For Liberal Elites at Davos, Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others. The leaders gathered in the Swiss Alps call to mind the rulers of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’

Wall Street Journal ^ | January 24, 2020 | Gerard Baker

[karpov]

...

Davos is, without rival, the global forum of the people who run most of the world: chief executives, investors, leaders of emerging technology companies, heads of government, leading writers, artists, performers, the panoply of nongovernmental organizations that direct global conversation about the big issues of the day.

Half a century ago, the debate among this elite crowd represented a fair diversity of views. If anything, the consensus, such as it was, tended toward a conservative one: The dominating issues were how to restore growth in a stagnating world, how to revive capitalism.

Today, Davos reflects perfectly the stultifying ideological consensus that this globalized, deracinated economic and cultural leadership promotes. There is almost universal agreement on the urgency of the issues at hand: combating climate change, promoting racial and ethnic diversity, supporting the rights of migrants and the free movement of labor, empowering women, promoting transgender rights.

Of course, these are almost exclusively liberal-left ideas, and the loudest voices in global business are liberals—the likes of Laurence Fink at BlackRock, David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group, Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Marc Benioff of Salesforce.

As well as being highly talented and supremely well-rewarded, these leaders are eager to drive the public discourse on issues that go way beyond their own bottom lines. The conversation at Davos and in the wider world is so convergent these days that it charges a high premium for dissent. Anyone who deviates from the left’s global agenda is marginalized.

[KarlInOhio]

Every Davos meeting makes me hope for an avalanche. If I were in Switzerland I would be shouting at the mountains

[dljordan]

“Every Davos meeting makes me hope for an avalanche.”

JDAM