Home at last. Davos may be beautiful, but it is damn cold this time of year.
Looking at the website, the week was a success. A lot of great speeches, workshops and “thought leadership” on how we billionaires can make a real difference to the problems of the world.
Bit annoying to have that teenage girl Greta Thunberg telling us off for not stopping using fossil fuels immediately. Trump was right to put her in her place. Besides, how were we supposed to get to and from Davos without a plane?
And I am a little tired of being lectured to by supposedly well-meaning people about the frequency of financial crises; the rich getting rich without producing anything; the unevenness of development; the “beggar thy neighbour” relationship between rich and poor nations; the tax evasion; corruption; vested interests taking over politics; the lack of transparency and participation by ordinary citizens in decision making; the running down of social services like education and health and the kind of values (read excessive consumption) we are living by. Don’t get me started on inequality and social justice.
Still, you have to take criticism on the chin when you are one of the 10 percent of humanity that hold 90 percent of the world’s wealth. It is a privilege that should not be taken lightly.
So, I am not going to. On the way back in the private jet I discussed with my staff the possibility of setting up a charitable foundation.
I am not blind. I can see that there are real problems that need to be addressed. Some of my fellow 10percentrers think it is so bad they have decided to hole up somewhere like New Zealand and wait for the inevitable collapse. But I did not get where I am today by being a defeatist – or a “gloomster” as Boris would say. I like that man; he knows how to stay positive.
Anyway, we (that’s my staff and me) agreed that it was a waste of time looking to government to solve problems. No one trusts them to do anything. We will have to go around them and look for “win-win” initiatives like “micro loans” and “impact investing”.
To work out the details, we will need to enlist the support of credible academics and pull in “thought leaders”. I have asked my people to check out the latest TED Talks for the anything interesting. If you can’t say it in 18 minutes, it is not worth saying.
I want people to know I am serious. I want to “make the world a better place”.
There will be the usual doubters. Over the last few years there have been a lot more complaints about the so-called billionaire class. Too much wealth in too few hands.
This is clearly a misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up. We did not ask to be rich. It is the natural outcome of globalisation. The bigger the market, the more money I stand to make.
And, anyway, globalisation is based on sound academic work. As I was explaining to my staff (all young graduates from Ivy League universities) Davos has a history going back to 1971 when Karl Schwabe from the University of Geneva set up the World Economic Forum. Schwab is long forgotten but names like Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and, of course, Milton Friedman (at the University of Chicago) are more well known.
Schwab wanted to see rules, regulations and institutions put in place that would insulate markets against interference from nation states, political change and democratic demands for greater equality and social justice (1). If this sounds a bit much, remember Schwab and his colleagues at the University of Geneva were reacting to the kind of nationalism that led to the first and second world wars. They thought a borderless global economy would prevent conflict.
For this to happen, national governments had to sign up to agreements allowing for the free movement of business, capital and people around the world. They also had to begin cutting back on the welfare state, human rights, taxation, inappropriate regulations and anything else that was not good for business. The world would be a better place if business could be business – anywhere, anytime.
These are very noble goals and I miss no opportunity to tell anyone who will listen what is good for business is good for the world. That’s why I like Trump. He is a businessman; he gets it. Well, I think he does.
By the way, what Schwab and others were talking about is today referred to as neoliberalism and I think we need to celebrate its champions. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are obviously people to remember fondly. But almost every liberal democracy – and a lot of illiberal democracies – have been led by people who understood the importance of implementing neoliberal policies.
One of my favourites is the former New Zealand Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas. Wow, did he know how to make a difference. The woman who came after him, Ruth Richardson, she was a true believer.
What all of this adds up to is that we must pull off the trick of changing the world while keeping globalisation in place. It is what the Italian aristocrat Tancredi Falconeri said, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change” (2).
This what I want to do with my foundation – find some people (a medical condition that effects children sounds good) I can help and make a difference to their lives while not disturbing the global economy.
I know there will be critics who say, but what about the people your foundation can’t reach? Shouldn’t we be helping governments (through paying a decent level of tax and not parking trillions of dollars in off-shore tax havens) to put in place public solutions that help everyone?
To that I say, government is broken. It does not work. Better to do something than nothing.
One of my young staff (he won’t be with us much longer) put it to me that perhaps governments were broken because of the way democratic institutions had been attacked, undermined and starved of funding for as long as neoliberalism had been around.
He went on about a progressive globalism that would see governments work together on the kinds of problems that had found their way into Davos – inequality, social justice, democracy and global warming. In his view, our aim should be to support governments that are democratically accountable to people rather than wealthy elites who claim to know what is best for the world.
He suggested we focus on repairing democratic institutions and had the cheek to argue that democratic nations had a history of amazing achievements and that these achievements had laid the foundation for the kind of wealth self-made billionaires like me were enjoying (like the internet).
He said he doubted that it was possible for people (like me) to credibly address problems when the ideas we supported had caused the problems in the first place.
When he saw how hurt I was by has comments he had the grace to say that he knew I was sincere in my efforts to help. But, he emphasised, only sustained collective effort would make the kind of difference being asked for – and that came from governments working with active communities not a wealthy few trying to bring about change through a range of initiatives with our names on them. What’s wrong with a bit of positive PR I ask you.
I was pleased to see his colleagues tell him that was nonsense.
The days of government ruling the roost were over. That is why they come cap in hand to Davos. They want to reassure us they will do their best to look after our interests (or we will relocate our businesses and capital to somewhere that does). We advise them what to do, not the other way around, and that is as it should be. We have the best brains working for us, the most resources and we know what is good for the world – a borderless global economy.
Having said that, I am a bit concerned about the rise of these authoritarian populists like Trump, Bolsonaro, Oban and even Boris. To get into power they have been leading the charge against everything Davos stands for. At times they sound a lot like the kinds of people that Schwab and co were against back in the middle of the last century.
My hope is that they do not mean what they say – which seems like a fair bet.
Trump, for example, has whipped up anger against elites (he is careful about limiting this to journalists, experts and government) and migrants while presenting himself as the saviour of the ‘forgotten man”. But in the end, he is one of us. He is a billionaire. He is a winner and has no intention of doing anything that would hurt us. Those tax cuts he gave us were all the proof of his loyalty that we needed.
Still, he has been getting himself into a lot of hot water. This impeachment thing could do some damage. His base may see him for what he is and start asking for a serious person to bring about serious change. Transformation even. He will have to be watched.
It is a dangerous world – even for billionaires. I might offer some “thought leadership” on the subject next year at Davos.
1. For an outstanding discussion of the neoliberal globalisation project see Slobodian, Q (2018) Globalists: The end of empire and the birth of neoliberalism. Harvard University Press: Cambridge Massachusetts.
2. Before anyone goes looking for this man – he is a fictional aristocrat.
3. I was prompted to write this blog after reading Giridharadas, A. (2019) Winner Take All: The elite charade changing the world. Allen Lane