public sector. For this purpose, technology has emerged as their tool of choice. A globalized world now means an inter-connected digital world and e-commerce is the new marketplace. Artificial intelligence and automation is the ideal solution for the giant corporations who want to maximize profits and spread their reach without investing in a new workforce. But technology is not creating enough jobs for the low and middle-skilled workforce. The plight of farmers and global debt rising to $244 trillion has no relevancy in the Davosian paradigm.
The most usual answer of Davos to every global issue involves words like “technology”, “cooperation” and “multilateralism”. But the corporate-dominated events won’t explain the barriers that stop dispersion of technology and capital to poor economies. The elite attendees are complicit in these problems. There is a clear disdain for any strategy to clamp down on tax-haven. Meanwhile, the tech giant CEOs at Davos won’t tell how they are spending more money than ever on lobbying politicians.
The recently published Global Risk Report places Extreme weather events and climate change at the top of its warning list. But, the concern for the environment and climate change among the different tribes of ‘Davos Men’ is limited to extending the role of western multinationals. No wonder Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro who pledged to roll back protections of the rain forest and indigenous rights was invited to deliver the keynote address.
The latest Oxfam report claims that last year 26 people owned the same wealth as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity. It is in Davos that our political representatives report to the top 1% holding the bulk of global capital. Davos is the collusion of self-serving interests between corporations and politicians undermining the representative democracy. The forum’s approach to multilateralism has no issue with Chinese digital totalitarianism or Trump/Bolsonar style nationalism.
The Met Gala of Neoliberalism
The resort-capitalism that we see at Davos continues to function without any operational object. The private symposium debating ‘Globalisation 4.0’ remains silent on the excesses of globalization in form of sweatshops in Dhaka to modern slavery in Abu Dhabi. Similarly, the debates on inequality stay silent on fair wages and working poverty.
This year’s forum takes place at a moment of growing concern about the risk of another recession. The concentration of wealth in few hands is the true crisis of capitalism in our times. The slashing of taxes on the rich is happening from France to the USA. The seasonal corporate doves in Davos have no desire to combat the growing inequality and low wages.
Davos is a congregation of the ‘champions’ in an unsustainable global economic system. Davos regulars are trying to shift the focus of attention from the global threat posed by the expansive monopolistic capitalism. The annual gathering is missing a key point. They cannot close their eyes to the shrinking middle class and growing economic risks. It is only a matter of time before the working class discontent echoes all the way to their snow peaks.
Until then much like the melting ice, Davos is losing its sheen.
