Relax, thought followers…

One and probably the only upside to Covid is not having to endure the preening of the world’s top political, academic and business leaders on the World Economic Forum (WEF) stage in Davos.

At about this time every year this band of self-appointed “thought leaders” gathers in the snowy, hard-to-get-to Swiss town of Davos and capture the latest mega-trend to challenge the world’s leaders.

They then brand it as their own and, with the help of a generally compliant media, disseminate it to all of us “thought followers”.

There’s nothing quite as certain to kill a fledgling challenge to the establishment as having that very same establishment capture and endorse that challenge.

They’ve done it to the environmentalists, and more recently they did it to civil society organisations pushing for a more accountable corporate sector.

The theme of last year’s get-together was “Stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world”.

Behind the theme was the message that companies have a greater purpose than just providing returns for shareholders – providing some returns is of course a critical basic requirement.

In the WEF’s defence, the lack of any sign of progress with its latest campaign could be down to the devastation of global Covid-induced lockdowns.

Anyway, this year’s annual conference has been postponed – to May – and relocated to Singapore. At this stage, a further postponement does seem inevitable.

As for the location, some commentators have suggested Wuhan.

Although it is slapbang in the middle of a Communist-run country, Wuhan might just represent the epicentre of all that global shareholder capitalism currently represents and is therefore a more fitting venue for the times it is in.

The annual Davos bash has traditionally also provided an opportunity to release the latest Edelman Trust Barometer survey, which attempts to measure the level of trust citizens have in their government, business, nongovernmental organisations and media.

Almost inevitably, year after year, countries such as China, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Malaysia scored the best trust levels.

Equally inevitably the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and South Africa were at the bottom of the pile when it came
to trust.

It’s difficult not to suspect that the barometer is actually measuring the extent of state power versus the chaotic vibrancy of so-called “Western style” democracy.

Instead of the Edelman barometer, this year we could just measure the level of expressed anger about individual government’s roll-out of Covid vaccines.

Chaos, without the vibrancy, just about describes the US regulators’ recent efforts to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders banning investment in companies with alleged ties to the Chinese military.

This article first appeared on Moneyweb and was republished with permission.

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