Only elites believe in elite consensus

I’ve never paid much attention to what happens at Davos, but apparently some people do. Now it’s fading into irrelevance:

Rivals have filled the space. The Munich Security Conference has expanded beyond defence into broader geopolitical debate. Riyadh’s state-backed Future Investment Initiative, dubbed “Davos in the Desert”, offers a glossy alternative. China, too, promotes its own dialogues under the Belt and Road banner.

“Davos has always reflected what happened in the wider world,” says Thierry Malleret, co-author of several books with Schwab and whose next book is titled Death of Davos. “It had glory because the west was drunk on its own power — and that is finished. Multi-polarity is the future. You’ll have events in China, Riyadh, Aspen — and European Davos slowly fading into irrelevance.”

The forum’s survival now depends on whether it can reinvent itself — structurally, culturally and politically — for a world that no longer believes in elite consensus, Malleret and others say. That will demand more than new co-chairs; it will require a reckoning with its own limits, and with the backlash against the globalisation it celebrates.

C’mon now, the world has never believed in elite consensus. Only elites believe in elite consensus.