Global leaders, I prefer tamperers, came to consensus on an agenda prior to gathering in Davos, Switzerland. The top three urgent issues deal with financial instability. The next two, income inequality and unemployment, directly impact the governed.
It seems leaders are incapable of addressing the deepest problems the people face This hardly inspires confidence, must less followership.
The aim of the World Economic Forum purports to be:
Committed to Improving the State of the World
This is hard to believe when attendance costs over $40,000, enabling only a select few in the world attend. Many are there to be seen, to cut deals. That may improve oligarch's pocketbooks and ultimately benefit their preferred charities.
Secretaries of State Clinton and Kerry declared America's #1 foreign policy criteria to be a healthy U.S. economy. That means opening up more markets to Western goods and ways. It means selling more implements of war. It means access to "our oil" wherever it may be on the planet. It means America owning the global commons, seas, space and communications.
The World Economic Forum is about hegemony. The problems we face, are in part, the problems Forum leaders created. They freely admit they have little confidence in their ability to solve them. Are they incapable or unwilling?
Update 1-20-24: Oxfam chronicled a decade of failure by the World Economic Forum to impact income inequality.