An elitist world view

The 2018 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland, a global meeting of 2,500 political and business elite, ended a week ago. The conference theme was supposed to be “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World.”

Before the start of the conference, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, said: “Our collective inability to secure inclusive growth and preserve our scarce resources puts multiple global systems at risk simultaneously. Our first response must be to develop new models for cooperation that are not based on narrow interests but on the destiny of humanity as a whole.”

I expected that the most pressing problem the 2018 World Economic Forum would tackle would be the state of global income equality where 63 individuals have the equivalent wealth of the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. That was not my impression after reading all the insights from different sources about the highlights in Davos. One observer reporter that it would really be inconceivable for the global elite to really care about income equality when stock market prices were increasing all over the world which was making the utra- rich even richer.

Another observer said that the 2,500 participants arrived in more than 1,000 private planes. The Davos elite, except for a few NGOs, were clearly beneficiaries of the present economic system. This is a group that is definitely not interested in discussing issues related to distribution of wealth. The “Shared Future” apparently did not include the rest of the world that were not sharing the benefits of a booming stock market.

What then were the top issues discussed in Davos that were of interest to the global elite? Among the many different analysis and observations, I thought that the five takeaways from Davos 2018 cited by Barri Rafferty CEO Ketchum, was one of the best summary. Here are her five takeaways:

Artificial intelligence

According to her, artificial intelligence or AI was ubiquitous. She said: “ I don’t think there was a session you could go into, whether it was health care or agriculture or technology that didn’t talk about how AI is going to change our workforce...We need to teach people to question things, to be more creative, to be more insightful. Those are skills that are not memorization skills but tactics that we need to teach our children along the way.” There are certain human qualities AI can’t replace like creativity and empathy.

Blockchain technology

The “blockchain” became a buzzword about two years ago, coming into the scene simultaneously with AI. Blockchain is the ledger system behind digital currencies. AI has been adopted by a number of industry sectors, blockchain is less developed. She said: “ Blockchain has not advanced as much, but because of cryptocurrency, there’s much interest in it. There was a lot of debate – are we able to crunch that kind of data? Do we have the power sources? There’s a lot of infrastructure areas they’re looking to make it real. But certainly the vision is there.”

Concern about the oceans

Rafferty said: “Sustainability and climate change continue to be a key theme. You heard a lot this year about the oceans...people are concerned about more plastics being in the oceans than fish. There’s a lot of concern about drilling and doing things that are going to happen in our oceans.”

Women’s issues have taken center stage

When Rafferty first attended the meeting in Davos seven years ago, she was frequently mistaken for a spouse. But as concerns over women’s equity have moved to center stage, that is no longer the case. She said: “What started as a female issue became a business issue. This year, female topics – whether it was pay equity, equality – really moved from the side room and what I call HR topic to being a C-suite topic...There were actually men by themselves talking about closing the gender gap...When you have a more diverse slate of senior executives and a more diverse board and business, you’re going to be more profitable.”

The importance of reskilling

She said: “Another I saw this week was the concept of reskilling. When you’re 22 and you graduate, in our day, you thought you had everything...our education system is first Industrial Revolution where we’re fourth Industrial Revolution. With AI, with technology, with everything changing there are jobs that are going to go away. We’re going to to have to reskill the workforce, whether you’re at a big corporation or in a factory. To do an overhaul of curriculum, and overhaul with adults that are already working, it’s going to take what Davos proposes – a lot of people working together and a lot of collaboration, to get there.”

There were two major issues that were not, to my mind, adequately discussed in Davos 2018. The first is that the world is entering a dangerous era of nuclear deterrence and proliferation. The United States is planning to take more steps to modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal in competition with China and Russia. According to a recent Stratfor report, India and Pakistan are lowering their threshold of conflict as India promises devastation should Pakistan try to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. North Korea is on the verge of possessing viable nuclear deterrence. South Korea and Japan may eventually entertain the idea of obtaining nukes of their own. A concerted effort by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia to destabilize Iran may encourage more debate in Iran on the merits of acquiring its own nuclear deterrence.

The second issue is the social and political effects of the expansion of the Technological revolution. Startfor said: “ If adopting robotics in the manufacturing industry over the past three decades has created the intense level of social angst we are experiencing today, imaging what will happen when algorithms replace entire industries of middleman services, such as insurance and health care. We’re on a timeline that leaves little space for politicians to gamble with the expectations that economic benefits will eventually trickle down to the masses.”

This continuing rise in global inequality will eventually force nations to rewrite their social contract with their citizens. This day of reckon will come either from the political will of its leaders or by the force of an enraged citizenry.

Creative Writing Classes for Kids and Teens

Young Writers’ Hangout on February 10 & 24, March 3 & 17 (1:30pm-3pm, independent, stand-alone sessions) at Fully Booked BGC. For more details, email [email protected].

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Email: [email protected]