Davos Turns Gently to the Right
Something unexpected happened at Davos this year. The conventional wisdom took some tentative steps toward the right. Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, the “global conversations" that take place among business, political and social leaders at the World Economic Forum each year have trended left.
Elite Western opinion seemed destined to move toward more faith in state planning and less in the power of markets. There were reasons for the shift. China’s economic success seemed to vindicate central planning.
People believed massive state intervention would promote a fast, cheap and effective transition to a net-zero world. The economic crisis seemed to demonstrate that American-style “cowboy capitalism" was a flop. “Stakeholder capitalism" and environmental, social and governance investing would, backers promised, be at least as profitable and considerably more popular than the old-fashioned kind.
Business leaders needed to adapt to a woke world. These ideas—that China’s economic model was sound, that American-style capitalism had failed, that governments could plan a successful energy transition at a reasonable cost, that business needed to move beyond profit-seeking to embrace a variety of social goals, and that pursuing a radical social agenda was a good business decision—had congealed into the new conventional wisdom. Twenty twenty-four could be the beginning of the backlash.
There were no marches for Adam Smith or posters of Milton Friedman at Davos this year, but the applause for the combative defense of free markets by Argentina’s new libertarian President Javier Milei was more than polite. Citing the contrast between ages of stagnation and the miracle of accelerating progress in the modern era, Mr. Milei
. Read more on livemint.com
