The Counterintuitive Good News from Davos

The annual gathering of the elite showed that the emperors have no clothes, and that at least provides clarity of what to expect from a fading ritual.

I spent last week intensely covering the World Economic Forum in Davos. While I followed the speeches and the events in excruciating detail, I wasn’t physically there. So I didn’t get swept up in the atmosphere or get awestruck by celebrities walking down the Promenade. From that distant vantage point, the view was unobstructed and that provided some clarity.

For better or worse, Davos has been a regular part of my annual routine for years. It always seemed little more than a collective ego trip — a stage for the world’s elite to cosplay at caring about poverty, disease and environmental degradation.

But this time, with the world spiraling toward chaos, the theater fell flatter than ever.

From the rambling of Donald Trump and the sycophantic farce of his Board of Peace to the steady parade of self-serving executives, there were no new ideas, at least not in substance. It was a system justifying itself, creating a distraction from the smoke billowing out from behind the facade. It was a ritual of the liberal order (and I played my part).

The vacuous display was in its way reassuring. It meant there’s no reason to look toward the Swiss Alps for answers, because there will be no revelations coming down the mountain.

The emptiness of Davos was counterintuitively highlighted by Mark Carney. The Canadian prime minister boldly declared that the postwar rules-based international order was dead. His proposal was less of a “rupture” (as he called it) than a new form of Realpolitik.

He called for middle powers to unite to rival great powers like the U.S. (though he never mentioned Trump or the U.S. by name). While feeling fresh, the position assumes that existing power structures can and should endure — hardly surprising from a former central banker and a Goldman Sachs alum. But the underlying problems with liberalism itself escaped scrutiny.

The most striking part of Davos, though, came toward the end, when two of the final speakers brought home the glaring gap between the elitist rhetoric and brute reality.

Elon Musk, a last-minute addition to the program, was given kid-glove treatment by fellow billionaire Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock and interim co-chair of the WEF. The pandering was so complete that Fink asked the crowd to applaud again after the initial welcome for the world’s richest man came off as too tepid.

Rather than press the boss of Tesla, Spacex and X on any number of issues (such as facilitating disinformation, sowing nationalist division and undermining democracy), Fink gave Musk free rein to talk about a future where humankind would be served by humanoid robots, ride around in autonomous vehicles and have the means to explore space.

His fantasy might somehow sound appealing if it wasn’t so abundantly clear that such a future can only be attainable for the Davos elite. The rest of us will be locked out.

Just before Musk’s pontifications, there was Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The Ukrainian President also came on short notice. He had planned to stay in Kyiv to show solidarity with countrymen suffering without heat and power because of Russia’s attacks.

The strain of years of war were etched on his face, as he lashed out at Europe for talking too much and doing too little to defend democracy and define the future. Despite all their futility, Ukraine’s closest allies already represent the coalitions of the willing that Carney’s vision aspires to.

To make his point, the Canadian prime minister evoked former Czech dissident Vaclav Havel’s criticism of Soviet authoritarianism. The parable of the greengrocer in Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, which Carney cites, shows how regular people sustain power structures by performing system-supporting rituals.

Underscoring how the Davos crowd misses the mark, Carney equated Canada with a simple shopkeeper. But with its vast natural and financial resources, Canada is not merely peddling onions and carrots. Havel’s point was that people have the power and collectively legitimize constructs — like “Canada” as well as “communism” and “liberalism.”

That means people can collectively withdraw their support when the system no longer works for them. The liberal order appears to have forgotten that lesson.

Afterall, the ability for the Davos elite to accumulate vast resources, while others starve or are bombed, is not about the principles of liberty. It is an outcome of systemic failures perpetuated under the guise of freedom and individual rights. The claims echo the absurdity of the Soviet Union branding itself a “worker’s state.”

Recognizing that dissonance is ultimately the positive conclusion from the ritual of Davos. The shopkeepers of the world are now clearly aware of what the system has to offer and they can take the sign out of the window if they so choose.