Next stop on the global snoozapalooza tour: Davos

WEF, Davos, Switzerland

So it’s that time of year again when we all have to pretend that the World Economic Forum in Davos actually means something.  Fawning journalists will once again hope that this time it’s different, that for 5 magical days from Jan 27-31 2010 there could be major intellectual and economic breakthroughs for them to write boring 2000 word columns about (by the way even if there isn’t they’re still going to file those boring columns).

Davos is billed every year, like most of these global elitist nullities, as a ‘forum‘ for developing ‘cooperation‘ between ‘stakeholders‘ so that the ’global‘ economy can surmount the myriad of ‘challenges‘ it faces - All textbook giveaway keywords signifying your classic hob-nobbing snooze-fest.

But don’t take it from me, here’s what the WEF organisers have to say regarding the purpose of Davos:

“Improving the state of the world requires catalysing global cooperation to address pressing challenges… Global cooperation in turn needs stakeholders from business, government, the media, science, religion, the arts and civil society to collaborate as a true community. To this end, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting has engaged leaders from all walks of life to shape the global agenda…”

Does that even mean anything?  Alas, most of that ‘catalysing’ of ‘cooperation’ and ‘engaging’ of ’stakeholders’ takes place over $1000 lunches in 5-star luxury among the secluded Alpine slopes of a largely sheltered and somewhat irrelevant country.  Oh the Davos-lovers will say it is a perfect destination – cool mountain air makes for clear thinking; removal from life’s distractions allows our global brains trust to shut out noise and focus on the solutions; the 5-star treatment allows for full attention to be placed on the work at hand.  In reality though Davos the place provides a burlesque backdrop for Davos the economic summit – nice to look at but of no relevance to the real world.

Don’t get me wrong, collaboration and sharing ideas can be a wonderful thing.  The problem is, unlike a cutting edge technology summit or industry expos, there really is nothing new to be said in economics that hasn’t already been said, argued, journaled, propounded or turned into a best seller.  The world’s economic troubles are not new but old, and they result from the same old failed monetary and state interventionism.  Furthermore, even to the extent that you get ideas at Davos, hardly any of them are born from a sound worldview.  It really is, in many ways, a forum for the flourishing of the herd polemic.

Davos is always billed as the cutting edge of economic thought and discourse, where the people who matter get together to wrestle earnestly and with deeply frowned brows against the pressing critical issues of our time.  But enough about its bad points, is there anything substantive to this racket?  I highly doubt it.  Instead, a pontificating class of technocrats and high-society thinkers will get together, make each other feel really clever and warm and fuzzy, and generate a forest of working paper reports that highlight key issues to be discussed in specially selected round-table forums that will be tasked to come up with recommendations to be tabled before a plenary committee that will put forward the key initiatives to be discussed as a matter of urgency at Davos 2011.

And so round and round we go.  As we said of the global summit trotters recently,

“There is an entire subset of people in most modern economies, and increasingly in the not so modern ones as well, that make their living leaching off…sponsored summits, initiatives, aid, programmes, reports, conferences, working plans, stimulus programmes and all sorts of other big government minutia.  Like a pulsating tumour feeding off whatever remains truly healthy, this fraternity of mostly well educated but hopelessly lazy…do-gooders frolics around the globe, attending to each issue with an earnestness and passion that grossly overstates their ambitions or their efficacy.

For, in the final analysis, all these post-graduate degreed summit prancers really have no bold and innovative solutions and can only imagine a world in which government comes to the rescue while they’re waiting in the wings to pick up the contract as lead ‘development consultant’ or ‘poverty reduction agent’ or ‘climate stabiliser’ or who knows what?”

Here’s a bold prediction!  Davos will wallow once again in snoozy dampsquibiness.  It’ll generate catchy headlines from some of the funkier thinkers du jour, and it may even cause some skittish investors to prick their ears up.  But when all is said and done and last restaurant bill is paid by some unknowing sucker somewhere, the world will just have to get on with it, knowing full well that nothing truly defining came from Davos and probably never will.

We don’t need more forums or new ideas.  We need a revolution back to sound principles and clear thinking and a desire to fight for economic freedom.  We need a return to old sound economics. 

The ‘New Economics’ of our time that so many are so hot for is really just old folly dressed up in a shiny new suit on its way to Davos.