Mutiny erupts among WEF staff over role of ‘Mr Davos’ | Hacker News Reader

Mutiny erupts among WEF staff over role of ‘Mr Davos’

theguardian.com

42 pointsr72128 comments

The World Economic Forum is just a company with a specific tax efficient corporate structure that has built a great deal of wealth for the bloke who owns it.

Pretending it's something amazingly different to Cannes Film Festival or the Golden Globes would be a mistake. It's just networks + publicity rolled up as a VIP access event.

(N.B. Didn't check if Cannes, GG, etc are privately held. Doesn't change my point)

That's not really where i see the problem, the problem for the WEF is optics, a bunch of world leaders talking about radical changes in our society is going to look bad, regardless of whether they are serious or not and regardless of what the actual details of the conversation are.

The prime example of this is when the WEF published the infamous "you will own nothing and you will be happy line". Now if you actually read the article its a little pie in the sky but not overly dystopian. But the thing that gets me every time is how in the hell did they publish that and not think there was going to be some backlash, a bunch of elites and world leaders telling you that you will "own nothing and be happy", that's a bad look.

They probably didn't expect backlash because whenever a giant megacorp ceo says "We are going to change the world (and make you pay for it)" people freaking cheer and their stock goes to the moon.

I honestly think they are just out of touch. It's easy to convince yourself that something is a good idea when all your colleagues are agreeing with you. I think often times they might not fully realize they are on this global stage and their words will be torn apart.

Is it just a company? Or is it also a club similar to Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club, Le Cercle and others that drawn in powerful elites that collude as a group to coordinate changes to corporate structures and policy that ultimately shape bits and pieces of society and laws of all the first world nations? Companies ultimately fund lobbyists and if most companies are on the same page then these groups of companies can coordinate to manipulate and fully control lawmakers. If I am just one company, maybe I can afford $20 million in lobbying. If I am in a similar 40% to 60% tank of similar thinking people from the fortune 500's that number potentially goes up quite a bit. I believe that is called plutocracy but there is probably a better word.

Am I giving them too much credit?

-100 social credit

Points taken! Well, they can not take away points I do not have.

The sets intersect, partially at least.

Would make for an interesting Venn diagram.

Edit: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/WEF

Wow, this is increadibly weak stuff. A left-leaning newspaper reports on the liberal-leaning WEF, airing the complains of an anonymous group of employees, some of them not even current employees.

> Klaus has been at the helm of the WEF for 52 years.

Wouldn't that make him qualified to continue doing what he has been doing for 52 years?

> When he was born [in 1938] 122 of the 195 states in the world right now did not even exist.

God only knows what they're implying here.

> He is completely unaccountable to anyone inside and outside the organisation,” the group said.

Which is supported by what evidence? ...not to be found in the article. Also unclear who he is supposed to be accountable to. Apparently some trustees or something. ...now that would have been interesting for the article to go into detail about.

What has the political slant of the paper and WEF got to do with it? If that’s relevant, surely a left leaning paper attacking a left leaning organisation makes the article more compelling?

By liberal, I mean free-market liberalism (like FDP in Germany). I'm European. It didn't occur to me that people in the U.S. would misunderstand and think "liberal" means "left". Is that the miscommunication that's happening here?

Likely. I live in the US, and the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are used to mean left/right in US politics. Thus, in US politics terms, your comment says "A left-leaning newspaper reports on the left-leaning WEF...".

Right, to Americans, "liberalism" -> "classical liberalism", and "globalist neoliberalism" -> "liberalism".

I'd say that's incorrect, to the vast majority of Americans "liberalism" means left/progressive, that's simply what the word has evolved into in the mainstream. You use "classical liberalism" when you mean "classical liberalism" unless you're talking to some kind of economic historian or libertarian pedant and it has more context.

Ha, yes. However I’m a New Zealander in New Zealand.

What do you make of this, then? Third row, on the right side:

https://www.younggloballeaders.org/community?class_year=&pag...

> When he was born [in 1938] 122 of the 195 states in the world right now did not even exist.

I would like to know where writing such as this is taught. Everyone knows what '52 years' is there is no reason to embellish it in that way UNLESS you are writing to a tabloid audience (mainstream media to be sure does this as well).

And it deprecates the main point which (if true) is the strongest 'not accountable'.

Liberal leaning? I hate to be rude have no idea what you're talking about and it sounds like you have a terminal case of "two party system brain"

This is unfair. The commenter you are replying to is claiming that a liberal organization is being attacked from the left, and this is a pretty fair statement. Even the sales pitches for why you should subscribe to The Guardian make it clear what their bias is, and those are on the bottom of every page.

And this is actually a pretty refreshing take because it correctly distinguishes between liberalism and the left. Both of which are distinct from conservatism.

At worst you could say they have a three party system brain.

>Wouldn't that make him qualified to continue doing what he has been doing for 52 years?

A long tenure does not necessarily mean that one is qualified to continue.

Their concern is not whether he's qualified but that he's going to die of old age soon without leaving anyone clearly in charge.

"We are a group of current and former employees of the WEF. We want to play our role in fostering debate about the role this organisation plays in the world."

Why now? Who gets to take part in the debate? Why does a private club get to play a role in the world in the first place?

I don’t really see any evidence of mutiny. Some people who work there are anonymously airing their complaints to a newspaper.

I suspect it would take a lot more than that to see any changes.

Actually, if Davos and the WEF did not survive after the founder, I don’t think it would be a bad thing.

Davos is really a nice town the rest of the year when Schwab and his elitist circus is not there. Shame its name has become a metonym for WEF.

I was just talking to a friend about the WEF so I have these links at hand, gonna drop them here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsEGfhaX4PQ (37 second clip of John Kerry almost calling the rich extraterrestrial)

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly... (Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com