{"id":15140,"date":"2019-01-26T23:06:22","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T23:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15140"},"modified":"2019-01-27T15:42:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T15:42:20","slug":"why-the-davos-elites-are-still-relevant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-the-davos-elites-are-still-relevant\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Davos elites are still relevant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christopher Michaelson<\/a>, University of St. Thomas<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Has Davos lost its mojo?<\/p>\n

After U.S. President Donald Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and other world leaders nixed plans to attend<\/a> the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Switzerland, some began to claim \u201cDavos is in decline<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I take the opposite view. Having been there<\/a> in the past as part of a participant\u2019s supporting staff \u2013 condescendingly referred to by status-conscious attendees<\/a> as a \u201csherpa\u201d<\/a> \u2013 I have seen up close how much can be accomplished by a handful of people sitting in a room and talking.<\/p>\n

As a philosopher and business ethicist<\/a>, I believe it\u2019s worth remembering some of the history that\u2019s been made in that rarefied Alpine air and why Davos still matters today.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres shake hands at Davos in 2001, their second meeting at the forum.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Michel Euler<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The stated aim of the World Economic Forum \u2013 which we commonly refer to by the name of the ski resort in the Swiss Alps where it is held \u2013 is \u201cimproving the state of the world<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It does this by promoting global collaboration<\/a>, capitalism that includes many stakeholders<\/a> and public-private cooperation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Numerous international agreements and breakthroughs have emerged from Davos. Examples include preventing war<\/a> between Turkey and Greece in the 1980s and helping resolve the eurozone\u2019s debt crisis<\/a> in 2012 \u2013 the year I was last there. It brought together world leaders as oppositional as South Africa\u2019s Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk<\/a> in 1992 and Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres<\/a> in 1994 and 2001.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Prince William and Sir David Attenborough watch the latter\u2019s new documentary \u2018Our Planet.\u2019<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Davos doesn\u2019t need to make a breakthrough in an ancient conflict to be effective. Its theme this year, \u201cGlobalization 4.0<\/a>,\u201d served as an important rebuke to the nationalists emerging<\/a> in the world today who have shown a disdain for multilateralism<\/a> and a preference for confrontation over cooperation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And in fact, most<\/a> of the sessions<\/a> focused<\/a>, as I believe they should, on finding cooperative ways<\/a> to solve the world\u2019s pressing problems.<\/p>\n

And the world has many to deal with<\/a>, from worsening economic inequality and climate change to the growing scarcity of water. All were discussed<\/a> at Davos this year.<\/p>\n

Were any breakthroughs made? Maybe not.<\/p>\n

Davos cannot realistically be expected to solve the world\u2019s problems in less than a week each year. But despite its elite reputation, I believe it helps direct attention toward actually making the world better for everyone \u2013 and not just the elites in the audience.\"The<\/p>\n

Christopher Michaelson<\/a>, Professor of Ethics and Business Law, University of St. Thomas<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Michaelson, University of St. Thomas Has Davos lost its mojo? After U.S. President Donald Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and other world leaders nixed plans to attend the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Switzerland, some began to claim \u201cDavos is in decline.\u201d I take the opposite view. Having been there in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[277],"tags":[1766,5804,4334,2449,13,2197,4424,4819,5805,5803,4569],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15146,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15140\/revisions\/15146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}