Hmmm…..

I don’t believe it. Like rust, such people never sleep. However, a couple of commentators think the WEF may be in trouble (given Javier Milei was invited to address the WEF in Davos perhaps they are?)

First up is one Joel Kotkin, who I’ve found to be an informed, reasonable and often insightful commentator on current affairs, Goodbye to Davos — and good riddance:

Once widely considered the gathering of the elite of a future world government, the World Economic Forum is leaving a legacy of increasing irrelevance. To be sure, the snow was good; the AI art installation and occasional forays into witchcraft may have stirred some; but the whole thing has devolved into a cocktail party for the self-important, with diminishing bearing on world politics.

That’s a big call when you look at some of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Dr. Julius No, Klaus Schwab’s acolytes like Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau; the latter is certainly gone from NZ politics, and so unpopular that Labour kept her hidden during the last election, but Trudeau is still in power and following WEF. But here’s Kotkin’s reasons in synopsis:

  • The interconnected world envisioned by the WEF is disintegrating. Indeed, it has fallen victim to the resurgence of history and the rise of powers determined to return us to the glories of the Middle Ages.
  • The grandees don’t have to travel far to see the results of their “reset” as nearby Germany’s industrial machine collapses, with even its last solar panel plant about to go belly-up.
  • Green jobs increasingly seem to be reduced to the low-wage service type. The forced march towards renewables has only rewarded China…
  • The whole ESG movement, which sought to reward “right-thinking” executives, is falling apart, in large part because it makes no economic sense. 

Politicians like Trudeau and Macron, even though they are still in power, seem increasingly on the back foot on many issues that WEF is pressing on.

Second up is another thoughtful American commentator, Richard Fernandez, and although he has fun with the whole Schwab-as-Bond-Villain (check the videos) he quotes the WEF themselves in The Year The Future Disappeared:

The unforeseeable happened. Russia’s war in Ukraine has polarized the world, triggered energy and food crises and fueled an acceleration of global inflation and a rise in the cost of living. It has thrust the issue of energy security to the top of the political agenda at the expense of energy transition, slowing that green recovery and dampening our collective will to ‘build back better’.

FFS, they actually quoted “President” Biden’s bullshit campaign slogan and spending monstrosity. That alone should put an ideological tag (and the case of the USA, a partisan one) on the WEF.

And I don’t agree about the “unforeseeable” bit. I’d worked with Just-In-Time (JIT) production systems and anybody who did so understood that while they were vastly more efficient (and hence cheaper) than traditional logistics systems of warehouses they were also more vulnerable to sudden change (check out the comments on the original post at the old No Minister blog). Something like the Chinese Lung Rot Pandemic was always a faint possibility: wars far more so.

And even while the WEF stumbles backwards in shock at the reduction in globalisation and the increase in “on-shoring” key manufacturing and other industrial processes, it’s war that may be the ultimate stumbling block to their utopian dreams for the world, even if the war is not hot:

In its place is what writers have already dubbed the Second Cold War. Unlike the first time around, the new one may not be neatly divided into two massive camps. Whereas the US may be expecting Cold War II, shaped primarily by ideological polarization, China seems to be betting on global fragmentation.