As my train pulled into the station at a snow-covered Davos a few days ago, I was prepared to be cynical. I’d had dinner the night before with an old friend, a former chairman of a major American company, who was usually a regular at Davos. But this year he stayed away, even though he was in nearby Zurich. The World Economic Forum, he told me, had lost its original spirit. It had become a forum for ritzy parties, not a place to achieve any good for the world. My friend figured his time was best spent elsewhere.
That impression only solidified as soon as I left the train station. My wife and I decided to stop into a small, nondescript café for a quick lunch, expecting a coffee and simple sandwich. Not in Davos. The waiter recommended a $75 vegetable pizza. (We didn’t order it.) The pizza turned out to be symbolic of that showy and self-indulgent side of the Davos forum my friend had come to detest. Everyone spends too much time partying, or networking to get into parties, or scrambling for access to the most-prized dinners and sessions. I began to see Davos as no more than a playground for the high and mighty 1%.
