"World Economic Forum" Davos

364 results back to index


pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

sref=61mHmpU4. 41 “How Greta Thunberg and ‘Flygskam’ Are Shaking the Global Airline Industry,” Nicole Lyn Pesce, MarketWatch, December 2019, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/flygskam-is-the-swedish-travel-trend-that-could-shake-the-global-airline-industry-2019-06-20. 42 “This Is What Peak Car Looks Like,” Keith Naughton and David Welch, Bloomberg Businessweek, February 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-28/this-is-what-peak-car-looks-like. 43 “COVID-19 Made Cities More Bike-Friendly—Here's How to Keep Them That Way,” Sandra Caballero and Philippe Rapin, World Economic Forum Agenda, June 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/covid-19-made-cities-more-bike-friendly-here-s-how-to-keep-them-that-way/. 44 “Germany Calls for a New Trans Europe Express TEE 2.0 Network,” International Railway Journal, September 2020, https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/main-line/germany-calls-for-a-new-trans-europe-express-tee-2-0-network/. 45 ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. 46 “EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS),” European Commission, https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en. 47 “The European Union Emissions Trading System Reduced CO2 Emissions Despite Low Prices,” Patrick Bayer and Michaël Aklin, PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, April 2020, https://www.pnas.org/content/117/16/8804. 48 Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/projects/alliance-of-ceo-climate-leaders. 49 “The Net-Zero Challenge: Fast-Forward to Decisive Climate Action,” World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group, January 2020, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Net_Zero_Challenge.pdf. 50 Greta Thunberg, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland, January 2019. An edited version of this speech can be found under the title “‘Our house is on fire’: Greta Thunberg, 16, Urges Leaders to Act on Climate,” The Guardian, January 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate.

locations=SA. 14 Global Gender Gap report 2018, http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2018/key-findings/. 15 “Historical Background and Development Of Social Security,” Social Security Administration, https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html. 16 Tuberculosis Treatment, Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tuberculosis/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20351256. 17 The term “global village” was coined by Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. 18 “The World Economic Forum, a Partner in Shaping History, 1971–2020,” p.16 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_A_Partner_in_Shaping_History.pdf. 19 The Davos Manifesto, 1973, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-1973-a-code-of-ethics-for-business-leaders/. 20 “A Friedman Doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” Milton Friedman, The New York Times, September 1970, https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html. 21 The New York Times Magazine, “What Is Fukuyama Saying?

Ltd in 1998, 16 ZF (Zeppelin Foundation) presence in, 16, 18 Chinese Century of Humiliation (1840), 56 Chinese Dream (China), 184 Chinese economy African ties (2020s) with, 69–70 Belt and Road Initiative, 100 carbon neutrality goal of the, 62–63 the “China effect” of, 70–72 economic growth (2000s–present) of, 18 emerging global markets interacting with, 63–66, 70–72 energy demands, 62–63 environmental degradation and growth of the, 72 FDI investors setting up businesses in SEZs, 57–58, 61 Gini Indices on global income inequality impact of, 37fig–38, 226 historic Silk Road of ancient, 99, 100 IMF forecast on 2020 economic growth of, 71 increased total debt–to–GDP ratio, 62 increasing national income inequality in, 40 IT and Internet revolution role in expanding, 137 oil imports to, 64 post-World War II, 6 the price of progress, 61–63 private sector's percentage of GDP, 172 Reform and Opening Up policy (1979), 15, 18, 36, 57, 59, 72 state capitalism model of the, 171, 172–173 Christian–Democrats (CDU) [Germany], 78, 79 Christian–Democrats political parties (Europe), 83, 188 Civil Rights Act (US), 226 Civil society to advance interest, meaning, or purpose to members, 179 advocacy groups, 243–246 consumer rights groups, 239–240 the international community and, 237–238 as key stakeholders, 178 modern labor unions, 240–243 NGOs as part of the, 183, 197 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), 183, 197, 214, 237 plagued by inequality and unsustainability, 3 Cleveland (Ohio), 159 Climate Action Tracker, 191 Climate change Anthropocene label on human responsibility for, 161 Fridays for Climate strikes (2018), 149, 250 Greta Thunberg's activism on, 52, 86, 147–150, 250 megatrends driving, 159–162 Paris Agreement (2015) on, 150, 165, 182, 183, 189, 198 reasons for lack of progress in fighting, 150–159 School Strike for Climate (2018), 147, 148–149 searching for solutions to, 165–168 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) [2015], 150 UN Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) on, 150 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 51, 149 See also Global warming; Greenhouse gases; Pollution Climate change megatrends changing societal preferences, 162–165 demographic changes, 160–161 technological progress, 161–162 urbanization, 159–160 Club of Rome, 12–13, 47–48, 149–150 CO2 emissions, 160, 161, 165–166, 182, 200, 202, 203, 207 Cold War Berlin Wall (1961) during the, 75–76, 88, 89 collapse of Soviet Union ending the, 16, 98 fall of the Iron Curtain ending, 77, 80 Soviet sphere of influence during, 6, 7, 8, 75–77 Collective bargaining decline during the 1980s, 14 European promotion of (1950-1970), 10 Ravensburger Pact's impact on, 17 Colombia, 188 Colonialization (19th century), 104 Columbia University, 11, 22 Columbus, Christopher, 97, 101 Communism collapse (1990s–2000s) Soviet Union, 16, 98 Communist Party of China (CPC), 56–57 ideological battle between capitalism and, 7 Soviet Union's promotion of economic model of, 6, 7, 8 Communist Party of China (CPC), 56–57 Compagnie de Suez (France), 94 Companies aim to generate profits and value creation, 179 at the center point of its stakeholders, 175fig checks and balances within, 185, 193–198 collective bargaining with, 10, 14, 17 global stakeholder model role of, 180fig as key stakeholders, 178 re-emerging post-World War II, 6–7 society demanding that a social purpose be served by, 215–216 Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics to measure goals of, 193, 214–215, 249, 250–251 See also specific company; Stakeholder companies Competition EU's anti-competition ruling against Microsoft, 139–140, 141 Milton Friedman doctrine on, 209 Thiel's editorial on problem of, 208–209 See also Monopolies “Competition is for Losers” Wall Street Journal editorial (Thiel), 208–209 Connective technologies description and importance of, 177 government focus on improving digital connectivity, 225, 227–228, 232 Consumer International, 238 Consumer rights groups, 239–240 Cook, Tim, 211–212 Corporate social responsibility (CSR) Mærsk projects in, 206 Milton Friedman's rejection (1970s) of, 14 Costa Rica, 188 Côte d'Ivoire, 70 COVID-19 pandemic “all of society” approach to the, 224 changing travel habits during the, 164 China's total debt–to–GDP ratio impacted by, 62 economies of ASEAN nations and, 66, 67fig female government leadership found to do better during, 224 global economic impact of, 108 globalization allowing rapid spread of, 107 impact on interest rates by, 31 India's economic growth impacted by, 66, 67, 68–69 inequalities revealed by the, 3–4, 43, 73, 227 as litmus test, 250 New Zealand's successful response to, 219–224, 236 protests over governmental responses to, 87 public debt increase during, 19, 29–30 as reminder of interconnectedness of people, 177 response in Sweden to the, 220 SARS–CoV–2 vaccines developed to combat the, 248 Singapore response to the, 232–233 social disruption due to, 247, 248 South Africa's economic impact due to, 70 Spain and Italy as worst hit economies by, 68 stakeholders working for well-being of people during, 248 US society ill-prepared for the, 186 well-managed response in Germany to, 79 Coyle, Diane, 25, 191, 234 Crabtree, James, 40, 125 Crazy Rich Asians (film), 228 CRRC (China), 142 Cryptocurrencies, 161 Cuban Missile Crisis, 76 Czech Republic, 41 D Dale, Spencer, 49 Dansk Metal (Denmark), 115, 117 Darvas, Zsolt, 36, 37, 112, 113 “Data as a property right” initiative, 239 Data Dividend Project, 239 Davos Manifesto (1973), 13–14, 88, 213 Davos Manifesto (2020), 191–192, 213 Davos meetings. See World Economic Forum Annual Meetings Davos (Switzerland), 11 Deaton, Angus, 42 Debt China's increased total debt–to–GDP ratio, 62 high-quality vs. low-quality, 29 increasing rates of, 28–31 low inflation rates and impact on, 33 Decision making Davos Manifesto (1973) on stakeholder-centered, 13–14, 88, 213 history of stakeholder concept on, 174–175 need for checks and balances in, 185, 193–198 reaching environment, social, and governance (ESG) objectives, 185, 193 separating consultative process from, 198 stakeholder model on, 13, 173, 175–198 subsidiarity principle of, 181–183 “Decoupling” of wages, 34 Deloitte (US), 215, 250 Democracy Economist Intelligence Unit's Singapore ranking (2019), 233 global drop in voter turnout for elections, 188 respecting local customs and traditions, 195–196 stakeholder model applied to, 185, 193–198 See also Political divisions Demographic changes, 160–161 Deng Xiaoping, 56, 57 Denmark “Active Labour Market Policies” of, 120–121 A.P.


pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

sref=61mHmpU4. 41 “How Greta Thunberg and ‘Flygskam’ Are Shaking the Global Airline Industry,” Nicole Lyn Pesce, MarketWatch, December 2019, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/flygskam-is-the-swedish-travel-trend-that-could-shake-the-global-airline-industry-2019-06-20. 42 “This Is What Peak Car Looks Like,” Keith Naughton and David Welch, Bloomberg Businessweek, February 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-28/this-is-what-peak-car-looks-like. 43 “COVID-19 Made Cities More Bike-Friendly—Here's How to Keep Them That Way,” Sandra Caballero and Philippe Rapin, World Economic Forum Agenda, June 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/covid-19-made-cities-more-bike-friendly-here-s-how-to-keep-them-that-way/. 44 “Germany Calls for a New Trans Europe Express TEE 2.0 Network,” International Railway Journal, September 2020, https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/main-line/germany-calls-for-a-new-trans-europe-express-tee-2-0-network/. 45 ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. 46 “EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS),” European Commission, https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en. 47 “The European Union Emissions Trading System Reduced CO2 Emissions Despite Low Prices,” Patrick Bayer and Michaël Aklin, PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, April 2020, https://www.pnas.org/content/117/16/8804. 48 Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/projects/alliance-of-ceo-climate-leaders. 49 “The Net-Zero Challenge: Fast-Forward to Decisive Climate Action,” World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group, January 2020, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Net_Zero_Challenge.pdf. 50 Greta Thunberg, World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, held in Davos, Switzerland, January 2019. An edited version of this speech can be found under the title “‘Our house is on fire’: Greta Thunberg, 16, Urges Leaders to Act on Climate,” The Guardian, January 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate.

locations=SA. 14 Global Gender Gap report 2018, http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2018/key-findings/. 15 “Historical Background and Development Of Social Security,” Social Security Administration, https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html. 16 Tuberculosis Treatment, Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tuberculosis/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20351256. 17 The term “global village” was coined by Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s. 18 “The World Economic Forum, a Partner in Shaping History, 1971–2020,” p.16 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_A_Partner_in_Shaping_History.pdf. 19 The Davos Manifesto, 1973, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-1973-a-code-of-ethics-for-business-leaders/. 20 “A Friedman Doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” Milton Friedman, The New York Times, September 1970, https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html. 21 The New York Times Magazine, “What Is Fukuyama Saying?

Ltd in 1998, 16 ZF (Zeppelin Foundation) presence in, 16, 18 Chinese Century of Humiliation (1840), 56 Chinese Dream (China), 184 Chinese economy African ties (2020s) with, 69–70 Belt and Road Initiative, 100 carbon neutrality goal of the, 62–63 the “China effect” of, 70–72 economic growth (2000s–present) of, 18 emerging global markets interacting with, 63–66, 70–72 energy demands, 62–63 environmental degradation and growth of the, 72 FDI investors setting up businesses in SEZs, 57–58, 61 Gini Indices on global income inequality impact of, 37fig–38, 226 historic Silk Road of ancient, 99, 100 IMF forecast on 2020 economic growth of, 71 increased total debt–to–GDP ratio, 62 increasing national income inequality in, 40 IT and Internet revolution role in expanding, 137 oil imports to, 64 post-World War II, 6 the price of progress, 61–63 private sector's percentage of GDP, 172 Reform and Opening Up policy (1979), 15, 18, 36, 57, 59, 72 state capitalism model of the, 171, 172–173 Christian–Democrats (CDU) [Germany], 78, 79 Christian–Democrats political parties (Europe), 83, 188 Civil Rights Act (US), 226 Civil society to advance interest, meaning, or purpose to members, 179 advocacy groups, 243–246 consumer rights groups, 239–240 the international community and, 237–238 as key stakeholders, 178 modern labor unions, 240–243 NGOs as part of the, 183, 197 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), 183, 197, 214, 237 plagued by inequality and unsustainability, 3 Cleveland (Ohio), 159 Climate Action Tracker, 191 Climate change Anthropocene label on human responsibility for, 161 Fridays for Climate strikes (2018), 149, 250 Greta Thunberg's activism on, 52, 86, 147–150, 250 megatrends driving, 159–162 Paris Agreement (2015) on, 150, 165, 182, 183, 189, 198 reasons for lack of progress in fighting, 150–159 School Strike for Climate (2018), 147, 148–149 searching for solutions to, 165–168 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) [2015], 150 UN Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) on, 150 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 51, 149 See also Global warming; Greenhouse gases; Pollution Climate change megatrends changing societal preferences, 162–165 demographic changes, 160–161 technological progress, 161–162 urbanization, 159–160 Club of Rome, 12–13, 47–48, 149–150 CO2 emissions, 160, 161, 165–166, 182, 200, 202, 203, 207 Cold War Berlin Wall (1961) during the, 75–76, 88, 89 collapse of Soviet Union ending the, 16, 98 fall of the Iron Curtain ending, 77, 80 Soviet sphere of influence during, 6, 7, 8, 75–77 Collective bargaining decline during the 1980s, 14 European promotion of (1950-1970), 10 Ravensburger Pact's impact on, 17 Colombia, 188 Colonialization (19th century), 104 Columbia University, 11, 22 Columbus, Christopher, 97, 101 Communism collapse (1990s–2000s) Soviet Union, 16, 98 Communist Party of China (CPC), 56–57 ideological battle between capitalism and, 7 Soviet Union's promotion of economic model of, 6, 7, 8 Communist Party of China (CPC), 56–57 Compagnie de Suez (France), 94 Companies aim to generate profits and value creation, 179 at the center point of its stakeholders, 175fig checks and balances within, 185, 193–198 collective bargaining with, 10, 14, 17 global stakeholder model role of, 180fig as key stakeholders, 178 re-emerging post-World War II, 6–7 society demanding that a social purpose be served by, 215–216 Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics to measure goals of, 193, 214–215, 249, 250–251 See also specific company; Stakeholder companies Competition EU's anti-competition ruling against Microsoft, 139–140, 141 Milton Friedman doctrine on, 209 Thiel's editorial on problem of, 208–209 See also Monopolies “Competition is for Losers” Wall Street Journal editorial (Thiel), 208–209 Connective technologies description and importance of, 177 government focus on improving digital connectivity, 225, 227–228, 232 Consumer International, 238 Consumer rights groups, 239–240 Cook, Tim, 211–212 Corporate social responsibility (CSR) Mærsk projects in, 206 Milton Friedman's rejection (1970s) of, 14 Costa Rica, 188 Côte d'Ivoire, 70 COVID-19 pandemic “all of society” approach to the, 224 changing travel habits during the, 164 China's total debt–to–GDP ratio impacted by, 62 economies of ASEAN nations and, 66, 67fig female government leadership found to do better during, 224 global economic impact of, 108 globalization allowing rapid spread of, 107 impact on interest rates by, 31 India's economic growth impacted by, 66, 67, 68–69 inequalities revealed by the, 3–4, 43, 73, 227 as litmus test, 250 New Zealand's successful response to, 219–224, 236 protests over governmental responses to, 87 public debt increase during, 19, 29–30 as reminder of interconnectedness of people, 177 response in Sweden to the, 220 SARS–CoV–2 vaccines developed to combat the, 248 Singapore response to the, 232–233 social disruption due to, 247, 248 South Africa's economic impact due to, 70 Spain and Italy as worst hit economies by, 68 stakeholders working for well-being of people during, 248 US society ill-prepared for the, 186 well-managed response in Germany to, 79 Coyle, Diane, 25, 191, 234 Crabtree, James, 40, 125 Crazy Rich Asians (film), 228 CRRC (China), 142 Cryptocurrencies, 161 Cuban Missile Crisis, 76 Czech Republic, 41 D Dale, Spencer, 49 Dansk Metal (Denmark), 115, 117 Darvas, Zsolt, 36, 37, 112, 113 “Data as a property right” initiative, 239 Data Dividend Project, 239 Davos Manifesto (1973), 13–14, 88, 213 Davos Manifesto (2020), 191–192, 213 Davos meetings. See World Economic Forum Annual Meetings Davos (Switzerland), 11 Deaton, Angus, 42 Debt China's increased total debt–to–GDP ratio, 62 high-quality vs. low-quality, 29 increasing rates of, 28–31 low inflation rates and impact on, 33 Decision making Davos Manifesto (1973) on stakeholder-centered, 13–14, 88, 213 history of stakeholder concept on, 174–175 need for checks and balances in, 185, 193–198 reaching environment, social, and governance (ESG) objectives, 185, 193 separating consultative process from, 198 stakeholder model on, 13, 173, 175–198 subsidiarity principle of, 181–183 “Decoupling” of wages, 34 Deloitte (US), 215, 250 Democracy Economist Intelligence Unit's Singapore ranking (2019), 233 global drop in voter turnout for elections, 188 respecting local customs and traditions, 195–196 stakeholder model applied to, 185, 193–198 See also Political divisions Demographic changes, 160–161 Deng Xiaoping, 56, 57 Denmark “Active Labour Market Policies” of, 120–121 A.P.


pages: 535 words: 158,863

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bob Geldof, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, carried interest, clean water, compensation consultant, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, fake news, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, global village, high net worth, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Elkington, joint-stock company, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Long Term Capital Management, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, old-boy network, open borders, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Skype, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, William Langewiesche

., “Carlyle Changes Its Stripes,” made the cover of BusinessWeek, February 12, 2007. 263 in 1990 Carlyle started buying up defense-related assets Doward, “Ex-Presidents’ Club.” 263 took the company public Mark Fineman, “Arms Buildup Is a Boon to Firm Run by Big Guns,” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2002. 263 Its $73 million purchase Terence O’Hara, “Carlyle Shows It’s Still Tops in Defense,” Washington Post, February 13, 2006. 263 He purportedly made a phone call Warner, “Down the Rabbit Hole.” 263 “The problem comes when” Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger, “The Ex-Presidents’ Club,” Guardian, October 13, 2001. 263 One of Carlyle’s cofounders told The Nation Tim Shorrock, “Crony Capitalism Goes Global,” Nation, April 1, 2002. 263 “Since 9/11, USIS’s acquisition” Briody, Iron Triangle, 152. 264 Shafig bin Laden, one of Osama’s numerous brothers Warner, “Down the Rabbit Hole.” 264 As one top-level Carlyle employee Ibid. 266 One antiglobalist website, NewsWithViews Available at www.newswithviews.com. 266 “Business leaders go to Davos” Available at www.foe.co.uk. 266 “Davos is … the most visible symbol” Jeff Faux, “The Party of Davos,” Nation, February 13, 2006. 266 now generating more than $85 million a year World Economic Forum, “Annual Report 2005/06,” www.weforum.org. 267 The facts about the meeting are well known “About Us,” WEF website, www.weforum.org. 267 As Henri Schwamm, former vice president Jean-Christophe Graz, “How Powerful Are Transnational Elite Clubs? The Social Myth of the World Economic Forum,” New Political Economy 8, no. 3 (November 2003): 330. 267 As David E.

Barnum of our time, and he has created in Davos the world’s greatest Ponzi scheme.” Philippe Bourguignon, a former co-CEO of the World Economic Forum, offered a more balanced view. “Davos played this role in at least developing awareness among leaders, governments, and businesspeople. Like HIV/AIDS or global warming. But I think today it has also become in some ways a big missed opportunity. It still clearly has a role, but this role could have a much greater impact. I wouldn’t say it is bad, it has just missed a step. People like [former French president Jacques] Chirac look at Davos and they see a club of rich, global leaders whose only motivation is economics, business, and not human things.

Over the three and a half decades of its existence, this mountaintop gathering clearly had done more than merely transform Davos from sleepy ski town to cosmopolitan hub. More than a meeting place for international business, government, media, and cultural leaders, it now was a symbol for the knitting together of the world, literally and figuratively a summit of summits. The concept of what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called “Davos man”—the global citizen, the leader for whom borders were increasingly irrelevant—described a new leadership class for our era. When founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, the organization that would become known as the World Economic Forum had a narrower mission.


pages: 831 words: 98,409

SUPERHUBS: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule Our World by Sandra Navidi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, digital divide, diversification, Dunbar number, East Village, eat what you kill, Elon Musk, eurozone crisis, fake it until you make it, family office, financial engineering, financial repression, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Gordon Gekko, haute cuisine, high net worth, hindsight bias, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Jaron Lanier, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, McMansion, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, Myron Scholes, NetJets, Network effects, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Parag Khanna, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, performance metric, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Satyajit Das, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Predators' Ball, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, women in the workforce, young professional

Tracy Alloway and Tom Braithwaite, “M Stanley Chief Warns on Wall St Pay,” Financial Times, October 4, 2012, https://next.ft.com/content/96e3261c-0654-11e2-bd29-00144feabdc0. CHAPTER 6 1. World Economic Forum, “History,” http://www.weforum.org/history. 2. Neil Parmar, “Klaus Schwab: Inside the World Economic Forum,” Wall Street Jour nal, September 4, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/klaus-schwab-inside-the-world-economic-forum-1409843416. 3. Derek Thompson, “How Your Face Shapes Your Economic Chances,” The Atlantic, August 1, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/the-economics-of-your-face/375450. 4. Gillian Tett, “Klaus Schwab Opens Door for His Davos Successor,” Financial Times, May 19, 2015, https://next.ft.com/content/0fcb6966-fdfd-11e4-9f10-00144feabdc0. 5.

Bernstein, 150 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 24, 159, 177–178 Saudi Arabia, 205 Savarona, 120 Savings banks, 37 Scaramucci, Anthony, 23, 53 Scarsdale Equities, 109 Schatzalp Hotel, 115 Schmidt, Eric, 40, 114 Scholes, Myron, 208 Schumer, Chuck, 27 Schwab, Klaus background on, 93–96 Christine Lagarde and, 158 common good and, 225 at Davos, 116 digital technology and, 99 education of, 96 network power of, 95, 101 stakeholder principle of, 63 World Economic Forum and, 25, 93–96, 101. See also World Economic Forum Schwarzman, Steve background on, 59–62 Blackstone Group, xxvii, 27, 30, 53, 60–61, 79, 88, 109, 204 at charity events, 129 earnings by, 88 education of, 61 general references to, xxvii, 4, 9, 76, 109, 192 at Milken Institute conference, 192 net worth of, 88, 123 partnerships by, 79 philanthropy by, 82 power lunches by, 124 residences of, 89–92 in think tanks, 106 Schwarzman Scholars program, 103 Scotland, 212 Scowcroft, Brent, 45 Seagram Building, 124–125 SEC.

CHAPTER 1 The Financial Universe An Innately Human System THE STRATOSPHERE OF POWER: DAVOS It was a gray January day in New York. The frenzied holiday season had passed, the tourists departed, and the traffic deadlock dissolved. The city’s famed energy seemed frozen and its residents hibernating. I, however, was engaged in a flutter of activity, preparing for my most important trip of the year—to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The exclusivity of the event and its high-profile attendees have shrouded “Davos,” as it has become known, in legend. Set in a small ski resort in the Swiss Alps, the Annual Meeting attracts 2,500 global leaders, including heads of state, billionaire investors, managers of trillion-dollar funds, multinational CEOs, and elite academics.


pages: 403 words: 105,550

The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark, Will Louch

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, dark triade / dark tetrad, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, fake news, forensic accounting, high net worth, impact investing, income inequality, Jeffrey Epstein, Kickstarter, load shedding, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, planetary scale, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, trade route, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks, young professional

Then, inside hotel suites rented out for thousands of dollars, they bargained with politicians and struck secretive deals that generated profits for them and consequences that would shape the future of humanity. Arif was in his element. He made it a point to be a regular Davos attendee, paying millions of dollars to put himself and Abraaj front and center. He hired a World Economic Forum executive, a Frenchman called Fred Sicre, to ensure he got maximum exposure for his money. A symbiotic relationship was at play. Arif got access to the Davos network, and Davos got access to his network. Davos offered Arif credibility and new sources of money, and Arif offered Davos attendees insights into developing countries they knew little about but which contained billions of potential new customers.

If planned correctly, the fund could seal Abraaj’s status as a leader of the impact-investing movement and earn vast amounts of money through fees and a share of profits. Arif took his plans for the new healthcare fund to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2013. Two of the most important people in the global medical industry were also in Davos for the conference: Frans Van Houten, the chief executive of Royal Philips Electronics, and Omar Ishrak, the chief executive of Medtronic, led two of the world’s largest healthcare companies, with a combined value of almost $100 billion. In May 2013, Arif talked to the Philips CEO about his plan at a World Economic Forum meeting to discuss Africa in Cape Town. The opportunity for Philips and Medtronic was obvious.

An employee who organized alcohol-fueled, million-dollar Abraaj parties that sometimes went on for days liked to joke that Arif paid for them by shaking the Abraaj money tree. “You would have to think that he had more money than God,” said another employee. * * * The World Economic Forum’s main meeting took place in January each year in the Swiss Alpine ski resort of Davos. The gathering was the nerve center of the global elite, where billionaires and politicians from East and West met. Davos was the central incubator for the surging globalization zeitgeist—a place of high-minded public rhetoric and behind-the-scenes dealmaking. Duplicity was baked into the very fabric of the forum.


pages: 250 words: 75,151

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place by Felix Marquardt

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, digital nomad, Donald Trump, George Floyd, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joi Ito, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, out of africa, phenotype, place-making, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sustainable-tourism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Yogi Berra, young professional

movement 123–7, 130, 146–7 education system/Grandes Écoles 48–9, 54, 118, 126 emigration of young people from 48–54, 55, 69, 116–20, 123–7, 130, 145–7 FM childhood in 37–42, 43 FM family first move to 37–8 gerontocratic tradition in 50, 123, 128 Gilets Jaunes movement 48–9 hip-hop in 28, 45–6, 50, 55, 113, 124, 139, 162, 233 Islamist terror attacks in 23–6 Les Trente Glorieuses (three decades of sustained growth) 124–5 London, emigration to from 54–5, 59 racism and 52 ‘republican equality of chances’ (les valeurs de la République) 20, 211 Syrian refugees in 169–75 youth unemployment/lack of opportunity within 48–54, 55, 69, 116–20, 123–7, 130, 145–7 see also individual place name French Islamic Foundation 24 Friedman, Sam 211 Fuerteventura 149 Fulbright scholarship 34–5, 136 Gates, Bill 28 Générations 88.2 (French independent radio station) 48–54 Georgia (nation) 73, 175–8 Georgia (state), US 82–3 Germany 1, 2, 17, 32–4, 37, 38, 42, 43, 47, 72, 73, 79, 100, 101, 126, 132, 138 gerontocracy (government by entitled elders) 50, 124, 127 Ghana 96, 134–5 Gilets Jaunes 48–9 globalisation 11, 51–2, 90 globalism 30, 54 Goodhart, David 40–1 Grand Tour 57, 59 Grandes Écoles 48–9, 54, 118, 126 Great March for Climate Action 218–19 Greece 18, 35, 36, 37, 43, 45, 47, 55, 57, 78, 135 Group, the (religious cult) 64 Hedges, Chris 32 Heimat (mix of home, culture, vernacular, community) 17 Hibbard, Cooper 1–2, 4, 238 Hindriks, Karoli 191 Hine, Dougald 20 hip-hop 28, 45–6, 50, 55, 113, 124, 139, 162, 233 Holiday Swap app 195 Hollande, François 126 Homo erectus 9 homosexuality 102–7 Hughes, Solomon 114–15 Hult 137 hunter-gatherers 9–10, 18, 187 Huntington, Samuel P. 195–6 Hutchinson, Robert 84–5 iEconcalc 78 Ikola, Rabbi 220 Illich, Ivan 232 immigration economic 122–47 see also economic migration education and 48–69 see also education, immigration and emigration 93–121 see also emigration entrepreneurs and 70–92 see also entrepreneurs, migration and Felix Marquardt, transformative power in life of 23–47 see also Marquardt, Felix labelling of 169–200 see also labelling, migration and nomadism and see nomadism ‘out of Africa’ migration of early humans 9, 18, 69 pushback against 201–23 see also liberals refugees and 148–68 see also refugees World Economic Forum, Davos and see World Economic Forum, Davos India 14–15, 76, 80, 83, 111, 118, 130, 155, 156 Citizenship Bill (2016) 140 entrepreneurs returning to 139–45 Youthonomics Global Index (YGI) and 139–40, 145 inequality 16, 20, 31, 49, 209, 210–11, 216, 228, 241 Ingvarsdóttir, Sigurlína 239 initiatory journey 57 ‘internal’ migrations from village to city ix, 10 International Council on Clean Transportation 217 International Herald Tribune 28, 188 international schools 41 ‘inverted totalitarianism’ 32 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 215 Iraq 10, 123, 179–80 ISIS 23, 25 Islam 4, 8, 15, 23–5, 160, 175 Israel 157–8 Italy 36, 126 Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) 53, 98, 152, 155 Jackson, Wes 227 Japan 77, 93–9, 128, 135, 136, 156 Jews 2, 15, 27, 31, 70, 79, 100, 157–8 Jobbatical 191–2 Johnson, Boris 100, 146 Jung, Carl 212 Jungle, Calais 9 Kaba, Mbake 153–4 Kansas Wesleyan University 206 Kati, Mali 2, 5, 6 Kawaakibi1 Foundation 24–6 Kazakh government 177 Kierkegaard, Søren 212 King, Steve 199 Kobalia, Anastasia 177–8 Kobalia, Vera 175–9, 182 Koum, Jan 71 Kundera, Milan 45 Kurzweil, Ray 181 labelling, migration and 168, 169–82 Amr Maskoun/labelling of refugees 169–73 immigration and emigration, distinction between 174–5 ‘migrant’ and ‘refugee’, conflation of terms 174–5 Mustafa Al Sarajj/labelling of refugees 179–82 refugee, usefulness of term 174 Vera Kobalia/labelling of refugees 175–9 La Croix-Valmer, France 42 Larsson, Sven 179, 180, 181 Latour, Bruno: Où atterrir?

movement and 48–54, 69, 123–7, 130, 145–6 Black Elephant and 232–9, 241 communities/networks, importance of to 161–2 education 29–30, 43–4, 45, 56–7 family background 26, 32–8, 41, 42, 43, 47 Greek roots 35, 36, 37, 43, 47 ‘hyper-nomad’ past 188–9 Islam, conversion to 24, 25 Kawaakibi Foundation and 24–6 marriage 24, 27, 63 Parisian childhood 38–43 Paris terror attacks and 23–6 Sweden, emigration to 25–7 transformative power of migration in life of 23–47 United States and 26, 34–8, 41–4, 47 WEF/Davos and see World Economic Forum Youthonomics Global Index (YGI) and see Youthonomics Global Index (YGI) Zagreb, Croatia, travels to during war in Yugoslavia (1993) 44–5 Marquardt, Horst (FM’s grandfather) 33–4, 36 Marquardt, Nikki (FM’s mother) 35–6, 37–8, 39, 47, 116 Marquardt, Sigrid (FM’s grandmother) 33, 34, 47 Maskoun, Amr 169–73 Maskoun, Ghazwa 170, 171 Maskoun, Lama 170–1 Maskoun, Nador 171 Maskoun, Shahm 169–70, 171 Maskoun, Wahid 170–1 Mateschitz, Dietrich 71 Mauritania 148 Ma Voisine (My Neighbour) 239 May, Theresa 146 Meadows, Dennis: The Limits of Growth 237 Mediterranean, migrants crossing 9, 122, 148–50, 152, 160, 238 meritocracy 20, 54, 210–11, 234 Mexico 201–8, 209 mid-sized countries, fast-growing 76 migration economic 122–47 see also economic migration education and 48–69 see also education, immigration and emigration and 93–121 see also emigration entrepreneurs and 70–92 see also entrepreneurs, migration and Felix Marquardt, transformative power in life of 23–47 see also Marquardt, Felix internal ix, 10 labelling of 169–200 see also labelling, migration and multilateral phenomenon 72–92 nomadism and see nomadism ‘out of Africa’ migration of early humans 9, 18, 69 pushback against 201–23 see also liberals refugees and 148–68 see also refugees South-South 74, 85–90 World Economic Forum, Davos and see World Economic Forum, Davos ‘migrant’ term 9, 174–5 Millicom 83–4 Mirian (Spanish migrant in London) 128, 129 Mitterrand, François 188 mobility injustice 53 Mokless 124 Monbiot, George 195 Montaigne 57 Montana, US 1–4, 7–8, 13, 14, 22, 34, 166, 229, 232, 238 Morrison, Toni: Beloved 169 Mozambique 97 multilateral phenomenon, migration as 72–92 Muslims 4, 23–5, 27, 51, 52, 102, 105, 134, 137, 139, 140, 153, 185, 209, 234 Myanmar 89 Nando’s 80–1 nationalism 8–9, 16, 27, 30, 140, 239 nation, definition of 21 Naveed (entrepreneur) 75–82, 92 Nayyar (entrepreneur) 142, 143 New Nomad Visa 233 New York, US 27, 34, 35, 35–7, 38, 43, 61–2, 75, 76, 116, 122, 137, 186, 191, 196, 220 New York Times 115, 126 nomadism changing perceptions of 31 digital nomad see digital nomad networks and 153 ‘nomad’, etymology/usage of 18, 31–2, 187, 226, 227 pre-agricultural 9–10, 18, 187 reclamation of term/giving equal weight to mobility and location 226, 228–9, 232 Northfield Mount Hermon (NMH), US 44 Norway 59, 128, 130, 145 Nussimbaum, Lev 27 Obama, Barack 30, 113, 123, 210, 213–14 online communities/virtual friendships 164–8 Ortega, Anamari Garcia ‘Annie’ 201–4, 205–8, 210, 218, 223, 229 Othering African American emigration and 111 Brexit and 15–16 defined 15–16 hallmark of sedentary civilisation 16 humour and 173 labelling and 111, 168 leaving behind 21, 228 liberals and 209–10 refugees and 168 Pablo (Barcelona) 154, 156 Palau 65–6 Paris, France African American immigrants in 111–14 banlieue 51, 55, 115 digital nomads in 188, 190–1, 194, 196 emigration from 116–21 FM’s family and 34, 37–42, 111–17 ISIS terror attacks (7 January 2015) 23–6 youth opportunity/unemployment in 48–54, 55, 69, 123–7, 130, 145–6 ‘Patriot’ movement, US 64 Pauly, Daniel 86 People’s Pilgrimage (climate march) 218–21 Phoenicians 57 pioneering spirit 51, 54, 93, 229 piroguistes (youngsters who risk their lives on rafts while trying to enter Europe) 148–9 Pizza Pie 76 Poe, Edgar Allan: Marginalia 23 populism 8–9, 16, 30, 31, 90, 158–9, 210, 218, 230 post-traumatic growth 19, 167 progressive myth 19–20 Rabelais 57 Rachid (Ch’klah) (rapper) 50–2, 55, 59, 68 racism 60, 227 Africa and 115 China and 131 emigration and 111–15 France and 52 Japan and 95 Othering and 15 suffering of both racist and victim of 21, 115 US and 7, 8, 44, 83, 111–15, 202, 207, 208, 209, 210 refugees 9, 19, 62, 70, 102, 147, 148–64, 167–8, 169–75, 207, 231, 236 African refugees in Europe 9, 122, 148–57, 158, 161, 167, 229, 236 criminals profiting from 160 early humans and 147 health concerns over 161 Israel and 157–8 labelling/oversimplification of 169–82 ‘migrant’ term and 9, 19 Mediterranean, crossing of in boats/rafts 9, 122, 148–50, 152, 160, 238 motivations behind a refugee’s movement compared to other migrants 158 networks/community, reliance on and creation of 150–7, 161–8 online communities/virtual friendships and 164–8 ‘Othering’ and 168 social media and 163–4 Spain and 148–57, 158, 161, 167, 229, 236 as ‘successful’ migrant 19 Syrian 169–75, 179–82 terrorists among, fear/risk of 160 uneasiness people feel about 159–61 United States and 156, 157, 158 René (Paraguay) 89 ‘republican equality of chances’ (les valeurs de la République) 20, 211 Ribbenvik, Mikael 174 Rice, Condoleezza 28 Rivas, Franco 205–6 Rocket Internet 79 Romain (Parisian entrepreneur) 55, 59 Russia 27, 32, 33, 70, 80, 102, 164, 175–6 Saakashvili, Mikheil 176, 177 SAE Asia 138 Said, Edward 39 Said, Kurban 27 Salina, Kansas 201–3 Sall, Macky 134 Sanbar, Jamie 102–7, 115–16, 118, 119 Saño, Yeb 218 Sarmiento, Gonzalo Sanchez 190–4, 197, 199 Saudi Arabia 24 Sciences Po, Paris 54, 118 Seattle Freeze 26–7 Second World War (1939–45) 32, 36, 42–3, 100, 125, 157 sedentarism 11, 13, 16, 40, 222, 226, 227, 228 Seely, Jeff 3, 4, 7–8, 14, 21, 234 Senegal 83, 98–9, 132–5, 145, 148–9, 152, 155, 162 7-Eleven 179–81 Shake Shack 81 Shakespeare, William: Romeo and Juliet 93 Shanghai, China 73, 132, 136, 137 shifting baselines 86 Shinagawa, Natsuno 93–9, 100, 102, 107, 115, 119, 122, 229, 236 Shoprite 88 Sieben, Henry 1, 2 Sieben Live Stock Company/Ranch Sieben, Montana, US 1–5, 21–2, 34, 233–4 Sierra Leone 63, 67–8 Silicon Valley, US 177, 187, 211 Singapore 94, 107, 108–9, 110, 178, 191, 240 Singularity University 191 sixth species’ extinction 216 slavery 44, 114 Slovenia 116, 118 Smale, Alison 53 social media 68, 163–4, 172, 189, 192, 196 Södermalm, Stockholm 181, 208 South Africa 24, 86–8, 156 southern Europe, youth emigration from 128–30 South-South migration 74, 85–90 Spain 126 African migrants in 148–56, 161, 229 youth emigration from 128–30 Spencer, Thomas 71 Spur Steak Ranch, South Africa 87–8, 89 Stafstrom, Isaac 2, 3 Stanford University 2, 7, 233, 234 Stockholm, Sweden 26–7, 179–82, 191, 208, 212–15 Sweden 26–7, 82–3, 85, 179–82, 191, 208, 212–15 Syria 9, 10, 169–73, 176, 179 Taleb, Nassim: Black Swan 236 Tanzania 76–7, 79–80, 81, 82, 83–5, 88, 97, 114 Teshuva (הבושת) (repentance or salvation) 17 Tetlow, Daniel 101 Thunberg, Greta 214, 221 Thunder Competition 154 The Times 125 Tola 239 Tomlinson, Sally 100 Tompkins, Berenice 218–21, 223, 229 Total 28 ‘totalitarian corporatism’ 32 Tounkara, Fatou 155 Tounkara, Lamine 148–57, 158, 161, 167, 229, 236 Tounkara, Salim 154–5 transfer of wealth, parent-child 127 Trump, Donald climate change and 217 immigration policies of administration 201–10 supporters of, liberal attitudes towards 1–8, 12, 13–14, 16, 21–2, 28, 30, 47, 59, 68, 99, 113, 119, 133, 166, 201–23, 224, 232–4, 235, 238, 241 Tunisia 24, 27, 63 Ukraine 76, 80, 176 unemployment, youth France 48–54, 123–7 Spain 128–30 Youthonomics Global Index (YGI) and 127–30 United Arab Emirates 75, 76–7, 81, 171 United States: African American emigration from 44, 111–15 African immigrants in (‘Abdi’) 1–8, 12, 13–14, 21–2, 47, 59, 68, 133, 218, 224, 232–4, 235, 238, 241 American Civil War (1861–5) 1 American Dream 20, 35, 72, 73, 81, 196, 211, 234 American Exceptionalism 28, 35 Central American immigrants and 9, 10 children separated from their parents at Mexican border 201–2 climate change and 218–21 county supremacy doctrine 64 dual citizenship and Covid-19 in 185–6 employer enterprise birth rate in 144 entrepreneurs, immigrant 71–2, 81–85 FM’s childhood and 42, 43–5 FM’s family and 34–8, 39, 41, 42, 43–5, 47 Mexican border internment camps 168, 201–2, 205–8 Mexican immigrants in 201–8, 209 Obama and see Obama, Barack refugees and 156, 157, 158 Second World War and 32, 34 Swedish immigrants in 2, 47, 82–3 Trump and see Trump, Donald Trump supporters within, liberal dismissal of 1–8, 12, 13–14, 16, 21–2, 28, 30, 47, 59, 68, 99, 113, 119, 133, 166, 201–23, 224, 232–4, 235, 238, 241 Youthonomics Global Index (YGI) and 130, 139–46 University of Cape Coast, Ghana 134 USAID 79 Venezuela 163, 176, 231 Vengetsamy, Ravendra ‘Son’ 85–90 Victor (Spanish migrant in London) 128, 129 Videlles, France 42 Virgil: Aeneid 201 virtual friendship 164–8 vulgarisation (ability to explain very complicated ideas in layman’s terms) 55–6 Waseda University, Tokyo 96–7 Wertheimer, Ashley 1–2 white supremacism 15, 21 Williams, Thomas Chatterton 111–14, 115 Losing My Cool 113–14 ‘The Next Great Migration’ article 115 World Economic Forum, Davos 28, 230 ‘Davos man’ 195–6 as parody of diversity 232–5 shutting down 240–1 (2017) 30–1, 187, 232–4, 235 (2020) 237, 239–40 (2021) (exceptional meeting, Singapore) 240 World of Warcraft (multiplayer game) 165 Wright, Richard: I Choose Exile 113 Yassir (Indian entrepreneur) 140–5 Young, Toby 210 Youthonomics Global Index (YGI) 127–30, 139–40, 145, 146 Yugoslavia, war in (1991–2001) 44–5 Zandi, Emmanuella 239 Zulu restaurant, Ciudad del Este, Paraguay 85–6 Zweig, Stefan 62 First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2021 Copyright © Felix Marquardt, 2021 The right of Felix Marquardt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

The first time Abdi and I met in person was not on a Montana ranch but at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2017. I was heading the global expansion of a cybersecurity firm (and about to be fired for being a tad too candid on Twitter about what I thought of the newly inaugurated president) and had heard of a Malian student who had risen from a rural background in Africa to studying at one of the world’s top universities. He sounded like the perfect spokesperson for a campaign for a global youth work visa that I had convinced my sceptical CEO of launching. We called it the New Nomad Visa. I have taken many people to Davos over the years, from political dissidents and Nobel laureates to rappers, from famous writers and journalists to CEOs.


pages: 223 words: 58,732

The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, call centre, carried interest, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, computer age, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Santayana, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, microaggression, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, one-China policy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, telepresence, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

(Simon & Schuster, New York, 2013 (ebook)). 69 Edward Luce, ‘Obama must face the rise of the robots’, Financial Times, 3 February 2013, <https://www.ft.com/content/f6f19228-6bbc-11e2-a17d-00144feab49a>. 70 Lee Drutman and Yascha Mounk, ‘When the Robots Rise’, National Interest, 144 (July–August 2016), <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/when-the-robots-rise-16830>. 71 Espen Barth Eide, ‘2015: the year geopolitics bites back?’, World Economic Forum, 7 November 2014, <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/11/2015-year-geostrategic-competition/>. 72 Global Risks 2015, World Economic Forum, <https://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2015/part-2-risks-in-focus/2-2-global-risks-arising-from-the-accelerated-interplay-between-geopolitics-and-economics/>. 73 Global Risks 2017, World Economic Forum, <http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2017/part-2-social-and-political-challenges/2-1-western-democracy-in-crisis/>. 74 Ibid. 75 Lawrence Summers, ‘America needs to make a new case for trade’, Financial Times, 27 April 2008, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c35d3d62-14ba-11dd-a741-0000779fd2ac.html?

Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (James Pott & Company, New York, 1902), p. 333. 3 Jamil Anderlini and Lucy Hornby, ‘China overtakes US as world’s largest goods trader’, Financial Times, 10 January 2014, <https://www.ft.com/content/7c2dbd70-79a6-11e3-b381-00144feabdc0>. 4 Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Belknap Press, Cambridge MA, 2016 (ebook)). 5 Danny Quah, ‘The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity’, Global Policy, 2:1 (January 2011), <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1758-5899.2010.00066.x/pdf>. 6 Milanovic, Global Inequality. 7 Hobson, Imperialism, p. 339. 8 Milanovic, Global Inequality. 9 Richard Baldwin: The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization (Belknap Press, Cambridge MA, 2016 (ebook)). 10 Hugh White, The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012 (ebook)). 11 The World Economic Forum’s website has a comprehensive database of each forum’s reports and sessions stretching back many years. For 2016, see: <https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2016/sessions/the-globl-economic-outlook-1d2286ef-25a9-47cf-bba6-56fc8ef98004>. 12 Chris Giles, ‘China poised to pass US as world’s leading economic power this year’, Financial Times, 30 April 2014, <https://www.ft.com/content/d79ffff8-cfb7-11e3-9b2b-00144feabdc0>. 13 John Williamson, ‘From reform agenda to damaged brand name: A short history of the Washington Consensus and suggestions for what to do next’, Finance and Development, 40:3 (September 2003).

. —— Every January, the Davos gathering sounds a little more bemused about what is happening in the world outside. In 2016 it worried about the threat of mass disease, just as the Ebola epidemic was receding. In 2015, its annual report dwelt on the return of geopolitics following Russia’s annexation of Crimea the year before.71 In its first report in 2006 it was anxious about epidemics and the risk of terrorism after the Asian flu crisis and the London Underground attacks. And so on. Davos specialises in projecting the future from a recent past that took it by surprise. We are all guilty of this. But Davos has made a brand of its blow-dried conventional wisdom.


pages: 391 words: 102,301

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

Saving the World Notes Bibliographic Essay Acknowledgments Index ZERO-SUM FUTURE PROLOGUE DAVOS, 2009 Every January, political leaders from all over the world gather in a Swiss mountain valley. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the assembled politicians agree to set aside their differences and to speak a common language. Closeted together in a ski resort, they restate their commitment to a single, global economy. They mingle cheerfully with the same multinational executives and investment bankers. They campaign to attract foreign investment and trade. For five days, the world’s leaders seem to agree on a narrative about how the world works. At Davos, even the most intractable political differences are temporarily smothered by the globalization consensus.

The pace of change in the rest of the world helped to convince Latin American leaders that the reformists were right. On a trip to Europe in early 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico realized that his country needed to change fast if it was to compete for investment with the new markets that were opening up in Eastern Europe. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, he approached Carla Hills, the U.S. trade representative, with the idea of negotiating a free-trade agreement between Mexico and the United States. The resulting North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented in 1994.5 Latin America did not simply passively receive lessons in free-market economics from the rest of the world.

His formative political experiences came leading metalworkers’ strikes in the years when Brazil was still a military dictatorship. For many years his Workers Party espoused radical leftist policies. But in his victorious 2002 campaign, Lula espoused centrist and pragmatic economic policies. After his election, his first major foreign trip was to the World Economic Forum in Davos. When asked to explain his transformation, Lula typically replied, “I changed, Brazil changed.”17 It was a nicely understated way of encapsulating the transformation of an entire continent. 8 INDIA, 1991 THE SECOND ASIAN GIANT AWAKES By the middle of 1991, India was on the edge of political and economic disaster.


pages: 391 words: 123,597

Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again by Brittany Kaiser

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Asian financial crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Carl Icahn, centre right, Chelsea Manning, clean water, cognitive dissonance, crony capitalism, dark pattern, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Etonian, fake news, haute couture, illegal immigration, Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Nelson Mandela, off grid, open borders, public intellectual, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Russian election interference, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, statistical model, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, TED Talk, the High Line, the scientific method, WeWork, WikiLeaks, you are the product, young professional

And that was when he said he had an idea for an opportunity to make even more connections and possibly drum up additional business for myself that would lead to an actual commission from SCL: together, he and I could go to Davos for the annual conference of the World Economic Forum, slated for late January, only a few weeks away. His merely suggesting that we attend Davos was one of those things that made me realize at a much deeper level that Chester was extremely well connected. I knew he’d attended the conference before, but I had had no idea what that meant. I’d certainly read about “Davos.” Since 1971, the mountain resort town in the Swiss Alps had hosted a world-famous international conference of the World Economic Forum (WEF), a nonprofit organization whose members were the world’s billionaires and executives of the most valuable companies on the planet.

Notes 1: A LATE LUNCH 1.Ari Berman, “Jim Messina, Obama’s Enforcer,” The Nation, March 30, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/159577/jim-messina-obamas-enforcer. 2.David Corn, “Inside Groundswell: Read the Memos of the New Right-Wing Strategy Group Planning a ‘30 Front War,’” Mother Jones, July 25, 2013, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-rightwing-group-ginni-thomas/. 3: POWER IN NIGERIA 1.Julien Maton, “Criminal Complaint Against Nigerian General Buhari to Be Filed with the International Criminal Court on Short Notice,” Ilawyerblog, December 15, 2014, http://ilawyerblog.com/criminal-complaint-nigerian-general-buhari-filed-international-criminal-court-short-notice/. 2.John Jones, “Human Rights Key as Nigeria Picks President,” The Hill, February 20, 2015, https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/civil-rights/233168-human-rights-key-as-nigeria-picks-president. 4: DAVOS 1.“Our Mission,” World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/about/world-economic-forum. 2.Jack Ewing, “Keeping a Lid on What Happens in Davos,” New York Times, January 20, 2015, https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/keeping-a-lid-on-what-happens-in-davos/. 3.Ibid. 4.Strategic Communications Laboratories. NID Campaign January-February 2015 Final Completion Portfolio. London: Strategic Communications Laboratories, 2015. 5.Agencies in Abuja, “West Criticises Nigerian Election Delay,” Guardian, February 8, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/08/nigeria-election-delay-west-us-uk. 6.Ibid. 7.Ibid. 8.Nicholas Carlson, “Davos Party Shut Down After Bartenders Blow Through Enough Booze for Two Nights,” Business Insider, January 23, 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/davos-party-shut-down-by-swiss-cops-2015–1. 6: MEETINGS AND REUNIONS 1.Joseph Bernstein, “Sophie Schmidt Will Launch a New Tech Publication with an International Focus,” BuzzFeed, May 1, 2019, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/a-google-scion-is-starting-a-new-publication-with-focus-on. 2.https://www.bluestatedigital.com/who-we-are/. 3.https://www.bluelabs.com/about/. 4.https://www.civisanalytics.com/mission/. 5.Rosie Gray, “What Does the Billionaire Family Backing Donald Trump Really Want?”

Chester had rented an apartment in the middle of the high-security zone, directly across from the Davos Congress Centre, the site of most of the key sessions for the World Economic Forum, and it wasn’t easy getting things in and out of that area. There would be caterers, bartenders, trucks filled with liquor, food, furniture, and other supplies; and the area just around the venue was almost as hard to penetrate as Fort Knox. The temperature the night of the party was frigid, as it often is in January in Davos, but everything was ready. We set up heaters outside on the apartment building’s vast rooftop terrace, where the bar was located and where we’d placed glow-in-the-dark chairs and stools, which gave the place an otherworldly vibe, in keeping with the outer space theme.


pages: 245 words: 71,886

Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story by Jeremy Farrar, Anjana Ahuja

"World Economic Forum" Davos, bioinformatics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, dual-use technology, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, machine translation, nudge unit, open economy, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, side project, social distancing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, zoonotic diseases

* 20 JANUARY 2020 Known cases: 282. (China: 278; Thailand: 2; South Korea: 1; Japan: 1) 6 deaths in Wuhan. ON 20 JANUARY 2020, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, texted me. He was due in Davos, Switzerland, next day, for the three-day annual gathering of the World Economic Forum but things were moving too quickly for him to leave Geneva. Could I take on some of his commitments, he asked, while I was at Davos? He was anxious for the world’s decision-makers to understand the significance of the new transmissible respiratory virus emerging in China. He had changed his plans because the WHO was due to hold an emergency meeting on 22 and 23 January.

As the tension was ratcheting up in Geneva, I was co-hosting a lunch in Davos, listening to the head of a global bank telling an audience at the World Economic Forum about his struggle with work-related stress. António Horta-Osório, who ran Lloyds Banking Group until July 2020, revealed how he had sought help from the Priory Clinic, a mental health retreat usually associated with celebrities undergoing rehabilitation for drug and alcohol problems. Most people don’t talk frankly about their personal troubles but that’s the bizarre thing about Davos: here was a top executive discussing his mental breakdown in front of some of the most powerful people in the world.

The lunch at which António spoke was co-hosted by Wellcome and Lloyds and boasted a starry list of guests, including the British model Lily Cole. It was intended to lay the groundwork for the 2021 World Economic Forum, on the theme of mental health, particularly in the workplace. Instead, rumours of China’s mystery pneumonia were swirling everywhere and everyone wanted to know more. When the CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria interviewed the then chief executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, on stage at Davos, he opened not with the pro-democracy protests in the former British colony but with the new disease. ‘Let me start by asking you something that’s on people’s minds right now,’ Zakaria said smoothly.


pages: 401 words: 115,959

Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop, Michael Green, Bill Clinton

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Bob Geldof, Bonfire of the Vanities, business process, business process outsourcing, Charles Lindbergh, clean tech, clean water, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Dava Sobel, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, digital divide, do well by doing good, don't be evil, family office, financial innovation, full employment, global pandemic, global village, Global Witness, God and Mammon, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, James Dyson, John Elkington, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Live Aid, lone genius, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, market bubble, mass affluent, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Singer: altruism, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, working poor, World Values Survey, X Prize

Since then, the New York–based organization has invested around $25 million in nearly four hundred and fifty social enterprises in thirty countries, including Teach for America, City Year, College Summit, and Mental Disability Rights International. Even more selective is the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, endowed by Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, and his wife, Hilde, in 1998. Once a year, the foundation has brought together one hundred or so of the leading social entrepreneurs from around the world to share insights, train them, and honor their achievements. A handful of the best have been chosen to join with the world’s wealthy elite at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where they can showcase their work and, they hope, secure the financial backing and connections they need to grow. Today, courses in social enterprise are taught at many of the world’s leading business schools, whose students increasingly want to work in jobs with a purpose beyond merely making money.

(David Rockefeller was behind the creation of another target of conspiracy theorists, the Trilateral Commission—whose purpose is to foster better dialogue between the leaders of Asia, Europe, and America.) Above all, conspiracy theorists are obsessed with the World Economic Forum held in Davos in the Swiss Alps. The annual meeting each January is a favorite target of antiglobalization protesters who think that inside the security ring, Davos Man (as Samuel Huntington christened its attendees) is busy taking all sorts of self-seeking plutocratic decisions. Whether or not as a direct response to these protests, and the creation of the rival World Social Forum, in recent years the agenda at Davos has broadened from economic growth and trade to address the big social challenges facing the world, such as development, poverty, and climate change.

Both Google guys are active participants in the elite global gatherings where philanthrocapitalists rub shoulders with politicians and other influential folks. These include the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Clinton Global Initiative, and Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED), a conference at which luminaries such as Bill Clinton and Bono are awarded prizes to help them achieve a “wish to change the world.” At Davos in 2006, where Google made headlines mostly for the superior quality of the wine served at its party, Page gave a talk about space flight, one of his great passions. Indeed, in the main building of the Googleplex hangs a replica of SpaceShipOne, the privately developed spacecraft that won the first prize—of $10 million—ever awarded by the X Prize Foundation.


pages: 263 words: 77,786

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon footprint, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, gun show loophole, impact investing, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge worker, lockdown, London Whale, low interest rates, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, natural language processing, new economy, old-boy network, price mechanism, profit maximization, remote working, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

“We sit in the heart of Silicon Valley, and the reason we are able to attract great talent and retain great talent is because of the values we have and our fearlessness in taking these stands.” This view received widespread validation at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020. It was clear the Business Roundtable statement, released the previous August, had marked an inflection point. We had been talking about these issues at our annual Davos dinners since January 2017, when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff first stood up and offered, as noted earlier, to be founding sponsor of Fortune’s CEO Initiative. Three years later, the intensity of the conversation had changed.

They were all on a journey, driven by forces that they faced every day in their positions of enormous responsibility and consequence. And I was fortunate to be a passenger on those journeys. My conversations gave me a prime opportunity to travel along with them. Looking back, I would pinpoint the first sign of this rethinking of corporate capitalism that I heard to a 2008 speech Bill Gates gave at the World Economic Forum at Davos—his last year as Microsoft CEO. The financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed had sown new doubts about free market economics. And the ramifications of that recession were being felt far and wide. Countless books have been written about that colossal market failure, and there is no need for me to revisit it in detail here.

Everyone agreed that any stakeholder effort needed strong metrics, something Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has been involved in developing. Moynihan is chairman of the International Business Council (IBC), which is a community of over 120 global CEOs. The IBC has been working to establish a set of common metrics that the business community can use. At the January 2020 Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, the IBC issued a preliminary report setting the terms for the discussion, and then followed it up in January 2021 with a final report. The report identifies a set of Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics across four pillars considered the most critical for business, society, and the planet: governance, planet, people, and prosperity.3 To summarize: PILLAR 1: PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNANCE.


pages: 481 words: 120,693

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Bullingdon Club, business climate, call centre, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, double helix, energy security, estate planning, experimental subject, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, high net worth, income inequality, invention of the steam engine, job automation, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberation theology, light touch regulation, linear programming, London Whale, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, NetJets, new economy, Occupy movement, open economy, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, postindustrial economy, Potemkin village, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, the long tail, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

The real community life of the twenty-first-century plutocracy occurs on the international conference circuit. “We don’t have castles and noble titles, so how else do you indicate you’re part of the elite?” Andrew Zolli of PopTech, an ideas forum and social innovation network, told New York magazine. The best known of these events is the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, invitation to which marks an aspiring plutocrat’s arrival on the international scene—and where, in lieu of noble titles, an elaborate hierarchy of conference badges has such significance that one first-time participant remarked that the staring at his chest made him realize for the first time what it must be like to have cleavage.

Gates and his co-donor Warren Buffett—not accidentally two of the world’s most visible and most admired billionaires—have made it de rigueur not only to give away a lot of your money but to be actively engaged in how it is spent. Gates has become an evangelist for this idea that capitalism must do good, and do-gooders must become more capitalist. He even has a name for it, “creative capitalism,” a term he unveiled in a speech at Davos—where else?—at the 2008 meeting of the World Economic Forum. Marx famously observed that early generations of philosophers had sought to describe the world; he wanted to change it. Gates and his plutocratic peers are having a similarly dramatic impact on the world of charity. They don’t want to fund the social sector, they want to transform it.

“India’s gilded age is going to be a combination of America’s first gilded age and the second gilded age,” Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of political science at Brown University who was born in India and now spends half his time in Bangalore, where his wife and son live full-time, told me at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Mumbai in November 2011. “India is going through this phenomenon in the twenty-first century. . . . The pace at which information traveled in the nineteenth century was very different. Today eight hundred million Indians are connected through mobile phones.” The two gilded ages can also get in each other’s way.


pages: 344 words: 104,522

Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-bias training, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, clean tech, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, critical race theory, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, defund the police, deplatforming, desegregation, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fudge factor, full employment, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, green new deal, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, impact investing, independent contractor, index fund, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Network effects, Parler "social media", plant based meat, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, random walk, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Bork, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, single source of truth, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, Susan Wojcicki, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Virgin Galactic, WeWork, zero-sum game

The occasion for the trip was the first-ever Future Investment Initiative global conference—one that was quickly dubbed “Davos in the Desert.” The conference shared a lot in common with the World Economic Forum in Davos and the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. The same billionaire class was in attendance. They use the same private jets to travel to all three. They drank wine in Davos, whiskey in Los Angeles, and sparkling grape juice in Riyadh. In Davos they talk about the promise of ESG, in Los Angeles they talk about the American dream, in Riyadh they talk about spreading technology in the Middle East.i But in all three places, the goal was to set an agenda that entrepreneurs and CEOs were expected to follow—especially young CEOs like me who were dependent on investments from people like them.

“A Friedman Doctrine—The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” The New York Times, 13 Sept. 1970, www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html. 2. Schwab, Klaus. “Davos Manifesto 1973: A Code of Ethics for Business Leaders.” World Economic Forum, 1973, www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/davos-manifesto-1973-a-code-of-ethics-for-business-leaders/. 3. Schwab, Klaus, and Peter Vanham. Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet, 185–186. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2021. 4. OccupyRichmond2011.

“Wrong,” he said. “He who has the gold makes the rules.” I called it “the Goldman Rule.” I learned something valuable that summer after all. NEARLY A DECADE and a half after I learned that whoever has the gold makes the rules, the Goldman Rule had only grown in importance. In January 2020, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon declared that Goldman would refuse to take companies public unless they had at least one “diverse” member on their board. Goldman didn’t specify who counted as “diverse,” other than to say that it had a “focus on women.” The bank just said that “this decision is rooted first and foremost in our conviction that companies with diverse leadership perform better” and that board diversity “reduces the risk of groupthink.”


pages: 460 words: 130,053

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice by Bill Browder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, British Empire, corporate governance, El Camino Real, Gordon Gekko, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, index card, off-the-grid, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, transfer pricing, union organizing

Although he was roughly my age, I felt like an amateur around him whenever he turned on his finely tuned political skills. “Hey, Bill,” Marc said as soon as I picked up the phone. “I’m going to go to Davos—you want to come with me?” Marc was referring to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an annual event that was attended by CEOs, billionaires, and heads of state. It was the ultimate A-list party of the business world, and the terms of admission—running a country or a globally important corporation, along with a $50,000 registration fee—were intended to make sure that rabble such as Marc and I could not just “go to Davos.” “I’d love to, Marc, but I haven’t been invited,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

The plan was to have this prospectus ready in time for the World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of January 2007. There is no better place in the world to raise capital than Davos. My fortunes had changed since my first foray there in 1996. I no longer had to sleep on the floor or linger in hotel lobbies hoping to meet important people. Since 2000 I had been a proper member of the forum and had been going every year since. This time, I decided to bring Elena with me. She was in the first trimester of her second pregnancy, and I thought the interesting lectures and receptions of Davos would be a welcome break from looking after our one-year-old at home.

What does a man like Putin do when he is humiliated? As we’d seen so many times before, he lashes out against the person who humiliated him. Ominously, that person was me. * * * 1 The lower house of the Russian Parliament. 41 Red Notice At the end of January 2013 I found myself back in Davos at the World Economic Forum. On my second day there, as I was trudging through the snow outside the conference center, I heard a chirpy female voice call out, “Bill! Bill!” I turned and saw a short woman with a big furry hat walking briskly toward me. As she got closer, I recognized her. It was Chrystia Freeland, the reporter who’d broken the Sidanco story so many years ago in Moscow.


pages: 357 words: 94,852

No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need by Naomi Klein

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, antiwork, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Brewster Kahle, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Celebration, Florida, clean water, collective bargaining, Corrections Corporation of America, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, energy transition, extractivism, fake news, financial deregulation, gentrification, Global Witness, greed is good, green transition, high net worth, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, private military company, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, tech billionaire, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, urban decay, W. E. B. Du Bois, women in the workforce, working poor

Backfiring of Gates Foundation’s silver-bullet fixes Bill Gates, 2009 Annual Letter (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, January 2009), accessed from: https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/​Documents/​2009-bill-gates-annual-letter.pdf. Davos’s 2017 summit: Shakira and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver World Economic Forum, “Arts and Culture in Davos 2017,” WEForum.org, accessed April 12, 2017, http://www3.weforum.org/​docs/​Media/​AM17/​AM17_Arts_brochure.pdf. Gates: a new $460-million fund to fight the spread of infectious disease World Economic Forum, “CEPI Initiative Aims to Prepare Vaccines to Speed Up Global Response to Epidemics,” press release, January 19, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/​press/​2017/​01/​cepi-initiative-aims-to-prepare-vaccines-to-speed-up-global-response-to-epidemics/.

Two-thirds of minimum-wage workers in the States are women National Women’s Law Center, “Women and the Minimum Wage, State by State,” NWLC.org, January 2017, https://nwlc.org/​resources/​women-and-minimum-wage-state-state/. World Economic Forum’s annual global rankings on the economic gender gap World Economic Forum, “The Global Gender Gap Report 2016,” World Economic Forum website, 2016, http://reports.weforum.org/​global-gender-gap-report-2016/​results-and-analysis/. World Economic Forum, “The Global Gender Gap Report 2015,” World Economic Forum website, 2015, http://reports.weforum.org/​global-gender-gap-report-2015/​press-releases/. Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin: 15 to 20 percent fewer Democratic voters for Clinton Calculations based on: Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S.

Similarly, while there are a great many women in positions of power—not enough, but substantially more than a generation ago—low-income women are working longer hours, often at multiple jobs, without security, just to pay the bills. (Two-thirds of minimum-wage workers in the States are women.) In the World Economic Forum’s annual global rankings on the economic gender gap, the US fell from the 28th spot in 2015 all the way down to 45th place in 2016. While white Trump voters responded to their precariousness by raging at the world, many traditional liberals seem to have responded by tuning out. When Hillary Clinton called out identifiable groups at every rally, declaring that she would “stand up” for each of them, it was too tepid an offering to build the ground-swell of support she needed.


pages: 317 words: 87,566

The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being by William Davies

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business logic, corporate governance, data science, dematerialisation, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Gini coefficient, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Leo Hollis, lifelogging, market bubble, mental accounting, military-industrial complex, nudge unit, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Philip Mirowski, power law, profit maximization, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, social contagion, social intelligence, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, theory of mind, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, you are the product

THE HAPPINESS INDUSTRY THE HAPPINESS INDUSTRY How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being WILLIAM DAVIES For Lydia First published by Verso 2015 © William Davies 2015 All rights reserved The moral rights of the author have been asserted 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Verso UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201 www.versobooks.com Verso is the imprint of New Left Books ISBN-13: 978-1-78168-845-8 (HC) ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-272-6 (Export) eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-847-2 (US) eISBN-13: 978-1-78168-846-5 (UK) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Typeset in Fournier MT by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland Printed in the US by Maple Press Contents Preface 1Knowing How You Feel 2The Price of Pleasure 3In the Mood to Buy 4The Psychosomatic Worker 5The Crisis of Authority 6Social Optimization 7Living in the Lab 8Critical Animals Acknowledgements Notes Index Preface Since the World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded in 1971, its annual meeting in Davos has served as a useful indicator of the global economic zeitgeist. These conferences, which last a few days in late January, bring together corporate executives, senior politicians, representatives of NGOs and a sprinkling of concerned celebrities to address the main issues confronting the global economy and the decision-makers tasked with looking after it.

Happiness, in its various guises, is no longer some pleasant add-on to the more important business of making money, or some new age concern for those with enough time to sit around baking their own bread. As a measurable, visible, improvable entity, it has now penetrated the citadel of global economic management. If the World Economic Forum is any guide, and it has always tended to be in the past, the future of successful capitalism depends on our ability to combat stress, misery and illness, and put relaxation, happiness and wellness in their place. Techniques, measures and technologies are now available to achieve this, and they are permeating the workplace, the high street, the home and the human body.

This book shares much of that disquiet. There are surely ample political and material problems to deal with right now, before we divert quite so much attention towards the mental and neural conditions through which we individually experience them. There is also a sense that when the doyens of the World Economic Forum seize an agenda with so much gusto, there is at least some cause for suspicion. The mood-tracking technologies, sentiment analysis algorithms and stress-busting meditation techniques are put to work in the service of certain political and economic interests. They are not simply gifted to us for our own Aristotelian flourishing.


pages: 242 words: 67,233

McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Ronald Purser

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, British Empire, capitalist realism, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, fake news, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, impulse control, job satisfaction, liberation theology, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Nelson Mandela, neoliberal agenda, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, placebo effect, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, publication bias, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, source of truth, stealth mode startup, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, work culture

CHAPTER TWO: Neoliberal Mindfulness CHAPTER THREE: The Mantra of Stress CHAPTER FOUR: Privatizing Mindfulness CHAPTER FIVE: Colonizing Mindfulness CHAPTER SIX: Mindfulness as Social Amnesia CHAPTER SEVEN: Mindfulness’ Truthiness Problem CHAPTER EIGHT: Mindful Employees CHAPTER NINE: Mindful Merchants CHAPTER TEN: Mindful Elites CHAPTER ELEVEN: Mindful Schools CHAPTER TWELVE: Mindful Warriors CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Mindful Politics CONCLUSION: Liberating Mindfulness NOTES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS chapter one What Mindfulness Revolution? Mindfulness is mainstream, endorsed by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Goldie Hawn and Ruby Wax. While meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists rub shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the founders of this movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance,” the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress.

It slots so neatly into the mindset of the workplace that its only real threat to the status quo is to offer people ways to become more skillful at the rat race. Modern society’s neoliberal consensus argues that those who enjoy power and wealth should be given free rein to accumulate more. Those mindfulness merchants who accept market logic are an unsurprising hit with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Kabat-Zinn has no qualms about preaching the gospel of competitive advantage from meditative practice.4 Over the past few decades, neoliberalism has outgrown its conservative roots. It has hijacked public discourse to the extent that even self-professed progressives, such as Kabat-Zinn, think in neoliberal terms.

But this has led to the opposite outcome, creating an uncontrollable consumer commodity that devalues mindfulness. Downloading an app as a digital detox is irrational. Mindful merchants don’t care. They seem to be proud of creating a global branded product, accessible to anyone, anywhere — like a Big Mac. chapter ten Mindful Elites Mindfulness made its debut at Davos in 2013. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), a week of parties and panel discussions in a sleepy Swiss ski resort, is a schmooze-fest for the global economic elite. The WEF attracts CEOs, fund managers, venture capitalists, heads of state and politicians, economists, representatives of NGOs, and a handful of token artists and celebrities.


pages: 243 words: 68,818

Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs―A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder by Ben Mezrich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, new economy, vertical integration

Marina was equally certain, as she worked her way back down through the extravagant Logovaz Club, that this surreal moment was likely to be just the first of many. The contents of the suitcase might represent a monstrous sum to a woman like Marina, but a million dollars wasn’t going to satisfy a man like Boris Berezovsky for very long. CHAPTER ELEVEN * * * February 1996, World Economic Forum, Annual Meeting, Davos, Switzerland TWO MONTHS BEFORE HIS fiftieth birthday, and Boris Berezovsky could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had been rendered speechless—and one of those times had involved a blown-up Mercedes and a decapitated driver. But here it was, happening again in the most pristine setting he could ever imagine: an elegant, wood-paneled conference room in an alpine hotel, hanging off the edge of the most spectacular, snow-topped mountain, the air outside so crisp and blue it was like the frozen interior of a diamond.

He knew that the gist of what had been said was nothing he shouldn’t have already known; he had been having similar conversations for the past ten days in Moscow, and the man who had just left the Alpine conference room hadn’t said anything Berezovsky could not have realized himself. But hearing those words, in this place, from such a source—it was beyond sobering. George Soros, the Hungarian-born American billionaire, one of the richest men in the world—and in many ways a personal idol of Berezovsky’s—was exactly the sort of man you came to the World Economic Forum at Davos to meet. To Berezovsky, he represented everything laudable about the West; Soros’s opinions informed Berezovsky of the Western way of thinking about markets, business, and even politics. Berezovsky had searched him out specifically to get his opinion on the situation that was rapidly developing back in his homeland.

A Abramovich, Irina, 196–97, 243 Abramovich, Roman, 82, 113–22, 173–74, 196–201 aluminum interests of, 132, 147, 184, 199, 245, 249–50 background of, 45–47, 50, 113, 115, 121, 186 Berezovsky’s exile and, 182–83, 186–87, 192, 197 Berezovsky’s first meeting with, 46–47 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 45–50, 73, 76, 87–88, 116–18, 122, 130, 147, 174, 182–87, 198–201, 208, 211, 218, 231, 236, 245–46, 248–49, 251 Berezovsky’s suit against, 235–37, 239, 243–52, 254, 258–59 Caribbean cruises of, 44–48, 56, 118, 182 Chechen conflicts and, 117–18 elections and, 87–88, 132 final payments to Berezovsky of, 197–201, 209, 231, 245–46 Goncharova’s package and, 70, 76–77 Goncharova’s relationship with, 69–71 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 119–22 Kursk incident and, 174, 187 oil interests of, 47–50, 56, 72–73, 113, 132, 245 ORT acquisition of, 183–87, 192, 200, 236, 245, 248–49 Patarkatsishvili’s relationship with, 115–16 physical appearance of, 182 Putin and, 147, 174, 184, 187, 245, 248–49 Sibneft and, 71–73, 75, 77, 87–88, 97, 114–17, 147, 184, 186, 199, 218, 231, 245, 248–49 wealth of, 208–9, 231, 243–44 advertising, 31, 53–55, 58–60, 72 Aeroflot, 96–97, 172–73, 192, 206–7 and criminal allegations against Berezovsky, 131, 147, 172, 185 Alexandrovka Dacha, 144 Berezovsky’s eviction from, 173 All-Russia Party, 132–34 aluminum, 83 Abramovich and, 132, 147, 184, 199, 245, 249–50 Berezovsky and, 120, 122, 245, 249–50 in Krasnoyarsk, 119–22 Aluminum Wars, 119, 122 Antibes, 116, 198 Berezovsky’s exile and, 179–82, 185–87 Antigua, 43–44 Aven, Pyotr, 44–45, 248 AvtoVAZ, 11, 13–15 B bankers, banking, 24, 74–75, 77, 82, 200 Aven and, 44 Berezovsky and, 15, 45, 84, 86 Gusinsky and, 32–33, 48, 86, 132, 146 Khodorkovsky and, 74, 204, 207 Most Bank and, 32–33, 132, 146 Barsukov, Mikhail, 91 Berezovsky, Boris Abramovich, 9–17, 27–36, 43–56, 79–91, 114–18, 127–35, 140–48, 157–65, 171–75, 179–87, 195–201, 206–11, 223, 229–41, 243–59 Abramovich’s final payments to, 197–201, 209, 231, 245–46 Abramovich’s oil interests and, 47–50, 56 Abramovich’s relationship with, 45–50, 73, 76, 87–88, 116–18, 122, 130, 147, 174, 182–87, 198–201, 208, 211, 218, 231, 236, 245–46, 248–49, 251 Abramovich sued by, 235–37, 239, 243–52, 254, 258–59 access to Kremlin of, 67, 76, 85, 117–18, 128, 132, 142, 147, 157, 160, 174, 184, 199, 211, 250, 254 Aeroflot and, 96–97, 131, 147, 172–73, 185, 192, 206–7 aluminum interests of, 120, 122, 245, 249–50 and assassination of Listyev, 63, 65–67 attempted arrest of, 48, 64–67 attempted assassinations of, 17, 19–25, 28–29, 35, 48, 62, 79, 85, 110, 147, 174, 180, 200, 210, 259 attempted extradition of, 206, 209–10 background of, 12–14, 32, 45, 61, 181, 186, 200, 207 banking interests of, 15, 45, 84, 86 car business of, 10–11, 13–16, 29, 31–32, 48, 106–7, 142, 181 Caribbean cruises of, 43–48, 50, 56, 72, 118, 148, 182 Chechen conflicts and, 96–97, 117–18 company headquarters of, 9–11, 13 criminal allegations against, 64–67, 131, 147, 172, 185, 192, 200, 259 death of, 257–59 demise of, 252, 259, 262 elections and, 34, 49, 53, 72, 80–91, 96, 105, 125, 128, 131 exile of, 171, 174, 179–83, 185–87, 191–93, 197, 201, 206–8, 210–11, 245, 255–56, 259 Family and, 32, 35, 45, 81, 91, 97, 109, 117, 122, 125, 130–31, 143 financial problems of, 217–18, 230–31, 233, 252, 258–59 Forbes sued by, 211, 254 FSB complaint of, 103, 105, 108–10 FSB-ordered assassination of, 99–103, 108, 110, 129, 200 Goncharova’s package and, 70–71, 76–77 Gusinsky’s relationship with, 32, 48, 83–84, 86, 146, 174 injuries of, 21, 27–29, 32, 82, 110 Khodorkovsky’s arrest and, 206, 210 Klebnikov’s murder and, 254–55 Kommersant and, 109, 172 Korzhakov’s relationship with, 29–32, 35, 147, 174 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 120, 122 Kursk incident and, 157–59, 161–62, 167, 174, 187 Lebed’s relationship with, 118, 120 Listyev’s relationship with, 56, 64 Litvinenko’s death and, 229–31 Litvinenko’s exile and, 190–91 Litvinenko’s imprisonment and, 124, 129, 143 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 227 Litvinenko’s press conference and, 109–11 Litvinenko’s relationship with, 61–67, 96–103, 105–6, 108, 123–24, 129–30, 173, 190–91, 193, 214, 217, 219, 230 Litvinenko’s whistle-blowing and, 101, 103, 105, 108–11 Logovaz Club office of, 61–65, 76–77, 96 national security post of, 96 pace and impatience of, 10–12, 14, 16, 127, 134–35, 254 Patarkatsishvili’s death and, 240–41, 249 Patarkatsishvili’s relationship with, 46–47, 116, 137, 142, 168–69, 171, 174, 179–80, 198, 209, 218, 231, 240–41, 250, 255, 258 physical appearance of, 9–10, 43–44, 61, 66, 76, 174–75, 179, 231, 233–35, 240, 247, 257–58 Presidential Club and, 27–29, 31, 52 Putin and, 106–7, 109–10, 125, 129–34, 141–48, 158–64, 167–68, 171–74, 181, 183–87, 192, 206–7, 209–11, 231, 245, 248, 250–51, 255–56, 261–62 religious beliefs of, 12, 32, 99, 200, 207 security for, 9–10, 17, 24–25, 48, 64–65, 179–82, 192, 195, 207–8, 229, 233–35, 240, 244, 259 Sibneft and, 72–73, 76–77, 80, 82–83, 87–88, 96, 117–18, 184, 199, 245 State Duma post of, 131 TV station interests of, 29–36, 45, 49–50, 52–56, 58, 64, 72, 74, 80, 82, 87, 96, 116, 131, 133–34, 145, 147, 158–63, 165, 167–69, 172–73, 183–87, 191–92, 200, 207, 214, 236, 245, 248 Unity Party and, 132–35 wealth of, 14–15, 29, 32–33, 43, 45, 49, 61, 77, 87, 96–97, 116, 148, 175, 181, 185, 192, 195, 198, 200, 208–9, 234, 241, 258 wet work of, 15–16 womanizing of, 62 World Economic Forum and, 79–82, 84–85 Yeltsin’s relationship with, 23, 31–32, 61, 91, 96, 110, 122, 128, 131 Yeltsin’s resignation and, 140–41 Berezovsky, Galina, 217 Boris, Project, 117 C car business: AvtoVAZ and, 11, 13–15 of Berezovsky, 10–11, 13–16, 29, 31–32, 48, 106–7, 142, 181 Ladas and, 11, 13–16, 181 Caribbean, 208 Abramovich’s cruises in, 44–48, 56, 118, 182 Berezovsky’s cruises in, 43–48, 50, 56, 72, 118, 148, 182 Chas Pik, 58 Château de la Garoupe, 180–83, 185–87, 198, 200 Chechens, Republic of Chechnya: Berezovsky and, 96–97, 117–18 Litvinenko and, 62, 96–97, 129, 191, 193, 229 Putin and, 133–34, 141, 146 Russian conflicts with, 33, 62, 96–97, 117–18, 129, 133–34, 141, 146, 229 Sibneft and, 117 terrorism and, 5, 16, 24, 96, 117, 133, 193 Chubais, Anatoly, 33–34, 74–75 arrests of assistants of, 89–91 elections and, 81, 83–85, 89–90 Communists, 12, 33, 107 elections and, 72, 80–82, 84, 86, 88–89, 128 Russian economy and, 75, 82, 144 Yeltsin and, 30, 72, 80–81, 84, 86 D Davny, Igor, 19–24 Davos Pact, 86 Deripaska, Oleg, 121, 249 Doctorow, Ivan, 37–42 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 55 E Eugene (Abramovich’s associate), 198, 249 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 120–22 Sibneft and, 114–16 F Faces in the Snow, 48, 66 Family, 147 Berezovsky and, 32, 35, 45, 81, 91, 97, 109, 117, 122, 125, 130–31, 143 elections and, 125 Putin and, 107, 109, 130–31, 143 Sibneft and, 117 Yeltsin and, 32, 35, 81, 83, 91, 97, 107, 109, 125, 130–31, 133 Financial Times, 159 Forbes, 256 Berezovsky’s suit against, 211, 254 FSB (Federal Security Service), 91, 207 assassination of Berezovsky ordered by, 99–103, 108, 110, 129, 200 and assassination of Listyev, 64, 66–67 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 66–67 and attempted arrest of Gusinsky, 38, 40–41 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 19–20, 23, 28, 62 Berezovsky’s complaint against, 103, 105, 108–10 Berezovsky’s exile and, 192 business atmosphere and, 21 corruption in, 105–6, 110, 125 Litvinenko and, 19–21, 23, 28, 62–67, 95–100, 102, 105–6, 108–11, 124–25, 129, 190–93, 213, 215, 227, 230 Patarkatsishvili and, 166–67, 171 Putin and, 107–9, 124–25, 129–30, 141, 167, 173, 183 G Gazprom, 146, 198 Georgians, Georgia, 24–25 see also Patarkatsishvili, Badri glasnost, 246 Gloster, Dame Elizabeth, 246, 250–52, 259 Glushkov, Nikolai: arrest and imprisonment of, 206–7, 248–49 criminal allegations against, 172–73, 185, 192 escape attempt of, 207, 214 Gogol, Anton, 37–42 KGB and, 38–39 Goncharova, Marina: Abramovich’s relationship with, 69–71 as accountant, 69, 71, 74 package of, 69–71, 76–77 physical appearance of, 69, 77 Russian economy and, 74–76 Sibneft and, 71, 75–77 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 12, 22, 128 Gorodilov, Viktor, 73 Gusinsky, Vladimir, 162–63 attempted arrest of, 38–42, 48, 66, 174 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 66 background of, 45 banking interests of, 32–33, 48, 86, 132, 146 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 32, 48, 83–84, 86, 146, 174 elections and, 83–84, 86, 132, 146 exile of, 146, 148, 159 Putin and, 146, 148, 167 security for, 35, 38, 40, 42, 174 TV station interests of, 32–35, 83, 86, 132, 146 wealth of, 146 H Hermès, 234–35 I Interfax Press Center, 109–10 Italy, Italians, Litvinenko and, 190, 213–17 Ivan (Berezovsky’s assistant), 88–90 and arrests of Chubais’s assistants, 89–90 Goncharova’s package and, 70–71, 76 J Jews, 12, 32, 99, 200, 207 K KGB, 21–22, 124, 131, 167 business atmosphere and, 21 Gogol and, 38–39 Korzhakov and, 30, 32 Putin and, 107–8, 129, 133, 141, 143, 161, 167, 189 Khodorkovsky, Mikhael, 203–7 arrest and imprisonment of, 205–7, 210 banking interests of, 74, 204, 207 wealth of, 74, 204, 206–7 Yukos and, 74 King, Larry, 52 Klebnikov, Paul, 211, 254–55 Kolesnikov, Dmitri, 149–55 Kursk incident and, 151–55 Kommersant, 109, 172 Korzhakov, Alexander Vasileyevich, 97 and arrests of Chubais’s assistants, 89–90 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 48 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 29–32, 35, 147, 174 Berezovsky’s TV interests and, 29, 31–36, 52, 56, 80, 82 elections and, 34, 49, 82–84, 89–91, 128 Gusinsky and, 32, 34 KGB and, 30, 32 Krasnoyarsk, 114–15, 118–19 aluminum production in, 119–22 labor disputes in, 119–20, 122 Kremlin, 28, 32, 137, 159–61, 184–86, 192, 207, 209–11, 219 Berezovsky’s access to, 67, 76, 85, 117–18, 128, 132, 142, 147, 157, 160, 174, 184, 199, 211, 250, 254 physical appearance of, 127–28 Putin’s ascension to, 130–34, 142–43, 145, 161 krysha, 66, 75, 121 Abramovich and, 49, 77, 116, 187, 199, 201, 209, 246 Berezovsky and, 23–25, 28, 49, 67, 77, 97, 100, 116, 124, 147, 187, 199, 201, 209, 246 Litvinenko and, 25, 67, 100, 124 meaning of, 23 Kuntsevo Dacha, 3–7 Kursk, sinking of, 151–55, 165–67 and Abramovich, 174, 187 and Berezovsky, 157–59, 161–62, 167, 174, 187 and ORT, 158–59, 161–62, 167, 183 and Patarkatsishvili, 183, 187 and Putin, 158–59, 161, 187 L labor disputes, 119–20, 122 Ladas, 181 Berezovsky and, 11, 13–16 as symbol of new Russia, 13 Lebed, General, 89–90, 118–20 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 118, 120 elections and, 86, 90, 118–19 Krasnoyarsk labor disputes and, 120 Lefortovo Prison, 124–25 Lenin, Vladimir, 128 Lisovsky, Sergei, 89 Listyev, Vlad, 51–60 assassination of, 60, 63–67, 72, 97 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 64–67 background of, 55, 57 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 56, 64 Logovaz Club meeting of, 51–55 ORT and, 51–56, 58–59, 63–64, 72 physical appearance of, 51–53, 57–60 politics of, 53 popularity and fame of, 51–55, 59, 63–64 Litskevich, Ivan, 73 Litvinenko, Alexander “Sasha,” 95–103, 213–19 arrests and imprisonments of, 124–26, 129, 143–44, 173, 190, 223 assassination of, 225–32 and assassination of Listyev, 63–67 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 64–67 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 19–25, 28, 62 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 61–67, 96–103, 105–6, 108, 123–24, 129–30, 173, 190–91, 193, 214, 217, 219, 230 business atmosphere and, 21–22 Chechens and, 62, 96–97, 129, 191, 193, 229 elections and, 96 exile of, 189–94, 210, 213–15, 217–19, 222–23 FSB and, 19–21, 23, 28, 62–67, 95–100, 102, 105–6, 108–11, 124–25, 129, 190–93, 213, 215, 227, 230 Italians and, 190, 213–17 Moscow journalist’s murder and, 216–17 and ordered assassination of Berezovsky, 99–102, 110, 129 physical appearance of, 106, 109, 123, 226 planned assassination of, 215 poisoning of, 221–23, 225–31 press conference of, 109–11, 123–24 prison release of, 129–30 Putin and, 106, 108, 110, 124–25, 129, 143–44, 189–90, 214–15, 217 trial of, 123–26 videotape of, 101–3, 105, 110 whistle-blowing of, 101–3, 105, 108–11, 123–25, 129, 215 loans for shares program, 74–76, 115–16 LogoVAZ: advertising and, 31, 54 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 21, 24–25 finances of, 15, 54 Ladas and, 11, 13–15 Patarkatsishvili’s position with, 24–25, 46, 55–56 wet work of, 15–16 Logovaz Club, 49, 87, 118, 130, 137, 140, 144, 165, 172, 182 Berezovsky’s meeting with Listyev at, 51–55 Berezovsky’s office in, 11, 61–65, 76–77, 96 elections and, 85–86, 90 Goncharova’s trip to, 69–71, 76–77 security at, 69–71, 76–77 violence near, 20 Lubyanka, 98–99 Lugovoy, Andrei, 207, 214, 218–19, 223, 227, 230 Luzhkov, Yuri, 132, 134, 146 M Marina (ballroom dancer), 61–63, 97, 101–2, 125–26, 193 beauty of, 20, 25 Litvinenko’s death and, 228 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 222–23 Mario (Litvinenko’s associate), 213–17 Media-Most, 35, 146 Megève, 195–97, 207, 209, 231, 246, 249 Millennium Hotel, 218–19 Moscow, 3, 7, 9, 12, 45, 80, 96, 101, 107, 114, 119, 125, 128–29, 131–33, 146, 148, 171, 173–74, 184, 203, 207–8, 214, 219, 230 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 66–67 Berezovsky’s exile and, 180–81 and Berezovsky’s trip to Antigua, 43–44 Gusinsky and, 32, 35, 40–42, 48 Listyev and, 58–59, 63, 66 Litvinenko’s exile and, 190–91 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 227 Sibneft and, 75 violence and crime in, 20–25, 40–42, 65, 98, 133, 216–17 Yeltsin and, 30 Moscow Times, The, 173 Most Bank, 32–33, 132, 146 N nickel manufacturing, 74, 82–83 9/11 terrorist attacks, 216 Novosibirsk, 114, 203 NTV, 33, 83, 146 elections and, 86, 132, 134 Ostankino Tower fire and, 165 O oil, 82–83 Abramovich and, 47–50, 56, 72–73, 113, 132, 245 Berezovsky and, 47–50, 56 Yukos and, 74, 82, 207 see also Sibneft Oligarchs, 243 backgrounds of, 5 elections and, 83–84, 87, 89–91, 128 Kuntsevo meeting of, 4–6 Putin and, 6–7, 144–48, 159, 163, 173 security for, 59 violence and, 5 wealth of, 4–7 World Economic Forum and, 81, 84 ORT (Russian Public Television): Abramovich’s acquisition of, 183–87, 192, 200, 236, 245, 248–49 advertising on, 53–55, 58–60, 72 Berezovsky’s interest in, 33–35, 45, 49–50, 52–56, 58, 64, 72, 74, 80, 82, 87, 96, 116, 131, 133–34, 145, 147, 158–63, 165, 167–69, 172–73, 183–87, 191–92, 200, 207, 214, 236, 245, 248 Berezovsky’s ordered assassination and, 102 Berezovsky’s ordered removal from, 162–63, 167–69, 172–73 Berezovsky’s sale of, 183–87, 191–92, 200, 207, 236, 245, 248–49 and criminal allegations against Berezovsky, 131 elections and, 34, 49, 53, 72, 82, 86 Kursk incident and, 158–59, 161–62, 167, 183 Listyev and, 51–56, 58–59, 63–64, 72 Ostankino Tower fire and, 165 Patarkatsishvili’s position with, 55–56 Putin and, 133–34, 144–45, 158–63, 167–68, 172, 183–85, 192, 248–49 Ostankino Tower fire, 165–67 P Patarkatsishvili, Badri, 141–42, 165–69 and Abramovich’s final payments to Berezovsky, 197–201, 209, 246 Abramovich’s relationship with, 115–16 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 24–25 Berezovsky’s exile and, 174, 179–82 and Berezovsky’s first meeting with Abramovich, 46–47 and Berezovsky’s meeting with Listyev, 52, 54–55 and Berezovsky’s ordered removal from ORT, 167–69 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 46–47, 116, 137, 142, 168–69, 171, 174, 179–80, 198, 209, 218, 231, 240–41, 250, 255, 258 and Berezovsky’s sale of ORT, 183–85 and Berezovsky’s suit against Abramovich, 237, 245–46, 248, 250 Chechen conflicts and, 96–97, 117 criminal allegations against, 207 death of, 240–41, 249, 255 elections and, 85–86, 88, 90–91 exile of, 207, 240 FSB and, 166–67, 171 Georgian politics and, 209, 218, 231, 240–41 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 120 Kursk incident and, 183, 187 Ostankino Tower fire and, 165–67 physical appearance of, 55, 113, 116, 168, 196, 198 position with LogoVAZ of, 24–25, 46, 55–56 position with ORT of, 55–56 Putin and, 147, 160, 167–69, 171, 181, 183, 209 Siberian trip of, 113–15, 118 Sibneft and, 75, 116 Unity Party and, 132–33 wealth of, 209, 240 Patrushev, Nikolai, 167 perestroika, 12–13, 16, 32, 186, 246 Presidential Club: Berezovsky and, 27–29, 31, 45, 52, 85 elections and, 85 Primokov, Yevgeny, 131 Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 106–10, 191, 246 Abramovich and, 147, 174, 184, 187, 245, 248–49 as acting president, 140–41, 144 ascension to Kremlin of, 130–34, 142–43, 145, 161 background of, 107–8, 161 Berezovsky and, 106–7, 109–10, 125, 129–34, 141–48, 158–64, 167–68, 171–74, 181, 183–87, 192, 206–7, 209–11, 231, 245, 248, 250–51, 255–56, 261–62 Chechen conflicts and, 133–34, 141, 146 Family and, 107, 109, 130–31, 143 FSB and, 107–9, 124–25, 129–30, 141, 167, 173, 183 Gusinsky and, 146, 148, 167 KGB and, 107–8, 129, 133, 141, 143, 161, 167, 189 Kuntsevo meeting and, 5–7 Kursk incident and, 158–59, 161, 187 Litvinenko and, 106, 108, 110, 124–25, 129, 143–44, 189–90, 214–15, 217 Oligarchs and, 6–7, 144–48, 159, 163, 173 ORT and, 133–34, 144–45, 158–63, 167–68, 172, 183–85, 192, 248–49 Patarkatsishvili and, 147, 160, 167–69, 171, 181, 183, 209 physical appearance of, 5–6, 106, 144–45, 160 popularity of, 144–45, 172 presidential campaign of, 131–32, 134, 144–46, 160, 183, 189 tea invitation of, 148 Yeltsin and, 107, 109, 133, 140–41 R Red Directors, 13, 15, 91 krysha and, 24 Sibneft and, 73 roof, see krysha Rusal, 245 Russian Federation, 69, 107, 150–51, 198, 200–201, 204–5, 207–11, 217, 231, 254 advertising structure in, 53–54 and assassination of Listyev, 63–64 Berezovsky’s exile and, 245, 255–56 and Berezovsky’s suit against Abramovich, 244, 246, 250 Berezovsky’s TV interests and, 31, 172 business atmosphere in, 15–16, 20–22, 24, 28, 45, 71, 251 Chechen conflicts with, 33, 62, 96–97, 117–18, 129, 133–34, 141, 146, 229 and criminal allegations against Berezovsky, 259 cronyism in, 5 economy of, 14, 21–22, 33–34, 74–76, 82, 87, 132, 141, 144 elections in, 34, 49, 53, 72, 80–91, 96, 105, 118–19, 125, 128–29, 131–32, 134, 146 graft and corruption in, 5, 13, 33, 54, 58–59, 64, 72, 75–76, 81, 105–6, 110, 125, 251 Gusinsky’s TV station and, 33 Kursk incident and, 151, 162 Listyev’s fame and, 51–52 Litvinenko’s death and, 232 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 227 Ostankino Tower fire and, 166 patronage in, 75 and planned assassination of Litvinenko, 215 political parties in, 132–35, 141, 145 Sibneft and, 72–73, 75–76 and symbolism of Ladas, 13 violence and crime in, 5, 15–17, 19–25, 60, 63–64 World Economic Forum and, 81–82 Russian Public Television, see ORT S Saakashvili, Mikheil, 209 St.


pages: 222 words: 68,089

Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs and the Greatest Wealth in History by Ben Mezrich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, new economy, vertical integration

Marina was equally certain, as she worked her way back down through the extravagant Logovaz Club, that this surreal moment was likely to be just the first of many. The contents of the suitcase might represent a monstrous sum to a woman like Marina, but a million dollars wasn’t going to satisfy a man like Boris Berezovsky for very long. CHAPTER ELEVEN February 1996, World Economic Forum, Annual Meeting, Davos, Switzerland TWO MONTHS BEFORE his fiftieth birthday, and Boris Berezovsky could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had been rendered speechless—and one of those times had involved a blown-up Mercedes and a decapitated driver. But here it was, happening again in the most pristine setting he could ever imagine: an elegant, wood-paneled conference room in an alpine hotel, hanging off the edge of the most spectacular, snow-topped mountain, the air outside so crisp and blue it was like the frozen interior of a diamond.

He knew that the gist of what had been said was nothing he shouldn’t have already known; he had been having similar conversations for the past ten days in Moscow, and the man who had just left the Alpine conference room hadn’t said anything Berezovsky could not have realized himself. But hearing those words, in this place, from such a source—it was beyond sobering. George Soros, the Hungarian-born American billionaire, one of the richest men in the world—and in many ways a personal idol of Berezovsky’s—was exactly the sort of man you came to the World Economic Forum at Davos to meet. To Berezovsky, he represented everything laudable about the West; Soros’s opinions informed Berezovsky of the Western way of thinking about markets, business, and even politics. Berezovsky had searched him out specifically to get his opinion on the situation that was rapidly developing back in his homeland.

A Abramovich, Irina, 196–97, 243 Abramovich, Roman, 82, 113–22, 173–74, 196–201 aluminum interests of, 132, 147, 184, 199, 245, 249–50 background of, 45–47, 50, 113, 115, 121, 186 Berezovsky’s exile and, 182–83, 186–87, 192, 197 Berezovsky’s first meeting with, 46–47 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 45–50, 73, 76, 87–88, 116–18, 122, 130, 147, 174, 182–87, 198–201, 208, 211, 218, 231, 236, 245–46, 248–49, 251 Berezovsky’s suit against, 235–37, 239, 243–52, 254, 258–59 Caribbean cruises of, 44–48, 56, 118, 182 Chechen conflicts and, 117–18 elections and, 87–88, 132 final payments to Berezovsky of, 197–201, 209, 231, 245–46 Goncharova’s package and, 70, 76–77 Goncharova’s relationship with, 69–71 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 119–22 Kursk incident and, 174, 187 oil interests of, 47–50, 56, 72–73, 113, 132, 245 ORT acquisition of, 183–87, 192, 200, 236, 245, 248–49 Patarkatsishvili’s relationship with, 115–16 physical appearance of, 182 Putin and, 147, 174, 184, 187, 245, 248–49 Sibneft and, 71–73, 75, 77, 87–88, 97, 114–17, 147, 184, 186, 199, 218, 231, 245, 248–49 wealth of, 208–9, 231, 243–44 advertising, 31, 53–55, 58–60, 72 Aeroflot, 96–97, 172–73, 192, 206–7 and criminal allegations against Berezovsky, 131, 147, 172, 185 Alexandrovka Dacha, 144 Berezovsky’s eviction from, 173 All-Russia Party, 132–34 aluminum, 83 Abramovich and, 132, 147, 184, 199, 245, 249–50 Berezovsky and, 120, 122, 245, 249–50 in Krasnoyarsk, 119–22 Aluminum Wars, 119, 122 Antibes, 116, 198 Berezovsky’s exile and, 179–82, 185–87 Antigua, 43–44 Aven, Pyotr, 44–45, 248 AvtoVAZ, 11, 13–15 B bankers, banking, 24, 74–75, 77, 82, 200 Aven and, 44 Berezovsky and, 15, 45, 84, 86 Gusinsky and, 32–33, 48, 86, 132, 146 Khodorkovsky and, 74, 204, 207 Most Bank and, 32–33, 132, 146 Barsukov, Mikhail, 91 Berezovsky, Boris Abramovich, 9–17, 27–36, 43–56, 79–91, 114–18, 127–35, 140–48, 157–65, 171–75, 179–87, 195–201, 206–11, 223, 229–41, 243–59 Abramovich’s final payments to, 197–201, 209, 231, 245–46 Abramovich’s oil interests and, 47–50, 56 Abramovich’s relationship with, 45–50, 73, 76, 87–88, 116–18, 122, 130, 147, 174, 182–87, 198–201, 208, 211, 218, 231, 236, 245–46, 248–49, 251 Abramovich sued by, 235–37, 239, 243–52, 254, 258–59 access to Kremlin of, 67, 76, 85, 117–18, 128, 132, 142, 147, 157, 160, 174, 184, 199, 211, 250, 254 Aeroflot and, 96–97, 131, 147, 172–73, 185, 192, 206–7 aluminum interests of, 120, 122, 245, 249–50 and assassination of Listyev, 63, 65–67 attempted arrest of, 48, 64–67 attempted assassinations of, 17, 19–25, 28–29, 35, 48, 62, 79, 85, 110, 147, 174, 180, 200, 210, 259 attempted extradition of, 206, 209–10 background of, 12–14, 32, 45, 61, 181, 186, 200, 207 banking interests of, 15, 45, 84, 86 car business of, 10–11, 13–16, 29, 31–32, 48, 106–7, 142, 181 Caribbean cruises of, 43–48, 50, 56, 72, 118, 148, 182 Chechen conflicts and, 96–97, 117–18 company headquarters of, 9–11, 13 criminal allegations against, 64–67, 131, 147, 172, 185, 192, 200, 259 death of, 257–59 demise of, 252, 259, 262 elections and, 34, 49, 53, 72, 80–91, 96, 105, 125, 128, 131 exile of, 171, 174, 179–83, 185–87, 191–93, 197, 201, 206–8, 210–11, 245, 255–56, 259 Family and, 32, 35, 45, 81, 91, 97, 109, 117, 122, 125, 130–31, 143 financial problems of, 217–18, 230–31, 233, 252, 258–59 Forbes sued by, 211, 254 FSB complaint of, 103, 105, 108–10 FSB-ordered assassination of, 99–103, 108, 110, 129, 200 Goncharova’s package and, 70–71, 76–77 Gusinsky’s relationship with, 32, 48, 83–84, 86, 146, 174 injuries of, 21, 27–29, 32, 82, 110 Khodorkovsky’s arrest and, 206, 210 Klebnikov’s murder and, 254–55 Kommersant and, 109, 172 Korzhakov’s relationship with, 29–32, 35, 147, 174 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 120, 122 Kursk incident and, 157–59, 161–62, 167, 174, 187 Lebed’s relationship with, 118, 120 Listyev’s relationship with, 56, 64 Litvinenko’s death and, 229–31 Litvinenko’s exile and, 190–91 Litvinenko’s imprisonment and, 124, 129, 143 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 227 Litvinenko’s press conference and, 109–11 Litvinenko’s relationship with, 61–67, 96–103, 105–6, 108, 123–24, 129–30, 173, 190–91, 193, 214, 217, 219, 230 Litvinenko’s whistle-blowing and, 101, 103, 105, 108–11 Logovaz Club office of, 61–65, 76–77, 96 national security post of, 96 pace and impatience of, 10–12, 14, 16, 127, 134–35, 254 Patarkatsishvili’s death and, 240–41, 249 Patarkatsishvili’s relationship with, 46–47, 116, 137, 142, 168–69, 171, 174, 179–80, 198, 209, 218, 231, 240–41, 250, 255, 258 physical appearance of, 9–10, 43–44, 61, 66, 76, 174–75, 179, 231, 233–35, 240, 247, 257–58 Presidential Club and, 27–29, 31, 52 Putin and, 106–7, 109–10, 125, 129–34, 141–48, 158–64, 167–68, 171–74, 181, 183–87, 192, 206–7, 209–11, 231, 245, 248, 250–51, 255–56, 261–62 religious beliefs of, 12, 32, 99, 200, 207 security for, 9–10, 17, 24–25, 48, 64–65, 179–82, 192, 195, 207–8, 229, 233–35, 240, 244, 259 Sibneft and, 72–73, 76–77, 80, 82–83, 87–88, 96, 117–18, 184, 199, 245 State Duma post of, 131 TV station interests of, 29–36, 45, 49–50, 52–56, 58, 64, 72, 74, 80, 82, 87, 96, 116, 131, 133–34, 145, 147, 158–63, 165, 167–69, 172–73, 183–87, 191–92, 200, 207, 214, 236, 245, 248 Unity Party and, 132–35 wealth of, 14–15, 29, 32–33, 43, 45, 49, 61, 77, 87, 96–97, 116, 148, 175, 181, 185, 192, 195, 198, 200, 208–9, 234, 241, 258 wet work of, 15–16 womanizing of, 62 World Economic Forum and, 79–82, 84–85 Yeltsin’s relationship with, 23, 31–32, 61, 91, 96, 110, 122, 128, 131 Yeltsin’s resignation and, 140–41 Berezovsky, Galina, 217 Boris, Project, 117 C car business: AvtoVAZ and, 11, 13–15 of Berezovsky, 10–11, 13–16, 29, 31–32, 48, 106–7, 142, 181 Ladas and, 11, 13–16, 181 Caribbean, 208 Abramovich’s cruises in, 44–48, 56, 118, 182 Berezovsky’s cruises in, 43–48, 50, 56, 72, 118, 148, 182 Chas Pik, 58 Château de la Garoupe, 180–83, 185–87, 198, 200 Chechens, Republic of Chechnya: Berezovsky and, 96–97, 117–18 Litvinenko and, 62, 96–97, 129, 191, 193, 229 Putin and, 133–34, 141, 146 Russian conflicts with, 33, 62, 96–97, 117–18, 129, 133–34, 141, 146, 229 Sibneft and, 117 terrorism and, 5, 16, 24, 96, 117, 133, 193 Chubais, Anatoly, 33–34, 74–75 arrests of assistants of, 89–91 elections and, 81, 83–85, 89–90 Communists, 12, 33, 107 elections and, 72, 80–82, 84, 86, 88–89, 128 Russian economy and, 75, 82, 144 Yeltsin and, 30, 72, 80–81, 84, 86 D Davny, Igor, 19–24 Davos Pact, 86 Deripaska, Oleg, 121, 249 Doctorow, Ivan, 37–42 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 55 E Eugene (Abramovich’s associate), 198, 249 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 120–22 Sibneft and, 114–16 F Faces in the Snow, 48, 66 Family, 147 Berezovsky and, 32, 35, 45, 81, 91, 97, 109, 117, 122, 125, 130–31, 143 elections and, 125 Putin and, 107, 109, 130–31, 143 Sibneft and, 117 Yeltsin and, 32, 35, 81, 83, 91, 97, 107, 109, 125, 130–31, 133 Financial Times, 159 Forbes, 256 Berezovsky’s suit against, 211, 254 FSB (Federal Security Service), 91, 207 assassination of Berezovsky ordered by, 99–103, 108, 110, 129, 200 and assassination of Listyev, 64, 66–67 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 66–67 and attempted arrest of Gusinsky, 38, 40–41 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 19–20, 23, 28, 62 Berezovsky’s complaint against, 103, 105, 108–10 Berezovsky’s exile and, 192 business atmosphere and, 21 corruption in, 105–6, 110, 125 Litvinenko and, 19–21, 23, 28, 62–67, 95–100, 102, 105–6, 108–11, 124–25, 129, 190–93, 213, 215, 227, 230 Patarkatsishvili and, 166–67, 171 Putin and, 107–9, 124–25, 129–30, 141, 167, 173, 183 G Gazprom, 146, 198 Georgians, Georgia, 24–25 see also Patarkatsishvili, Badri glasnost, 246 Gloster, Dame Elizabeth, 246, 250–52, 259 Glushkov, Nikolai: arrest and imprisonment of, 206–7, 248–49 criminal allegations against, 172–73, 185, 192 escape attempt of, 207, 214 Gogol, Anton, 37–42 KGB and, 38–39 Goncharova, Marina: Abramovich’s relationship with, 69–71 as accountant, 69, 71, 74 package of, 69–71, 76–77 physical appearance of, 69, 77 Russian economy and, 74–76 Sibneft and, 71, 75–77 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 12, 22, 128 Gorodilov, Viktor, 73 Gusinsky, Vladimir, 162–63 attempted arrest of, 38–42, 48, 66, 174 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 66 background of, 45 banking interests of, 32–33, 48, 86, 132, 146 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 32, 48, 83–84, 86, 146, 174 elections and, 83–84, 86, 132, 146 exile of, 146, 148, 159 Putin and, 146, 148, 167 security for, 35, 38, 40, 42, 174 TV station interests of, 32–35, 83, 86, 132, 146 wealth of, 146 H Hermès, 234–35 I Interfax Press Center, 109–10 Italy, Italians, Litvinenko and, 190, 213–17 Ivan (Berezovsky’s assistant), 88–90 and arrests of Chubais’s assistants, 89–90 Goncharova’s package and, 70–71, 76 J Jews, 12, 32, 99, 200, 207 K KGB, 21–22, 124, 131, 167 business atmosphere and, 21 Gogol and, 38–39 Korzhakov and, 30, 32 Putin and, 107–8, 129, 133, 141, 143, 161, 167, 189 Khodorkovsky, Mikhael, 203–7 arrest and imprisonment of, 205–7, 210 banking interests of, 74, 204, 207 wealth of, 74, 204, 206–7 Yukos and, 74 King, Larry, 52 Klebnikov, Paul, 211, 254–55 Kolesnikov, Dmitri, 149–55 Kursk incident and, 151–55 Kommersant, 109, 172 Korzhakov, Alexander Vasileyevich, 97 and arrests of Chubais’s assistants, 89–90 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 48 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 29–32, 35, 147, 174 Berezovsky’s TV interests and, 29, 31–36, 52, 56, 80, 82 elections and, 34, 49, 82–84, 89–91, 128 Gusinsky and, 32, 34 KGB and, 30, 32 Krasnoyarsk, 114–15, 118–19 aluminum production in, 119–22 labor disputes in, 119–20, 122 Kremlin, 28, 32, 137, 159–61, 184–86, 192, 207, 209–11, 219 Berezovsky’s access to, 67, 76, 85, 117–18, 128, 132, 142, 147, 157, 160, 174, 184, 199, 211, 250, 254 physical appearance of, 127–28 Putin’s ascension to, 130–34, 142–43, 145, 161 krysha, 66, 75, 121 Abramovich and, 49, 77, 116, 187, 199, 201, 209, 246 Berezovsky and, 23–25, 28, 49, 67, 77, 97, 100, 116, 124, 147, 187, 199, 201, 209, 246 Litvinenko and, 25, 67, 100, 124 meaning of, 23 Kuntsevo Dacha, 3–7 Kursk, sinking of, 151–55, 165–67 and Abramovich, 174, 187 and Berezovsky, 157–59, 161–62, 167, 174, 187 and ORT, 158–59, 161–62, 167, 183 and Patarkatsishvili, 183, 187 and Putin, 158–59, 161, 187 L labor disputes, 119–20, 122 Ladas, 181 Berezovsky and, 11, 13–16 as symbol of new Russia, 13 Lebed, General, 89–90, 118–20 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 118, 120 elections and, 86, 90, 118–19 Krasnoyarsk labor disputes and, 120 Lefortovo Prison, 124–25 Lenin, Vladimir, 128 Lisovsky, Sergei, 89 Listyev, Vlad, 51–60 assassination of, 60, 63–67, 72, 97 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 64–67 background of, 55, 57 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 56, 64 Logovaz Club meeting of, 51–55 ORT and, 51–56, 58–59, 63–64, 72 physical appearance of, 51–53, 57–60 politics of, 53 popularity and fame of, 51–55, 59, 63–64 Litskevich, Ivan, 73 Litvinenko, Alexander “Sasha,” 95–103, 213–19 arrests and imprisonments of, 124–26, 129, 143–44, 173, 190, 223 assassination of, 225–32 and assassination of Listyev, 63–67 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 64–67 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 19–25, 28, 62 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 61–67, 96–103, 105–6, 108, 123–24, 129–30, 173, 190–91, 193, 214, 217, 219, 230 business atmosphere and, 21–22 Chechens and, 62, 96–97, 129, 191, 193, 229 elections and, 96 exile of, 189–94, 210, 213–15, 217–19, 222–23 FSB and, 19–21, 23, 28, 62–67, 95–100, 102, 105–6, 108–11, 124–25, 129, 190–93, 213, 215, 227, 230 Italians and, 190, 213–17 Moscow journalist’s murder and, 216–17 and ordered assassination of Berezovsky, 99–102, 110, 129 physical appearance of, 106, 109, 123, 226 planned assassination of, 215 poisoning of, 221–23, 225–31 press conference of, 109–11, 123–24 prison release of, 129–30 Putin and, 106, 108, 110, 124–25, 129, 143–44, 189–90, 214–15, 217 trial of, 123–26 videotape of, 101–3, 105, 110 whistle-blowing of, 101–3, 105, 108–11, 123–25, 129, 215 loans for shares program, 74–76, 115–16 LogoVAZ: advertising and, 31, 54 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 21, 24–25 finances of, 15, 54 Ladas and, 11, 13–15 Patarkatsishvili’s position with, 24–25, 46, 55–56 wet work of, 15–16 Logovaz Club, 49, 87, 118, 130, 137, 140, 144, 165, 172, 182 Berezovsky’s meeting with Listyev at, 51–55 Berezovsky’s office in, 11, 61–65, 76–77, 96 elections and, 85–86, 90 Goncharova’s trip to, 69–71, 76–77 security at, 69–71, 76–77 violence near, 20 Lubyanka, 98–99 Lugovoy, Andrei, 207, 214, 218–19, 223, 227, 230 Luzhkov, Yuri, 132, 134, 146 M Marina (ballroom dancer), 61–63, 97, 101–2, 125–26, 193 beauty of, 20, 25 Litvinenko’s death and, 228 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 222–23 Mario (Litvinenko’s associate), 213–17 Media-Most, 35, 146 Megève, 195–97, 207, 209, 231, 246, 249 Millennium Hotel, 218–19 Moscow, 3, 7, 9, 12, 45, 80, 96, 101, 107, 114, 119, 125, 128–29, 131–33, 146, 148, 171, 173–74, 184, 203, 207–8, 214, 219, 230 and attempted arrest of Berezovsky, 66–67 Berezovsky’s exile and, 180–81 and Berezovsky’s trip to Antigua, 43–44 Gusinsky and, 32, 35, 40–42, 48 Listyev and, 58–59, 63, 66 Litvinenko’s exile and, 190–91 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 227 Sibneft and, 75 violence and crime in, 20–25, 40–42, 65, 98, 133, 216–17 Yeltsin and, 30 Moscow Times, The, 173 Most Bank, 32–33, 132, 146 N nickel manufacturing, 74, 82–83 9/11 terrorist attacks, 216 Novosibirsk, 114, 203 NTV, 33, 83, 146 elections and, 86, 132, 134 Ostankino Tower fire and, 165 O oil, 82–83 Abramovich and, 47–50, 56, 72–73, 113, 132, 245 Berezovsky and, 47–50, 56 Yukos and, 74, 82, 207 see also Sibneft Oligarchs, 243 backgrounds of, 5 elections and, 83–84, 87, 89–91, 128 Kuntsevo meeting of, 4–6 Putin and, 6–7, 144–48, 159, 163, 173 security for, 59 violence and, 5 wealth of, 4–7 World Economic Forum and, 81, 84 ORT (Russian Public Television): Abramovich’s acquisition of, 183–87, 192, 200, 236, 245, 248–49 advertising on, 53–55, 58–60, 72 Berezovsky’s interest in, 33–35, 45, 49–50, 52–56, 58, 64, 72, 74, 80, 82, 87, 96, 116, 131, 133–34, 145, 147, 158–63, 165, 167–69, 172–73, 183–87, 191–92, 200, 207, 214, 236, 245, 248 Berezovsky’s ordered assassination and, 102 Berezovsky’s ordered removal from, 162–63, 167–69, 172–73 Berezovsky’s sale of, 183–87, 191–92, 200, 207, 236, 245, 248–49 and criminal allegations against Berezovsky, 131 elections and, 34, 49, 53, 72, 82, 86 Kursk incident and, 158–59, 161–62, 167, 183 Listyev and, 51–56, 58–59, 63–64, 72 Ostankino Tower fire and, 165 Patarkatsishvili’s position with, 55–56 Putin and, 133–34, 144–45, 158–63, 167–68, 172, 183–85, 192, 248–49 Ostankino Tower fire, 165–67 P Patarkatsishvili, Badri, 141–42, 165–69 and Abramovich’s final payments to Berezovsky, 197–201, 209, 246 Abramovich’s relationship with, 115–16 and attempted assassination of Berezovsky, 24–25 Berezovsky’s exile and, 174, 179–82 and Berezovsky’s first meeting with Abramovich, 46–47 and Berezovsky’s meeting with Listyev, 52, 54–55 and Berezovsky’s ordered removal from ORT, 167–69 Berezovsky’s relationship with, 46–47, 116, 137, 142, 168–69, 171, 174, 179–80, 198, 209, 218, 231, 240–41, 250, 255, 258 and Berezovsky’s sale of ORT, 183–85 and Berezovsky’s suit against Abramovich, 237, 245–46, 248, 250 Chechen conflicts and, 96–97, 117 criminal allegations against, 207 death of, 240–41, 249, 255 elections and, 85–86, 88, 90–91 exile of, 207, 240 FSB and, 166–67, 171 Georgian politics and, 209, 218, 231, 240–41 Krasnoyarsk aluminum production and, 120 Kursk incident and, 183, 187 Ostankino Tower fire and, 165–67 physical appearance of, 55, 113, 116, 168, 196, 198 position with LogoVAZ of, 24–25, 46, 55–56 position with ORT of, 55–56 Putin and, 147, 160, 167–69, 171, 181, 183, 209 Siberian trip of, 113–15, 118 Sibneft and, 75, 116 Unity Party and, 132–33 wealth of, 209, 240 Patrushev, Nikolai, 167 perestroika, 12–13, 16, 32, 186, 246 Presidential Club: Berezovsky and, 27–29, 31, 45, 52, 85 elections and, 85 Primokov, Yevgeny, 131 Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 106–10, 191, 246 Abramovich and, 147, 174, 184, 187, 245, 248–49 as acting president, 140–41, 144 ascension to Kremlin of, 130–34, 142–43, 145, 161 background of, 107–8, 161 Berezovsky and, 106–7, 109–10, 125, 129–34, 141–48, 158–64, 167–68, 171–74, 181, 183–87, 192, 206–7, 209–11, 231, 245, 248, 250–51, 255–56, 261–62 Chechen conflicts and, 133–34, 141, 146 Family and, 107, 109, 130–31, 143 FSB and, 107–9, 124–25, 129–30, 141, 167, 173, 183 Gusinsky and, 146, 148, 167 KGB and, 107–8, 129, 133, 141, 143, 161, 167, 189 Kuntsevo meeting and, 5–7 Kursk incident and, 158–59, 161, 187 Litvinenko and, 106, 108, 110, 124–25, 129, 143–44, 189–90, 214–15, 217 Oligarchs and, 6–7, 144–48, 159, 163, 173 ORT and, 133–34, 144–45, 158–63, 167–68, 172, 183–85, 192, 248–49 Patarkatsishvili and, 147, 160, 167–69, 171, 181, 183, 209 physical appearance of, 5–6, 106, 144–45, 160 popularity of, 144–45, 172 presidential campaign of, 131–32, 134, 144–46, 160, 183, 189 tea invitation of, 148 Yeltsin and, 107, 109, 133, 140–41 R Red Directors, 13, 15, 91 krysha and, 24 Sibneft and, 73 roof, see krysha Rusal, 245 Russian Federation, 69, 107, 150–51, 198, 200–201, 204–5, 207–11, 217, 231, 254 advertising structure in, 53–54 and assassination of Listyev, 63–64 Berezovsky’s exile and, 245, 255–56 and Berezovsky’s suit against Abramovich, 244, 246, 250 Berezovsky’s TV interests and, 31, 172 business atmosphere in, 15–16, 20–22, 24, 28, 45, 71, 251 Chechen conflicts with, 33, 62, 96–97, 117–18, 129, 133–34, 141, 146, 229 and criminal allegations against Berezovsky, 259 cronyism in, 5 economy of, 14, 21–22, 33–34, 74–76, 82, 87, 132, 141, 144 elections in, 34, 49, 53, 72, 80–91, 96, 105, 118–19, 125, 128–29, 131–32, 134, 146 graft and corruption in, 5, 13, 33, 54, 58–59, 64, 72, 75–76, 81, 105–6, 110, 125, 251 Gusinsky’s TV station and, 33 Kursk incident and, 151, 162 Listyev’s fame and, 51–52 Litvinenko’s death and, 232 Litvinenko’s poisoning and, 227 Ostankino Tower fire and, 166 patronage in, 75 and planned assassination of Litvinenko, 215 political parties in, 132–35, 141, 145 Sibneft and, 72–73, 75–76 and symbolism of Ladas, 13 violence and crime in, 5, 15–17, 19–25, 60, 63–64 World Economic Forum and, 81–82 Russian Public Television, see ORT S Saakashvili, Mikheil, 209 St.


pages: 299 words: 91,839

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anne Wojcicki, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, business process, call centre, carbon tax, cashless society, citizen journalism, clean water, commoditize, connected car, content marketing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, different worldview, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, don't be evil, Dunbar number, fake news, fear of failure, Firefox, future of journalism, G4S, Golden age of television, Google Earth, Googley, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, old-boy network, PageRank, peer-to-peer lending, post scarcity, prediction markets, pre–internet, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, social graph, social software, social web, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, web of trust, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Every time someone says something good about you online because of your product, service, reputation, honesty, openness, or helpfulness, you should knock another dollar off your advertising budget. Will it ever get to zero? Only if you’re lucky. New Society Elegant organization Elegant organization I sat, dumbfounded, in an audience of executives at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum International Media Council in Davos, Switzerland, as the head of a powerful news organization begged young Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, for his secret. Please, the publisher beseeched him, how can my publication start a community like yours? We should own a community, shouldn’t we? Tell us how. Zuckerberg, 22 at the time, is a geek of few words.

In any case, the magazine finally started. After an astounding $200 million investment—not all of it my fault—Entertainment Weekly became a franchise that brings in a few hundred million dollars a year. Innovation happens in spite of the structure of organizations. In 2008, I joined a seminar on innovation at the World Economic Forum at Davos. It was a highly formatted hour, with the entire room sitting in a circle (making the moderator dizzy). They had us write down the technology we loved most. Then we compared notes with a neighbor and came up with some neat invention out of this mashup. We heard a few cute ideas and then, thank goodness, a scientist in the room put a stop to it.

Google will have the flexibility to put servers most anywhere on earth, expanding its reach (Google has even patented the idea of wave-powered, water-cooled server farms on platforms in oceans). And the company will get due credit for helping to save the planet. “Our primary goal is not to fix the world,” Larry Page has said. But wouldn’t that be a nice fringe benefit? At the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos in 2008, I attended a forum at which Google’s founders presented their energy vision and I came away with a sense of how they would manage other industries and even how they would run the government (more on that later). It gave me a window into the engineers’ worldview. Just before this Google.org forum, I had attended a session with Bono and former Vice President Al Gore.


pages: 290 words: 84,375

China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle by Dinny McMahon

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, bank run, business cycle, California gold rush, capital controls, crony capitalism, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, industrial robot, invisible hand, low interest rates, megacity, middle-income trap, military-industrial complex, money market fund, mortgage debt, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, short selling, Silicon Valley, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban planning, working-age population, zero-sum game

“irrationally low prices”: David Hoffman and Andrew Polk, “The Long Soft Fall in Chinese Growth,” white paper, Conference Board, October 2014, https://www.conference-board.org/publications/publicationdetail.cfm?publicationid=2847&centerId=6. “protectionist tendencies”: “China at Davos.” 9. THE NEW NORMAL subprime mortgage crisis: “President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full,” World Economic Forum, January 17, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum. aluminum, and nickel: Shaun Roche and Marina Rousset, “China: Credit, Collateral, and Commodity Prices,” Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research working paper no. 27, December 2015.

Hanson, “The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 21906, January 2016, http://www.nber.org/papers/w21906. “light and air”: “President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full,” World Economic Forum, January 17, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum. from the year before: “China ‘Highly Alert’ of Overcapacity in Robotics: Regulator,” Xinhuanet, March 11, 2017, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-03/11/c_136120523.htm. “expanding,” he said: “工信部副部长辛国斌:机器人已有投资过剩隐忧” [Deputy Minister of Industry and Information Xin Guobin: Robots already facing overinvestment problems], Sina, June 16, 2016, http://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2016-06-16/doc-ifxtfrrc3709815.shtml.

Supply-side reform requires shutting down surplus factories, and opening new factories for things China needs but simply doesn’t currently make. Xi’s vision is perhaps best encapsulated by the example of the ballpoint pen. China makes 80% of the world’s pens, producing about thirty-eight billion a year, yet, according to Premier Li Keqiang, none of them are up to snuff. While attending the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Premier Li purportedly enjoyed using Swiss ballpoint pens so much that, when he returned to China, he went looking for an explanation as to “why China can’t produce a pen that writes as smoothly and easily.” The key to producing a quality ballpoint pen is the tiny ball bearing fitted into the pen’s nib.


Global Financial Crisis by Noah Berlatsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, centre right, circulation of elites, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, energy security, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Money creation, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, social contagion, South China Sea, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, working poor

T he premiers of China and Russia accused America of sparking the economic crisis as the Davos [Switzerland] political and business summit made a gloomy start. Wen Jiabao and Vladimir Putin [the premiers of China and Russia, respectively] both blamed “capitalist excesses” for Jenny Booth, “China and Russia Blame US for Financial Crisis,” Times Online, January 29, 2009. Copyright © 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd. Reproduced by permission. 22 Causes of the Global Financial Crisis the global downturn, as one followed the other to the podium at the opening of the World Economic Forum last night [January 2009]. American Policies Were Reckless The Chinese premier began with a speech asserting that the worst recession since the Great Depression had been caused by blind pursuit of profit.

These are disconcerting numbers, especially for Brown’s Labour party, which almost kicked the prime minister out of office last summer. Coming to grips with the public’s growing anger will be one of the prime minister’s most important tasks. Although Brown’s smart, academic analyses against protectionism are impressive to listeners in places like Davos [Switzerland, site of the World Economic Forum], the premier is increasingly alienating concerned traditional voters like the folks in Lincolnshire. In better times, for example, the strike in front of the Lincolnshire refinery would have elicited nothing but a shrug from most British workers. The operator of the plant, the 113 The Global Financial Crisis French energy company Total, had wanted to use 300 skilled workers from Italy and Portugal, provided by an Italian subcontractor, for a construction project.

See Derivatives Credit markets bubble/freezes, 34–35, 208, 211, 212 securitization’s effects, 56, 82, 89–90 Credit ratings, national, 94, 95, 100 Credit risks, 17, 28 See also Derivatives Currency instability, 59–64, 103, 106, 118 Czech Republic, 99 D Daremblum, Jaime, 180–185 Darling, Alistair, 113, 222 David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 158 Davos, Switzerland World Economic Forum, 2009, 22–26, 113 Debt relief, 193, 198–199 Defaults, mortgages, 34 Deflation Europe, 97–98, 99 Federal Reserve avoidance measures, 41 Japan, 209, 215 Dembele, Demba Moussa, 186– 200 Denmark, 95 Dennis, Felix, 60 251 The Global Financial Crisis Deposit insurance, 150, 154, 208– 209, 213, 214, 229 Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan, 208–209, 210, 218 Deposits.


pages: 285 words: 86,174

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Chris Hayes

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, carried interest, circulation of elites, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kenneth Arrow, Mark Zuckerberg, mass affluent, mass incarceration, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Savings and loan crisis, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, Vilfredo Pareto, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

“Go all the way back to Sumerian civilization,” Bill Clinton instructed a crowd of global jet-setters at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, “and you’ll see that every successful civilization builds institutions that work, that lift people up and reward people for their greatness. Then, if you look at every one of those civilizations, all those institutions that benefited people get long in the tooth. They get creaky. The people ruling them become more interested in holding on to power than the purpose they were designed for. That’s where we are now in the public and private sector.” The Davos crowd seemed unmoved by this rare dose of honesty. But then, the mood of Davos that year was a strange mix of cluelessness, self-importance, and repressed shame.

The successful overachiever can only enjoy the perks of his relatively exalted status long enough to realize that there’s an entire world of heretofore unseen perks, power, and status that’s suddenly come within view and yet remains out of reach. I caught a glimpse of this in 2011 when I attended the Davos World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global ruling class that takes place each January in Switzerland. When you arrive in the Zurich airport, your first instinct is to feel a bit of satisfaction that you are one of the elect few chosen to hobnob with the most powerful people on earth. Airport signs welcome and direct you to a special booth where exceedingly polite staff give you a ticket for a free shuttle bus that will drive you the two hours to the small ski-resort town in the Alps.

But you can’t help but notice that other guests, the ones who landed on the same plane but who were sitting in first class, are being greeted by an army of attractive red-coated escorts who help them with their bags before whisking them off in gleaming black Mercedes S-Class sedans for the two-hour drive. Suddenly your perspective shifts. At first you had viewed yourself as special and distinct from all those poor saps who would never be allowed into the inner sanctum of global power that is the World Economic Forum. But now you realize that, in the context of Davos attendees, you are a member of the unwashed masses, crammed into a bus like so much coach chattel. And while you’re having this realization, those same special VIPs whom you’ve quickly come to envy are enjoying their ride inside their plush leather confines. But later that night they will find out over cocktails that those who are the true insiders don’t fly on commercial flights into Zurich, they take private jets and then transfer to helicopters, which make the trip from Zurich in about thirty minutes and feature breathtaking views of the Alps.


pages: 208 words: 57,602

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, automated trading system, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, business process, call centre, choice architecture, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, fake news, fault tolerance, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Freestyle chess, future of work, Future Shock, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Google Hangouts, GPT-3, hiring and firing, hustle culture, hype cycle, income inequality, industrial robot, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, lockdown, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Narrative Science, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, OpenAI, pattern recognition, planetary scale, plutocrats, Productivity paradox, QAnon, recommendation engine, remote working, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture

But they all knew that there would be victims. None of them were under the impression that AI and automation will be good for everyone, and nobody was even considering pumping the brakes. I got my first glimpse of this other automation conversation during the World Economic Forum, an annual conference held in Davos, Switzerland. Davos bills itself as a high-minded confab where global elites gather to discuss the world’s most pressing problems, but in reality it’s more like the Coachella of capitalism—a beyond-satire boondoggle where plutocrats, politicians, and do-gooder celebrities come to see and be seen.

Goodman, “The Robots Are Coming, and Sweden Is Fine,” New York Times, December 27, 2017. Some leaders, including Bill Gates and New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio Richard Rubin, “The Robot Tax Debate Heats Up,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2020. A 2019 report by the World Economic Forum “Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-Led Action for the Future of Work,” World Economic Forum, January 22, 2019. Airbnb…was forced to lay off 25 percent of its staff Erin Griffith, “Airbnb Was Like a Family. Until the Layoffs Started,” New York Times, July 17, 2020. Executives from Accenture Sarah Fielding, “Accenture and Verizon Lead Collaborative Effort to Help Furloughed or Laid-Off Workers Find a New Job,” Fortune, April 14, 2020.

But there is little evidence, so far, that these programs actually work at scale. Many companies find it easier to hire new employees than retrain existing ones, and some in-demand skills, such as data science, require specialized knowledge that can’t be taught in a six-week seminar. A 2019 report by the World Economic Forum estimated that of the workers who will be fully displaced by automation in the next decade, only one in four can be successfully reskilled by private-sector programs. Personally, I’m skeptical that the private sector will save us from a problem it is helping to cause. I’d favor a UBI-style plan coupled with Medicare for All and generous unemployment benefits for workers who are displaced by automation, similar to how the federal government stepped in with emergency cash transfers during the Covid-19 pandemic.


pages: 251 words: 76,868

How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, bank run, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, borderless world, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, congestion pricing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, double entry bookkeeping, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, friendly fire, global village, Global Witness, Google Earth, high net worth, high-speed rail, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, private military company, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, sustainable-tourism, Ted Nordhaus, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, X Prize

Or maybe a new and more exclusive G-8 will form, kicking marginal members, such as Argentina and Italy, out of the larger group. Still, as we experiment with the G-20 and push leading nations to focus on coordination rather than communiqués, the global diplomatic system will evolve—and so will we. Who Has the Money Makes the Rules At the World Economic Forum’s 2009 Davos meeting, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao succinctly articulated what became the dominant narrative of the global financial crisis, claiming it had its roots in an “unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption” and the “blind pursuit of profits.”

The largest humanitarian NGOs (whose annual giving exceeds $20 billion) have teamed with Microsoft in an “NGO Connection” platform to assist them in compiling and sharing best practices. This kind of interoperability planning is what we typically expect from members of the NATO alliance—now anyone can do it. Flash Diplomacy: The World Economic Forum On a typically sunny day in the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, more than one thousand men and women gathered for anything but a day at the beach. All top figures in their fields, they were convened by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for a “Summit on the Global Agenda,” lending their minds to what the BBC’s Nik Gowing dubbed a “fundamental reboot” of global problem solving. But rather than formulating extravagant proposals, they huddled in “Global Agenda Councils” to perform mental brain dumps, sharing the latest thinking on alternative energy, food security, Mideast peace, financial risk, social entrepreneurship, biodiversity, trade liberalization, and dozens of other issues.

The New Middle Ages The New Rules of the Game Generation Y Geopolitics Chapter Two The New Diplomats From Model United Nations to Model Medievalism The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Diplomats America’s “Diplomacy in Action” Celebrity Diplomats: Does Life Imitate Art? Stateless Statesmen and Super-NGOs Flash Diplomacy: The World Economic Forum The Broker: The Clinton Global Initiative Chapter Three The (Fill-in-the-Blank) Consensus “Twenty HUBS and No HQ” Who Has the Money Makes the Rules Public and Private Part Two SAVING US FROM OURSELVES Chapter Four Peace Without War A World of Complexes Can an Oxymoron Stop a War?


pages: 205 words: 61,903

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.” Government was the enemy, and had to be kept from exercising its authority over this new collective project of humankind. Most of us missed the signature line at the end, “Davos, Switzerland, February 8, 1996”—the time and place of the famous World Economic Forum, ground zero for global capitalism. Deregulation sounded good at the time. We were just ravers and cyberpunks, paranoid about the government arresting us for drugs. We knew John Barlow as the freewheeling Grateful Dead lyricist—not in his earlier role as the libertarian who ran Dick Cheney’s congressional campaign.

You can monopolize, but you can’t escape. 11 The Mindset in the Mirror RESISTANCE IS FUTILE T he greatest danger to the holders of The Mindset would be for us to really listen to what they’re telling us and react accordingly. In the techno-utopian fantasies they share from TED stages, Davos podiums, and Silicon Valley pitch decks, we human beings are regarded as little more than iron filings flying back and forth between the magnetic poles set up by the rich and powerful, mostly in an effort to keep us from impinging on their lifestyles. How can anyone listen to World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab’s vision for a Great Reset without getting the heebie-jeebies? His glossy brochures and high-budget videos depict a total solution for how the world’s biggest banks and corporations can employ automation to fix joblessness, mass surveillance to solve immigration, biometric tracking to ensure global health, sensor networks to upgrade agriculture, blockchains to wipe out slav ery, geo-engineering to remedy climate change, and capitalism to repair the extractive damage of, well, capitalism.

Funded by billionaire Deadhead and early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, as well as a handful of other tech bros who are now feeling ashamed of themselves for the platforms they’ve built, it’s a well-intentioned but problematic effort. Red flags abound , from the Center’s association with the World Economic Forum Global AI Council to its willingness to accept social media companies’ claims about their technology’s power over us at face value. Further, many of these new tech reformers have yet to divest from their holdings in Google, Facebook, and others aiming at our brainstems—companies they now claim are “as big an existential threat to humanity as climate change.”


pages: 397 words: 112,034

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy by David Hale, Lyric Hughes Hale

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, classic study, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversification, energy security, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, global village, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, passive investing, payday loans, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precautionary principle, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yield curve

The goal of this compendium is to provide original insights from a diverse mixture of independent analysts and forecasters. The contributors include the founder of the Hong Kong currency board, the former prime minister of Peru, the former research director of the central bank of Botswana, the founder of a Mexican fund management group, economic analysts in Hong Kong, a former director of the Davos World Economic Forum, and many other distinguished authors. There are certain issues that loom large in the intermediate-term outlook. Will the recovery in US final demand be sustained? Can Chinese microeconomic policy support high growth for another year? How will European countries such as Britain cope with dramatic fiscal tightening?

In 1989, he consolidated his power by successively jailing Joaquín Hernández Galicia (“La Quina”), the leader of the oil workers’ union, and Eduardo Legorreta, one of the most prominent brokers in Mexico. In January 1990, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Salinas realized at the World Economic Forum’s annual Davos meeting that he would have to compete with the newly liberated countries of Eastern Europe. Salinas ordered the beginning of negotiations toward a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the reprivatization of the banking system. The banks were privatized between June 1991 and June 1992, and NAFTA was negotiated at a breakneck pace and approved by the US Congress in November 1993, with implementation of the agreement beginning on January 1, 1994.

On four occasions while I was working at the World Economic Forum in 2006, I gathered a group of economists, prominent investment bankers, and insurers to brainstorm about the impending risks that could derail the “Goldilocks scenario” that then prevailed. The disconnect between the concerns and warnings of the economists—among them Roubini Global Economics’ Nouriel Roubini and David Rosenberg, then with Merrill Lynch—and the indestructible optimism of the investment bankers and insurers was startling. This series of meetings subsequently led to a session at Davos in January 2007 aptly titled “Housing Deflation: What’s the Hissing Sound?”


Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America by David Callahan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, automated trading system, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, corporate social responsibility, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Thorp, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial independence, global village, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, income inequality, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John Markoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, medical malpractice, mega-rich, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, NetJets, new economy, offshore financial centre, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, power law, profit maximization, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Florida, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, short selling, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stem cell, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, systematic bias, systems thinking, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, working poor, World Values Survey

Since Gates began to ramp up his giving, the topics of global health and poverty have gone from the margins of elite conversation to its center. Just look at Davos, where Gates has been a fixture for years. It used to be—before Angelina Jolie showed up—that the World Economic Forum was a venue for neoliberal scheming by business and government leaders. The antiglobalization left so demonized Davos that it repeatedly tried to shut the forum down with protests and created its own global conference, the World Social Forum, to counter Davos’s insidious influence. A funny thing has happened in the last few years, however: Davos is no longer simply a pep rally for global capitalism; it is now also a pep rally for global humanitarianism.

bnotes.indd 298 5/11/10 6:29:34 AM notes to pages 111–127 299 3. Michelle O’Keeffe, “Computer Millionaire Helps Just a Little Byte,” Sunday Mirror, September 15, 2002. 4. Nicole Lewis, “The Audacity of Hope,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, February 22, 2007. 5. Ibid. 6. “Bill Gates—2002 World Economic Forum,” www.gatesfoundation .org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bill-gates-2002-world-economic-forum .aspx. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. “Remarks by Bill Gates: Global Foundation Address, September 12, 2000,” www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/billgates-2000-global-foundation.aspx. 11. “William J. Brennan, Jr., Defense of Freedom Award Recipient, 2004,” Media Law Resource Center, 2004. 12.

By 2008, he had come to believe that free markets had fundamentally failed to meet the basic needs of people at the bottom of the global income ladder. To raise up the lives of the poor and truly conquer dread diseases, he believed that a new kind of capitalism would be needed. Gates put forth this thesis during a keynote address at the 2008 meeting of the World Economic Forum, long a venue for celebrating the market’s virtues. Gates told the assembled crowd of luminaries that capitalism was a great system—except for poor people who don’t have any money. The market had plenty of incentives to address problems that rich people worried about—for instance, finding a cure to baldness—but there were no incentives to tackle the problems that plagued the poor, such as finding a vaccine for malaria.


pages: 391 words: 97,018

Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline . . . And the Rise of a New Economy by Daniel Gross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset-backed security, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, congestion pricing, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, demand response, Donald Trump, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, illegal immigration, index fund, intangible asset, intermodal, inventory management, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, LNG terminal, low interest rates, low skilled workers, man camp, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, money market fund, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, plutocrats, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, risk tolerance, risk/return, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, the High Line, transit-oriented development, Wall-E, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game, Zipcar

They have proven able to build ideas to scale and to plug into financial, trading, investing, and consumer systems that can supercharge growth. CHAPTER 13 Supersize Nation: Scale, Scope, and Systems At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2010, the world’s good and great gathered to observe and meditate (yet again) on the demise of America as a vital economic force. But in the space of a couple of hours toward the end of the confab, I experienced a set of revelations that set me thinking that the Davos consensus was wrong yet again. First, I stopped by the annual Friday night Shabbat dinner, the trifecta of bad food: Swiss, institutional, and kosher.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted in September 2010 found that 61 percent of Americans believed the country was in a state of decline and that only 27 percent were confident their children’s future standard of living would be better than their own. Americans who ventured abroad after the Great Panic of 2008 suffered a series of insults and pokes in the eye. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2010, amid the panels on climate change, green technology, and the need to reimagine capitalism, American voices were conspicuous by their absence. The United States, which had once dominated the forum, occupied negative space in the multilevel Kongresszentrum.

Thanks to Susan Kreifels at the East-West Center in Honolulu for including me in the 2009 Japan exchange; to Alison Bradley and Zhen He, intrepid guides and wranglers for two China-U.S. Exchange Foundation fellowships, in 2009 and 2011; to Will Bohlen and Randy Soderquist of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, with whom I traveled to South Africa, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Adrian Monck and Kai Bucher at the World Economic Forum have made it possible for me to attend many extremely useful events. Dean Vance Roley hosted me for a very fruitful week at the University of Hawaii Shidler School of Business. I also spent a week in the fall of 2011 at the Hoover Institution, collecting thoughts and writing, and wondering why I shouldn’t move to northern California.


pages: 324 words: 93,606

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, American Legislative Exchange Council, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, cashless society, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, effective altruism, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, germ theory of disease, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Hollis, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mitch Kapor, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, obamacare, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school choice, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, tacit knowledge, technological solutionism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators

The idea reportedly hit him in Davos, at a meeting of the World Economic Forum, while billionaires and heads of state lingered for a chance to shake Clinton’s hand. Eying the queues of adoring fans, Band realized that Clinton’s star power could be leveraged for philanthropic good – albeit not in the traditional way. Established in 2001, Clinton’s philanthropic foundation was already up and running. The William J. Clinton Foundation dispensed money to numerous causes, with a focus on global health and economic development. Band’s idea was something new. He saw the need for an annual event, similar to Davos, which could bring powerful elites into contact with each other to forge ‘partnerships’ aimed at solving global problems.

What’s remarkable about this belief is its resilience at a time when the recent subprime mortgage crisis seemed poised to douse the enthusiasm of social entrepreneurship champions – a resilience that surprised even staffers at places like the World Economic Forum. In March 2009 I sat in the WEF’s Geneva office with a WEF policy advisor. ‘When this crisis hit last autumn’, she said, ‘I [thought] that’s going to impact us a lot because no one is going to want to send a CEO for five days or four days in this time of crisis’. She was relieved when the 2009 forum had a ‘record attendance … I was really happy because the forum wants to be a neutral platform where discussions are held at a high level … in times of crisis, we want to be even more useful. And this is exactly what we proved with Davos this year’. The value of pro-market solutions particularly during times of economic catastrophe has been one of the most common themes to emerge out of the 2008 collapse, a crisis which initially led to questions over whether the private sector was, as Georgia Keohane writes, ‘the best exemplar of corporate governance, accountability, or long-term investment savvy’.39 At the 2009 Skoll World Forum, just months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, there was very little acknowledgement of the role that business played in destabilizing markets.

Since 2003, the Skoll World Forum has become a flagship event on the social entrepreneur’s annual calendar – as hotly anticipated by some as it is unknown to those struggling to understand what a social entrepreneur is, let alone realize there’s a conference complete with its own fringe festival, the ‘Oxford Jam’ – an opportunity, the 2011 Skoll conference programme promises, for late-night networking and cabaret performances. Alongside Skoll and the World Economic Forum, there are smaller events such as Hedgestock – a 2006 gathering in Knebworth, Hertfordshire, where 4,000 hedge fund managers paid £500 per head to network in open pastures flanked by market stalls selling tailor-made golf clubs and holiday homes in Europe. The recent financial crisis hit some attendees harder than others.


pages: 288 words: 85,073

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund

"World Economic Forum" Davos, animal electricity, clean water, colonial rule, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, fake news, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, global pandemic, Hans Rosling, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), jimmy wales, linked data, lone genius, microcredit, purchasing power parity, revenue passenger mile, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Walter Mischel

“Rise of the West: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe: A long-term perspective from the sixth through eighteenth centuries.” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 2 (February 2009): 409–45. gapm.io/xriwe. van Zanden[3], van Zanden, Jan Luiten, et al., eds. How Was Life? Global Well-Being Since 1820. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2014. gapm.io/x-zanoecd. WEF (World Economic Forum). “Davos 2015—Sustainable Development: Demystifying the Facts.” Filmed Davos, Switzerland, January 2015. WEF video, 15:42. Link to 5 minutes 18 seconds into the presentation, when Hans show the audience results: https://youtu.be/3pVlaEbpJ7k?t=5m18s. White[1]. White, Matthew. The Great Big Book of Horrible Things. New York: W.W.

Could the media be to blame? Of course I thought about that. But it wasn’t the answer. Sure, the media plays a role, and I discuss that later, but we must not make them into a pantomime villain. We cannot just shout “boo, hiss” at the media. I had a defining moment in January 2015, at the World Economic Forum in the small and fashionable Swiss town of Davos. One thousand of the world’s most powerful and influential political and business leaders, entrepreneurs, researchers, activists, journalists, and even many high-ranking UN officials had queued for seats at the forum’s main session on socioeconomic and sustainable development, featuring me, and Bill and Melinda Gates.

Per Person “The forecasts show that it is China, India, and the other emerging economies that are increasing their carbon dioxide emissions at a speed that will cause dangerous climate change. In fact, China already emits more CO2 than the USA, and India already emits more than Germany.” This outspoken statement came from an environment minister from a European Union country who was part of a panel discussing climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2007. He made his attribution of blame in a neutral tone of voice, as if he were stating a self-evident fact. Had he been watching the faces of the Chinese and Indian panel members he would have realized that his view was not self-evident at all. The Chinese expert looked angry but continued to stare straight ahead.


pages: 265 words: 80,510

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy by Frank Vogl

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, corporate governance, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Global Witness, Greensill Capital, income inequality, information security, joint-stock company, London Interbank Offered Rate, Londongrad, low interest rates, market clearing, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, profit maximization, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, stock buybacks, too big to fail, WikiLeaks

—New Year’s address,1 January 1990, by Vaclav Havel, the new president of Czechoslovakia (following forty years of Communist Party/Soviet-controlled rule of his country) FLASHBACK TO JANUARY 1990 In late January 1990, I was in Davos, Switzerland, to witness a remarkable event. Six middle-aged men wearing ill-fitting business suits gathered on the stage. They looked almost as bewildered as the large audience of leaders of Western capitalism before them. The men on the stage did not know each other, yet they had a great deal in common. The venue was the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—the meeting of the chief executives of the world’s largest corporations, tycoons of finance, and power brokers in global investment.

With the benefit of hindsight and given his profound understanding of politics and finance, it remains surprising to me that actions done on his watch, and by his immediate successors, should do so much to damage the health of his bank, and more broadly the reputation of German banking.21 Whether as head of Germany’s biggest bank, as chairman of the IIF, as President of the trustees of the World Economic Forum, which runs the annual Davos, Switzerland, gathering of the world’s business leaders, or as a board director of such enterprises as Siemens and Royal Dutch Shell, Ackermann was constantly building his personal network. The global range of his contacts in business and politics helped him to keep expanding Deutsche Bank’s businesses.

This total exceeds the 2019 fiscal year budget for the US Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Air Force combined; it is considerably more than the annual sales of Amazon; and it is even greater than the total annual sales of the world’s largest retailer, Walmart,2 and Walmart accounts for 10 percent of all US consumer spending. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has stated that across the world: “One trillion dollars are paid in bribes annually, while another $2.6 trillion are stolen; all due to corruption.”3 Striving to place the costs of corruption in more human terms, just consider that the World Economic Forum has pointed out that the United Nations has estimated that by investing $116 billion a year—a drop in the ocean compared to the trillions wasted on corruption—we could wipe out hunger in a little over a decade.4 Economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have estimated that global corruption costs 1.5 to 2 percent of global GDP5 and that the costs of corruption are upwards of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion annually.6 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that 57 percent of foreign bribery cases prosecuted under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention involved bribes to obtain public contracts.7 According to a 2013 EU Eurobarometer survey, more than 30 percent of companies participating in EU public procurement say corruption prevented them from winning a contract.


pages: 382 words: 105,819

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Black Lives Matter, Boycotts of Israel, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, carbon credits, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, computer age, cross-subsidies, dark pattern, data is the new oil, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, game design, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, It's morning again in America, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, laissez-faire capitalism, Lean Startup, light touch regulation, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. “The Current Moment in History,” remarks by George Soros delivered at the World Economic Forum meeting, Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2018. Reprinted by permission of George Soros. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: McNamee, Roger, author. Title: Zucked : waking up to the facebook catastrophe / Roger McNamee. Description: New York : Penguin Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

In my years in the investment business, there were a handful of people whose brilliance dazzled me, and George Soros was one. In an email, Soros’s colleague Michael Vachon explained that Soros had read my Washington Monthly essay and liked it so much he planned to use it as the frame for a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 25. Would I be willing to meet with Mr. Soros to help him write the speech? I certainly would. We agreed to meet at the end of the week. That same day, I called my friend Chris Kelly, the former chief privacy officer of Facebook, who had originally introduced me to Zuck.

My thanks go to Noah Stein and his terrific colleagues. Thank you to William Schultz and Andrew Goldfarb for great legal advice. Thank you to Erin McKean for helping me see how the changing perception of Facebook reveals itself in language. I owe huge thanks to George and Tamiko Soros. George based a speech at the World Economic Forum’s Davos conference on my Washington Monthly essay and introduced me to an amazing set of ideas and people. Michael Vachon, in particular, has earned my thanks. One of the most impressive people I met on this journey is Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands.


pages: 354 words: 92,470

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, moral hazard, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, paradox of thrift, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Skype, South China Sea, special drawing rights, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

The human race had come out of darkness, fear and hate, but now it was moving forward and upward along a shining road toward a final state of understanding, inner illumination, goodness and happiness – and technology was the most useful vehicle for travelling that road. It turns out that the spirit of Davos at the World Economic Forum today is remarkably similar to the spirit of Davos before the First World War.2 SUPPORTERS, BENEFICIARIES AND DOUBTERS The problem with all these gatherings can be simply stated. Those who attend these forums are natural supporters of globalization for one simple reason: they are by far globalization’s biggest beneficiaries.

The ‘public’ events at these meetings are mostly for show: the real action typically takes place behind the scenes in countless bilateral meetings. Of all these gatherings, however, perhaps the best-known – and possibly the most notorious – venue is Davos, the ski resort in Switzerland which, at the end of each January, hosts the World Economic Forum, a gathering of the great, the good and the not so good, with a handful of celebrities thrown in to spice up proceedings. Although it claims to address the big issues of the day, the all-encompassing ‘theme’ each year appears to be devoid of any real meaning: recent examples include ‘Responsive and Responsible Leadership’ (2017), ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (2016), ‘The New Global Context’ (2015), ‘The Reshaping of the World’ (2014), ‘Resilient Dynamism’ (2013) and ‘The Great Transformation’ (2012).

(i) West Bank (i) West Germany (i) see also Germany West Indians (i), (ii) Westphalia, Peace of (i) White, Harry Dexter (i), (ii), (iii)n4 WikiLeaks (i) Wilhelm I, Kaiser (i) Wilhelm II, Kaiser (i) William of Orange (i) Williamson, John (i)n3 Wilson, Woodrow (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Wirtschaftswunder (i) Wizard of Oz, The (Victor Fleming) (i) Wolfe, Tom (i) World Bank Asian Development Bank and (i) creation of (i), (ii) limitations (i) meetings (i) Millennium Development Goal (i) World Economic Forum (i), (ii) World Trade Organization (WTO) early failure (i) GATT and (i) GOFF and (i) opposition to (i) poorest countries and (i) possible undermining of (i) tobacco companies and (i) Wrocław (i) Xi Jinping (i), (ii) Xiongnu (i) Yamaichi (i) Yaroslavsky (i) Yemen (i), (ii) Yiwu (i) Yom Kippur War (i) Yorubas (i) Yugoslavia (i), (ii) Yunnan province (China) (i), (ii) Zheng, Admiral (i) Zollverein (i) Zoroastrianism (i) Zurich (i)


pages: 190 words: 62,941

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination by Adam Lashinsky

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, always be closing, Amazon Web Services, asset light, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Benchmark Capital, business process, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, DARPA: Urban Challenge, Didi Chuxing, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, gig economy, Golden Gate Park, Google X / Alphabet X, hustle culture, independent contractor, information retrieval, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, new economy, pattern recognition, price mechanism, public intellectual, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, South of Market, San Francisco, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Steve Jobs, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Tony Hsieh, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, young professional

That January, despite running a two-person company that was perennially one step away from insolvency, he was invited to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as a “tech pioneer,” a kind of nonpaying attendee with glorified intern status at the prestigious schmoozefest. There he met with Paul Sagan, the CEO of Akamai. “He sought me out,” says Sagan. “He always assumed Akamai would buy his business.” Things were finally looking up for Red Swoosh. Kalanick says his agreement with AOL was “a breakthrough deal where they were going to pay over a million dollars a year for our services and I’d go from two people to something bigger.” But while Kalanick was in Davos, Michael Todd helped recruit Red Swoosh’s only employee, Evan Tsang, to Google.

As acting CEO of the China entity, he often ended his day in San Francisco in the small hours of the night, on the phone with executives in Beijing. That June, the World Economic Forum invited Kalanick to be a cochair of its so-called New Champions meeting in Tianjin, a coastal city near Beijing. The meeting sought to recognize up-and-coming corporate leaders and was informally known as the “summer Davos.” The association resonated with Kalanick. Nearly a decade earlier, he’d been invited to Davos and was touched to find himself in such proximity to heads of state. “I remember trudging through the snow with the president of Kenya, which felt kind of cool,” he muses.

All the travel from his home base in San Francisco is part of a money-draining and quixotic gambit to replicate the global success of Uber’s disruptive ride-hailing service in the world’s most populous country. Kalanick has spent the previous three days in Tianjin, a megacity on the Yellow Sea, two hours southeast of Beijing. There he was a cochair of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) New Champions meeting, the so-called summer Davos. Weeks shy of his fortieth birthday, Kalanick was the toast of Tianjin, where he enjoyed the considerable fringe benefits of his newfound worldwide prominence. The California start-up he runs has been around a mere six years, yet at the off-season international gabfest he scored an audience with the second most powerful government official in China, Premier Li Keqiang.


pages: 335 words: 100,154

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath by Bill Browder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist lawyer, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Clive Stafford Smith, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Donald Trump, estate planning, fake news, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, Ponzi scheme, power law, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Bannon

I checked into the Hotel Concordia, a modest 3-star hotel near the conference center that charged an immodest 500 Swiss francs (about $520) a night for a cramped single with a shower. Even so, I was thrilled. The really unlucky Davos attendees get shunted into hotels in Klosters, the next town down the valley, and a 30-minute drive away. The official motto of the World Economic Forum is “Committed to Improving the State of the World,” but in reality, many attendees are billionaires, dictators, and Fortune 500 executives who have little interest in improving the state of the world. A few are interested in exactly the opposite. To justify their noble mission, the World Economic Forum regularly invites a handful of people who do take their motto to heart.

But before sending it to a PO box in Bern and blindly hoping that someone there would read and act on it, I was going to make one last-ditch effort to find someone influential in Switzerland who might be able to help. I would have that opportunity at the World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of January. I’d attended Davos every year since 1996, and on January 25, I flew from London to Zurich to make the familiar three-hour train ride up into the Alps. When I arrived in Davos, I found the streets piled high with snow. The Swiss military was out in force, manning barricades and posting rooftop snipers to protect the international VIPs descending on this otherwise sleepy mountain town.

., 251, 253, 255, 256, 257, 259, 262, 285 Trump, Melania, 256 Trump Tower meeting, 250–256, 263, 277, 281, 285 Trusted Traveler program, 265–269 TV Centre (Moscow), 138 Twitter feeds, 4, 5–6, 8, 10, 258, 264, 272, 277–278, 288–289 Tyco, 21 UBS, 82–83 Uighur concentration camps (Xinjiang), 295 UK Law Society, 28 Universal Savings Bank, 20, 32, 34–35, 36, 48–50, 56 Van Ruymbeke, Renaud, 188, 227 Veselnitskaya, Natalia: indictment by US government, 296 Prevezon case and, 114, 120–121, 148, 151, 178–179, 185–186, 203, 204, 206, 212, 215–216, 217, 219, 220–221, 223–224, 236, 238, 296 Trump dossier and, 232 Trump Tower meeting and, 250–256, 263, 277 US arrest warrant and freezing order, 296 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 170–171 VKontakte (Russian version of Facebook), 37, 244 Wall Street Journal, 128, 180, 214, 215–216, 224–225 Washington Post, 10, 219, 224–225 Whitehouse, Sheldon, 264 Wicker, Roger, 38, 289, 294 Winter, Jonathan, 283–284 World Economic Forum (Davos), 54–57 World War II, 58, 222 Wurzmann, Eduardo, 182–186 Wurzmann, Lina, 182, 183, 186 Yakunin, Vladimir, 198 Yandex (Russian version of Google), 81 Yeltsin, Boris, 41 YouTube videos, 35, 38, 69, 118, 203n Zakaria, Fareed, 255 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2022 by Hermitage Media Limited All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.


pages: 385 words: 101,761

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire by Bruce Nussbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, declining real wages, demographic dividend, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, follow your passion, game design, gamification, gentrification, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, invisible hand, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gruber, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lone genius, longitudinal study, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Minsky moment, new economy, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QR code, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, reshoring, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, Tesla Model S, The Chicago School, The Design of Experiments, the High Line, The Myth of the Rational Market, thinkpad, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, We are the 99%, Y Combinator, young professional, Zipcar

The annual design awards cover took up to fifteen pages in the magazine, and there was little direct advertising for this coverage. Over the course of a decade and a half, BusinessWeek spent millions of dollars supporting design and innovation. The business leaders that I’ve met over the years at the World Economic Forum in Davos considered it one of Shepard’s greatest achievements in his career at the magazine. I transitioned from print to digital media in the early aughts. My deep thanks go to Jessie Scanlon, who partnered with me in launching Innovation & Design, the first open-source online channel of news and analysis of the growing field.

Jobs progressively increased his level of charisma over the years, choosing a signature style of personal dress, the simple black turtleneck; learning to introduce products with Broadway-level drama, whipping off a cloth to reveal a new offering and promoting what Apple employees called his “reality distortion field,” demanding even that which appears to be impossible. I saw Mark Zuckerberg for the first time at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009. He was sitting in front of several hundred people in a large conference room on a panel about the future of mobile along with Chad Hurley and a number of other high-tech luminaries. Panel moderator Mike Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, said it was the first time he ever saw Zuckerberg with a tie on.

CEOs and top managers trained in metrics and analytics understand the process of squeezing more and more profits out of existing products. What they don’t get is that the profits from innovative new products can have greater value, support higher prices, and generate even greater profits. THE RISE OF FINANCIAL CAPITALISM I attended the World Economic Forum in 2008, just months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Hedge fund managers had taken over the tiny village of Davos, Switzerland. They were booking the best hotel rooms, throwing the biggest parties, running the most important panels, and squiring the most beautiful models in the fanciest cars. That year, the influence of hedge fund managers eclipsed that of the old global elite of high-tech hotshots, corporate CEOs, and presidents and premiers from around the world.


pages: 426 words: 117,775

The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child by Morgan G. Ames

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Benjamin Mako Hill, British Empire, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, clean water, commoditize, computer age, digital divide, digital rights, Evgeny Morozov, fail fast, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, hype cycle, informal economy, Internet of things, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Lou Jepsen, Minecraft, new economy, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Peter Thiel, placebo effect, Potemkin village, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, SimCity, smart cities, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Hackers Conference, Travis Kalanick

Introduction On January 26, 2005, capitalists and leaders from around the world made their annual pilgrimage to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. A decade before, those worshipping at this altar of neoliberal globalization had supported missions to spread computers and connectivity to the far corners of the world, such as the Technology to Alleviate Poverty project and the Digital Divide Initiative, but the dot-com crash in 2001 had largely quashed the appeal of those kinds of technological visions. Even so, Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), tested the waters for rekindling that vision under a new name. He plied the halls of Davos that January with a crude mock-up and what he hoped would be a compelling story of a hundred-dollar laptop for children across the Global South.1 It would be cheap, it would be powerful, and it would be rolled out by the hundreds of millions to entire countries.

Negroponte largely shrugged off the sharp criticism his book and columns drew from some scholars, such as legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who has decried the echo chambers of Negroponte’s customized “Daily Me” newsfeed idea for polarizing the US political landscape, and cultural historian Fred Turner, who has linked Negroponte’s digital boosterism to the commodification of “New Communalist” utopianism in the 1970s and beyond.4 A decade later, in January 2005, Negroponte seemed to receive a relatively cool reception in Davos. His hallway pitch for a hundred-dollar laptop garnered a brief blog mention by Travis Kalanick, who was attending the World Economic Forum as a “technology pioneer” (and would later start the ride-sharing platform Uber), but this mention was more due to Negroponte’s other accomplishments than his idea for a hundred-dollar laptop. New York Times technology journalist John Markoff took up Negroponte’s pitch in more depth but concluded that Negroponte had not been given more of an official platform because the forum had moved on from the ideal of closing the digital divide to solving more “fundamental” inequalities.5 This tone changed considerably the following November, when Negroponte took the stage at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis.

Transcript of speech at the World Congress on Information Technology, Austin, TX, May 2006. OLPC Talks, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20071024160550/http://www.olpctalks.com:80/nicholas_negroponte/negroponte_wcit.html ———. “Nicholas Negroponte at WEF.” Transcript of an interview by Loïc Le Meur at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 2006. OLPC Talks, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20130411034406/http://www.olpctalks.com:80/nicholas_negroponte/negroponte_wef.html ———. “Nicholas Negroponte at World Bank Group.” Transcript of a presentation at the World Bank Group, Washington DC, May 31, 2007.


pages: 393 words: 91,257

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, Alvin Toffler, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bread and circuses, Brexit referendum, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, clean water, company town, content marketing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, data science, deindustrialization, demographic transition, deplatforming, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Future Shock, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, guest worker program, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job polarisation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, life extension, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Occupy movement, Parag Khanna, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-work, postindustrial economy, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Salesforce, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Satyajit Das, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, technological determinism, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, work culture , working-age population, Y Combinator

Essays on a Failing System (New York: Verso, 2016), 219. 30 Phil Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity (New York: New America Books, 2004); Joel Kotkin, “Death Spiral Demographics: The Countries Shrinking the Fastest,” Forbes, February 1, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2017/02/01/death-spiral-demographics-the-countries-shrinking-the-fastest/#4ae48b38b83c. 31 Alex Gray, “The troubling charts that show young people losing faith in democracy,” World Economic Forum, December 1, 2016, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/charts-that-show-young-people-losing-faith-in-democracy/. 32 Amanda Taub, “How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red,’” New York Times, November 29, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html?

.: Evidence from survey-linked administrative data,” Equitable Growth, September 7, 2016, https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/the-decline-in-lifetime-earnings-mobility-in-the-u-s-evidence-from-survey-linked-administrative-data/. 24 Mona Chalabi, “The world’s wealthy: where on earth are the richest Guardian, October 9, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/oct/09/worlds-wealthy-where-russia-rich-list; Andrea Willige, “5 charts that show what is happening to the middle class around the world,” World Economic Forum, January 12, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/5-charts-which-show-what-is-happening-to-the-middle-class-around-the-world/. 25 Anna Ludwinek et al., Social Mobility in the EU, Eurofound, 2017, http://www.praxis.ee/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Social-mobility-in-the-EU-2017.pdf; Adam O’Neal, “Why Bernie Sanders Is Wrong About Sweden,” Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-bernie-sanders-is-wrong-about-sweden-11566596536; Liz Alderman, “Europe’s Middle Class Is Shrinking.

Guardian, April 29, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/29/millennials-struggling-is-it-fault-of-baby-boomers-intergenerational-fairness; Lindsay Judge and Daniel Tomlinson, “Home improvements: action to address the housing challenges faced by young people,” Resolution Foundation, April 17, 2018, https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/home-improvements-action-to-address-the-housing-challenges-faced-by-young-people/. 19 Kamal Ahmed, “Up to a third of millennials ‘face renting their entire life,’” BBC, April 17, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43788537. 20 Yuan Yang, “The quiet revolution: China’s millennial backlash,” Financial Times, April 18, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/dae2c548-4226-11e8-93cf-67ac3a6482fd. 21 Andrea Willige, “5 charts which show what is happening to the middle class around the world,” World Economic Forum, January 12, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/5-charts-which-show-what-is-happening-to-the-middle-class-around-the-world/. 22 Lisa Boone, “They don’t own homes. They don’t have kids. Why millennials are plant addicts,” Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-millennials-plant-parents-20180724-story.html. 23 Ryan Dezember and Laura Kusisto, “House Money: Wall Street Is Raising More Cash Than Ever for Its Rental-Home Gambit,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-money-wall-street-is-raising-more-cash-than-ever-for-its-rental-home-gambit-1531128600. 24 Chris Salviati, “Student Debt and Millennial Homeownership,” Apartment List, January 25, 2018, https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/student-debt-millennial-homeowership/; Valerie Bauerlein, “American Suburbs Swell Again as a New Generation Escapes the City,” Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-suburbs-swell-again-as-a-new-generation-escapes-the-city-11561992889?


pages: 296 words: 98,018

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist lawyer, affirmative action, Airbnb, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Heinemeier Hansson, deindustrialization, disintermediation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, food desert, friendly fire, gentrification, global pandemic, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, new economy, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit maximization, public intellectual, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, tech baron, TechCrunch disrupt, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the High Line, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Two Sigma, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, Virgin Galactic, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

Then I did probably an impulsive thing and said, ‘I’ll try this.’ ” In January 2005, on a stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, one of the original conferences on the MarketWorld circuit, where corporate types paid vast sums of money to mingle with political leaders and others of similar social position, Clinton announced the Clinton Global Initiative. It would, he said, be like Davos, except it would require the rich and powerful people it brought together to commit, as a condition of showing up, to tangible projects for the global good. “I’m a big supporter of Davos, but the world leaders of the rich and the poor countries and everybody in between come to the UN every year in September,” Clinton said, according to Conason, adding, “So what I thought we would do this year is to have a somewhat smaller version of what we do at the World Economic Forum, but that it would be focused very much on specific things all the participants could do.”

She and many other people at the party wanted to do something about it. Nicola said that globalization and trade and openness and “everything we all believe in”—she gestured at the MarketWorlders circling the buffet—must be explained to those mobs. Nicola said she could start a new initiative, which could be housed at the World Economic Forum, the organization behind the annual plutocratic reunion in Davos. In this thinking she was not alone. All across MarketWorld in that winter of revulsion, people were plotting solutions to the revolt against them that doubled down on the approaches that had gotten us here. If anyone truly believes that the same ski-town conferences and fellowship programs, the same politicians and policies, the same entrepreneurs and social businesses, the same campaign donors, the same thought leaders, the same consulting firms and protocols, the same philanthropists and reformed Goldman Sachs executives, the same win-wins and doing-well-by-doing-good initiatives and private solutions to public problems that had promised grandly, if superficially, to change the world—if anyone thinks that the MarketWorld complex of people and institutions and ideas that failed to prevent this mess even as it harped on making a difference, and whose neglect fueled populism’s flames, is also the solution, wake them up by tapping them, gently, with this book.

“I’m a big supporter of Davos, but the world leaders of the rich and the poor countries and everybody in between come to the UN every year in September,” Clinton said, according to Conason, adding, “So what I thought we would do this year is to have a somewhat smaller version of what we do at the World Economic Forum, but that it would be focused very much on specific things all the participants could do.” Decisions and actions, the actual solving of problems, would be the distinguishing feature of CGI. “Everybody who comes needs to know on the front end that you’re going to be asked your opinion about what we should do on AIDS, TB, malaria; what the private sector can do about global warming,” he said.


Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, anti-communist, anti-globalists, autism spectrum disorder, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Cambridge Analytica, capitalist realism, ChatGPT, citizen journalism, Climategate, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, critical race theory, dark matter, deep learning, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hive mind, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lab leak, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, neurotypical, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, profit motive, QAnon, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, shared worldview, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

Very similar versions of electoral diagonalism have taken root in countries around the world, from Sweden to Brazil. I’m not surprised that these messages are resonating. For years I was part of internationalist left movements that protested outside meetings of the World Trade Organization, the World Economic Forum in Davos, G8 summits, and the International Monetary Fund for their roles in undermining democracies and advancing the interests of transnational capital; in the United States, we called out both major parties for being beholden to corporate donors and serving the rich rather than the people who voted them into office.

What was strange, though, was that the Great Reset wasn’t hidden—it was a branding campaign that the World Economic Forum had kicked off to repackage many of the ideas it has long advanced: biometric IDs, 3D printing, corporate green energy, the sharing economy. All were hastily positioned as a blueprint for reviving the global economy post-pandemic by “seeking a better form of capitalism.” Through a series of videos, the Great Reset brought together heads of transnational oil giants to opine about the urgent need to tackle climate change, as well as politicians pledging to “build back better” and bring about a “fairer, greener, healthier planet.” It was standard-issue Davos fare—arrogant, to be sure, and many parts were actively dangerous.

Maybe it’s that, in liberal democracies that still pay lip service to social equality (or at least “equity”), there is something profoundly unsatisfying about how open our global elites are about the power they believe they have a right to wield over the rest of us. The mechanics of oligarchy are not hidden; they are flaunted with a level of pride that actively humiliates their spectators. Billionaires, heads of state, A-list celebrities, journalists, and members of various royal families gather every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just as they do in Aspen, Colorado, and just as they did in Manhattan at the Clinton Global Initiative—Google even runs an invitation-only annual “summer camp” in Sicily where you are as likely to bump into Mark Zuckerberg as Katy Perry. In every case, they take up the mantle of solving the world’s problems—climate breakdown, infectious diseases, hunger—with no mandate and no public involvement and, most notably, no shame about their own central roles in creating and sustaining these crises.


pages: 471 words: 127,852

Londongrad: From Russia With Cash; The Inside Story of the Oligarchs by Mark Hollingsworth, Stewart Lansley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bob Geldof, Bullingdon Club, business intelligence, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Donald Trump, energy security, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, Global Witness, income inequality, kremlinology, Larry Ellison, Londongrad, mass immigration, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, offshore financial centre, paper trading, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, power law, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Sloane Ranger

At the time the international investor and philanthropist George Soros, now one of the oligarchs’ greatest critics, warned Berezovsky somewhat acidly that if the communists were to win, ‘you are going to hang from a lamppost’.16 Berezovsky was only too aware that he had enemies among the communists. At a secret meeting in Davos in the Swiss Alps during the World Economic Forum in February 1996, he galvanized the wealthiest businessmen known in Russia as ‘the Group of Seven’. They agreed to bankroll Yeltsin’s election campaign in return for the offer of shares and management positions in the state industries yet to be privatized. The seven parties privy to the ‘Davos Pact’ were mainly bankers - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin, Alexander Smolensky, and Petr Aven, as well as media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, industrialist Mikhail Fridman, and, of course, Berezovsky himself.

.: Failed Crusade 63 Coleman, John 147-8, 149 Collins, James 32 Collins, Tim 109 Collongues-Popova, Elena 219-20 Colony Club, Hertford Street, Mayfair 119 Commercial Court, London 317 Committee to Protect Journalists 271-2 communism collapse of (1991) 13, 32, 46, 273 Russian attitude to 49 Communist Party, backs Khodorkovsky 46 Confederation of Independent States 54 Connery, Sean 138 Conservative Party 58, 334 Constellation (ship) 229-30 Cook, Robin 160 Cooperative Insurance Society 341 Corbin, Arnaud 368 Corfe Holdings Ltd 236 Corker Binning 213 Cossacks 56, 171 Côte d’Azur 198, 203, 264 Courchevel ski resort, France 158, 181, 198, 204-7 Cowdray, Lord 236 Crown Prosecution Service 261 Crown Protection Services 351 CSKA Moscow 160 CSS 202 Curtis, Louise 11 Curtis, Sarah 10, 11, 12, 13 Curtis, Stephen Langford 89, 266 covert cooperation with NCIS 6, 7 covert custodian of Russian personal fortunes 3-4 death threats 6-7, 10 decision to co-operate with British police 5 early career 94 fatal helicopter crash follows threats 1-10 finds working for Russians exciting and challenging 93-4 and Fomichev 104, 105 funeral 10-13 guardian of Russian clients’ secrets 4 health 10 and ISC Global 237 and Khodorkovsky 4, 5, 6, 46, 93, 215, 234 meets Berezovsky 94 and Menatep 5, 6, 94, 216, 217, 237, 240 personal fortune 4-5, 236 personality 4, 10, 94, 95, 234 and security 237, 239, 240-41 sets up New World Value Fund Ltd 235 and Sibneft 98, 99 works for Berezovsky 4, 6, 95-6, 107, 110, 261, 262 and the Yukos curse 246 Curtis & Co. 94, 95, 235, 238, 240-41 Cyprus 213, 215, 216, 247, 321, 322 Daily Mail 346 Daiwa Bank 218 Daresbury, Lord 161 Darling, Alistair 301, 356 Dart, Kenneth 240 Dartmouth, Earl of 147 Davidson, Rod 11-12 Davis, Alan 9 Davis, Rick 336 Davos, Switzerland 49, 214 World Economic Forum 49, 275, 330 ‘Davos Pact’ 49-50 de Klerk, F.W. 257, 276 de Kooning, Willem: Woman III 186 de Sancha, Antonia 257 de Saumarez family 350 de Waal, Thomas 288 Del Ponte, Carla 79 Deloitte Touche 137 Deng, Wendi 280 Dent-Brocklehurst, Molly 202 Derby, Earl of 161 Deripaska, Oleg 151, 157, 162, 165, 167, 256, 315, 342, 353 aluminium magnate 15, 55 appearance 55, 319 and Bob Dole 335-6 buys racehorses 356-7 and Cherney 318-19, 322-8, 339, 342, 343 Conservative Party donation issue 334 as a dollar billionaire 363 early life 56 enemies 326 entry problems to United States 16, 328-9, 335, 336, 337 and the ‘family’ 56 friendship with Abramovich 55, 319 global business empire 16 Jewish background and Cossack heritage 56 losses 364 and Magna 328, 339, 364 marriage 56 and Nat Rothschild 329-30 personality 55, 319 a post-Soviet corporate raider 55 property purchaser 145, 320-21 and Putin 15, 66, 343 ruthless young pretender 15, 55 Deripaska, Polina 165, 181, 320 Devonshire, Duke of 114 Diana, Princess of Wales 133, 171 Dickens, Charles 196 Dinamo Tbilisi Football Club 277 Disdale, Terence 153, 154, 351-2 Doig, Peter: White Canoe 185-6, 193 Dolce & Gabbana 315 Dole, Bob 335-6 Dom-2 (reality TV programme) 189 Donde, Daniel Ermes 201 Dorchester Hotel, London 26, 223, 322, 323 Doronin, Vladimir 169-70 Downside Manor, Leatherhead, Surrey 277-8, 279 Draycott House, off Sloane Square 339 Dresner-Wickers 50 Dubai 99, 142, 198 Dubov, Yuli 267-8, 279 Bolshaya Paika (The Lion’s Share) 30, 267 The Lesser Evil 267-8 Ducasse, Alain 203 Dulwich College 166 Dyachenko, Boris 165 Dyachenko, Tatyana (Tanya) 50, 52, 145, 162, 165, 204 Dzerzhinsky, Felix 173 East End, London 21, 190 Eastern Bloc, collapse of (late 1980s) 22 Eastern Oil Company 210 Easton, Isle of Portland 11, 12 Easton Neston, neat Towcester 146 Eaton Square, London 136, 137, 140-41 Ecclestone, Bernie 162 Eclipse (yacht) 155-6 Economic and Trade Ministry 61 Economist, The 221 Ecstasea (yacht) 154 Ekho Moskvy radio station 25, 75, 271, 280 Elizabeth II, Queen 142 Elliott Hotel, Gibraltar 235 Ellison, Larry 153 Enron scandal 337 Esher, Surrey 143 Eurocement 157 Eurocement Holding AG 157 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) 126, 127, 128 European Champions League 154 European Union 330, 331, 332 Evans, Chris 111, 112 Evans, Jonathan 270 Evening Standard 132, 346, 365 Evraz 157, 363 Exclusive London 174-5 ExxonMobil 230, 245 Fabergé 192 Falileyev, Judge Igor 357 ‘family, the’ 51-2, 56 Farnborough Airport 152 Farouk, King of Egypt 129 Fatherland All-Russia Party 73 Fayed, Camilla 181 FBI 359 Federal Law N 153-F3 310-11 Feldman, Andrew 334 Felshtinsky, Yuri 292 Fennell, Theo (jewellers) 26 Fezan Ltd 236 Fiat 38 financial crash (1998) 218, 221 Financial Dynamics 256 Financial Times 63, 131, 236, 275, 323, 339 Finans business magazine 55, 363 Finsbury 256 Firebird Fund 80 first Gulf War 130, 131 Fitasc Sporting British clay pigeon shooting Grand Prix 148 Fitzgerald, Edward, QC 213 Fleming, Roddie 161 Florida International University 61 Fomichev, Katya 104-5, 181 Fomichev, Ruslan 104-5, 181 Forbes magazine 24, 77, 363 Forbes Russia 246, 272, 273 Ford, Tom 179 Foreign Office 7, 241, 261, 270, 282, 303, 307 Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) 225 Fortnum & Mason 24 Forus 40, 78, 79, 80 Forward Media Group 320 Fox, James 125 Fox and Gibbons 94 Foxwell, Gavin 8 France, affluent Russians move to 22 Francis I, King of France 149 Fraud Squad 261 Fredriksen, John 128, 132 Freeland, Chrystia 63 French Foreign Legion 108 French Special Forces 108 Freud, Lucian: Benefits Supervisor Sleeping 201 Fridman, Mikhail 49 Friedman, Thomas 61-2 Frieze Fair 188, 192 Frontline (American news programme) 63, 76 Frontline Club, London 36 FSB (Federal Security Service) 53, 62, 71, 74, 86, 103, 106, 115, 230, 231, 262, 267, 275, 281, 285, 286, 287, 289-90, 292, 293, 296, 305-9, 312, 313, 338 Fulham Football Club 163 Fyning Hill, Rogate, West Sussex 124, 130, 152, 161, 163, 200, 201, 353 G8 summits 259-60, 309, 360 Gagosian, Larry 202 Gallitzin, Prince Gregory 167 Garda Worldwide 130 GAZ 157 Gazprom 76, 157, 173, 233, 270-71, 317, 341, 362 Geffen, David 194 Geldof, Bob 172 General Motors 39, 244, 325 George V, King 114 Giacometti, Alberto 201 Gibraltar 19, 100, 104, 215, 216, 235, 236, 241 Gibraltar Criminal Intelligence Agency 241 Gillford, Lord (‘Paddy’) 226-7 Glencore 340 global economic crisis (2008) 17 Global Leadership Foundation (GLF) 275-6 Global Options Group Inc 335, 336 Glushkov, Nikolai 92, 96, 102-3, 279 Goldfarb, Alex 65, 80, 82-3, 275, 281, 291, 297, 298, 337 Goldfarb, Alex with Litivinenko, Marina: Death of a Dissident 307 Goldsmith, Sir James 55 Goldsmith, Lord (Peter) 279 Golubev, Yuri 245 Goodwin, James 334 Gorbachev, Mikhail 32, 35, 40, 171, 173, 199, 312 Gorbunova, Yelena 72, 110, 111, 113, 114 GPW Ltd 351 Grand Bleu, Le (yacht) 153, 154, 155, 203 Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat 203-4 Grayson, Patrick 351 Gref, German 330 Greig, Geordie 171, 172, 345-6, 365 Grey Advertising 222 Grigoriev, Boris Dmitrievich: Faces of Russia 194 Group Menatep Ltd (GML) 215-16, 227, 235, 236 Group of Seven 49 GRU 270, 287 GSS Global 248 Gstaad, Switzerland 19 Guardian 195, 268, 280, 281, 369 Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas, Moscow 43 Gucci 179 Guernsey 236 Guinness, Lady Honor 320-21 Gulf States 99 Gusinsky, Vladimir 49, 75-6, 82, 83, 86, 132, 196, 280 Gutseriyev, Mikhail 165, 360-62 Gyunel 169 Hague, Ian 80 Hakkasan restaurant, London 176 Hamnett, Professor Chris 353 Hampton Court Palace 171 Hamstone House, St George’s Hill, Weybridge 145 Hannant, Paul 8 Hanson, Lord 226 Hanson Plc 226 Harding, James 17 Harewood estate, near Windsor 142, 203 Harrods department store, London 26, 123, 125, 137, 163, 174 Harrods Estates 135 Harrogate Ladies’ College 166 Harrow School 165 Harry’s Bar restaurant, South Audley Street, London 101, 109 Hartlands 145-6 Harvard University-Dow Jones US-Russian Investment Symposium 328 Harvey, David 17-18 Harvey Nichols department store, London 174, 180 Fifth Floor Restaurant 26 Hascombe Court, near Godalming, Surrey 111-12 Haslam, Nicholas 105, 136 Hawksmoor, Nicholas 146 Hazlitt, William 191 Health Protection Agency 298, 300 Heath Lodge, Iver, Buckinghamshire 110 Heath, Sir Edward 304 Hello!

Goldfarb met Berezovsky when Soros was investing in Russia during the Yeltsin era and became one of the oligarch’s closest confidants. Once potential business partners, Berezovsky and Soros collided over Soros’s financial backing of a rival, Vladimir Potanin, in the bitterly contested auction for Svyazinvest, the giant state telecommunications company. They soon became irreconcilable and at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos in 1996 they clashed badly over Berezovsky’s business methods. In the 1990s Berezovsky outstripped even his fellow oligarchs in the vigour of his business techniques. Soros himself had long warned of the severe dangers of no-holds-barred markets and regarded many of the oligarchs as the architects of the ‘robber capitalism’ of the time.18 On one occasion he claimed that he started to fear Berezovsky.


pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

CHAPTER 16 THIS CIVILIZATION IS FINISHED Rupert Read—dapper, trim, sandy-haired Green Party politician, Oxford-educated philosopher, spokesman for the activist environmental group Extinction Rebellion—breathed in the crisp Alpine air as he stepped off a train in Davos Platz. Here he was in the very belly of the beast: Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of the planet’s self-anointed movers and shakers, the millionaires and billionaires, the politicians and policy-makers. It was January 2020. Read had endured fourteen hours on a string of trains from London to the snowbound ski resort to avoid riding in a carbon-belching airplane (thereby passing up a one-and-a-half-hour flight from Heathrow).

Taleb told the bankers in the room that the multitrillion-dollar credit meltdown on Wall Street, by the time it was over, would wipe out all of the money the global banking industry had made. Ever. CHAPTER 10 DREAMS & NIGHTMARES In January 2009, the world’s top financiers, policy-makers, and so-called elite thinkers flocked to Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Economic Forum, to try to figure out how it all went wrong—and what to do next. Among the newly minted elite: Nassim Taleb. On a Wednesday night at the forum, Taleb sat on a podium alongside Niall Ferguson, the British professor of history and bestselling author; Nouriel Roubini, known as Dr.

See also Russia collapse of, 143, 256 University of Chicago, Project on Security and Threats, 34 Vanguard, 101, 230 Varela, Francisco, 208 Varieties of Democracy, 256 Venter, Craig, 123, 124 VIX (CBOE Volatility Index), 110, 154, 163, 167, 168 Volmageddon, 14, 154, 157 von Mises, Ludwig, 121, 136 VUCA World Risk Index, 262 Wagner, Gernot, 231, 240 Wall Street Journal, 15, 24, 43, 45, 46, 104, 111, 120, 129, 130–31, 154, 175, 176, 248, 251, 262, 276 Walsh, John, 29 Wapner, Scott, 5–6, 7 Washington Post, 34, 102, 282, 290 Webber, Melvin, 240 Webber, Susan, 23 Weinstein, Boaz, 176 Wells, David Wallace, 162 Welsh, Irvine, 243 Whitehouse, Sheldon, 223, 233 Why Stock Markets Crash (Sornette), 87, 88, 90 Wiliot, 214 Wolfram Mathematica, 18 World Economic Forum, 119, 183 World Health Organization (WHO), 2, 205, 241 Wright, Theodore, 249 Wright’s law, 249 Writers Rebel, 243–44 Yarckin, Brandon, 88, 137, 162, 165–66, 167 background of, 63–65 CalPERS investment and, 151, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159–60 Empirica experience of, 65, 69 Film investments of, 94–95 SALT conference and, 139–40 Universa and, 97–98, 100–2, 110–12 Zelenska, Olena, 279 Zelensky, Volodymyr, 279–80, 285–86 Zuckerberg, Mark, 19 Scribner An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2023 by Scott Patterson All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.


pages: 689 words: 134,457

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alistair Cooke, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, Bear Stearns, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Citizen Lab, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, data science, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, full employment, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, illegal immigration, income inequality, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job satisfaction, job-hopping, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, load shedding, Mark Zuckerberg, megaproject, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, mortgage debt, Multics, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, profit maximization, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, The future is already here, The Nature of the Firm, too big to fail, urban planning, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

“Turning a Coal Mine into a Diamond” “can generate ideas capable”: ExxonMobil, “Five Big Ideas from the Aspen Ideas Festival,” press release, July 9, 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT He quickly pivoted to the topic: “This Is Not Rocket Science: Rutger Bregman Tells Davos to Talk About Tax—Video,” Guardian, Jan. 29, 2019. The 2020 World Economic Forum at Davos took place before the global onset of COVID-19. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT In June 2019: For a description of the McKinsey partners speaking at Aspen, see “A Festival of Ideas, Shaped by McKinsey Insight” on the McKinsey website, posted July 31, 2019, www.mckinsey.com.

Make the world more beautiful with “wildflower seed bombs” from Standard Industries, the building materials company that planted thirty-five hundred trees in honor of this annual jamboree of the great and the good. Welcome to the Aspen Ideas Festival. At Aspen, and its Swiss cousin, the World Economic Forum in Davos, an invitation validates your importance, a recognition that you have something wise to say, that you belong in the company of the wealthy and the powerful. Vitally important issues get aired here in courteous panel discussions often moderated by prominent journalists who treasure the spotlight.

., office, 26, 30–31 Washington Mutual bankruptcy, 188 Washington Nationals, 219 Washington Post, 63, 216, 253–54 Washington State, 72 water, 165, 206, 269 Waterman, Bob, 179 Waxman, Henry, 42 Weiss, Alexander, 232–34, 238, 240 Wen Jiabao, 97 West Point, 155 Wharton School, 83, 87–88, 212, 230 Whitney Museum, 116 “Why We Need Bolder Action to Combat the Opioid Epidemic” (Latkovic), 143–44 WikiLeaks, 65 wildfires, 151, 168 William Hill, 210 Wilson, Thomas, 198 Wilson, Tom, 114 wind power, 151, 158 Winickoff, Jonathan, 123 Winners Take all (Giridharadas), 26 Wirth, Mike, 164 Woetzel, Jonathan, 96 Women’s March (2017), 78 Wood, Eric, 234 Woodcock, Janet, 68 Working Nights (newsletter), 10 World Economic Forum (Davos), 149, 150, 262 World Health Organization (WHO), 118–19, 128 World Series, 216–17, 219 World Trade Center, 118 World Trade Organization (WTO), 96 World War II, 32, 258, 260 Wriston, Walter, 171, 175–76 X Xactimate computer program, 194 Xi Jinping, 26, 100–101 Xinjiang Province, 100, 104–6 Y Yale University, 25, 51, 165 Yanukovych, Viktor, 257 Yee, Lareina, 150 Yemen, 245–46 YouTube, 252–53 Yunnan Province, 108 Z Zelensky, Volodymyr, 279 zero tolerance policy, 83 zhongyang qiye, 92, 98, 108 Zondo, Raymond, 237, 239–41 Zucker, Brandon, 13 Zuckerberg, Mark, 149 Zuma, Jacob, 226–28 Zweig, Phillip, 176 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z What’s next on your reading list?


pages: 482 words: 121,173

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age by Brad Smith, Carol Ann Browne

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, air gap, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Celtic Tiger, Charlie Hebdo massacre, chief data officer, cloud computing, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, data science, deep learning, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Hacker News, immigration reform, income inequality, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, national security letter, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, precision agriculture, race to the bottom, ransomware, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, school vouchers, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tim Cook: Apple, Wargames Reagan, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

Success rarely comes to people who do nothing. Chapter 11 AI AND ETHICS: Don’t Ask What Computers Can Do, Ask What They Should Do When I arrived in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum in January 2017 for the annual bellwether event discussing global trends, AI was the talk of the town. Every tech company was touting itself as an AI company. One night after dinner, I called on my northeastern Wisconsin roots and braved the snow and ice to walk the full two-mile length of Davos’s main boulevard. It looked more like the Las Vegas strip than an Alpine village. Other than a handful of banks, the ski town was dominated by the lit-up logos and slick signage of tech companies, each (Microsoft included) promoting their AI strategy to the business, government, and thought leaders spending the week in the Swiss Alps.

Her commitment to the housing issue and her credibility across the region and political spectrum were instrumental in persuading us that it was a challenge we could help address in a meaningful way. Information about Challenge Seattle can be found at https://www.challengeseattle.com/. Back to note reference 40. CHAPTER 11: AI AND ETHICS Accenture, “Could AI Be Society’s Secret Weapon for Growth? – WEF 2017 Panel Discussion,” World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, YouTube video, 32:03, March 15, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i_4y4lSC5M. Back to note reference 1. Asimov posited three laws of robotics. First, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Second, “A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

., 9 Bill of Rights, 7 First Amendment to, 12, 15, 33, 36, 102 Fourth Amendment to, 7–8, 14, 15, 23, 26, 33, 34, 36 Constitutional Convention, 77 consumer credit, 246 consumer privacy, see privacy Cook, Tim, 16, 252 Coons, Chris, 314n9 copyright, 284 Correal, Annie, 220 Courtois, Jean-Philippe, 181 Court TV, 104 Crovitz, Gordon, 104–5 Curie, Marie, 184 Customs and Border Protection, US (CBP), 215, 220–21 cyberattacks, 111, 112–14, 124, 205 attribution of, 118–19 denial-of-service attack in Estonia, 91–92 NotPetya, 69–72 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 Cyber Defense Operations Center, 111 cybersecurity, 61–76, 92, 112–15, 119, 123, 294–95, 300, 302 China and, 251, 252 data sharing and, 283 generational divide in views on, 71 national security and, 110–11 tech companies’ attitudes toward, 294–95 Cybersecurity Tech Accord, 119–21, 294, 300, 301 cybertribes, 92–93 cyberwar, cyberweapons, 69, 118, 130, 205–6, 289 Czechoslovakia, 40 D DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), 173–74 Daily, 219–20 Daily Beast, 83 Daily Princetonian, 13 Dartmouth College, 193 data, xiii, xiv, 195 creation of, 274 government, 283–84, 297 open, 269–86, 297 ownership of, 283 privacy and, 282–84; see also privacy sharing of, 275–76, 280–83 data centers, xiv–xv, xviii–xix, 8, 19, 21, 24, 42, 44–45, 52, 133, 303 of Microsoft, xiv–xix, 5, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 42–46, 48–56 data science, 181, 196, 207, 264, 323n9 biomedical science and, 273 Davos, World Economic Forum at, 191–93, 202 DCU (Digital Crimes Unit), 78–81, 85, 111, 112, 316n2 Declaration Networks Group, 167 Declaration of Independence, 7 deep fakes, 99 DelBene, Suzan, 314n9 democracy(ies), 10, 77–88, 89, 91, 95, 97, 107, 149, 227, 229, 289, 295, 301–4 disinformation campaigns and, 94, 289, 302 foreign interference in, 105–6 see also elections Democratic National Committee (DNC), 78, 278 Democratic National Convention (2016), 77, 78 Democrats, 82, 84–85, 106, 172, 278–81 denial-of-service attacks, 91–92 Denmark, 109–10, 112, 123, 130 Depression, Great, 164, 165, 171, 242–44 Deutsche Telekom, 122 Dick, Philip K., 211 Dickerson, Caitlin, 220 DeGeorge syndrome, 213 Dietterich, Thomas, 328n12 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, 283–84 Digital Geneva Convention, 113–15, 128, 300 digital neutrality, 35 diplomacy, 109–30 disabilities, 200, 287–88 disinformation campaigns, 90, 94, 102, 104, 106–7, 289, 294, 302 Russia and, 95–98, 103 Downing, Richard, 59 DREAMers, 173–74 E Economic Graph, 181 economy, 241–43, 289, 299 Edelman Trust Barometer, 216–17 Edison, Thomas, 194 education, 156, 180, 182, 186, 207 computer science, 170, 177–81, 184 Microsoft’s school voucher program, 177 Microsoft’s Technology Education and Literacy in Schools program, 178–79 national talent strategy and, 175–76 Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program, 181–82 Workforce Education Investment Act, 182–84 Egan, Mike, 331n8 8chan, 99 Einstein, Albert, 129, 171, 209–10, 289 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 172 ElectionGuard, 87 elections, 84, 95 in France, 81 hacking and, 81, 86–88 U.S. presidential election of 2016, 81, 82, 139, 144, 157, 172, 189, 278–82, 331n8 voting machines and, 87 electricity, 70, 286, 289, 299 data centers and, xiv, xvi, 44 in rural areas, 159, 160, 163–66 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), 22, 23, 33, 47 electronic grids and infrastructures, 70–71, 266, 299 El Paso, Tex., 233–35, 331n8 Ely, James, 110 email, 23, 24, 28, 49, 221, 237–38 phishing and, 79, 83 Russian hackers and, 81, 95 employee activism, 215–17 Empson, Mark, 70 encryption, 14–15, 19, 87, 149, 171, 283 endangered species, 288 engineering, 141–42 England, 316n2 National Health Service in, 62 see also United Kingdom Estonia, 89–93, 320n19 Étienne, Philippe, 123 European Commission, 131 European Court of Justice, 136, 137 European Union (EU), 43, 44, 47–48, 56, 124, 284, 314n10 Brexit and, 131–32, 139, 238 General Data Protection Regulation of, 131–32, 139–43, 146–49 International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles of, 133–36 Privacy Shield of, 137–38, 300 F FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), 336n10 Facebook, 2, 16, 44, 73–76, 85, 92, 95–99, 103, 104, 120–21, 124, 125, 133, 173, 253, 270, 272, 281, 285 Cambridge Analytica and, 144 Christchurch mosque shootings and, 99, 126 disinformation campaigns on, 90, 95–98 privacy and, 135, 144 facial recognition, 203, 211–30, 239, 264, 330n21 bias and, 198 legislation on, 226, 330nn19–20, 331n26 regulation of, 221–22, 224, 225, 228, 296 surveillance and, 227–28 Fancy Bear (APT28; Strontium), 78–81, 84–85 Fargo, N.Dak., 331n8 FarmBeats, 163 farmers, farming, 156, 163, 164, 171, 243–44 FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 13, 22, 25, 27, 28, 36, 49, 63, 73, 78 data requested from Microsoft by, 31 FCC (Federal Communications Commission), 158, 323n17 Blue Book of, 101–2, 318nn27–28 broadband and, 153–56, 158, 322n6, 323n9 FedEx, 70 Ferguson, Bob, 173, 324n4 Ferry County, Wash., 151–55, 157, 166–67 fiber-optic cables, 13, 14, 42, 43, 153, 158, 159, 162, 163, 296 filing cabinets, xiv, 309n2 fire extinguishers, 236 fire horses, 231–32, 245, 247 First Amendment, 12, 15, 33, 36, 102 FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), 12 5G, 153, 266 Ford, Henry, 245, 246 4G, 158 Fourth Amendment, 7–8, 14, 15, 23, 26, 33, 34, 36 Fourth Geneva Convention, 113, 117–18 Fourth Industrial Revolution, 169 Fox News, 314n10 France, 126 National Assembly in, 224 presidential candidates in, 81 Revolution in, 319n36 1798 war with U.S., 9–10 terrorist attacks in Paris, 26–28 war between United Kingdom and, 105 Francis, James C., IV, 52, 314n10 Francis, Pope, 209–10 Frank, John, 3, 4, 8, 22 Franklin, Benjamin, 7, 77, 87, 107, 192 frauds and scams, 192–93, 316n2 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 272–74, 276, 284–86 Freedom House, 222 freedom of speech, 102 French Revolution, 319n36 Friedman, Nat, 277 FTC (Federal Trade Commission), 29, 146, 310n6 G Galileo, 209 Garnett, Paul, 167 Gates, Bill, xviii, 29, 194, 240, 252, 254, 277, 325n11 Gates, Melinda, 252 Gebru, Timnet, 198 Gellman, Bart, 13 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 131–32, 139–43, 146–49, 294 Genêt, Edmind Charles, 105–6, 319n36 Geneva, 129 Geneva Conventions, 113, 117–18, 320n16 Geography of Thought, The (Nisbett), 258, 261–62 George, John Earl, Sr., 165, 166 Germany, 39–41, 51–53, 56 Germany, Nazi, 39, 41, 61, 90, 129 Giant Company Software, xviii Gibson, Charlie, 314n10 Gilliland, Gary, 273 GitHub, 100, 277 Global Network Initiative (GNI), 333n16 Good, I.J., 328n12 Google, 16, 19, 44, 85, 97, 104, 120, 122, 124, 126, 133, 144, 173, 199, 216, 253, 256, 269, 272, 285 government sued by, 12, 18–19 Microsoft and, 12 military and, 203, 204, 215, 216 NSA and, 2, 4, 13 Plus, 270 YouTube, 2, 95, 99, 125, 126 GPS, 33–34, 228 Graham, Lindsey, 56, 57 Gramophone, 101 Graphika, 95 Great Depression, 164, 165, 171, 242–44 Greek philosophy, 259, 263 Green Bay, Wisc., 331n8 Green Bay Packers, 233, 331n8 Gregoire, Christine, 186, 189, 316n2, 325n20, 327n40 Guardian, 2–4, 8, 19 Gutenberg, Johannes, xiii, 209 Guterres, António, 205 Gutierrez, Horacio, 312–13n12 H hackers, hacking, 71, 79, 81, 86, 113, 266, 287 Chinese, 251, 263 elections and, 81, 86–88 hackers, Russian, 78, 82–83, 95 elections and, 81, 86 Strontium (Fancy Bear; APT28), 78–81, 84–85 Hamilton, 106, 249 Hamilton, Alexander, 105, 106 Harding, William, 100 Harvard Law Review, 330n24 Hastings, Reed, 16, 17, 335n7 Hatch, Orrin, 176, 314n9 He Huaihong, 261–62 Heiner, Dave, 194, 197 Heller, Dean, 314n9 Hippocratic oath for coders, 207–8 Hitachi, 122 Hoffman, Reid, 267, 292 Hogan-Burney, Amy, 25–26 Hollande, François, 28 HoloLens, 204, 238–39, 252 Hood, Amy, 174, 183, 188–89, 293–94, 306 horses, 240–45 fire, 231–32, 245, 247 Horvitz, Eric, 194, 199, 218, 327n5, 328n12 Hotmail, 21–22 Hour of Code, 179 House of Representatives, 7, 56, 57, 176 housing, 186–90, 302, 327n40 Houston, Tex., 96 Howard, David, 31–33, 35 HP, 120, 132 Huawei, 263 Hudson Institute, 84 Hu Jintao, 252 human rights, 260, 262–64, 292, 301–4, 333n16 Human Rights Watch, 206 Humphries, Fred, 55 Hutchinson, Bill, 272 Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 272–74, 276, 284–86 I I, Robot, 193 IBM, 192, 285, 310n6 ImageNet, 197 immigration, 169, 171–76, 290 DACA program and, 173–74 facial recognition and, 214–15 national talent strategy and, 175–76 separation of children from parents at the border, 214, 215, 220–21 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US (ICE), 214–15 Immigration Innovation Act (I-Squared), 176 information bubbles, 95 information technology, 70, 253, 298–300 China and, 253, 258, 263–67 persuasion and, 107 weaponization of, 97 infrastructure and grids, 70–71, 266, 299 Inslee, Jay, 325n20 Instagram, 95–96 Intel, 253 intellectual property, 113, 175, 207, 284, 336n9 International Campaign to Ban Landmines, 127 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 113, 118, 127, 320n16 International Humanitarian Law, 117 International Monetary Fund, 97 International Republican Institute (IRI), 84 international rules, 302 arms control, 116–18, 128, 302 International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, 133–36 internet, 24, 41, 91, 106, 107, 192–93, 299, 335n9 Communications Decency Act and, 98–99 rural broadband and, 151–67, 289, 296, 322n6, 323n9 Internet Research Agency (IRA), 95–96 Interstate Commerce Commission, 299–300 Iowa, 164–66 Iran, 71 Iraq, 81 Ireland, 42–46, 49–56, 133, 135 Ischinger, Wolfgang, 96 ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), 28 Israel, 81 J Jacobins, 319n36 Japan, xvii, 75, 122, 124, 129, 253 Japanese-Americans, internment of, 10 Jarrett, Valerie, 15–16 Jefferson, Thomas, 105, 106, 313n5 Jewish manuscripts, 288, 335n2 jobs, 186, 187, 297, 302 artificial intelligence and, 231–47 creation of, 156–58 digital content in, 177–78 Economic Graph and, 181 immigration seen as threat to, 175 unemployment, 152, 156 Jobs, Steve, 142, 241 Jones, Nate, 25–26, 49 Jourová, Věra, 136–37 Joyce, Rob, 73 Justice Department (DOJ), xx, 12, 13, 16, 18–19, 26, 31, 35, 36, 49, 53, 56, 148 K Kahan, John, 323n9 Kaljurand, Marina, 91–92 Kenya, 160 Kentucky School for the Blind, 287, 334n1 KGB, 92 Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), 220, 329n11 King County, Wash., 152, 157 Kirkpatrick, David, 192 Kissinger, Henry, 250, 259 Kistler-Ritso, Olga, 90–92, 317n2 Klobuchar, Amy, 176 Klynge, Casper, 109, 112, 123, 127, 128, 130 Kollar-Kotelly, Colleen, 335n7 Koontz, Elbert, 152–55, 167 Kubrick, Stanley, 328n12 Kushner, Jared, 173, 280 L Lagarde, Christine, 97 landmines, 127, 320n21 language translation, 197, 236, 239–40, 261 Law Enforcement and National Security (LENS), 24–26 Lay-Flurrie, Jenny, 334–35n1 Lazowska, Ed, 178, 325n11 LEADS Act (Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad), 314n9 League of Nations, 129 Lee, Kai-Fu, 269–70, 272, 273, 276 legal work, impact of technology on, 236, 237 Leibowitz, Jon, 29 LENS (Law Enforcement and National Security), 24–26 Leopard, HMS, 313n5 libraries, ancient, xiii, 309n1 Liddell, Chris, 173 Lincoln, Abraham, 10 LinkedIn, 100, 103, 126, 181, 325n18 Linux, 277 Long, Ronald, 43 LTE, 158, 162 M Macron, Emmanuel, 81, 123–24, 127 Mactaggart, Alastair, 144–49 Madison, James, 7 Maersk, 70–71 Mahabharata, The, 205 malware, 63, 68 see also cyberattacks Mamer, Louisan, 164–66 Manhattan Project, 171 Map to Prosperity, 157 Marino, Tom, 314n9 Markle Foundation, 325n18 Martin, “Smokey Joe,” 231 Martinon, David, 123 Mattis, James, 67 May, Theresa, 132, 238–39 Mayer, Marissa, 18 McCaskill, Claire, 83 McFaul, Michael, 117 McGuinness, Paddy, 56 McKinsey Global Institute, 241 Mercedes-Benz, 240, 326n31 Merck, 70 Meri, Lennart, 91 Merkel, Angela, 239 Mexico, 124 Microsoft: AccountGuard program of, 84, 85 AI ethics issues and, 199–201, 205, 218, 222, 223, 229–30, 294 AI for Earth team of, 288 antitrust cases against, xx, 12, 29, 96, 143, 148, 175–77, 291, 310n6, 335n7 Azure, 126, 140 Bing, 100, 104, 126, 140 board of directors of, 335n7 Brazil and, 48–49, 53 China and, 65, 250–52, 254–55, 259–61 Christchurch Call to Action and, 125–27 cloud commitments of, 30, 33, 292 Code.org and, 179 Cyber Defense Operations Center of, 111 Cybersecurity Tech Accord and, 119–21 data centers of, xiv–xix, 5, 14–15, 29–30, 34, 42–46, 48–56 Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) of, 78–81, 85, 111, 112, 316n2 ElectionGuard system of, 87 engineering structure at, 142 facial-recognition technology of, 213–15, 222–24, 226–27, 229–30 and FBI’s request for customer data, 31 Friday meetings of, 62 General Data Protection Regulation and, 140–43, 146–47, 294 Giant Company Software and, xviii GitHub, 100, 277 Google and, 12 government sued by, 12–13, 15, 16, 18–19, 33, 35–37, 83 housing initiative of, 186–90, 327n40 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, 214–15 Ireland and, 42–45, 49–56 Law Enforcement and National Security (LENS) team of, 24–26 LinkedIn, 100, 103, 126, 181, 325n18 Muslim travel ban and, 173 NSA and, 1–4, 8, 13–14 Office, 84, 140, 253, 254 OneDrive, 126 open-source code and, 277–78 Patch Tuesdays of, 74 Philanthropies, 178–80 privacy legislation advocated by, 132, 146–48, 321n3 Research (MSR), 170–71, 194–95, 197, 237, 275, 328n12 Research Asia (MSRA), 255 Rural Airband Initiative of, 160–62, 166–67 Russia’s message to, 86 school voucher program of, 177 security feature development in, 111 Senior Leadership Team (SLT), 15, 62, 141, 221, 274, 307 Strontium and, 78–81, 84–85 Tay, 255–56 TechFest, 170–71 Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program of, 178–79 TechSpark program of, 233, 331n8 Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) of, 63, 78–79, 84 Windows, xx, 12, 29, 63–65, 203, 212, 253, 270 Word, 50, 264 Xbox, 72, 100, 126, 140, 160 military weapons, 117–18, 127, 202–6, 264, 329n29 artificial intelligence in, 202–6, 215, 216 nuclear, 116–17, 210 minimum viable product, 225–26, 296 Minority Report, 211–12 missiles, 66–67 MLATs (mutual legal assistance treaties), 47–49, 52 Mobility Fund, 158, 323n17 Moglen, Eben, 314n8 Mook, Robby, 279 Morrow, Frank, 125 MSTIC (Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center), 63, 78–79, 84 Munich Security Conference, 96–97, 208 Muslims, 288, 335n2 Christchurch mosque shootings, 99–100, 102, 125–26 travel ban on, 173 Myerson, Terry, 65 Myhrvold, Nathan, 194–95 Mylett, Steve, 187 N Nadella, Satya, 28–29, 62, 65, 66, 73, 115, 126–27, 141–43, 172–74, 186–88, 199, 200, 204–5, 218, 219, 221, 239–40, 252, 274, 276, 277, 289, 292 National Australia Bank, 213 National Federation for the Blind, 334n1 National Geographic Society, 161 National Health Service, 62 National Human Genome Research Institute, 213 National Institute of Standards and Technology, 221–22 nationalism, 112, 300–301 National Press Club, 29 national security: cybersecurity and, 110–11 individual freedoms vs., 9–10 National Security Council, 26 NATO, 82, 124, 204 Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, 92, 320n19 Nazi Germany, 39, 41, 61, 90, 129 negotiations, 175 Netflix, 16, 335n7 network effects, 270 neural networks, 196–97 New Deal, 164 NewsGuard, 104–5 New York, N.Y., 245 fire horses in, 231–32, 245, 247 New York Times, 63, 65–67, 99, 118, 219–20 New York University, 333n16 New Zealand, 75, 124, 125–27, 130 Christchurch mosque shootings in, 99–100, 102, 125–26 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), 127, 128, 208, 302, 303 Nimitz, USS, 203 9/11 terrorist attacks, 8–9, 71, 72 1984 (Orwell), 227 Nisbett, Richard, 258, 261–62 North Korea, 63, 64, 67–69, 71–74 missile launch of, 67 Noski, Chuck, 335n7 NotPetya, 69–72 NSA (National Security Agency), 3, 8–9, 13, 15, 73 Google and, 2, 4, 13 Microsoft and, 1–4, 8, 13–14 PRISM program of, 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Snowden and, 4–5, 8, 9, 13–14, 17–19, 25, 41 Verizon and, 2–3 WannaCry and, 63–69, 71–74 and White House meeting with tech leaders, 16–19 nuclear power, 143–44 nuclear weapons, 116–17, 210 O Obama, Barack, 15–16, 26, 53, 83, 131, 174, 179–80, 278, 279, 284 meeting with tech leaders called by, 16–19 Office, 84, 140, 253, 254 Office of Personnel, US (OPM), 251, 263 O’Mara, Margaret, 297, 335n9 OneDrive, 126 Open Data Initiative, 285 Oracle, 120 Orwell, George, 227 O’Sullivan, Kate, 119–20 Otis, James, Jr., 6–7, 311nn14–15 Ottawa Convention, 320n21 Oxford University, 95 P Paglia, Vincenzo, 208–9 Pai, Ajit, 153–54 Pakistan, 21–22 Palais des Nations, 129 Paltalk, 2 Panke, Helmut, 335n7 paralegals, 236 Paris, terrorist attacks in, 26–28 Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, 123–25, 127, 128, 300, 301 Paris Peace Forum, 123 Parscale, Brad, 280, 281 Partnership on AI, 200–201 Partovi, Hadi, 179 PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security), 288 PBS NewsHour, 85–86 Pearl, Daniel, 21–22 Pearl Harbor attack, 10 Pelosi, Nancy, 57 Penn, Mark, 312–13n12 Pettet, Zellmer, 242–44 Petya, 69 Pew Research Center, 155–56, 323n9 phishing, 79, 83 Pickard, Vincent, 101 Pincus, Mark, 17–18 poachers, 288 Posner, Michael, 333n16 post office, 7, 192 Prague Spring, 40–41 presidential election of 2016, 81, 82, 139, 144, 157, 172, 189, 278–82, 331n8 Preska, Loretta, 314n10 Priebus, Reince, 279–80, 282 Princeton University, 13, 174, 218, 288, 314n10, 335n2 printing press, xiii, 209 PRISM (Planning Tool for Resource Integration, Synchronization, and Management), 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Pritzker, Penny, 136, 137, 250 privacy, 5–6, 21, 22, 30, 39–59, 131–49, 193, 229, 289, 300, 301 artificial intelligence and, 171, 199–200, 207 California Consumer Privacy Act, 147–48 data sharing and, 282–84 differential privacy, 282–83 Facebook and, 135, 144 facial recognition and, see facial recognition Fourth Amendment and, 7–8, 14, 15, 26 General Data Protection Regulation and, 131–32, 139–43, 146–49 legislation on, 132, 146–48, 321n3 Privacy Shield and, 137–38, 300 public attitudes about, 143 public safety and, 21–37, 222 reasonable expectation of, 7–8, 34 right to, 330n24 Safe Harbor and, 133–34 search warrants and, see search warrants social media and, 145 Wilkes and, 5–6, 23 see also surveillance Privacy Shield, 137–38, 300 Private AI, 171 Progressive movement, 245 ProPublica, 197–98 Proposition 13, 146 Purdy, Abraham, 232 Q Quincy, Wash., xiv–xv, 5, 34, 42 R racial minorities, 184–85 radio, 95, 100–102, 106, 159 Radio Free Europe, 107 radiologists, 236–37 railroads, 110, 299–300 Railroads and American Law (Ely), 110 ransomware, 68 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 Rashid, Rick, 237, 238 Reagan, Nancy, 116 Reagan, Ronald, 23, 116, 146 Red Cross, 113, 118, 127, 320n16 Reddit, 99 Redmond, Wash., 187 Reform Government Surveillance, 16–17 regulation, 102, 143, 144, 192, 206–7, 219, 224, 266, 295–98, 300, 301, 303 of artificial intelligence, 192, 296 China and, 258 of facial recognition, 221–22, 224, 225, 228, 296 of governments, 301–2 of railroads, 299 of social media, 98, 100, 102–4, 144 Republic, Wash., 151–52, 155, 167 Republican National Committee (RNC), 279–82 Republicans, 82, 106, 172, 278–80 International Republican Institute, 84 Republic Brewing Company, 167 restaurants, fast-food, 235, 241 Ries, Eric, 225 Riley v.


pages: 371 words: 98,534

Red Flags: Why Xi's China Is in Jeopardy by George Magnus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, AlphaGo, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, business process, capital controls, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, cloud computing, colonial exploitation, corporate governance, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land reform, Malacca Straits, means of production, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old age dependency ratio, open economy, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, speech recognition, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, trade route, urban planning, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working-age population, zero-sum game

Simon Tisdall, ‘China Syndrome Dictates Barack Obama’s Asia-Pacific Strategy’, Guardian, 6 January 2012, <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/06/china-barack-obama-defence-strategy>. 3. ‘President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full’, World Economic Forum, Davos, 17 January 2017, <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum>. 4. Anna Wong, ‘China’s Current Account: External Rebalancing or Capital Flight?’ International Finance Discussion Papers 1208, Federal Reserve Board, 15 June 2017, <https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/ifdp/files/ifdp1208.pdf>. 5.

Trump is much more interested in Americans as suppliers of a narrow range of products, not the economy’s broader interests, let alone those of the world trade system. It came as no surprise, therefore, that President Xi Jinping felt able to give a tour de force address to the global elite of policymakers and business people at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days later. He told them how China had been hesitant about joining the WTO but summoned up the courage to do so, adjust, and make a virtue of free trade. Taking on the role of defender of globalisation, Xi said: ‘Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from.

property price rises (i) SEZs (i), (ii) stock exchange opened (i), (ii) Shenzhen–Hong Kong Connect Scheme (i) shipping (i) Sichuan (i) Silk Road BRI and (i) historical routes and trade (i) Xi invokes (i), (ii), (iii) Silk Road Economic Belt (i) see also Belt and Road Initiative Silk Road Fund (i) n7 Singapore Asian Tiger economies (i) fertility rates (i), (ii) high growth maintained (i) high-speed rail links (i) middle- to high-income (i) RCEP (i) SCIOs and (i) TPP member (i) Singapore Airlines (i) Sino IC Fund (i) Sino-Japanese war (1895) (i) see also Japan Sinochem (i) Sinopec (i) skyscrapers (i) Slovenia (i) smaller banks at risk (i) Smith, Adam (i), (ii) Social Insurance Law (2011) (i), (ii) social security (i), (ii), (iii) social unrest (i) socialism (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) SOEs (state-owned enterprises) (i), (ii) attempts to strengthen (i) debt for equity programmes (i) debts of (i), (ii) expansion (i) imprudent lending to (i) lagging behind private firms (i) more required of (i) privatisation (i) public-private partnerships (i) reform of (i), (ii) n16 viability (i) Sony (i) sorghum (i) Soros, George (i) South Africa BRICS (i), (ii) Chinese interests in (i) education completion rate (i) middle- to high-income (i) Renminbi reserves (i) South China Sea contested islands (i) global sea-borne trade (i) maritime goals in (i) rimland (i) Scarborough Shoal (i) Taiwan and (i) South Korea see also Korea ASEAN (i) Asian crisis (i) Asian Tiger economies (i) attitude to Renminbi bloc (i) China restricts tourism (i) external surplus comparison (i) fertility rates (i), (ii) high growth maintained (i) middle- to high-income (i), (ii) old-age dependency ratio (i) protectionist barriers (i) protests against (i) RCEP (i) retirement in (i) robots (i) US steel imports (i) Southern Tour (Deng) (i), (ii), (iii) Soviet Communist Party (i), (ii) Soviet Union backs Mao (i) fall of (i) see also Russia models adopted from (i) relations with (i) technological expertise (i) Xi learns lessons from (i) Spain (i), (ii), (iii) Special Drawing Rights (IMF) see also IMF importance of Remninbi (i) lack of practical purpose for China (i), (ii) prestige associated with (i) Renminbi admitted to (i) special economic zones (SEZs) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Spykman, Nicholas John (i), (ii) Sri Lanka (i), (ii), (iii) Starbucks (i) State Administration for Foreign Exchange (SAFE) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) n7 State Council Development Research Center (i) Financial Stability and Development Committee (i) housing reform (i), (ii) Made in China 2025 (MIC25) (i) merger of Regulatory Commissions (i) regulations for migrants (i) SOEs regulation (i) state intervention (i), (ii) State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) (i), (ii) steel (i), (ii) Stern, Lord Nicholas (i) stock market (i) structure of banking system (i) sub-Saharan Africa (i) see also Africa Suez Canal (i) Sun Yat-sen (i), (ii) Sun Zhigang (i) Sunseeker (i) Sweden (i), (ii) SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) (i) Swissport (i) Switzerland (i), (ii) Taiping Rebellion (i), (ii) Taiwan ageing population (i) agricultural produce of (i) Asian Tiger economies (i) diplomatic relations established (i) fertility rate (i) ‘first island chain’ (i) Foxconn (i) high growth maintained (i) loss of suzerainty (i), (ii) middle- to high-income (i) old-age dependency ratio (i) Renminbi bloc, attitude to (i) Ryukyu islands (i) separatism issue (i), (ii) US arms sales (i) Tanzania (i), (ii) Tariff Act 1930 (i) technology (i), (ii) Tencent (i), (ii) TFP (total productivity factor) (i) Thailand ASEAN (i) Asian crisis (i) disputes (i) high growth maintained (i) middle-income country (i) rail projects (i), (ii) Thames Estuary (i) Third Front Initiative (i) Tiananmen Gate (i) Tiananmen Square (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Tianjin (Tientsin) coal mines (i) colonial architecture (i) demilitarised zone (i) free trade zone (i), (ii) growing role (i) water shortages (i) Tibet (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Tientsin, Treaty of (i) tiers (classification of cities) (i) Togo (i) Tomorrow Group (i) TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) (i), (ii), (iii) Trade Act 1974 (i) trains (i), (ii) Transparency International (i) transport 13th Five-Year Plan (i) BRI initiatives (i), (ii) car sales (i), (ii) freight trains (i) rail network (i) traps (four economic) (i), (ii) Treasury (US) (i) treaty ports (i), (ii), (iii) Trump, Donald AI budget proposals (i) America First (i) China accused (i) China aided by (i) China’s edgy response (i) focus of (i) takes issue with China (i) TPP withdrawal (i) views on trade (i) Tsingtao brewery (i) TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) (i) Turkey (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Turkic language speakers (i) TVEs (town and village enterprises) (i), (ii) UK see Britain unemployment (i) UNESCO (i) United Nations Population Division (i), (ii) United States (i) America First (i), (ii) arms sales to Taiwan (i) Asian economies and the dollar (i) Bretton Woods (i) challenges from (i) China and, a progress report (i) China and the dollar (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) China as Trump’s major target (i) China’s direct investment (i) dollar’s survival (i) future administrations (i) Japan and (i) Marshall Plan (i), (ii) Mexican border (i) North Korea (i) products sold to China (i) Renminbi ‘manipulation’ (i) retreat from global leadership (i) rimland (i) rivalry with (i) tariffs (i) trade and technology disputes (i) trade deficit with China (i), (ii) Trump accuses China (i) Trump’s effect on (i) University of Wisconsin-Madison (i) Unlikely Partners (Julian Gewirtz) (i) Ural Mountains (i) urban living (i), (ii), (iii) Vanke Real Estate Corporation (i) Vasco da Gama (i) VAT (i) Venezuela (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Versailles, Treaty of (i), (ii) vested interests (i) Vientiane (i) Vietnam 18th century (i) American steel imports (i) ASEAN (i) Chinese claims (i) Human Freedom Index (i) low value manufacturing moves to (i), (ii) TPP (i) Voltaire (i) Waldorf Astoria, Manhattan (i) Walmart (i) Wang Qishan (i) WAP (working-age population) see also population statistics child dependency and (i) defining (i) falls for first time (i), (ii) immigration rates and (i) low-cost workers (i) productivity and (i) retirement age and (i) water scarcity (i), (ii), (iii) Wellington Street (Hong Kong) (i) Wen Jiabao (i), (ii), (iii) West, the bad decisions written off by (i) China and, reviewed (i) financial crisis (i), (ii), (iii) individualism (i) rising tensions with (i) Western mindsets (i) Western skills used (i) ‘Western values’ (i) Xi minded to press his advantage (i) West Point Military Academy (i) Why Nations Fail (Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson) (i) WMPs (wealth management products) nature of (i), (ii) regulatory issues (i), (ii) small and medium size banks (i) women (i), (ii) World Bank 2015 research paper (i) ‘China 2030’ (i) China’s integration (i) Chinese cities controlled (i) ‘Governance Indicators’ (i) labour force participation (i) laissez-faire reconsidered (i) LGFV liabilities (i) MES and (i) middle income nations (i), (ii) world dominance (i) World Economic Forum (i) World Health Organization (i) World Heritage Sites (i) World Intellectual Property Organization (i) World Trade Organization (WTO) admitted (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) balance of payments surge (i) export booms from (i) GATT and (i) globalisation effects (i), (ii) preparations for joining (i), (ii) retaliation rules (i) Wu Xiaohui (i) Wuhan (i) Wuhan Greenland Tower (i) Wuhan Iron and Steel (i) Wuhan Motor Engines (i) Xcerra (i) Xi Jinping see also Communist Party all-powerful (i) anti-corruption campaigns (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Belt and Road Initiative see Belt and Road Initiative capital controls (i) Chinese Dream invoked (i), (ii) Communist Party and see Communist Party emperor-like status (i), (ii) energy and pollution aims (i) financial security campaign (i), (ii) first Belt and Road Forum (i) jeopardy (i) Leading Small Groups (i) Mao and (i), (ii), (iii) Mao, Deng and (i) president for life?


pages: 328 words: 96,678

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendshoring, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

The panel’s moderator said aloud, “I think perhaps we need a stiff drink.” That drew a laugh from a skeptical audience. The speaker after me noted that my predictions did not use mathematical models. He rejected my analysis as mere hunches of a perennial pessimist. In February 2007 I stressed my concern again, on a panel on the global outlook at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Denial was still powerful. US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke had declared that a housing correction was due, but he ruled out any dire spillover effects. He foresaw no financial crisis, much less a systemic threat to the banking system. I respectfully disagreed, warning instead that we should brace for a bumpy ride and a global—not just US—financial crisis.

Manu Kumar and Brad Setser are longtime friends and intellectual colleagues: I learned a lot from both of them and very much appreciate their friendship. I benefited a lot from feedback received at many conferences and other venues where I presented my views over the years, including the World Economic Forum at Davos, the Ambrosetti Forum, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee, the Milken Institute Global Conference, the NBER, and the CEPR. Many academic colleagues—some with invaluable policy and/or markets experience—have been a source of great food for thought and important ideas: Ken Rogoff, Barry Eichengreen, Dani Rodrik, Maury Obstfeld, Jeff Frankel, Bill Nordhaus, Larry Kotlikoff, Jeff Sachs, Michael Pettis, Alberto Alesina, Richard Portes, Helen Rey, Paul Krugman, Carmen Reinhart, Nassim Taleb, Raghu Rajan, Joe Stiglitz, Niall Ferguson, Robert Shiller, Kishore Mahbubani, Willem Buiter, Giancarlo Corsetti, Brad DeLong, and Steven Mihm (my co-author of Crisis Economics).

My reception affirmed that even the prominent experts at Davos may not see trouble before it’s too late. It’s a classic bias in human thinking: most of us never want to imagine the worst. We are optimists by nature. Personally, I find the zeitgeist at Davos every year to be a contrarian indicator of the future. If everyone in the Davos set believes something will happen—good or bad, as it may be—they are highly likely to be wrong. Consensus groupthink often rules among the world’s elites. The same event gave me another chance to voice my contrarian perspective. My second Davos presentation probed the future of the European monetary union with an eye to the risks ahead.


pages: 741 words: 179,454

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, carbon credits, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discrete time, diversification, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Goodhart's law, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Bogle, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, load shedding, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, negative equity, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon shock, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Satyajit Das, savings glut, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, tail risk, Teledyne, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the market place, the medium is the message, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Turing test, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

The media celebrated George Soros’ 1992 attack on the pound sterling as victory over an inept and poor government. Bankers joined industrialists and celebrities as Davos men and women.13 At the Davos World Economic Forum, the Boao Forum in Asia and the IMF/World Bank annual meetings, the financial elite meets to exchange views, coordinate strategies, and shape policy, captured by the paparazzi. The events are open to people whose adoring and uncritical media profiles promote their purported business genius and ability to walk on water. Believing that they are special, they associate only with special others who understand them. At Davos the diverse mix is confusing—celebrities wanting to be intellectuals, intellectuals wanting to be celebrities, and bankers wanting to be both celebrities and intellectuals.

Joseph Akermann, head of Germany’s Deutsche Bank, thought that adding women to the firm’s men-only management board would make the forum “more colorful and prettier.”22 In 2007 Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $62 million to settle a number of gender discrimination claims bought by female employees. Writing about her experiences at the 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, journalist Anya Schiffrin, the wife of economist Joseph Stiglitz, recorded the humiliation of the women who make up a small portion of attendees. In a world where titles on conference badges are everything, the plain white name badges defined a wife’s low status. The only position that is worse is that of a Davos mistress, who usually does not get a badge at all.23 Smiling and Killing French philosopher Michel Foucault identified a carceral continuum, the system of cruelty, power, supervision, surveillance, and enforcement of acceptable behavior affecting working and domestic lives.

But “he did not know that it was already behind him.”20 This Time, It Is No Different! Failure is generally not fatal but failure to change can be. But no real progress is possible until everybody faces up to the fundamental problems. Yet no one seems to have learned anything at all. At the 2011 World Economic Forum at Davos, a Report—More Credit with Fewer Crises: Responsibly Meeting the World’s Growing Demand for Credit—forecasts that global borrowings will double between 2009 and 2020 to $213 trillion, a growth rate of 6.3 percent per annum. This follows a doubling of global credit between 2000 and 2009 from $57 trillion to $109 trillion, a 7.5 percent compound annual growth rate.


pages: 306 words: 78,893

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away by Doug Henwood

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, book value, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital divide, electricity market, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, feminist movement, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, government statistician, greed is good, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Internet Archive, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Mary Meeker, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, occupational segregation, PalmPilot, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rewilding, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, statistical model, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, tech worker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, union organizing, War on Poverty, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

There are also legal arrangements Hke NAFTA, and organizations Hke the IMF and WTO, which are the cells of an embryonic transnational state. Robinson and Harris single out the World Economic Forum (WEF), a group founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab, a Swiss professor of business, policy entrepreneur, and social cHmber. At first it was quiet and mostly European, but it grew over time, and by the 1990s had evolved into a gathering of a global business, government, and media eHte—most famous for its annual meetings in Davos (though the 2002 edition was held in New York). It's undoubtedly one of the ways by which that world elite has constituted itself, learning to think, feel, and act in common.

So even that project of integration, which has everything going for it, has a long way to go. And again, it's fairer to call it regional, involving as it does only half the European continent, rather than truly global. Back to the World Economic Forum. In the 1990s, the meetings were reportedly much giddier afiairs, when the U.S. economy was booming, the new economy was still new, and the creature that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times calls Davos Man seemed young and healthy. For the last few years, the WEF was convening against a backdrop of very bad news—^Enron, Argentina, recession, terrorism, and protests outside directed against them and all they stand for.

"^ Of course, good American individualists don't like to talk about the public sector, since their hero is the plucky entrepreneur. This entrepreneur's contribution is frirther called into question by the unpleasant fact that the stodgy social democracies of Scandinavia are among the most wired countries around. In early 2003, the World Economic Forum proclaimed Finland the most tech-sawy nation in the world. Fact-checking the Ukes of Allen Sinai is pretty unrewarding work, even though someone has to. But fact may never have had much to do with it. A good bit of the New Economy discourse was a product of fantasy, a symptom of American triumphaUsm—^very much like the globalization narrative that Paul Smith takes apart in Millennial Dreams (Smith 1996).


pages: 521 words: 118,183

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Securities and Exchange Commission, January 31, 2020, https://investors.zoom.us/static-files/09a01665-5f33-4007-8e90-de02219886aa. 29 Betsy Woodruff Swan, “State report: Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation narratives echo one another,” Politico, April 21, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/21/russia-china-iran-disinformation-coronavirus-state-department-193107. 30 Yuval Harari, “Read Yuval Harari’s blistering warning to Davos in full,” World Economic Forum, January 24, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/yuval-hararis-warning-davos-speech-future-predications/. 31 Chris Brose, The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (New York: Hachette, 2020), xii. 32 Jane Zhang, “China created a unicorn every 3.8 days in 2018,” South China Morning Post, January 27, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2183717/china-created-unicorn-every-38-days-2018. 33 John Adams, “To Thomas Jefferson from John Adams, 6 December 1787,” Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0405. 34 Josh Constine, “AOL Instant Messenger is shutting down after 20 years,” TechCrunch, October 6, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/06/aol-instant-messenger-shut-down/. 35 Angus King, “CSC Final Report,” Cyberspace Solarium Commission, March 2020, https://www.solarium.gov/report. 36 Sir Winston S.

China’s Artificial Intelligence Push into Africa,” Council on Foreign Relations, December 17, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/blog/exporting-repression-chinas-artificial-intelligence-push-africa. 100 Adrian Shahbaz, “The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism. 101 Ghalia Kadiri, “A Addis-Abeba, le siège de l’Union africaine espionné par Pékin,” Le Monde, January. 26, 2018, https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/01/26/a-addis-abeba-le-siege-de-l-union-africaine-espionne-par-les-chinois_5247521_3212.html. 102 Joe Parkinson, Nicholas Bariyo, and Josh Chin, “Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/huawei-technicians-helped-african-governments-spy-on-political-opponents-11565793017. 103 Yuval Harari, “Read Yuval Harari’s blistering warning to Davos in full,” World Economic Forum, January 24, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/yuval-hararis-warning-davos-speech-future-predications/. 104 Vincent, “Watch Jordan Peele use AI to make Barack Obama deliver a PSA about fake news.” Chapter 5: THE HILL AND THE VALLEY 1 “Transcript with Rep. Cicilline,” Rev, https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/_FX24Jlb75YkV0wn0tdgEzn7hr3YnKHiYFRaJHC36cpuN8-hRZCoC_eanIZkNRqAAoCUFtC5429mmv3rvjnTX3PpTLo?

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind,” Barlow wrote. “On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”41 Ironically, Barlow penned his declaration in Davos, Switzerland, home to the World Economic Forum, which draws top global leaders and thinkers—hardly a hotbed of nonconformity. Yet the twenty-five-year-old manifesto makes clear that even if Edward Snowden had never absconded with the National Security Agency’s secrets, and even if Putin’s Internet Research Agency had never heard of Twitter, Silicon Valley and Washington were perhaps destined to end up at odds with each other.


pages: 363 words: 109,077

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future by Alec Ross

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, clean water, collective bargaining, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, dumpster diving, employer provided health coverage, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, independent contractor, information security, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, late capitalism, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mortgage tax deduction, natural language processing, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open economy, OpenAI, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, special economic zone, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, working poor

In the thirty-five years Trumka has been the president of a union, he has played the insider’s game. He attends the World Economic Forum in Davos every year, and while in Washington he frequents the Hay-Adams, a power-meal mecca with twenty-five-dollar lobster omelets on the menu. (In fairness, he notes it’s a union shop.) He’s making a mistake to think that you have to wear the camouflage of the corporate elite to get the C-suite and the halls of Congress to respond to you. It’s the opposite. In my experience, with every mouthful of lobster omelet in Washington and canapé in Davos, the union leaders lose their edge. They are dulled. They are members of the Davos crowd, but junior members.

Similarly, while it is unrealistic to expect that the janitor of a company will make anywhere near the same wage as the CEO, it is reasonable to have a measure and judge the company based on whether the difference in that compensation is ten times or one hundred times or ten thousand times. I remember being at a party in Davos during the World Economic Forum, held in the chalet of a billionaire. Stakeholder capitalism critic Dan Loeb was talking to a fellow billionaire, Sean Parker, discussing the costs of private jets relative to the altitudes they can reach. “I won’t pay $10 million for another five thousand feet of altitude,” Parker said to Loeb.

When Gregg Lemkau suggested setting a diversity threshold for IPOs, Solomon jumped at the idea. “Can we do that?” he asked Lemkau. “We can do anything we want,” Lemkau replied. There was not much time to shop it around: it was December 2019, and Solomon wanted to announce the initiative the following month at the World Economic Forum in Davos. As Lemkau hammered out the details of the policy, he met some resistance. Certain energy companies and family-owned businesses asked for exceptions. Within Goldman Sachs, some people feared the decision would cost Goldman business. Emails between Solomon and Lemkau pegged the number of new US listings they had done since 2016 without female directors at approximately 20 percent.


pages: 380 words: 109,724

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US by Rana Foroohar

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deal flow, death of newspapers, decentralized internet, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, future of work, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, light touch regulation, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, PageRank, patent troll, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, price discrimination, profit maximization, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, search engine result page, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, subscription business, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the long tail, the new new thing, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, warehouse robotics, WeWork, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Alex Shephard, “Facebook Has a Genocide Problem,” The New Republic, March 15, 2018. 14. Edelman Trust Barometer, ibid. 15. Rana Foroohar, “The Dangers of Digital Democracy,” Financial Times, January 28, 2018. 16. George Soros, “Remarks Delivered at the World Economic Forum,” January 24, 2019, https://www.georgesoros.com/​2019/​01/​24/​remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum-2/. 17. Rana Foroohar, “Facebook’s Data Sharing Shows It Is Not a US Champion,” Financial Times, June 6, 2018. 18. Kate Conger and Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China,” The New York Times, August 16, 2018. 19.

It was following the “move fast and break things” ethos long before Facebook.2 I’ve been following the company for over twenty years, and I first encountered the celebrated Google founders, Page and Brin, not in the Valley, but in Davos, the Swiss gathering spot of the global power elite, where they’d taken over a small chalet to meet with a select group of media.3 The year was 2007. The company had just purchased YouTube a few months back, and it seemed eager to convince skeptical journalists that this acquisition wasn’t yet another death blow to copyright, paid content creation, and the viability of the news publications for which we worked. Unlike the buttoned-up consulting types from McKinsey and BCG, or the suited executives from the old guard multinational corporations that roamed the promenades of Davos, their tasseled loafers slipping on the icy paths, the Googlers were the cool bunch.

Rana Foroohar, “China’s Xi Jinping Is No Davos Man,” Financial Times, January 20, 2019. 13. Ibid. 14. Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley, “The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies,” Bloomberg Businessweek, October 4, 2018. 15. Lee outlines some of this in his book AI Superpowers as I do in Makers and Takers. 16. Rana Foroohar, “Advantage China in the Race to Control AI?” Financial Times, September 21, 2018. 17. Rana Foroohar, “Fight the FAANGs, Not China,” Financial Times, May 6, 2018. 18. Foroohar, “China’s Xi Jinping Is No Davos Man.” 19. Lauren Easton, “How I Got That Photo of Zuckerberg’s Notes,” Associated Press, April 11, 2018. 20.


pages: 565 words: 122,605

The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us by Joel Kotkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alvin Toffler, autonomous vehicles, birth tourism , blue-collar work, British Empire, carbon footprint, Celebration, Florida, citizen journalism, colonial rule, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, demographic winter, Deng Xiaoping, Downton Abbey, edge city, Edward Glaeser, financial engineering, financial independence, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Gini coefficient, Google bus, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, intentional community, Jane Jacobs, labor-force participation, land reform, Lewis Mumford, life extension, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, microapartment, new economy, New Urbanism, Own Your Own Home, peak oil, pensions crisis, Peter Calthorpe, post-industrial society, RAND corporation, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Seaside, Florida, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, starchitect, Stewart Brand, streetcar suburb, Ted Nelson, the built environment, trade route, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, young professional

“Your Commute is Shrinking/Bay Area workers drive less as more jobs move out of suburbs,” SFGate, http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/YOUR-COMMUTE-IS-SHRINKING-Bay-Area-workers-2540280.php. HOLTHAUS, Eric. (2015, January 23). “Hundreds of Private Jets Delivered People to Davos. Also, It’s Climate Change Day at Davos,” Slate, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/23/davos_climate_change_hundreds_of_private_jets_at_the_world_economic_forum.html. HOOI, Joyce. (2012, October 9). “More than half of S’poreans would migrate if given a choice: Survey,” AsiaOne, http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20121007-376116.html. HOPE, Katie. (2014, March 24).

Increasingly, those calling for more densification are people who, as one Los Angeles newspaper found, enjoy the very lifestyle—in gated communities and large houses located far from transit routes—they wish to eradicate for others.111 The ultimate absurdity of this new approach to urbanity was on display at the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Davos meeting, epitomized in the focus on climate change by people who used some 1,700 private jets to attend the Swiss event.112 The people blowing fuel on private jets somehow feel empowered to ask everyone else to live more modestly. One has to wonder about Davos-goers like billionaire real estate investor Jeff Greene, who says that to fight climate change, America needs to “live a smaller existence.” This coming from a man who has owned as many as five houses, including an un-small $195 million Beverly Hills estate that was, at the time, possibly the country’s priciest residence.113 SEARCHING FOR THE HUMAN CITY In many ways, we are faced with a crisis that parallels that of the industrial city, with ever-widening inequality, widespread poverty, and social alienation.

“The Life and Death of Great American Cities,” American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/publication/the-life-and-death-of-great-american-cities/. SCHWAB, Klaus. (2013). “The Global Competitiveness Report: 2013-2014,” World Economic Forum, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalCompetitivenessReport_2013-14.pdf. SCHWEIZER, Peter. (2015, January 20). “1,700 Private Jets Fly to Davos to Discuss Global Warming,” http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/01/20/1700-private-jets-fly-to-davos-to-discuss-global-warming/. SCOMMENGA, Paola. (2014, September). “U.S. Baby Boomers Likely to Delay Retirement,” Population Reference Bureau, http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2014/us-babyboomers-retirement.aspx.


pages: 197 words: 53,831

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference by Alice Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, decarbonisation, diversification, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, family office, food miles, Future Shock, global pandemic, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green transition, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, off grid, oil shock, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, precision agriculture, risk tolerance, risk/return, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, William MacAskill

While some oil billionaires with the ear of government officials are certainly contributing to climate change, other billionaires like Bloomberg and Bill Gates are actively seeking to mitigate it. A lot of billionaires do see climate change as a risk. Respondents to the 2020 Global Risks Report, produced in advance of the World Economic Forum in Davos, an annual gathering of some of the world’s most influential billionaires and policymakers, listed environmental worries as the five main risks to the global economy – the first time the environment had taken all five top slots. The top three risks were deemed to be extreme weather, climate action failure, and natural disasters – as they had been in 2019 as well.

Rowe Price 88 Trump, Donald 188 Twitter 77, 135 UBS 5, 88, 100–101, 102, 163, 188, 195, 197 ‘unicorn’ companies 34, 128, 146 Unilever 153, 161–2, 174 United Nations (UN): Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030) 4; COP25 climate change convention, Madrid (2019) 188; COP26 climate change convention, Glasgow (2021) 189, 200–201; Earth Day 201; Environment Programme (UNEP) 198–9; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 152; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2, 5, 149; Paris Agreement (2015) 4–5, 10, 42, 73, 74, 76, 78, 93, 109, 111, 117, 132, 165, 188, 193; Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) 13, 97, 181–2, 183, 184, 185, 199–200, 203; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4, 10–11, 12, 40, 42 university endowment funds 45–7, 51–2, 55–7, 60, 65, 67, 74–5 Unreasonable Group 159 Vanguard 88, 89, 97 vegan diet 15, 22, 28, 146, 149–55, 163 Vegetarian Butcher, The 153 Velocys 142 venture capital 3, 18, 36–9, 41, 44, 114, 121, 122, 124, 135–6, 137, 140, 144, 148, 152, 153, 157, 162, 171, 178 Veolia 174 Vestas 7, 124–5 Virgin Atlantic 141 Viridor 174–5 Volkswagen 76, 129, 133, 137 Volvo 77 voting records, company climate-related resolutions 74, 87–9 waste-to-energy 174–5 water funds 12 wealth boom 17–19 Webber, Simon 73, 134 White, Neville 12 wind power 3, 7, 15, 21, 107–8, 110, 111, 114, 115, 120–21, 124–5, 134, 137, 138 Winnow 160 Wirth Research 38 World Economic Forum, Davos: (2019) 6; (2020) 17, 172, 191 World Energy 142 YCloset 175 Yin, Samuel 127–8 ZeroAvia 142 Zouk Capital 139–40 THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING Find us online and join the conversation Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/penguinukbooks Like us on Facebook facebook.com/penguinbooks Share the love on Instagram instagram.com/penguinukbooks Watch our authors on YouTube youtube.com/penguinbooks Pin Penguin books to your Pinterest pinterest.com/penguinukbooks Listen to audiobook clips at soundcloud.com/penguin-books Find out more about the author and discover your next read at penguin.co.uk PENGUIN BOOKS UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Politicians and celebrities alike burnished their green credentials. New poster children for the movement emerged – literally, in the case of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist who shot to fame at the age of just 15, having pioneered the movement for school students to strike over the climate in 2018, and who told attendees of the 2019 Davos summit that ‘our house is on fire’. Waking up to climate change in the investment world means looking to see where risks can be avoided and profits can be made. A report by Bank of America declared that the 2020s ‘are shaping up to be the decade of climate opportunity’, predicting that what it calls the climate solutions market could double in value from $1tn to $2tn by 2025.


pages: 497 words: 123,718

A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption by Steven Hiatt; John Perkins

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, airline deregulation, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bob Geldof, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate personhood, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial independence, full employment, global village, high net worth, land bank, land reform, large denomination, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Seymour Hersh, statistical model, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, Tax Reform Act of 1986, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

He was hailed in the Nigerian press: “The move will bolster international commercial confidence in investing in Nigeria,” proclaimed Business Day. 46 His first appearance as OPEC president was at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, the annual get-together of the world’s business and political elite. Davos nestles snugly in the Swiss Alps; outside the conference hall, clear, crisp blue skies formed the backdrop to chalets laden with snow. Inside the hall, some 2,300 delegates had come to the ultimate exclusive networking event. OPEC had been represented at Davos for over a decade, but this year it was putting on a special program featuring an “Energy Summit” with the theme of “Managing Tectonic Shifts.”

., and administration 66, 271, 278 and Iraq War 13, 28 Bush Agenda, The (Juhasz) 4, 275 Cabot Corporation 104, 112n32 Cameroon, foreign debt of 249 Canada 99, 101, 201, 268, 271 Canadian Export Development Corp. 201, 202, 203, 204, 206 capital flight 24, 43–44, 231–36, 253, 258n27 Carter, Jimmy 76, 140 Casey, William 70, 82, 90 Cavallo, Domingo Felipe 238 Cayman Islands, as offshore banking haven 65, 72, 73, 74, 75, 86 Center for Global Energy Studies 145 Center for Strategic and International Studies 119, 120 Central African Republic 231 Central Intelligence Agency 3, 5, 15 Afghan rebels and 70–71 BCCI and 69, 70, 71–72, 73, 76, 78, 79–82, 85 Saudi intelligence services and 75 Chad, foreign debt of 249 Chavez, Hugo 3, 25, 273 Cheney, Dick 28, 133 Chevron Oil 135, 138, 139, 144, 153 in Nigeria 123–24 Chile 236 1973 coup in 27 China 4, 229, 236 foreign debt 222–23 Third World resources and 5, 117–18, 120–21, 124, 126–27, 130 Chomsky, Noam Hegemony or Survival 4 Christian Peacemaker Team 96, 106–8 Citibank, Citigroup 75, 100, 130, 138, 226, 238, 268 Clifford, Clark 78–79, 85, 86, 88 Clinton, Bill, and administration 119, 120, 126, 212, 271 Coalition of Immokalee Workers 272, 280 COFACE 201, 205, 212 Cogecom 100 cold war 4 and decolonization 16–17 Colombia, human rights in 107 colonialism, decline of formal 13–14 coltan: efforts to control 5, 26, 95 shortages of 95 uses for 94 Commission for Africa 251 Communism: appeal of 14 fall of 4, 13, 27, 137–38, 238 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Perkins) 1–4, 6, 17 Congo, Democratic Republic of (Zaire): civil war in 26, 94–96, 108n3 corruption in 24, 254 foreign debt 220, 230, 247, 249 human rights in 107–8 rape as a weapon of war in 93, 96–98 Western role in 98–105, 109n4, 111n29 World Bank and 158 Congo Republic 230, 247, 249 cooperatives 276–77 corporations, as legal persons 277 CorpWatch 278 corruption: culture of 51–54 IMF/World Bank and 24–25, 157–74 offshore banking and 44–45, 52- power and 24 privatization and 24–25, 256n12 COSEC 209–10 Council on Foreign Relations 119–20 dam projects, 209–12 Dar al-Mal al-Islami 89 Daukoru, Edmund 125–27, 128 Davos see World Economic Forum DeBeers Group 101, 103 decolonization 13, 16–17 debt/flight cycle 231–36, 253, 258n27 debt relief, campaigns for 246, 252–55, 268 in U.S. 235 debt, Third World 32, 35 amount of relief 224–29 banks and 226–27, 229, 232–34 business loans 35–37, 227 cold war strategy and 17 corruption and 230, 231, 232, 253, 254, 257n23 1982 crisis 39, 55 disunity among debtor nations 237–39 dubious debts and 230, 235, 247, 253, 257n23, 261n68 growth of 18–19, 181, 229–36 as means of control 17, 23, 183–84 payments on 19, 190–91, 223, 228, 231, 247–48, 275 relief plans 220–22, 225–29, 239–52, 274 size of 221–24, 259n37, 260n46 social/economic impacts of 190–91, 231–36, 247–48 democracy: debt crisis and 236 economic reform and 276–79 global justice and 279–81 in Iraq 151–54 Deutsche Bank 226 drug trade 70, 80, 87 Dubai 73 Dulles, Alan 15 Eagle Wings Resources International 104 East Timor 205 economic development strategies: “big projects” and 16–17 debt-led 18–19 state-led 16–17, 19 economic forecasting 3 economic hit men 5 definition 1, 3, 18 John Perkins and 1–4, 17 types of 5, 18 Ecuador 236, 266 foreign debt 244 Egypt 14 Suez Crisis 15–16 Eisenhower, Dwight, and administration 15 elites, wealthy 4, 18, 57, 176, 183, 228, 232, 253 use of tax havens 43–44, 54–56, 65–66, 226, 232–34 El Salvador 26 empire see imperialism Eni SpA 144, 153 Enron 53, 54, 208–9 Ethiopia 230, 249 European Union 51 agricultural subsidies 22 environment degradation: development projects and 199, 200–211, 257n23 oil production and 115–16 export credit agencies: arms exports and 204–5 campaigns against 209–16 corruption and 200, 202–3, 205, 207–8 debt and 200 environmental effects 199, 200–211 nuclear power and 202, 205–6 operation of 197–201 secrecy of 205, 210–12 size of 201 World Bank and 199, 201, 202, 204 Export Credit Group 210, 215 Export Credits Guarantee Department 201, 205, 211 Export Finance and Investment Corp. 203, 204 export processing zones 178 Export Risk Guarantee 203, 211, 213 ExxonMobil 144 fair trade movement 280 Faisal, Mohammad al-89 Faux, Jeff Global Class War, The 4 Federal Bureau of Investigation 71 Federal Reserve Bank of New York 87 Federal Reserve System 78, 82, 88 Ferguson, Niall 13 First American Bankshares 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 88 First Quantum Materials 101 First, Ruth 26 Focus on the Global South 187, 273 foreign aid 19 in Congo civil war 99–100 France 236, 244 empire 13 Suez Crisis and 15 free trade 4, 19, 21–23, 268, 271 British development and 21 U.S. development and 21 Free Trade Area of the Americas 271 Friends of the Earth 104, 269 G8 summits 212, 213, 219–20, 221, 246, 250, 271, 275 Gambia 243, 249 García, Alan 74 Gates, Robert 85 Gécamines 100, 104 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade agricultural trade 186–87 establishment of 267 TRIPS 23 Uruguay Round 23, 267 General Union of Oil Employees 135–36, 141–44 Georgia 207 Germany 212, 213, 216, 236 export credit agency 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209–11, 212, 215–16 Green Party 206, 215 Ghana 16 development projects in 16, 207 foreign debt 230, 247, 249 impact of IMF SAP 5, 22 Giuliani, Carlo 271 Global Awareness Collective 278 Global Class War, The (Faux) 4 Global Exchange 278 globalization 3 alternatives to corporate 275–79 economic 176–79, 230, 236 impacts of 185–90, 234, 236, 263–65 of the financial system 55, 63–66 Globalization and Its Discontents (Stiglitz) 3, 4 Global justice movement: achievements of 276–79 campaigns 269–72, 274–75 in Global North 268–69, 271–72, 274 in Global South 271–74 origins of 268–69 proposals of 275–79 protests by 265–66, 270–71 Global South see Third World Gonzalez, Henry 72, 90 Gorbachev, Mikhail 137 Goulart, João 27 Groupement pour le Traitment des Scories du Terril de Lubumbashi 104 Guatemala 14, 236 Arbenz government 26 Guinea, foreign debt of 249 Guinea-Bassau 26, 247, 249 Guyana: export credit agencies and 203 environmental problems 203 foreign debt 241, 243, 244, 246, 247, 249 Haiti 236, 249 World Bank and 158 Halliburton 3, 133, 278 Hankey, Sir Maurice 145 Harken Energy Corp. 77, 78 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative 221, 225, 226, 230, 242–48, 275 conditions of 243–45 results of 248–50 Hegemony or Survival (Chomsky) 4 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin 70 Helms, Richard 82 Henwood, Doug 23, 177–79 Heritage Foundation 121 Heritage Oil and Gas 100 Hermes Guarantee 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 215–16 Honduras, foreign debt of 249 Hope in the Dark (Solnit) 281 Hungary, Soviet intervention in 16 Hussein, Saddam 28, 90, 141–42 and BCCI 72 Hutu people 94–96 Hypovereinsbank 209 Ijaw people 116, 121–23, 128 Illaje people 123 immigrant rights movement 281 imperialism 13–14 coups d’état and 27 divide-and-rule tactics 25, 26, 265 post-cold war changes 4–5 pressure on uncooperative countries 25, 142 resistance to 28, 115–17, 121–30, 143–44, 151–54, 176, 191–92, 265–66 resources and 98–106, 118–21, 133–34, 136, 139–40, 145 as system of control 17–28, 176 use of force 5, 25–28, 111n22, 113–14, 115–17, 123, 111n22 India 16, 119, 229, 236, 266 foreign debt 222, 223 export credit agencies and 206, 208 Maheshwar Dam 209–10 Indonesia 236 corruption in 202–3 export credit agencies and 200, 202–3, 205, 207, 216 foreign debt 228, 230, 244 inequality 44 Institute for Policy Studies 278 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 157 International Development Association 157, 242 International Forum on Globalization 266 International Monetary Fund 3, 4, 19, 135, 275 conflicts of interest 244 debt relief and 221–22, 224, 226, 237, 240, 243–46, 250–51, 252 Iraq and 151–53 Malaysia and 273 neoliberalism and 176–79, 222 offshore banking and 43, 234 protests against 266 structural adjustment programs 22, 23, 245, 265–66 Rwanda and 100 Uganda and 100 International Tax and Investment Center 134–35, 138–39, 144–54 International Trade Organization 267 Iran 14, 90, 145, 200 coup against Mossadegh 14–15 nationalization of oil industry 14 Iran-Contra affair 71–72 Iraq: BCCI and 72 foreign debt 152 Gulf War and 28, 72, 140, 141, 146 human rights in 105–6 oil production and reserves 135–36, 139–54 production sharing agreements in 147–54 sanctions against 72, 142 social conditions in 135, 142, 143 U.S. occupation of 28, 140, 141–42, 146, 250, 275, 278 Israel: and Suez Crisis 15 Yom Kippur War and 17 Ivory Coast 230 foreign debt 244, 249 “jackals” 25–26 James, Deborah 273 Japan 216, 236 Japan Bank for International Cooperation 201, 202, 203, 241 Jersey 88 banking boom in 46–47 impact on island 46, 51–52, 56–62 as offshore banking haven 43, 45, 56–61 Johnson, Chalmers Sorrows of Empire 4 Jordan 241, 266 Jordan, Vernon 100 JPMorganChase 226, 238 Jubilee South 190 Jubilee 2000 268 Juhasz, Antonia Bush Agenda, The 4, 275 Juma’a, Hassan 135–36, 140, 142–44, 154 Kabila, Joseph 96 Kabila, Laurent 94, 96, 99 Kagame, Paul 94, 98–99 ties to U.S. 99 Kazakhstan 138, 139, 144, 150 Keating, Charles 83 Kenya 236 foreign debt 243, 244 Kerry, John 76 investigation of BCCI 79–83, 87, 89 Kirchner, Nestor 273 Korea, Republic of 229, 272 Korten, David When Corporations Rule the World 4 KPMG 52 Krauthammer, Charles 13 Krushchev, Nikita 16 Kurdistan 211–12, 214 Kuwait 133, 141, 146, 152, 154 labor exports 235–36 Lake, Anthony 119–20 Lance, Bert 77 Lawson, Nigel 242 Lawson Plan 221, 242 Lee Kyung Hae 272 Liberia, World Bank lending to 159–67 Liberty Tree Foundation 276 Li Zhaoxing 117–18, 124 Lu Guozeng 117 Lumumba, Patrice 26 Luxembourg, as offshore banking haven 72, 73, 74 Madagascar, foreign debt of 249 Mahathir, Mohamad 273 Malawi 254 foreign debt 243, 249 Malaysia 41–43, 229 defiance of IMF 273 Mali, foreign debt of 246, 249 Marcos, Ferdinand 31, 48, 175, 176, 181–85 markets, corporate domination of 16 Martin, Paul 54 mass media, manipulation of 25 Mauritania, foreign debt of 247, 249 McKinney, Cynthia; hearing on Congo 98–99, 110n11 McLure, Charles 137–39 mercenaries: in Congo 111n22 in Nigeria 5, 25–26, 113–14, 115–17 Mexico 207, 256n14, 273 foreign debt 55, 227, 228, 230, 233, 240–41, 244 labor exports 236 Zapatista uprising 272 Middle East, and struggle for oil 27–28 military-industrial complex 99 military interventions 27–28 Mizban, Faraj Rabat 141 Mitterand Plan 221 Mobutu Sese Seko 24, overthrow of 94 Mondlane, Eduardo 26 Mongolia 207 Morales, Evo 277 Morganthau, Robert 69, 84–87 Moscow, John 58, 87 Mossadegh, Mohammad 3, 14–15, 27 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta 122–24, 129 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) 272 Mozambique 26, 27, 230 foreign debt 241, 246, 249 Mueller, Robert 87 mujahadeen (Afghanistan): and BCCI 70 and drug trade 70 Mulroney, Brian 100 Multilateral Agreement on Investment 269–70, 281 Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative 222, 225, 230, 250–52 Multilateral Investment Agreement 269 multinational corporations: export credit agencies and 209–11 export processing zones and 178 globalization, pressure for 138, 268, 275 mercenaries, use of 25–26, 111n22, 113–14, 115–17, 123 resources and 101–6, 111n29, 112n31, 112n32 scandals 5 transfer mispricing by 49–51 offshore banks, use of 24, 49–51 patents, control of 23 Museveni, Yoweri 95 Myanmar, foreign debt of 230 Nada, Youssef Mustafa 71–72 Namibia 95 export credit agencies and 207 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 15–16 National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia 88–89 National Family Farm Coalition 272 nationalism: pan-Arab 15 Iranian 14 Nehru, Jawaharlal 16 neocolonialism see imperialism neoliberalism 4, 19 critique of 176–79, 190–92, 234, 236 defined 176–77 economic development and 176–79, 232 economic strategies 178–81, 222, 230, 231, 236 Netherlands, overseas empire of 13 Newmont Mining Corp. 244 New World Order 27–28 Nicaragua 207 foreign debt 225, 230, 247, 249 U.S. proxy war against 26, 27, 79 Nicpil, Liddy 190–91, 192 Nidal, Adu 73 Niger, foreign debt of 241, 249 Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force 121, 123 Niger Delta Volunteer Service 122 Niger Delta region: attack on oil platforms 116–17 as “Next Gulf” 118–21 pollution from oil production 115–16 struggle against Shell 115–16, 121–24 Nigeria 200, 266 China and 117–18 colonial rule 115 corruption in 44–45, 230 foreign debt 223, 230, 233, 243, 244 oil production 115–16, 125–27 World Bank lending in 158, 167–69 Nkrumah, Kwame 16 nongovernmental organizations 239, 250 Noriega, Manuel 80 and BCCI 72, 79 North American Free Trade Agreement 4, 268, 272 nuclear power 205–6, 210 Obasanjo, Olusegun 125, 127 Obiang, Teodoro 48 O’Connor, Brian 144–45 OECD Watch 105 offshore banking havens: arms trade and 71–73 campaign against 62–64 central role in world trade 44, 47–48, 64–65 corruption and 24, 44–45, 52–56, 64, 231–33, 253 drug trade and 70 extraction of wealth 43, 54–56, 64–65, 226, 231–33, 253, 258n58 financial centers and 234, ignored by academia 44, 234 secrecy and 47–48, 53, 66 tax evasion and 43, 48, 49–51, 54, 57–59, 64–65, 226, 232 terrorism and 71, 88 Ogoni people 122–23, 125 Okadigbo, Chuba 116 Okonjo-Iweala, Ngozi 118 Okuntimo, Paul 123 Oil Change International 278 oil price spikes 236 oil production and reserves: future shortages of 28, 140 Indonesia 207 Iraqi 135–36, 144–54 Nigerian 113–14, 128–29 strategies to control 25–26, 27–28, 139–40 OM Group, Inc. 104, 112n31 OPEC 125–26, 128 1973 oil embargo by 17 dollar deposits in First World 17–18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 135, 269 “Action Statement on Bribery” 216 export credit agencies and 210, 215 Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises 101, 102, 105–6, 112n31 “OECD Arrangement” 215 Overseas Private Investment Corp. 204, 206–9 Oxfam 43, 62–63, 250 Pakistan 90 Afghan mujahadeen and 70–71 BCCI and 70 export credit agencies and 207 foreign debt 244 Panama 3, 26, 72 as offshore banking haven 73, 74 Papua New Guinea: export credit agencies and 204 mining and environmental problems 204 Paris Club of creditors 220, 225–26, 227, 228, 242, 252 Peru 74 foreign debt 241 impact of IMF SAP 22 petrodollars, recycling of 17–18 Perkins, John 19 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man 1–2, 17 Pharaon, Ghaith 76, 77, 86, 87, 88 Philippines, the 31–34, 35–36 corruption in 181–82 democratic movements in 182–85, 236 economic decline in 187–89 emigration from 189, 236 foreign debt 181, 190–91, 230, 241, 244 Marcos regime 31, 34, 175, 176, 180–85, 261n61 martial law in 180–85 social conditions in 179–80, 185–86, 189–91 U.S. rule 175–76 World Bank and 158, 178–81 Pinochet, General Augusto 27, 45–46, 48 PLATFORM 140, 156n28 Portugal 209–10 Posada Carriles, Luis 26 poverty reduction strategy programs see structural adjustment programs Price Waterhouse 83–84 privatization 191 production sharing agreements 147–54 protectionism 21, 181, 186–87 proxy wars 27, 70–71 Public Citizen 269, 273 public utilities, privatization of 191, 261n61, 277 Rahman, Masihur 85 Reagan, Ronald, and administration 19, 79, 87, 136–37, 239 Iran-Contra affair 72 Rich, Marc 90 Rights and Accountability in Development 101, 104, 105 Rio Tinto Zinc 204 Ritch, Lee 79–80 Robson, John 138 Roldós, Jaime 3, 26 Roosevelt, Kermit 15 Rumsfeld, Donald 138 rural economic development 183, 186–87 Russia: debt relief and 225 oil industry 154 transition to capitalism 137–39, 258n28 Rutledge, Ian 149 Rwanda 94–96, 98, 249 massacre in 94, 99 SACE 201 Sachs Plan 221 Saleh, Salim 95 Saõ Tomé, foreign debt of 247, 249 Saud al-Fulaij, Faisal 86, 87 Saudi Arabia 3, 88 and BCCI 70, 75 Saro-Wiwa, Ken 125–26 Scholz, Wesley S. 104 Scowcroft, Brent 72 Senegal 16, 249 Senghor, Léopold 16 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks 71 Shell Oil 144 Nigeria and 113–15, 122, 123, 125–29 at World Economic Forum 127 Shinawatra, Thaksin 54 Sierra Club 269 Sierra Leone 247 SmartMeme 276 Solnit, Rebecca Hope in the Dark 281 Somalia 251 Sorrows of Empire (Johnson) 4 South Africa 236 military interventions 27 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 26 Soviet Union 13, 14 de-Stalinization 16 Hungary, intervention in 16 influence in Third World 14 U.S. and 137 Stephens, Jackson 76, 77 Stiglitz, Joseph 24 Globalization and Its Discontents 3, 4 structural adjustment programs (SAPs) 19, 229–30 in Ghana 5, 22 in Peru 22 in the Philippines 176–79, 183–85, 190–92 in Zambia 22 Sudan 230, 251 Suharto 200, 202–3 Syria 211 Switzerland, as offshore banking haven 45, 65, 72 Taco Bell, boycott of 280 Tanzania, foreign debt of 247, 249 tax evasion 43, 48, 49–51, 54, 57–59, 64–65 Tax Foundation 137–38 tax havens see offshore banking havens Tax Justice Network 63 Tax Reform Act of 1986 138 Tenke Mining 99 terrorism: as EHM strategy 26, 72 financing of 42, 88–89 inequality and 44 Islamist 71–72, 89 Palestinian 73 Thatcher, Margaret 19, 138 Third World: as commodity producers 17, 23 conditions in 5, 96–97, 106–8, 116, 179–80, 185–90, 234, 236 development strategies 176–79 divisions among countries 265–68 elites in 25, 28, 43–44, 176, 226, 232–34 emergence of 14 lack of development in 232, 237 terms of trade and 22, 178–79 Third World Network 269 Tidewater Inc. 113 Torrijos, Omar 3, 26 Total S.A. 144, 153 trade unions 135–36, 141–44, 180, 186, 269, 274 transfer mispricing 49–51 cost to Third World 50 Transparency International 45 Turkey: export credit agencies and 206 Ilisu Dam 211–14 Turkmenistan 200 Uganda 94–96 foreign debt 241, 246, 249 Union Bank of Switzerland 57, 58, 77, 226, 250 United Arab Emirates 69, 73 United Fruit Company 15 United Kingdom 213 NCP for Congo 102–3 empire 13–14, 115, 129, 145 Iran and 14–15 Iraq occupation and 146, 151, 152 offshore banking and; Suez Crisis and 15 United Nations: trade issues and 265, 276 Panel of Experts, Congo 100–106, 112n32 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 220, 265, 267 United States: agricultural subsidies 22 aid 98 as empire 13, 28 cold war strategy of 16, 17, 24, 26 in Congo 99, 104, 105 debt-led development strategy of 176–79 Iran coup and 14–15 Iraqi oil and 133–34, 136, 139–40 Iraq wars 72, 133, 141–42 Islamists and 26 Nigerian oil and 118–21 Philippines and 175–76, 180 strategic doctrines 27–28, 118–19 support of Contras 72 trade deficit 23 trade policies 267 U.S.

., and administration 66, 271, 278 and Iraq War 13, 28 Bush Agenda, The (Juhasz) 4, 275 Cabot Corporation 104, 112n32 Cameroon, foreign debt of 249 Canada 99, 101, 201, 268, 271 Canadian Export Development Corp. 201, 202, 203, 204, 206 capital flight 24, 43–44, 231–36, 253, 258n27 Carter, Jimmy 76, 140 Casey, William 70, 82, 90 Cavallo, Domingo Felipe 238 Cayman Islands, as offshore banking haven 65, 72, 73, 74, 75, 86 Center for Global Energy Studies 145 Center for Strategic and International Studies 119, 120 Central African Republic 231 Central Intelligence Agency 3, 5, 15 Afghan rebels and 70–71 BCCI and 69, 70, 71–72, 73, 76, 78, 79–82, 85 Saudi intelligence services and 75 Chad, foreign debt of 249 Chavez, Hugo 3, 25, 273 Cheney, Dick 28, 133 Chevron Oil 135, 138, 139, 144, 153 in Nigeria 123–24 Chile 236 1973 coup in 27 China 4, 229, 236 foreign debt 222–23 Third World resources and 5, 117–18, 120–21, 124, 126–27, 130 Chomsky, Noam Hegemony or Survival 4 Christian Peacemaker Team 96, 106–8 Citibank, Citigroup 75, 100, 130, 138, 226, 238, 268 Clifford, Clark 78–79, 85, 86, 88 Clinton, Bill, and administration 119, 120, 126, 212, 271 Coalition of Immokalee Workers 272, 280 COFACE 201, 205, 212 Cogecom 100 cold war 4 and decolonization 16–17 Colombia, human rights in 107 colonialism, decline of formal 13–14 coltan: efforts to control 5, 26, 95 shortages of 95 uses for 94 Commission for Africa 251 Communism: appeal of 14 fall of 4, 13, 27, 137–38, 238 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Perkins) 1–4, 6, 17 Congo, Democratic Republic of (Zaire): civil war in 26, 94–96, 108n3 corruption in 24, 254 foreign debt 220, 230, 247, 249 human rights in 107–8 rape as a weapon of war in 93, 96–98 Western role in 98–105, 109n4, 111n29 World Bank and 158 Congo Republic 230, 247, 249 cooperatives 276–77 corporations, as legal persons 277 CorpWatch 278 corruption: culture of 51–54 IMF/World Bank and 24–25, 157–74 offshore banking and 44–45, 52- power and 24 privatization and 24–25, 256n12 COSEC 209–10 Council on Foreign Relations 119–20 dam projects, 209–12 Dar al-Mal al-Islami 89 Daukoru, Edmund 125–27, 128 Davos see World Economic Forum DeBeers Group 101, 103 decolonization 13, 16–17 debt/flight cycle 231–36, 253, 258n27 debt relief, campaigns for 246, 252–55, 268 in U.S. 235 debt, Third World 32, 35 amount of relief 224–29 banks and 226–27, 229, 232–34 business loans 35–37, 227 cold war strategy and 17 corruption and 230, 231, 232, 253, 254, 257n23 1982 crisis 39, 55 disunity among debtor nations 237–39 dubious debts and 230, 235, 247, 253, 257n23, 261n68 growth of 18–19, 181, 229–36 as means of control 17, 23, 183–84 payments on 19, 190–91, 223, 228, 231, 247–48, 275 relief plans 220–22, 225–29, 239–52, 274 size of 221–24, 259n37, 260n46 social/economic impacts of 190–91, 231–36, 247–48 democracy: debt crisis and 236 economic reform and 276–79 global justice and 279–81 in Iraq 151–54 Deutsche Bank 226 drug trade 70, 80, 87 Dubai 73 Dulles, Alan 15 Eagle Wings Resources International 104 East Timor 205 economic development strategies: “big projects” and 16–17 debt-led 18–19 state-led 16–17, 19 economic forecasting 3 economic hit men 5 definition 1, 3, 18 John Perkins and 1–4, 17 types of 5, 18 Ecuador 236, 266 foreign debt 244 Egypt 14 Suez Crisis 15–16 Eisenhower, Dwight, and administration 15 elites, wealthy 4, 18, 57, 176, 183, 228, 232, 253 use of tax havens 43–44, 54–56, 65–66, 226, 232–34 El Salvador 26 empire see imperialism Eni SpA 144, 153 Enron 53, 54, 208–9 Ethiopia 230, 249 European Union 51 agricultural subsidies 22 environment degradation: development projects and 199, 200–211, 257n23 oil production and 115–16 export credit agencies: arms exports and 204–5 campaigns against 209–16 corruption and 200, 202–3, 205, 207–8 debt and 200 environmental effects 199, 200–211 nuclear power and 202, 205–6 operation of 197–201 secrecy of 205, 210–12 size of 201 World Bank and 199, 201, 202, 204 Export Credit Group 210, 215 Export Credits Guarantee Department 201, 205, 211 Export Finance and Investment Corp. 203, 204 export processing zones 178 Export Risk Guarantee 203, 211, 213 ExxonMobil 144 fair trade movement 280 Faisal, Mohammad al-89 Faux, Jeff Global Class War, The 4 Federal Bureau of Investigation 71 Federal Reserve Bank of New York 87 Federal Reserve System 78, 82, 88 Ferguson, Niall 13 First American Bankshares 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 88 First Quantum Materials 101 First, Ruth 26 Focus on the Global South 187, 273 foreign aid 19 in Congo civil war 99–100 France 236, 244 empire 13 Suez Crisis and 15 free trade 4, 19, 21–23, 268, 271 British development and 21 U.S. development and 21 Free Trade Area of the Americas 271 Friends of the Earth 104, 269 G8 summits 212, 213, 219–20, 221, 246, 250, 271, 275 Gambia 243, 249 García, Alan 74 Gates, Robert 85 Gécamines 100, 104 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade agricultural trade 186–87 establishment of 267 TRIPS 23 Uruguay Round 23, 267 General Union of Oil Employees 135–36, 141–44 Georgia 207 Germany 212, 213, 216, 236 export credit agency 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209–11, 212, 215–16 Green Party 206, 215 Ghana 16 development projects in 16, 207 foreign debt 230, 247, 249 impact of IMF SAP 5, 22 Giuliani, Carlo 271 Global Awareness Collective 278 Global Class War, The (Faux) 4 Global Exchange 278 globalization 3 alternatives to corporate 275–79 economic 176–79, 230, 236 impacts of 185–90, 234, 236, 263–65 of the financial system 55, 63–66 Globalization and Its Discontents (Stiglitz) 3, 4 Global justice movement: achievements of 276–79 campaigns 269–72, 274–75 in Global North 268–69, 271–72, 274 in Global South 271–74 origins of 268–69 proposals of 275–79 protests by 265–66, 270–71 Global South see Third World Gonzalez, Henry 72, 90 Gorbachev, Mikhail 137 Goulart, João 27 Groupement pour le Traitment des Scories du Terril de Lubumbashi 104 Guatemala 14, 236 Arbenz government 26 Guinea, foreign debt of 249 Guinea-Bassau 26, 247, 249 Guyana: export credit agencies and 203 environmental problems 203 foreign debt 241, 243, 244, 246, 247, 249 Haiti 236, 249 World Bank and 158 Halliburton 3, 133, 278 Hankey, Sir Maurice 145 Harken Energy Corp. 77, 78 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative 221, 225, 226, 230, 242–48, 275 conditions of 243–45 results of 248–50 Hegemony or Survival (Chomsky) 4 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin 70 Helms, Richard 82 Henwood, Doug 23, 177–79 Heritage Foundation 121 Heritage Oil and Gas 100 Hermes Guarantee 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 215–16 Honduras, foreign debt of 249 Hope in the Dark (Solnit) 281 Hungary, Soviet intervention in 16 Hussein, Saddam 28, 90, 141–42 and BCCI 72 Hutu people 94–96 Hypovereinsbank 209 Ijaw people 116, 121–23, 128 Illaje people 123 immigrant rights movement 281 imperialism 13–14 coups d’état and 27 divide-and-rule tactics 25, 26, 265 post-cold war changes 4–5 pressure on uncooperative countries 25, 142 resistance to 28, 115–17, 121–30, 143–44, 151–54, 176, 191–92, 265–66 resources and 98–106, 118–21, 133–34, 136, 139–40, 145 as system of control 17–28, 176 use of force 5, 25–28, 111n22, 113–14, 115–17, 123, 111n22 India 16, 119, 229, 236, 266 foreign debt 222, 223 export credit agencies and 206, 208 Maheshwar Dam 209–10 Indonesia 236 corruption in 202–3 export credit agencies and 200, 202–3, 205, 207, 216 foreign debt 228, 230, 244 inequality 44 Institute for Policy Studies 278 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 157 International Development Association 157, 242 International Forum on Globalization 266 International Monetary Fund 3, 4, 19, 135, 275 conflicts of interest 244 debt relief and 221–22, 224, 226, 237, 240, 243–46, 250–51, 252 Iraq and 151–53 Malaysia and 273 neoliberalism and 176–79, 222 offshore banking and 43, 234 protests against 266 structural adjustment programs 22, 23, 245, 265–66 Rwanda and 100 Uganda and 100 International Tax and Investment Center 134–35, 138–39, 144–54 International Trade Organization 267 Iran 14, 90, 145, 200 coup against Mossadegh 14–15 nationalization of oil industry 14 Iran-Contra affair 71–72 Iraq: BCCI and 72 foreign debt 152 Gulf War and 28, 72, 140, 141, 146 human rights in 105–6 oil production and reserves 135–36, 139–54 production sharing agreements in 147–54 sanctions against 72, 142 social conditions in 135, 142, 143 U.S. occupation of 28, 140, 141–42, 146, 250, 275, 278 Israel: and Suez Crisis 15 Yom Kippur War and 17 Ivory Coast 230 foreign debt 244, 249 “jackals” 25–26 James, Deborah 273 Japan 216, 236 Japan Bank for International Cooperation 201, 202, 203, 241 Jersey 88 banking boom in 46–47 impact on island 46, 51–52, 56–62 as offshore banking haven 43, 45, 56–61 Johnson, Chalmers Sorrows of Empire 4 Jordan 241, 266 Jordan, Vernon 100 JPMorganChase 226, 238 Jubilee South 190 Jubilee 2000 268 Juhasz, Antonia Bush Agenda, The 4, 275 Juma’a, Hassan 135–36, 140, 142–44, 154 Kabila, Joseph 96 Kabila, Laurent 94, 96, 99 Kagame, Paul 94, 98–99 ties to U.S. 99 Kazakhstan 138, 139, 144, 150 Keating, Charles 83 Kenya 236 foreign debt 243, 244 Kerry, John 76 investigation of BCCI 79–83, 87, 89 Kirchner, Nestor 273 Korea, Republic of 229, 272 Korten, David When Corporations Rule the World 4 KPMG 52 Krauthammer, Charles 13 Krushchev, Nikita 16 Kurdistan 211–12, 214 Kuwait 133, 141, 146, 152, 154 labor exports 235–36 Lake, Anthony 119–20 Lance, Bert 77 Lawson, Nigel 242 Lawson Plan 221, 242 Lee Kyung Hae 272 Liberia, World Bank lending to 159–67 Liberty Tree Foundation 276 Li Zhaoxing 117–18, 124 Lu Guozeng 117 Lumumba, Patrice 26 Luxembourg, as offshore banking haven 72, 73, 74 Madagascar, foreign debt of 249 Mahathir, Mohamad 273 Malawi 254 foreign debt 243, 249 Malaysia 41–43, 229 defiance of IMF 273 Mali, foreign debt of 246, 249 Marcos, Ferdinand 31, 48, 175, 176, 181–85 markets, corporate domination of 16 Martin, Paul 54 mass media, manipulation of 25 Mauritania, foreign debt of 247, 249 McKinney, Cynthia; hearing on Congo 98–99, 110n11 McLure, Charles 137–39 mercenaries: in Congo 111n22 in Nigeria 5, 25–26, 113–14, 115–17 Mexico 207, 256n14, 273 foreign debt 55, 227, 228, 230, 233, 240–41, 244 labor exports 236 Zapatista uprising 272 Middle East, and struggle for oil 27–28 military-industrial complex 99 military interventions 27–28 Mizban, Faraj Rabat 141 Mitterand Plan 221 Mobutu Sese Seko 24, overthrow of 94 Mondlane, Eduardo 26 Mongolia 207 Morales, Evo 277 Morganthau, Robert 69, 84–87 Moscow, John 58, 87 Mossadegh, Mohammad 3, 14–15, 27 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta 122–24, 129 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) 272 Mozambique 26, 27, 230 foreign debt 241, 246, 249 Mueller, Robert 87 mujahadeen (Afghanistan): and BCCI 70 and drug trade 70 Mulroney, Brian 100 Multilateral Agreement on Investment 269–70, 281 Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative 222, 225, 230, 250–52 Multilateral Investment Agreement 269 multinational corporations: export credit agencies and 209–11 export processing zones and 178 globalization, pressure for 138, 268, 275 mercenaries, use of 25–26, 111n22, 113–14, 115–17, 123 resources and 101–6, 111n29, 112n31, 112n32 scandals 5 transfer mispricing by 49–51 offshore banks, use of 24, 49–51 patents, control of 23 Museveni, Yoweri 95 Myanmar, foreign debt of 230 Nada, Youssef Mustafa 71–72 Namibia 95 export credit agencies and 207 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 15–16 National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia 88–89 National Family Farm Coalition 272 nationalism: pan-Arab 15 Iranian 14 Nehru, Jawaharlal 16 neocolonialism see imperialism neoliberalism 4, 19 critique of 176–79, 190–92, 234, 236 defined 176–77 economic development and 176–79, 232 economic strategies 178–81, 222, 230, 231, 236 Netherlands, overseas empire of 13 Newmont Mining Corp. 244 New World Order 27–28 Nicaragua 207 foreign debt 225, 230, 247, 249 U.S. proxy war against 26, 27, 79 Nicpil, Liddy 190–91, 192 Nidal, Adu 73 Niger, foreign debt of 241, 249 Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force 121, 123 Niger Delta Volunteer Service 122 Niger Delta region: attack on oil platforms 116–17 as “Next Gulf” 118–21 pollution from oil production 115–16 struggle against Shell 115–16, 121–24 Nigeria 200, 266 China and 117–18 colonial rule 115 corruption in 44–45, 230 foreign debt 223, 230, 233, 243, 244 oil production 115–16, 125–27 World Bank lending in 158, 167–69 Nkrumah, Kwame 16 nongovernmental organizations 239, 250 Noriega, Manuel 80 and BCCI 72, 79 North American Free Trade Agreement 4, 268, 272 nuclear power 205–6, 210 Obasanjo, Olusegun 125, 127 Obiang, Teodoro 48 O’Connor, Brian 144–45 OECD Watch 105 offshore banking havens: arms trade and 71–73 campaign against 62–64 central role in world trade 44, 47–48, 64–65 corruption and 24, 44–45, 52–56, 64, 231–33, 253 drug trade and 70 extraction of wealth 43, 54–56, 64–65, 226, 231–33, 253, 258n58 financial centers and 234, ignored by academia 44, 234 secrecy and 47–48, 53, 66 tax evasion and 43, 48, 49–51, 54, 57–59, 64–65, 226, 232 terrorism and 71, 88 Ogoni people 122–23, 125 Okadigbo, Chuba 116 Okonjo-Iweala, Ngozi 118 Okuntimo, Paul 123 Oil Change International 278 oil price spikes 236 oil production and reserves: future shortages of 28, 140 Indonesia 207 Iraqi 135–36, 144–54 Nigerian 113–14, 128–29 strategies to control 25–26, 27–28, 139–40 OM Group, Inc. 104, 112n31 OPEC 125–26, 128 1973 oil embargo by 17 dollar deposits in First World 17–18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 135, 269 “Action Statement on Bribery” 216 export credit agencies and 210, 215 Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises 101, 102, 105–6, 112n31 “OECD Arrangement” 215 Overseas Private Investment Corp. 204, 206–9 Oxfam 43, 62–63, 250 Pakistan 90 Afghan mujahadeen and 70–71 BCCI and 70 export credit agencies and 207 foreign debt 244 Panama 3, 26, 72 as offshore banking haven 73, 74 Papua New Guinea: export credit agencies and 204 mining and environmental problems 204 Paris Club of creditors 220, 225–26, 227, 228, 242, 252 Peru 74 foreign debt 241 impact of IMF SAP 22 petrodollars, recycling of 17–18 Perkins, John 19 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man 1–2, 17 Pharaon, Ghaith 76, 77, 86, 87, 88 Philippines, the 31–34, 35–36 corruption in 181–82 democratic movements in 182–85, 236 economic decline in 187–89 emigration from 189, 236 foreign debt 181, 190–91, 230, 241, 244 Marcos regime 31, 34, 175, 176, 180–85, 261n61 martial law in 180–85 social conditions in 179–80, 185–86, 189–91 U.S. rule 175–76 World Bank and 158, 178–81 Pinochet, General Augusto 27, 45–46, 48 PLATFORM 140, 156n28 Portugal 209–10 Posada Carriles, Luis 26 poverty reduction strategy programs see structural adjustment programs Price Waterhouse 83–84 privatization 191 production sharing agreements 147–54 protectionism 21, 181, 186–87 proxy wars 27, 70–71 Public Citizen 269, 273 public utilities, privatization of 191, 261n61, 277 Rahman, Masihur 85 Reagan, Ronald, and administration 19, 79, 87, 136–37, 239 Iran-Contra affair 72 Rich, Marc 90 Rights and Accountability in Development 101, 104, 105 Rio Tinto Zinc 204 Ritch, Lee 79–80 Robson, John 138 Roldós, Jaime 3, 26 Roosevelt, Kermit 15 Rumsfeld, Donald 138 rural economic development 183, 186–87 Russia: debt relief and 225 oil industry 154 transition to capitalism 137–39, 258n28 Rutledge, Ian 149 Rwanda 94–96, 98, 249 massacre in 94, 99 SACE 201 Sachs Plan 221 Saleh, Salim 95 Saõ Tomé, foreign debt of 247, 249 Saud al-Fulaij, Faisal 86, 87 Saudi Arabia 3, 88 and BCCI 70, 75 Saro-Wiwa, Ken 125–26 Scholz, Wesley S. 104 Scowcroft, Brent 72 Senegal 16, 249 Senghor, Léopold 16 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks 71 Shell Oil 144 Nigeria and 113–15, 122, 123, 125–29 at World Economic Forum 127 Shinawatra, Thaksin 54 Sierra Club 269 Sierra Leone 247 SmartMeme 276 Solnit, Rebecca Hope in the Dark 281 Somalia 251 Sorrows of Empire (Johnson) 4 South Africa 236 military interventions 27 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 26 Soviet Union 13, 14 de-Stalinization 16 Hungary, intervention in 16 influence in Third World 14 U.S. and 137 Stephens, Jackson 76, 77 Stiglitz, Joseph 24 Globalization and Its Discontents 3, 4 structural adjustment programs (SAPs) 19, 229–30 in Ghana 5, 22 in Peru 22 in the Philippines 176–79, 183–85, 190–92 in Zambia 22 Sudan 230, 251 Suharto 200, 202–3 Syria 211 Switzerland, as offshore banking haven 45, 65, 72 Taco Bell, boycott of 280 Tanzania, foreign debt of 247, 249 tax evasion 43, 48, 49–51, 54, 57–59, 64–65 Tax Foundation 137–38 tax havens see offshore banking havens Tax Justice Network 63 Tax Reform Act of 1986 138 Tenke Mining 99 terrorism: as EHM strategy 26, 72 financing of 42, 88–89 inequality and 44 Islamist 71–72, 89 Palestinian 73 Thatcher, Margaret 19, 138 Third World: as commodity producers 17, 23 conditions in 5, 96–97, 106–8, 116, 179–80, 185–90, 234, 236 development strategies 176–79 divisions among countries 265–68 elites in 25, 28, 43–44, 176, 226, 232–34 emergence of 14 lack of development in 232, 237 terms of trade and 22, 178–79 Third World Network 269 Tidewater Inc. 113 Torrijos, Omar 3, 26 Total S.A. 144, 153 trade unions 135–36, 141–44, 180, 186, 269, 274 transfer mispricing 49–51 cost to Third World 50 Transparency International 45 Turkey: export credit agencies and 206 Ilisu Dam 211–14 Turkmenistan 200 Uganda 94–96 foreign debt 241, 246, 249 Union Bank of Switzerland 57, 58, 77, 226, 250 United Arab Emirates 69, 73 United Fruit Company 15 United Kingdom 213 NCP for Congo 102–3 empire 13–14, 115, 129, 145 Iran and 14–15 Iraq occupation and 146, 151, 152 offshore banking and; Suez Crisis and 15 United Nations: trade issues and 265, 276 Panel of Experts, Congo 100–106, 112n32 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 220, 265, 267 United States: agricultural subsidies 22 aid 98 as empire 13, 28 cold war strategy of 16, 17, 24, 26 in Congo 99, 104, 105 debt-led development strategy of 176–79 Iran coup and 14–15 Iraqi oil and 133–34, 136, 139–40 Iraq wars 72, 133, 141–42 Islamists and 26 Nigerian oil and 118–21 Philippines and 175–76, 180 strategic doctrines 27–28, 118–19 support of Contras 72 trade deficit 23 trade policies 267 U.S.


pages: 327 words: 84,627

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth by Jeremy Rifkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, book value, borderless world, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, decarbonisation, digital rights, do well by doing good, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, failed state, general purpose technology, ghettoisation, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, impact investing, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Joseph Schumpeter, means of production, megacity, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Network effects, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, prudent man rule, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, union organizing, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Climate change is no longer only an academic issue and long-term policy concern but, rather, a frightening reality for millions of Americans who sense that the country and the world are facing a new and harrowing future unlike any previous period in human history. The American public is not the only constituency that is running scared and motivated to act. The global elite of heads of state, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and billionaires meeting in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual get-together of the World Economic Forum in January 2019 were abuzz about the dire warnings from scientists. Conversation about the impacts that climate change is having on economies, businesses, and the financial community dominated the public sessions and private huddles. In a survey of attendees, climate issues accounted for four of the top five risks that could cause the most damage to the economy.11 Gillian Tett of the Financial Times reported that even though “Davosians apparently fear that extreme weather events are becoming more common,” they agreed that “the world has no effective mechanism to respond.”12 At the same time that the World Economic Forum was meeting in Davos, a group of twenty-seven Nobel laureates, fifteen former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President, four former chairpersons of the Federal Reserve, and two former US secretaries of the treasury joined together in an urgent appeal to the US government to enact a carbon emission tax as the best and quickest means to help cut carbon dioxide emissions and encourage businesses to transition into the new green energies, technologies, and infrastructure of a zero-carbon era.

In a survey of attendees, climate issues accounted for four of the top five risks that could cause the most damage to the economy.11 Gillian Tett of the Financial Times reported that even though “Davosians apparently fear that extreme weather events are becoming more common,” they agreed that “the world has no effective mechanism to respond.”12 At the same time that the World Economic Forum was meeting in Davos, a group of twenty-seven Nobel laureates, fifteen former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President, four former chairpersons of the Federal Reserve, and two former US secretaries of the treasury joined together in an urgent appeal to the US government to enact a carbon emission tax as the best and quickest means to help cut carbon dioxide emissions and encourage businesses to transition into the new green energies, technologies, and infrastructure of a zero-carbon era.

., “The Green New Deal Has Strong Bipartisan Support,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, December 14, 2018, http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/the-green-new-deal-has-strong-bipartisan-support/ (accessed February 7, 2019). 11.  Aengus Collins, The Global Risks Report 2019 (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2019), 6. 12.  Gillian Tett, “Davos Climate Obsessions Contain Clues for Policymaking,” Financial Times, January 17, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/369920f2-19b4-11e9-b93e-f4351a53f1c3 (accessed January 28, 2019). 13.  Leslie Hook, “Four Former Fed Chairs Call for US Carbon Tax,” Financial Times, January 16, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/e9fd0472-19de-11e9-9e64-d150b3105d21 (accessed January 28, 2019). 14.  


pages: 128 words: 38,187

The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, basic income, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, clean water, collective bargaining, commoditize, crony capitalism, do what you love, feminist movement, follow your passion, food desert, Food sovereignty, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, income inequality, Khan Academy, late capitalism, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, means of production, microapartment, performance metric, post-Fordism, post-work, profit motive, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school vouchers, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, structural adjustment programs, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

. ________ 1Randall Smith,”As His Foundation Has Grown, Gates Has Slowed His Donations,” New York Times, May 26, 2014. 2Bill Gates, Harvard commencement speech, June 7, 2007. 3Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008, p. 12. 4Bill Gates, Harvard commencement speech. 5Bill Gates, “A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century,” speech at the World Economic Forum 2008, Davos, Switzerland, January 24, 2008. 6See www.gatesfoundation.org. 7Melinda Gates, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar, Stanford Center for Professional Development, November 14, 2012. 8Bill Gates, Harvard commencement speech. 92014 Gates Annual Letter, http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/. 10Phillip McMichael, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective, Newbury Park, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2008. 11See http://files.amnesty.org/INGO/INGOAC.pdf. 12Bishop and Green, Philanthrocapitalism, p. 21. 13Joan Roelofs, “Foundations and Collaboration,” Critical Sociology 33: 3, May 2007, 479–504; see also G.

At tech companies only 2 to 4 percent of engineers are women; at Fortune 500 firms, 4 percent of CEOs are women. Boardrooms are a bastion of maleness, and many companies, like Twitter, have no women on their board. This disparity extends beyond corporate America: globally, 90 percent of heads of state are men, and at the 2014 World Economic Forum only 400 of the 2,600 representatives present were women, a 17 percent drop from the previous year. And 2013 marked the first time women held twenty seats in the US Senate. This is the world into which Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, launched her “sort of manifesto”, as she called it, in 2013.1 Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead addressed the persistent gender imbalance in elite jobs and announced Sandberg’s entrance into the century-old struggle for equality in the workplace.

For Bill and Melinda Gates, the answer to both questions is inefficiencies in capitalist markets. “In a system of capitalism, as people’s wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero,” Gates remarked at the World Economic Forum in 2008. “Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.”15 Even though poor people need more than wealthy people, there is no incentive to meet their needs because the needs are not coupled with the ability to pay. Thus, the Gateses contend that poor children are dying from disease and malnutrition, or not succeeding in school, because capitalist markets are not serving them.


pages: 326 words: 91,532

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything by Gottfried Leibbrandt, Natasha de Teran

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial exclusion, global pandemic, global reserve currency, illegal immigration, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Irish bank strikes, Julian Assange, large denomination, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine readable, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Network effects, Northern Rock, off grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, post-industrial society, printed gun, QR code, RAND corporation, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Rishi Sunak, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, tech billionaire, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, WikiLeaks, you are the product

Figures on large sovereign wealth funds taken from: www.swfinstitute.org/fund-rankings Jamie Dimon quotes on Bitcoin taken from: www.pymnts.com/blockchain/bitcoin/2018/jpmorgan-chase-jamie-dimon-dapper-labs-funding/ Chapter 24 For more on Che Guevara’s stint as Cuba’s central bank governor, see: https://sociable.co/web/fidel-castro-appointed-che-guevara-bank/ Chapter 25 Figures on global frequent flyer miles taken from: www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel-logistics-and-transport-infrastructure/our-insights/miles-ahead-how-to-improve-airline-customer-loyalty-programs# For Citibank and its New York ATM network, see: https://www.cgap.org/sites/default/files/Interoperability_in_Electronic_Payments.pdf For the EU investigations into Apple Pay and Qualcomm, see: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1075; https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_421 George Soros delivered this remark at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 25 January 2018; see: www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum/ Chapter 26 For US Executive Order banning eight apps, including Alipay and WeChat, see: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/08/2021-00305/addressing-the-threat-posed-by-applications-and-other-software-developed-or-controlled-by-chinese Carmen Balber, Washington Director for Consumer Watchdog, made the suggestion that the Federal Reserve Board consumer watchdog would be a lapdog (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dodd-proposal-to-give-the-federal-reserve-consumer-protection-authority-would-create-an-industry-lapdog-not-a-public-watchdog-85971237.html) For forensic analysis of the attack on Bangladesh Bank, see: www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-bangladesh-investigation/exclusive-bangladesh-bank-remains-compromised-months-after-heist-forensics-report-idUSKCN0Y40SM Chapter 27 For comment on INSTEX, see: W.

A payment initiation services provider, or PISP, provides online services to initiate payment orders at the request of payment service users with respect to payment accounts held at other payment service providers. 22. In code we trust: meeting the cryptocurrencies Late in January 2018, I was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. Walking back to my hotel one day, I passed a gaggle of people hanging about on the pavement. Sporting beards, face and neck tattoos and partly shaven heads, they looked like clubbers on a vape break. They were standing outside a door marked ‘CryptoHQ’. I was intrigued. CryptoHQ was packed.

Watch this case because, open or closed, the Commission’s findings will affect a far wider payments universe than Apple Pay. And Vestager has form. In January 2018, the day after she hit the US chip giant Qualcomm with a near €1 billion fine, she was flagged up by billionaire investor George Soros in his annual speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos: ‘It is only a matter of time before the global dominance of the US IT monopolies is broken . . . Regulation and taxation will be their undoing and EU Competition Commissioner Vestager will be their nemesis.’ ______________________________________________________________________ 1 In the wake of Epic’s move, Apple announced in November 2020 that smaller developers making up to $1 million would have to pay only 15 per cent rather than 30 per cent from January 2021.


pages: 3,002 words: 177,561

Lonely Planet Switzerland by Lonely Planet

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, Eyjafjallajökull, Frank Gehry, G4S, Guggenheim Bilbao, Higgs boson, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, messenger bag, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, smart cities, starchitect, trade route

The first visitors came to Davos from 1865, when it was discovered that the high-altitude climate proved effective in fighting tuberculosis. These days they come for the excitement of this Alpine resort, both in winter and summer. Davos is the annual meeting point for the crème de la crème of world capitalism: the World Economic Forum. Global chat fests aside, Davos inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) to don skis and Thomas Mann to pen The Magic Mountain. Davos comprises two contiguous areas, each with a train station: Davos Platz and the older Davos Dorf. Davos 1Top Sights 1Kirchner MuseumB2 1Sights 2WintersportmuseumA2 2Activities, Courses & Tours 3Eau-là-làC2 4Luftchraft – Flugschule DavosA3 4Sleeping 5Davos YouthpalaceD1 6Waldhotel DavosC1 5Eating 7Hänggi'sB3 8Kaffee KlatschB2 6Drinking & Nightlife 9Mountain's AktB2 1Sights oKirchner MuseumMUSEUM ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %081 410 63 00; www.kirchnermuseum.ch; Promenade 82; adult/child Sfr12/5; h11am-6pm Tue-Sun) This giant cube of a museum showcases the world's largest Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) collection.

Eau-là-làSWIMMING ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; www.eau-la-la.ch; Promenade 90; pool adult/child Sfr10/7, day spa Sfr28; h10am-10pm Mon-Sat, to 6pm Sun) If you prefer horizontal sightseeing to vertical drops, try this leisure centre, with heated outdoor pools, splash areas for the kids and a spa with mountain views. zFestivals & Events SchwingenCULTURAL (www.davos.ch; hAug) Swiss craziness peaks at Sertig Schwinget, with Schwingen (Swiss wrestling) champs doing battle in the sawdust. Davos FestivalMUSIC (www.davosfestival.ch; hAug) Classical music resounds for two weeks at the Davos Festival. FIS Cross-Country World CupSPORTS (www.davosnordic.ch; hDec) Davos hosts a round of the FIS Cross-Country World Cup each December. 4Sleeping Davos is full-on in winter and room rates can plunge by up to 30% in summer. Davos YouthpalaceHOSTEL€ ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %081 410 19 20; www.youthhostel.ch; Horlaubenstrasse 27; dm/s/d from Sfr39/110/114; pW) This one-time sanatorium has been transformed into a groovy backpacker palace.

Regular trains run between Davos Platz and Davos Wiesen (18 minutes). Schraemli's LengmattaB&B€€ ( GOOGLE MAP ; %081 413 55 79; www.lengmatta-davos.ch; Lengmattastrasse 19, Davos Frauenkirch; per person from Sfr80; pW) Big mountain views await at this sun-blackened timber chalet, which fits the bill nicely. You'll feel bug-snug in pine-clad rooms with checked fabrics and downy bedding. There's a children's playground, a peak-facing terrace and a fine restaurant dishing up Bündner specialities (from Sfr17). Half-board per person is Sfr35. From Davos Platz, it's a three-minute train ride to Davos-Frauenkirch.


pages: 372 words: 92,477

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Asian financial crisis, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, cashless society, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, circulation of elites, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Corn Laws, corporate governance, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, disintermediation, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Etonian, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mobile money, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, night-watchman state, Norman Macrae, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, open economy, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, pension reform, pensions crisis, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, profit maximization, public intellectual, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Skype, special economic zone, TED Talk, the long tail, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, total factor productivity, vertical integration, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, zero-sum game

Above all, China’s current leadership shares three of Lee’s convictions: that Western democracy is no longer efficient; that both capitalism and society need to be directed; and that getting government right is the key to their regime’s success and survival. The success so far is what makes westerners swoon. The one thing that the world’s tycoons agree upon when they meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos is that the Chinese state is a paragon of efficiency—especially compared with the fevered gridlock of Washington or the panicky incompetence of Brussels. “Beijing really gets things done,” sighs one American chief executive. “Their government people are so much smarter: it’s terrifying,”24 enthuses one of the world’s richest men.

This is a country where in the run-up to the Chinese New Year supermarkets sell briefcases with two bottles of whiskey prepacked inside as a necessary “thank you” to local officials: One Western retailer was furious when sales fell by a fifth in 2013 because Xi Jinping had thundered against bribery.28 China finishes eightieth in Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index, ­seventy-five places below Singapore. Indeed, if you look at any of the global measures of comparative effectiveness, the vaunted mandarin state that so impresses Davos man is full of holes: It finished only thirtieth in the World Economic Forum’s own Global Competitiveness Report in 2013–14, with lousy marks for bureaucracy as well as graft. The further you go down the Chinese system, the less impressive it appears. Most Chinese cities make ends meet through landgrabs. They buy property on the edge of town, using compulsory-purchase orders that seldom pay the landowners properly, and then sell it on to developers, who in turn sell on the houses they build to the richer urban middle classes.

Two canny optimists are Martin Wolf (“The Reality of America’s Fiscal Future,” Financial Times, October 22, 2013) and Lawrence Summers (“The Battle over the US Budget Is the Wrong Fight,” Financial Times, October 13, 2013). 11. Ezra Klein, “The U.S. Government: An Insurance Conglomerate Protected by a Large, Standing Army,” Ezra Klein: Economic and Domestic Policy, and Lots of It (blog), WashingtonPost.com, February 14, 2011. 12. Merkel used these numbers in remarks to the World Economic Forum in January 2013. 13. John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire (London: Hogarth Press, 1927). This was first delivered as a lecture at Oxford University in 1924. CHAPTER 1 THOMAS HOBBES AND THE RISE OF THE NATION-STATE 1. One of us (AW) was a colleague of Finer’s when he was writing his book and still recalls with awe the diminutive man’s determination to scale the mighty mountain he had fixated upon and his enthusiasm for discussing his findings of the day over lunch, tea, dinner, and late-night drinks. 2.


pages: 361 words: 81,068

The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Geldof, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, computer age, connected car, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, data science, David Brooks, decentralized internet, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Hacker Ethic, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, income inequality, index card, informal economy, information trail, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, libertarian paternalism, lifelogging, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, nonsequential writing, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, packet switching, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer rental, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Potemkin village, power law, precariat, pre–internet, printed gun, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, the medium is the message, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, work culture , working poor, Y Combinator

This was most memorably articulated by John Perry Barlow, an early WELL member and lyricist for the Grateful Dead, in his later 1996 libertarian manifesto “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of mind,” Barlow announced from, of all places, Davos, the little town in the Swiss Alps where the wealthiest and most powerful people meet at the World Economic Forum each year. “I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”38 The real explanation of the Internet’s early popularity was, however, more prosaic. Much of it was both the cause and the effect of a profound revolution in computer hardware.

According to its founder, Scott Phoenix, Vicarious’s goal is to replicate the neocortex, thus creating a “computer that thinks like a person . . . except that it doesn’t have to sleep.”37 Phoenix told the Wall Street Journal that Vicarious will eventually “learn how to cure diseases, create cheap renewable energy, and perform the jobs that employ most human beings.”38 What Phoenix didn’t clarify, however, is what exactly human beings will do with themselves all day when every job is performed by Vicarious. The threat of artificial intelligence to jobs is becoming such a huge problem that even Eric Schmidt, Google’s normally glib executive chairman, now acknowledges its seriousness. “The race between computers and people,” Schmidt declared at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos, will be the “defining one” in the world economy over the next twenty-five years.39 And “people need to win,” he said. But given their massive investment in artificial intelligence, can we really trust Google to be on our side in this race between computers and people over the next quarter century?

Best of all, at least from Page, Brin, and Schmidt’s point of view, Google has even been subsidized by NASA for cheap fuel, after what the agency’s inspector general described as a “misunderstanding” over pricing.78 So many of their jaunts around the world—from charity events in Africa to their presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos—are actually in part funded by public money. Google’s determination to reinvent reality can be seen in its plans to create a new Googleplex office, a medieval-style walled city called “Bay View”—featuring entirely self-enclosed offices, restaurants, gyms, laundries, crèches, even dormitories—that will, in good feudal fashion, cut off its privileged workers from everything around them.


Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jones Act, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, microcredit, moral hazard, negative emissions, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil rush, open borders, open economy, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, statistical model, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

They have not sought to create a fair set of rules, let alone a set of rules that would promote the well-being of those in the poorest countries of the world. After speaking at the World Social Forum, Mary Robinson, Delhi University chancellor Deepak Nayaar, International Labour Organization president Juan Somavia, and I were among the few who went on to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Swiss ski resort where the global elite gather to mull over the state of the world. Here, in this snowy mountain town, the world’s captains of industry and finance had very different views about globalization from those we heard in Mumbai. The World Social Forum had been an open meeting, bringing together vast numbers from all over the world who wanted to discuss social change and how to make their slogan, “Another world is possible,” a reality.

UNDP, Investing in Development, op. cit. 28.According to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, total expenditure on HIV/AIDS vaccine R&D as of 2002 has been between $430 million and $470 million, only between $50 million and $70 million of which has come from private industry. In contrast, total biopharmaceutical research and development expenditure has been about $50 billion a year. International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, “Delivering an AIDS Vaccine: A Briefing Paper,” World Economic Forum Briefing Document, 2002. 29.See Shantayanan Devarajan, Margaret J. Miller, and Eric V. Swanson, “Goals for Development: History, Prospects and Costs,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2819, April 2002. 30.There is one argument for direct transfers: In many developing countries, the quality of publicly provided health and education services is deficient.

Networking is also one of the main reasons that the movers and shakers of the world attend the invitation-only event at Davos. The Davos meetings have always been a good place to take the pulse of the world’s economic leaders. Though largely a gathering of white businessmen, supplemented by a roster of government officials and senior journalists, in recent years the invitation list has been expanded to include a number of artists, intellectuals, and NGO representatives. In Davos there was relief, and a bit of complacency. The global economy, which had been weak since the bursting of the dot-com bubble in America, was finally recovering, and the “war on terror” seemed to be under control.


Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration by Kent E. Calder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, air freight, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, cloud computing, colonial rule, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, energy transition, European colonialism, export processing zone, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, geopolitical risk, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial cluster, industrial robot, interest rate swap, intermodal, Internet of things, invention of movable type, inventory management, John Markoff, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, smart grid, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, supply-chain management, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, trade route, transcontinental railway, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, zero-sum game

Internationally, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, although not involved in any formal Chinese political activity, has been a prominent international spokesman for President Xi’s global economic initiatives, including the BRI. Ma met with president-elect Donald Trump just before Trump’s inauguration, for example, to discuss ways of promoting US small-business exports through e-commerce.58 And he spoke again in support of President Xi’s initiatives at the 2018 Davos World Economic Forum meetings.59 Through its e-commerce activities, Alibaba is continually promoting a next-generation version of the BRI.60 Taken together, the three types of Chinese national champions—SOEs, government-supported private firms, and employee-owned collectives—all play central, if varied, roles in deepening Eurasian connectivity.

Capitalizing on its continuing rapid growth, positive relations with major global power centers in Europe, and failures of US global leadership under Donald Trump, however, China is expanding its connectivity initiatives, both to other continents and also to the global agenda-setting stage. In January 2017 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and again in May 2017 at the inaugural Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, President Xi emphasized the global scope of the BRI and its role in promoting global communication, interdependence, and sustainable growth. Xi reiterated these themes at the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia. Premier Li Keqiang stressed similar themes in extensive meetings with European leaders in the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s controversial visit to NATO headquarters and Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the historic COP-21 global environmental agreement.

., 262n2, 285n46 Voltaire, 162, 163, 164 Volvo, 175 Vostok 2018 military exercise, 158 Wang Gungwu, 225 Warsaw Pact, 13, 56, 57, 122, 165, 167, 172, 210 Washington (as government). See United States Washington Consensus, 95 Water security challenges, 197 Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 195 –197, 196t Wen Jiabao, 95, 116 White, Harry Dexter, 207 Wilson, Harold, 220 Witte, Sergius, 32, 48 World Bank, 46, 94, 207, 208, 209 –210, 230 World Economic Forum in Davos, 114, 230, 236 World Health Organization (WHO), 199 World Trade Organization (WTO), 46, 118, 168, 208, 212, 224, 299n2 Xi Jinping: and Belt and Road Forum, 97, 117, 236; and Belt and Road Initiative, 4, 11, 32, 44, 46, 48, 96, 107, 108, 115, 116, 121, 203, 226, 230, 234; and Boao Forum for Asia, 236; as Chinese leader, 43, 251; and G-2, 239 –240; Eurasian diplomacy, 137, 139; and Europe, 68, 178, 204, 219; and Russia, 32, 41, 84, 101, 151–154, 204, 219; and Southeast Asia, 116, 135, 204; and Xi Zhongxun, 102 Xinjiang, 110, 112, 141, 142, 148, 189, 192, 194, 195 Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (Bingtuan), 110 Xiongnu, 25 –26, 257–258n9 Index Yakutia, 34, 144 Yamal LNG project, 147, 284n33 Yanukovych, Viktor, 66 – 67, 153, 171, 286n63 Yan Xuetong, 225 Yaowarat: and Bangkok Chinese, 124 Yeltsin, Boris, 55, 56, 60, 151 Yergin, Daniel, 210 Yiwu: and London rail service, 181 Yuan dynasty, 28, 161 325 Yukos, 142, 283n15 Yunnan, 115, 127, 130, 134, 135, 139 Zakaria, Fareed, 191 Zeng Peiyan, 95 Zhang Qian, and classic Silk Roads, 24, 25, 26, 28, 47, 257n3 Zheng He, 30, 44, 123 Zhou Enlai, 51, 101 Zhu Rongji, 187


pages: 282 words: 81,873

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anne Wojcicki, artificial general intelligence, bank run, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Build a better mousetrap, California gold rush, cashless society, colonial rule, computer age, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, deep learning, digital nomad, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Extropian, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fake news, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, hacker house, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, intentional community, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, obamacare, Parker Conrad, passive income, patent troll, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-work, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, RFID, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social software, software as a service, source of truth, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, technological singularity, technoutopianism, telepresence, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize, Y Combinator, Zenefits

According to Forbes, some wealthy landowners have taken additional exclusionary measures, like securing the perimeter of their estates with infrared cameras and booby-trapping the interiors with smoke screens and pepper-spray grenades. When fortification fails, there is retreat. At the 2015 Davos World Economic Forum, Robert Johnson, an economist close to the liberal financier George Soros, said he knew “hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.” Thiel, it seemed, would have company. Another Davos participant, the former World Bank economist Stewart Wallis, linked elite fears of wealth confiscation to the Singularitarian dream of space colonization.

Chaturbate Chen, Tim Chi, Tom Cisco Systems Citibank Clinkle Clinton, Bill CNBC CNET Cohen, Aron Community Foundation Compliance Company Conrad, Parker Corbis Corporation Counsyl Coursera Cowen, Tyler Craigslist Cryptonomicon (Stephenson) CutiePieMarzia Daily Caller Damore, James Davos World Economic Forum de Grey, Aubrey Deloitte Demotix DeveloperWeek Diamandis, Peter Dickman, Steve Discover Disney Dourdil, Steve Duplan, Lucas Dvorsky, George EATR Eaze eBay Ellison, Larry Ellul, Jacques Entrepreneur magazine Eventbrite Evernote Eviction Defense Collaborative Evola, Julius Eyal, Nir Facebook Factory FarmVille Fascism Viewed from the Right (Evola) Federal Trade Commission Feinstein, Dianne Fernandez, Manny Ferreira, Corey Fields, James Alex, Jr.

Although he was content to sip his beer and silently observe the proceedings from a distance, his presence could not be ignored. He seemed above it all. I had heard it said that in Silicon Valley, those most slovenly in appearance possessed the largest bank accounts. By that rule, this guy might’ve been a Davos-class billionaire. A well-worn backpack lay between his feet. His jeans were faded, his plaid shirt dull. Thick black curls poured from beneath his baseball cap. I’d been in a grouchy mood, but something about this man made me feel sociable. I took a seat by his side. By way of making conversation, I asked about his phone.


Switzerland by Damien Simonis, Sarah Johnstone, Nicola Williams

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, bank run, car-free, clean water, financial engineering, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, the market place, trade route, young professional

At the Sportzentrum (%081 415 36 00; Talstrasse 41) you can get into handball, volleyball and more – it is free for overnight guests. 12 17 e 18 15 nad me Pro str Orientation & Information Activities Schatzalp Funicular res e Ob 500 m 0.3 miles C eid Nine kilometres on from Klosters, Davos is the brasher of the two resorts and frankly not that attractive. Once a famous health resort, it has recently got a name for itself as the annual meeting point for the crème de la crème of world capitalism, the World Economic Forum (WEF to those in the know). Global chat fests aside, the serious business here is skiing. Those bold of body and swift of ski brave some savage slopes, including the legendary Parsenn-Weissfluh area, where runs descend up to 2000m. 1 tr B ssw pop 10,900 / elevation 1560m ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ A Davos Platz Ro DAVOS the world’s largest collection of works by the German expressionist painter (1880– 1938).

ArtHaus Hotel Quisisana (%081 413 51 04; www .arthaushotel.ch; Platzstrasse 5; s/d Sfr149/258) Two themes dominate the rooms: light, timber B1 B1 D1 B1 B1 A1 8 To Färich (1km); Flüela Pass (15km) Dorfstr 4 e nad e rom w nd t er 2 zgä ba str Sal Ta iss To Davoser See (2km); SYHA Hostel (4km); Hubli's Landhaus (5km); Klosters (10km) Parsenn Funicular Train Station Bü nd a ast r Train Station Jakobshorn Funicular Talstr awe g Bahnhofstr Ernst-LudwigKirchner Platz Regin 2 9 st a t Platzstr tr 7 6 Ric h 11 Davos Dorf Buols Mühiestr .davos.ch; Promenade 67; h8.30am-6.30pm Mon-Fri, 9am5.30pm Sat, 10am-noon & 3-5.30pm Sun) is in Platz. 3 D str Davos is a 4km-long strip beside the train line and the Landwasser river. It comprises two contiguous areas, each with a train station: Davos Platz and the older Davos Dorf. The main tourist office (%081 415 21 21; www The Weissfluh ski area goes as high as 2844m, from where you can ski to Küblis, more than 2000m lower and 12km away.

Those bold of body and swift of ski brave some savage slopes, including the legendary Parsenn-Weissfluh area, where runs descend up to 2000m. 1 tr B ssw pop 10,900 / elevation 1560m ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ ᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲᝲ A Davos Platz Ro DAVOS the world’s largest collection of works by the German expressionist painter (1880– 1938). Kirchner, afflicted by pulmonary problems and later a weakness in the hands that made painting difficult, first came to Davos for treatment in 1917. He later returned and, as the Nazis rose to power in his home country, remained and painted some extraordinary scenes of the area around Davos. When the Nazis classified Kirchner as a ‘degenerate artist’ and emptied German galleries of his works, he was overcome with despair and took his own life in 1938. 0 0 DAVOS Sportweg See Davos (p278), as Klosters is on the same train route between Landquart and Filisur.


pages: 454 words: 107,163

Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, conceptual framework, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Easter island, facts on the ground, falling living standards, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, insecure affluence, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, land reform, loss aversion, market fundamentalism, McMansion, means of production, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, new economy, oil shock, postindustrial economy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, science of happiness, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade liberalization, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, winner-take-all economy, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

On January 27, 2005, standing before the Davos World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Tony Blair put at the center of his vision of global interdependence two issues that had never before played such a prominent role in any geopolitical agenda: extreme poverty and global warming. “Why do it?” Blair asked. “Not just because they matter. But because on both there are differences that need to be reconciled; and if they could be reconciled or at least moved forward, it would make a huge difference to the prospects of international unity; as well as to people’s lives and our future survival.” For environmentalists, Blair’s Davos speech was a breakthrough.

See environmental justice groups Coutinho, Leonardo, 48–49, 51–52, 64 Coyle, Marcia, 70–72 creative ethos, 247 Crichton, Michael, 139–40 Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, The (Bell), 247 Cuyahoga River fire (1969), 21, 22–24, 279 (n3) D Darwin, Charles, 151 Davidson, Pamela, 71–72, 298 (n43) Davos World Economic Forum, 262–63 “Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World, The” (Shellenberger essay), 1, 8, 10, 111–12, 128–29 debt. See consumer debt; dictatorship debt debt-for-nature idea, 57–61 deforestation. See Amazon forest; Brazil Democratic Party deficit reduction and, 261–62 health care fixes and, 180–84 interest-group politics and, 231–32 need for new vision in, 13–15, 241–43, 256–59 as party of victims, 184–85 political failures and, 260–61 Dennehy, Kevin, 104 depression, 216–17, 220, 239 developing nations.

Even so, the announcement further undermined Blair and positioned Bush as a champion of economic development in the developing world. A senior Downing Street official correctly described the secretly negotiated agreement and surprise announcement as a “slap in the face.”32 9. What went wrong with Tony Blair’s crusade on global warming? To answer this question, we must take a closer look at the speech he gave at Davos. “There are facts that are accepted,” Blair began. Ever since Arrhenius first predicted global warming in 1896, it has been fiercely debated. I am not a scientific expert. I only see that the balance of evidence has shifted one way. Some argue this warming is part of a natural cycle such as, by contrast, the mini ice age in the Middle Ages.


pages: 179 words: 43,441

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, conceptual framework, continuous integration, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, global value chain, Google Glasses, hype cycle, income inequality, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, life extension, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, Narrative Science, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear taboo, OpenAI, personalized medicine, precariat, precision agriculture, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, reshoring, RFID, rising living standards, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social contagion, software as a service, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y Combinator, Zipcar

It is only by bringing together and working in collaboration with leaders from business, government, civil society, faith, academia and the young generation that it becomes possible to obtain a holistic perspective of what is going on. In addition, this is critical to develop and implement integrated ideas and solutions that will result in sustainable change. This is the principle embedded in the multistakeholder theory (what the World Economic Forum communities often call the Spirit of Davos), which I first proposed in a book published in 1971.70 Boundaries between sectors and professions are artificial and are proving to be increasingly counterproductive. More than ever, it is essential to dissolve these barriers by engaging the power of networks to forge effective partnerships.

It is incumbent on us all to make sure that the latter is what happens. Acknowledgements All of us at the World Economic Forum are aware of our responsibility, as the international organization for public private cooperation, to serve as a global platform to help define the challenges associated the fourth industrial revolution and help all stakeholders shape appropriate solutions in a proactive and comprehensive manner, in collaboration with our partners, members, and constituents. For this reason, the theme of the Forum’s Annual Meeting 2016 in Davos-Klosters is “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. We are committed to catalysing constructive discussions and partnerships around this topic across all our challenges, projects and meetings.

World Economic Forum® © 2016 – All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior permission of the World Economic Forum. ISBN-13: 978-1-944835-01-9 ISBN-10: 1944835016 REF: 231215 World Economic Forum 91–93 route de la Capite CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva Switzerland www.weforum.org Contents Introduction 1. The Fourth Industrial Revolution 1.1 Historical Context 1.2 Profound and Systemic Change 2. Drivers 2.1 Megatrends 2.1.1 Physical 2.1.2 Digital 2.1.3 Biological 2.2 Tipping Points 3.


pages: 386 words: 112,064

Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America by Garrett Neiman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, basic income, Bernie Sanders, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, clean water, confounding variable, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, Donald Trump, drone strike, effective altruism, Elon Musk, gender pay gap, George Floyd, glass ceiling, green new deal, high net worth, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, impact investing, imposter syndrome, impulse control, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, liberal capitalism, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microaggression, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, occupational segregation, offshore financial centre, Paul Buchheit, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, William MacAskill, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor

When education reform and extreme inequality duel, extreme inequality tends to win, since well-heeled parents ensure well-resourced schools. Yet philanthropists like Morgan continue to be surprised that it is so difficult to reform schools in low-wealth communities of color, even when those communities lack resources. When historian Rutger Bregman attended the World Economic Forum at Davos, he made a similar observation. Like Milken attendees, Davos participants were also searching for ways to drive systemic change without addressing wealth inequality. “It feels as if I’m at a firefighters’ conference,” Bregman remarked, “and no one is allowed to speak about water.”5 The view that education reform is the linchpin to fighting poverty is so commonly held among wealthy philanthropists that there is now a term for it.

While few studies to date have explored the relative impact of income and wealth on long-term life outcomes, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that children born into wealthy families are six times as likely to be wealthy as adults, a disparity that is far greater than the impact of the income divide.13 In America, wealth inequality is more extreme than income inequality. While America’s top 1 percent capture 19 percent of income, they hold 32 percent of the wealth—about $40 trillion.14 When the World Economic Forum surveyed 103 countries in 2018, it found that the United States had the sixth-highest wealth inequality.15 That level of inequality is on par with Russia—infamous for its oligarchs—and South Africa, which has struggled to dismantle its apartheid legacy.16 Among “developed” countries, American wealth inequality is unique.

If that sounds fantastical, consider Melinda Gates, who opens up in her book The Moment of Lift about her decades-long struggle to get her husband, Bill, to see her as an equal partner.38 Although the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bears both of their names, Melinda did not have equal decision rights, which kept a $1 billion initiative to advance gender equality on the back burner. It was only after Melinda convinced Bill to capitalize Pivotal Ventures, a separate fund that she oversees, that she was able to launch the initiative. Apparently Bill saw advancing gender equality as women’s work that was unfit for the foundation that bears his name. In 2019, a World Economic Forum study estimated that it will take the United States another 268 years to reach gender equality.39 How much time did America lose because one rich white man didn’t see his wife as an equal and treat her as a full partner? How much could this country gain if even a few powerful white men took that step?


pages: 327 words: 90,013

Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn by Nick Kostov

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, bitcoin, business logic, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, glass ceiling, Google Earth, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, Masayoshi Son, offshore financial centre, rolodex, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, the payments system

They were filled with darkness. * * * The World Economic Forum kicked off in Davos on January 22, 2019. Heads of state, economic pundits, and financial market luminaries congregated in the resort town surrounded by snowcapped mountains to discuss the state of the world and attempt to adjust the trajectory of human affairs. As it had been every year since 1971, the idea was for the participants to leave behind their earthly worries and gain some perspective in the rarefied heights of the Alpine retreat. This year, however, the man who had come to symbolize globalization and incarnated the Davos spirit more than any other corporate leader was notably absent.

His was the type of work trajectory Ghosn respected in others: Bahwan had gone from working at his father’s small import business to helming a sprawling conglomerate spanning everything from IT outsourcing to Rolls-Royce distribution. Juffali was a Saudi billionaire whom Ghosn had recently hired to help jump-start Nissan sales in the Gulf region. Ghosn knew the sheikh from his Michelin days, and the two men regularly met at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Though he didn’t fall into the self-made category that Bahwan did (his predecessors formed the “Juffali Group” conglomerate in the 1970s, managing one of the largest corporate enterprises in Saudi Arabia), Ghosn respected the sheikh’s ability to cultivate international connections.

See arrests/detention center Ghosn’s defense strategy, 271 Ghosn’s point-by-point rebuttal to charges, 257–58 Imazu’s meeting with, 173 interrogation techniques, 193–94 Kelly arrest, 183–84 Nada cuts deal with, 178 Nada’s meeting with, 175 Ohnuma and, 175 “the Oman route” focus, 220–21 raiding Nissan headquarters, 185–86 Seki, Yoshitaka, 192–94, 223 Tournaire, Serge, 266–67 Turrini, Régis, 137–40 Uniroyal Goodrich, 39–42 Vial, Martin, 141–42, 161, 208 Wagoner, Rick, 80 Wall Street Journal, 48 Wheels of Innovation (statue), 3 World Economic Forum, 200–201 Yokohama Prison, 273 Zayek, George-Antoine, 233, 234, 237, 265. See also escape operation Zetsche, Dieter, 113 Zi-A Capital, 104, 107, 109, 169–70 About the Authors NICK KOSTOV has worked for the Wall Street Journal for the last seven years, covering business and general news from Paris.


pages: 354 words: 105,322

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, cellular automata, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, G4S, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, jitney, John Meriwether, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, large denomination, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, machine readable, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, nuclear winter, obamacare, offshore financial centre, operational security, Paul Samuelson, Peace of Westphalia, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, plutocrats, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, random walk, reserve currency, RFID, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, tech billionaire, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, transfer pricing, value at risk, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Westphalian system

Central bankers gather in August at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, conference sponsored by the Kansas City Federal Reserve. Military and intelligence elites gather at the Munich Security Conference in early February. Thought leaders and public intellectuals can take their pick from among the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, and the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Vancouver. These super-elite venues are not run-of-the-mill industry conventions. They are by invitation only, or come with admission and sponsorship conditions that self-select for power elite participation.

S. Eliot had a vision: T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000). CHAPTER 2: ONE MONEY, ONE WORLD, ONE ORDER “Massive progress has been made”: Remarks of Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, at a Bloomberg Panel, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2015, accessed August 7, 2016, www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-01-22/lagarde-cohn-summers-botin-dalio-on-bloomberg-panel. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”: Rahm Emanuel, as quoted in Gerald F. Seib, “In Crisis, Opportunity for Obama,” The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008, accessed August 7, 2016, www.wsj.com/articles/SB122721278056345271.

Capital markets were condemned to a succession of calamities while academics-turned-central-bankers waited decades for more data to convince them of their failures. Faust and I ended the evening at the aptly named Bull and Bear bar in the Waldorf Astoria hotel about a block from the restaurant. We sipped straight Scotch, an aged batch selected with care by our friend Dave “Davos” Nolan, the hedge fund billionaire, and shared with another dinner companion, world-class biologist Beverly Wendland. Davos, Beverly, and I toasted Jon’s recent return to academia—what I called his “escape from the Fed.” Unfortunately there is no escape for the global economy. The Power of Gold Simply seeing market collapse, even through a complexity theory lens, is unsatisfying to investors who don’t care why things end, but want to know when.


pages: 343 words: 102,846

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future by Hal Niedzviecki

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, anti-communist, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, big-box store, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, Colonization of Mars, computer age, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, Future Shock, Google Glasses, hive mind, Howard Zinn, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, independent contractor, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, life extension, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Armstrong, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Ponzi scheme, precariat, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological singularity, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Virgin Galactic, warehouse robotics, working poor

Entities like the Push Institute (“pushthefuture.org”), Technology Futures, The Foresight Institute, and Institute for the Future issue ever more-lavish directives on seizing the coming day. Consulting firms, companies, and leading tech organizations release their annual proclamations on the future. These include Frog Design, an industrial design company that has worked with Apple and Sony, and its annual “Tech Trends” report; the World Economic Forum’s annual “Top 10 Emerging Technologies” report; Accenture’s “Technology Vision” report; Deloitte’s annual “predictions for the technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sectors”; and consulting firm Gartner’s annual “Gartner Predicts—Gartner’s Predictions for the Year Ahead.”24 These and many more missives are dispensed at must-attend conferences.

The Big Data authors write about “systems” as in, “systems perform well because they are fed with lots of data on which to base their predictions.”12 This is the implementation of an overall resetting of priorities around, “the ability of society to harness information in novel ways.”13 The Big Data authors talk about data as the “raw material of business, a vital economic input, used to create a new form of economic value.” They talk about how “data can be cleverly reused to become a fountain of innovation and new services.” They assure us that big data will “produce useful insights or goods and services of significant value.”14 In 2011, the World Economic Forum announced that big data would henceforth “be considered a new class of economic asset,” a thing you can own and profit from, the fuel that will finally power us to the future.15 So it is that more and more companies are signing up with ESRI. Collecting, accessing and parsing huge quantities of data, paying fees for systemic access to the future, is becoming just another cost of doing business.

Mayer-Scho¨nberger and Cukier, Big Data, 140. 39. Jeremy Rifkin, “The Rise of Anti-Capitalism,” The New York Times, March 15, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-anti-capitalism.html. 40. Don Tapscott, “Davos: Delight over the Recovery, Fear for the Bigger Picture,” The Globe and Mail, January 28, 2014, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/davos-delight-over-the-recovery-fear-for-the-bigger-picture/article16540650/. 41. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, Race Against the Machine. 42. Lanier, Who Owns the Future?, 60. 43. Paul Beaudry, David A. Green, and Benjamin M.


pages: 504 words: 143,303

Why We Can't Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, asset-backed security, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, biodiversity loss, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, declining real wages, deglobalization, degrowth, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, demand response, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green new deal, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", James Dyson, job automation, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land value tax, long term incentive plan, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, patent troll, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, popular capitalism, predatory finance, price stability, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Charles Ferguson argues that in the United States both main parties are heavily funded by major companies, so that they both adopt similar neoliberal economic policies and differ significantly only on social issues.24 Things are not so different in the UK, where both main parties are in thrall to the City and compete for the endorsement of Rupert Murdoch and other media oligarchs. What kind of democracy is this? Fat cats in the snow: the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos This is the place to be seen if you’re super-rich or seeking to ingratiate yourself with them and influence them. The WEF is an invitation-only organisation comprising ‘1,000 of the world’s top corporations, global enterprises usually with more than US$ 5 billion in turnover’.25 It describes itself as an ‘independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas’.

The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called ‘pro-globalization’ by the propaganda system. Singer Bono had it right when he called Davos ‘fat cats in the snow’. The lattice of influence The plutocracy makes use of a dense lattice of relationships between businesses, trade and professional organisations, think-tanks, lobbying firms, politicians, political party researchers and special advisors to politicians.

It’s what I would call ‘conscience laundering’ – feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity.130 And having one’s name or company brand attached to a good cause is good public relations; you don’t even have to declare how much you’ve given; for companies it buys an aura of ‘corporate social responsibility’. At the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, the super-rich gather to be seen at the sessions on philanthropy, and bathe in the glow of benevolence. Philanthropists don’t just want to give money and allow the recipients to use it as they see fit; they want to have some control over how it’s used, because, let’s face it, the rich, being so clever and successful, know best.


pages: 466 words: 127,728

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, complexity theory, computer age, credit crunch, currency peg, David Graeber, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, G4S, George Akerlof, global macro, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, jitney, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, Lao Tzu, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market design, megaproject, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, operational security, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, risk-adjusted returns, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Stuxnet, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, working-age population, yield curve

His background is unique: he has operated at the highest levels at a central bank under Chinese Communist Party control and at the highest levels of the IMF, an institution ostensibly committed to free markets and open capital accounts. Zhu travels continually on official IMF business, for university lectures, and to attend prestigious international conferences such as the Davos World Economic Forum. Private bankers and government officials eagerly seek his advice at the IMF’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and on the sidelines of G20 summits, while Communist Party Central Politburo members do the same on his periodic trips to Beijing. From East to West, from communism to capitalism, Min Zhu straddles the contending forces in world finance today, with a foot in both camps.

Hundreds of eminent international economists, and prominent former officials such as Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, who had engineered the Goldman Sachs bailout in 2008, publicly called on Congress to approve the legislation. However, President Obama did not include the new requests in his 2012 or 2013 budgets, in order to avoid making a campaign issue out of U.S. taxpayer support for European bailouts. At this point Christine Lagarde’s impatience with the process began to boil over. During the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 28, 2012, she hoisted her Louis Vuitton handbag in the air and said, “I am here with my little bag, to actually collect a bit of money.” In an interview with The Washington Post published on June 29, 2013, she was more pointed and said, “We have been able to significantly increase our resources . . . notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. did not contribute or support that move. . . .

National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper no. 15714, January 2010, http://www.nber.org/papers/w15714. ———. “Methods of Policy Accommodation at the Interest-Rate Lower Bound.” Paper presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyo., August 31, 2012, http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/sympos/2012/mw.pdf. World Economic Forum. “More Credit with Fewer Crises: Responsibly Meeting the World’s Growing Demand for Credit.” Report in Collaboration with McKinsey, January 2010, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_NR_More_credit_fewer_crises_2011.pdf. World Gold Council. “Gold: A Commodity like No Other,” April 2011, http://www.exchangetradedgold.com/media/ETG/file/Gold_a_commodity_like_no_other.pdf.


Mbs: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman by Ben Hubbard

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bellingcat, bitcoin, Citizen Lab, Donald Trump, fake news, it's over 9,000, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, megacity, Mohammed Bouazizi, NSO Group, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War

Saudi research grant: “Western walkout of Saudi ‘Davos in the Desert’ conference over Jamal Khashoggi undermines kingdom’s modernization plans,” WaPo, Oct. 12, 2018. MBS’s foundation: Author correspondence, Gates Foundation spokesperson, Nov. 1, 2018. ran for the exits: “Two more Washington lobbying firms drop representation of Saudi Arabia in wake of alleged killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” WaPo, Oct. 15, 2018. over a kneeling Khashoggi: Screenshot taken by the author Oct. 2018. “illicit appropriation”: “World Economic Forum Objects to Misuse of the ‘Davos’ Brand,” press release, World Economic Forum, Oct. 22, 2018.

As the conference approached, executives pleaded with MBS to postpone it, but he refused, not wanting to show weakness or imply culpability. So it went ahead, with an inauspicious start. Hackers defaced its website, posting a picture of MBS wielding a bloody sword over a kneeling Khashoggi. The World Economic Forum condemned the use of the “Davos” brand for unaffiliated events, threatening to “use all means” against “illicit appropriation”—clearly an effort to kill the “Davos in the Desert” comparisons. Once the conference began, Saudi speakers sought to express consternation while not dampening the kingdom’s attractiveness for investment. “The terrible acts reported in recent weeks are alien to our culture and our DNA,” Lubna Olayan, a Saudi billionaire businesswoman, said at the opening.

INTRODUCTION BY THE TIME the young prince who was running the Arab world’s richest country was due to speak, a standing-room-only crowd of international investors, businessmen, millionaires, and billionaires had packed a luxurious hall under massive crystal chandeliers to await his appearance. It was fall 2017, and all had come to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, for a lavish investment conference that had unofficially been dubbed “Davos in the Desert” to give it the same ring of exclusivity and consequence as the annual meet-up of global powerbrokers in the Swiss Alps. This conference, however, had a different goal: to convince the assembled moneymen that the time was now to bet big on Saudi Arabia. Over the previous days, the kingdom had worked hard to convince its thousands of guests that any preconceptions they had about Saudi Arabia were not true, or were at least on their way to not being true.


pages: 138 words: 41,353

The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, digital rights, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, high net worth, illegal immigration, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, offshore financial centre, open immigration, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, technoutopianism, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks

In this context, the sale of citizenship is interesting not because it is scandalous or even morally reprehensible, but because it speaks to the very arbitrariness of the concept of belonging to a nation to begin with. In 2002, the political scientist Samuel Huntington—the man credited with coining the term “Davos Man” to describe the type of global elite who attend the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss city—published an essay on the rift between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the country in the conservative international affairs magazine The National Interest. The elites, Huntington writes in “Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite,” are seceding into global units of one, while the public is growing more skeptical of globalization and becoming increasingly patriotic.

But President Taki died shortly thereafter, and the plan was left unexecuted. Ultimately, it took a Kiwan to initiate a citizenship exchange of such epic proportions. If Denard was the ideal intermediary to provide offshore services for rogue regimes, Kiwan was the man for market-based solutions to global problems, delivered with an educated veneer of legitimacy—a Davos man, if you will. He understood, on a gut level, the geopolitical shifts that made the time ripe for such a transaction; his jet-set lifestyle, his work in media, and his enormous web of friends, business partners, and acquaintances no doubt contributed to this intuition. As Kiwan tells it, he began to notice a growing demand for second passports among the Gulf’s middle and upper classes.

The men are fighting over market dominance, but also over whose company appears to be the best “global citizen.” In early 2015, Kalin announced that Henley had partnered with the UN Refugee Agency to help those “at the other end of the spectrum of global mobility”—actual stateless people and displaced persons, as opposed to denizens of Davos. Arton has a more creative plan. “I had a thought that for every passport we sell, we should donate one to a stateless person,” Arton told me. What capitalism can do for shoes, capitalism can do for passports, too. In fact, philanthropy was the unofficial theme at Arton’s 2014 “Global Citizenship Forum” in Toronto.


pages: 364 words: 99,897

The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Anne Wojcicki, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, connected car, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disintermediation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fiat currency, future of work, General Motors Futurama, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, Gregor Mendel, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lifelogging, litecoin, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mobile money, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, new economy, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open economy, Parag Khanna, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, precision agriculture, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Satoshi Nakamoto, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social graph, software as a service, special economic zone, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, Travis Kalanick, underbanked, unit 8200, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, young professional

These countries find themselves in a double bind: in order for regulation to serve the public interest, it must be enough to protect individual and community rights but not so much as to eliminate investment and economic growth. Whether or not we may want to respect a stronger version of privacy, it’s possible that we’re now unable to turn back and actually reach that notion of privacy. Margo Seltzer, a professor of computer science at Harvard University, argued at the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos that, “Privacy as we knew it in the past is no longer feasible. . . . How we conventionally think of privacy is dead.” With the proliferation of sensors, devices, and networks sucking up data everywhere, we may be past the point of being able to halt data collection in any meaningful way.

China’s rise and Japan’s stagnation have been an embarrassment to the Japanese. With some coaching from Hillary Clinton, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has begun to try to change this. At the core of his Abenomics economic plan, implemented after his election in December 2012, was a new place for women in the Japanese economy. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Abe declared, “Japan must become a place where women shine.” To make this happen, he has focused on increasing the availability of after-school programs for 10,000 kids. Too often, child care centers have lengthy waiting lists, so Abe has pushed for more private companies to open institutes.

The economic importance of this fact pushed Prime Minister Abe to begin working on a modification to Japan’s tax and pension policies to stop favoring stay-at-home wives rather than working women. He declared that by 2020, he wants women to be in 30 percent of Japan’s leadership roles. “Japan’s GDP could grow by 16 percent more, if women participated in labor as much as men,” Abe said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “That is what Hillary Clinton told me. I was greatly encouraged.” DIGITAL NATIVES A second major condition necessary for societies to compete and succeed in the industries of the future is to have young people whose ideas are funded and whose place on organizational charts belies their youth.


pages: 409 words: 125,611

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, company town, computer age, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, deindustrialization, Detroit bankruptcy, discovery of DNA, Doha Development Round, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, gentrification, George Akerlof, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global supply chain, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, job automation, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, urban sprawl, very high income, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, white flight, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population

It is simply about moderating it and restoring the American dream. ______________ * Washington Monthly, December 2004. INEQUALITY GOES GLOBAL* THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM’S ANNUAL MEETING IN Davos has lost some of its precrisis panache. After all, before the meltdown in 2008, the captains of finance and industry could trumpet the virtues of globalization, technology, and financial liberalization, which supposedly heralded a new era of relentless growth. The benefits would be shared by all, if only they would do “the right thing.” Those days are gone. But Davos remains a good place to get a sense of the global zeitgeist. It goes without saying that developing and emerging-market countries no longer look at the advanced countries as they once did.

Matters have not gone well in Egypt; but as this book goes to press, it appears that at least in one country, Tunisia, the seeds sown in the Arab Spring may actually have taken root. Growing awareness of the role that inequality had played in the Arab Spring—and growing inequality around the world—moved concerns about inequality front and center. “Inequality Goes Global”4 was written after I returned from the 2013 meeting at Davos, Switzerland, of the World Economic Forum. This is the annual gathering of the world’s elite—entertained and instructed by a few academics and complemented by a few people from civil society and social entrepreneurs. The meeting is a good place to feel the world’s pulse—or at least the pulse of this rarefied group. Before the crisis there was unbridled euphoria about globalization and technology.

This is but one of the reasons why concern about inequality has become urgent even among the 1 percent: increasing numbers of them realize that sustained economic growth, upon which their prosperity depends, can’t happen when the vast majority of citizens have stagnant incomes. Oxfam brought home forcefully the extent of the world’s growing inequality to the annual gathering of the world’s elite in Davos in 2014, pointing out that a bus with some 85 of the world’s billionaires had as much wealth as the bottom half of its population, some three billion people.1 By a year later the bus had shrunk—it required only 80 seats. Just as dramatic, Oxfam found that the top 1 percent of the world now owned nearly half the world’s wealth—and are on track to own as much of the rest of the 99 percent combined by 2016.


pages: 345 words: 100,989

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, Eyjafjallajökull, financial engineering, fixed income, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Kickstarter, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Masayoshi Son, means of production, Menlo Park, mittelstand, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, private military company, proprietary trading, remote working, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, supply chain finance, Tim Haywood, Vision Fund, WeWork, work culture

He was all flash without the fun. In early 2020, though, Lex’s reputation was still soaring. At the World Economic Forum in Davos that January, he was frequently by Masa’s side, as the Japanese tech titan met with world leaders. Lex had arrived at Davos without proper winter footwear – a no-no on the slippery streets, where the footsteps of the global elite turn the snow and ice into a skating rink. Lex got his personal assistant to buy dozens of pairs of snow-worthy shoes and bring them to David Solo’s Davos apartment, where Lex was staying for the duration of the conference. Too busy to visit a shoe shop, Lex effectively had his assistant bring the shop to him.

While the trappings of wealth were hugely rewarding, Lex was just as desperate for the status he got from hanging around politicians and top bankers. It was exhilarating to zip around the world in your own Gulfstream 650 – an elite plane even among global private aircraft owners. But showing off your star power over dinner with the great and good of international finance and politics at the World Economic Forum in Davos or at a Buckingham Palace garden party or as a trustee of the famed Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra was just as big a thrill. On a cold, sunny day in January 2020, Greensill’s top management meeting took place in London. The programme started with an 8 a.m. breakfast meeting in a grand boardroom on the lower floor of the Savoy.

R. ref1 Shop Direct ref1 Shoreditch ref1, ref2 Shuttleworth, Daniel ref1 Silicon Valley ref1, ref2 SIMAG see Systematic Investment Management AG SIMEC Group ref1, ref2 Skirzenski, Dave ref1, ref2 Sky News ref1 Sky television ref1 small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) ref1, ref2 SMBC ref1 Smith, Robert ref1 Smithfield ref1 Smythson ref1 SNL Financial ref1 Société Générale ref1 SoftBank ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 corporate espionage ref1 and Greensill Bank AG ref1, ref2 and Greensill Capital ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24 and Wirecard ref1 SoftBank Group ref1 SoftBank Group Corp ref1 SoftBank Vision Fund ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21 Solo, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Son, Masayoshi ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Spain ref1 Special Needs Group ref1, ref2, ref3 special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) ref1, ref2 special purpose vehicles (SPVs) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Standalone Policy ref1 Standard & Poor ref1 Standard Chartered bank ref1 Starbucks ref1 steel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Steinberg, Julie ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Steinway development ref1 Stephenson and Turner (S&T) ref1 Sumitomo ref1 Sunak, Rishi ref1, ref2 Sunday Times, The (newspaper) ref1 supply chain finance (SCF) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41, ref42, ref43 and bullying ref1 and the Covid-19 pandemic ref1, ref2 as loophole to hide borrowings ref1 public sector ref1 Swiss Bank Corporation ref1 Sydney ref1, ref2, ref3 Systematic Investment Management AG (SIMAG) ref1 Tadawul (Saudi stock exchange) ref1 Taribelang people ref1 Taulia (payment platform) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 tax relief schemes ref1 TBCC ref1 TDR Capital ref1 tech businesses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Telstra ref1, ref2 ‘ten baggers’ ref1 10 Downing Street ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Tesco ref1 Textura ref1 Thatcher administration ref1 Theranos ref1 Thiam, Tidjane ref1, ref2, ref3 Thompson, Maurice ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Thunder ref1 Thyssengrupp ref1 Times, The (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3 Tokio Marine ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 The Bond and Credit Company (TBCC) ref1, ref2, ref3 Tower Trade Group ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 trade credit insurance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20 trade finance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 see also supply chain finance Tradeshift Networks ref1, ref2 Transaction Risk Mitigation (TRM) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Transport for London (TfL) ref1 Trehan, Ravi ref1 Trump, Donald ref1 Uber ref1, ref2 UBS ref1, ref2 UK Export Finance (UKEF) ref1 UMobile ref1 ‘Unicorns’ ref1, ref2 UniCredit ref1, ref2 United Utilities ref1 US Treasury ref1 Utah Industrial Bank ref1 Varvel, Eric ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 View Inc. ref1 Vodafone ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Volga Dnepr Group ref1 Volkswagen ref1 ‘vulture funds’ ref1 Wagestream ref1 Wall Street ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Wall Street Journal, The (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17 Walmart ref1 Wang, Vera ref1 Wareing, Marcus ref1 Warner, Lara ref1, ref2, ref3 Warshaw, Robey ref1 Washington Post, The (newspaper) ref1 Wellcome Trust ref1 WestLB bank ref1 Westminster ref1 WeWork ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 White House ref1 White Oak Global Advisors ref1, ref2 Whitehall ref1, ref2 Widodo, Joko ref1 Wirecard AG ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Wolfenden, Rodney ref1 World Economic Forum ref1 World Health Organization (WHO) ref1 World Trade Center, New York ref1 Wuhan ref1 Wyelands bank ref1, ref2, ref3 Xavier, Navin ref1 Yoo ref1 York Capital Management ref1 Zahawi, Nadhim ref1 Zhengyao, Lu ref1 ZTE ref1 Zume ref1 About the Author DUNCAN MAVIN is a seasoned international financial journalist who started his career as a chartered accountant in the City and in Toronto.


pages: 171 words: 54,334

Barefoot Into Cyberspace: Adventures in Search of Techno-Utopia by Becky Hogge, Damien Morris, Christopher Scally

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Buckminster Fuller, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, disintermediation, DIY culture, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, game design, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, informal economy, information asymmetry, Jacob Appelbaum, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, mass immigration, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Mother of all demos, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer, Richard Stallman, Silicon Valley, Skype, Socratic dialogue, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks

Perhaps to combat (but also to feed) this elitist image, TED offers recordings of all of its talks for free online. The talks really are some of the best things available on the web, even with the excruciating BMW ads that top and tail them. In 2007, the Economist called TED “Davos for optimists”, in reference to the annual invitation-only World Economic Forum that is a regular target of anti-globalisation protestors. Ethan thinks “it’s a more useful Davos. Davos is about putting very, very powerful people together in a ski resort in Switzerland and hoping that they all party. And they do. TED is really about the talks. The conversation starter’s always, ‘what was the best thing you’ve heard today?’”

Xconomy, October 20. http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/10/20/arbor-networks-reports-on-the-rise-of-the-internet-hyper-giants/. Schneier, Bruce. 2000. Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World. United States: John Wiley & Sons. Stone, C.J. 1996. Fierce Dancing: Adventures in the Underground. Faber and Faber. The Economist. 2007. “TED: Davos for Optimists.” The Economist, March 8. http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/03/ted_davos_for_optimists. The Guardian. 2010a. “Afghanistan: The War Logs.” The Guardian, July 25. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-war-logs. ———. 2010b. “Iraq: The War Logs.” The Guardian, October 22. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq-war-logs. ———. 2010c.


pages: 116 words: 31,356

Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Big Tech, Californian Ideology, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, data science, deindustrialization, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, driverless car, Ford Model T, future of work, gig economy, independent contractor, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liquidity trap, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, mittelstand, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, platform as a service, quantitative easing, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, software as a service, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, the built environment, total factor productivity, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unconventional monetary instruments, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, Zipcar

In particular, there has been a renewed focus on the rise of technology: automation, the sharing economy, endless stories about the ‘Uber for X’, and, since around 2010, proclamations about the internet of things. These changes have received labels such as ‘paradigm shift’ from McKinsey1 and ‘fourth industrial revolution’ from the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and, in more ridiculous formulations, have been compared in importance to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.2 We have witnessed a massive proliferation of new terms: the gig economy, the sharing economy, the on-demand economy, the next industrial revolution, the surveillance economy, the app economy, the attention economy, and so on.

In the industry, these are known respectively as ‘infrastructure as a service’ (IaaS), ‘platform as a service’ (Paas), and ‘software as a service’ (SaaS). 37. Clark, 2016. 38. Miller, 2016. 39. Asay, 2015. 40. McBride and Medhora, 2016. 41. Webb, 2015; Bughin, Chui, and Manyika, 2015. 42. Bughin, Chui, and Manyika, 2015. 43. Alessi, 2014. 44. World Economic Forum, 2015: 4. 45. Zaske, 2015. 46. CB Insights, 2016c. 47. Waters, 2016. 48. Murray, 2016. 49. Miller, 2015b. 50. Waters, 2016. 51. Miller, 2015a. 52. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, 2015: 6–7. 53. Office for National Statistics, 2016a. 54. Bonaccorsi and Giuri, 2000: 16–21. 55.

‘Digital Marx: Toward a Political Economy of Distributed Media’. In Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism, edited by Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco, pp. 68–104. Leiden: Brill. World Bank. 2016. ‘World Development Reports, 2016: Digital Dividends’. Washington, DC. http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2016 (accessed 29 May 2016). World Economic Forum. 2015. ‘Industrial Internet of Things: Unleashing the Potential of Connected Products and Services’. New York. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_IndustrialInternet_Report2015.pdf (accessed 27 May 2016). World Steel Association. 2016. ‘March 2016 Crude Steel Production’. Brussels. http://www.worldsteel.org/statistics/crude-steel-production-2016-2015.html (accessed 29 May 2016).


pages: 317 words: 87,048

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

The term ‘the Great Reset’ had, for most of them, come from a book cowritten in June 2020 by Klaus Schwab, the then eighty-two-year-old founder of the World Economic Forum (often shortened to WEF). The WEF describes itself as a not-for-profit foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland, which ‘engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas’.17 Unlike most not-for-profits, it has an annual budget of around £300 million for its endeavours.18 The organisation’s most visible activity is the annual Davos forum of business and political leaders, which has one of the most elite guest lists in global affairs.

‘Cognitive dissonance: What to know’, www.medicalnewstoday.com, accessed 17 October 2022. 16. David Gilbert, ‘Roger Stone Visited the JFK-QAnon Cult In Dallas’, www.vice.com, 14 December 2021. 17. World Economic Forum, ‘Our Mission’, www.weforum.org, accessed 17 October 2022. 18. World Economic Forum, ‘Annual Report 2018–2019’, https://www3.weforum.org, accessed 17 October 2022. 19. Taylor Thompson Fuller, ‘False posts target World Economic Forum founder with hoax Covid-19 conspiracy’, https://factcheck.afp.com, 7 July 2021. 20. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ‘Bin Laden’s Bookshelf’, www.dni.gov, accessed 17 October 2022. 21.

But it is hard to see how any of them could have emerged in the forms that they did without the others. QAnon itself is hardly the final stage of a process – a movement that began with specific predictions about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has evolved into a loose coalition protesting lockdowns, vaccines, Bill Gates, the World Economic Forum and elites in general. It is said that dislodging a few loose rocks at the wrong time in the wrong place can set off a landslide. With that in mind, here’s how one well-meaning game changed the world – for the worse. It began with a blogpost by the ex-boyfriend of one of the game’s developers, Zoë Quinn.


pages: 301 words: 90,362

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 90 percent rule, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, game design, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Khan Academy, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, TED Talk

Nowhere else are so many people with the influence to change things so frequently brought together, only for the resulting conversations to remain on the surface. They lurk there because everyone is presenting the best self they think others expect to meet. If you had to pick the setting where this “conference self” is at its worst, you might well choose the meetings of the World Economic Forum, an organization that convenes the world’s rich and powerful several times a year, most famously in Davos, Switzerland. Which is why, a few years ago, a colleague and I set out to see if we could hack the WEF. Could we create an anti-WEF on the sidelines of a WEF event? Could we induce people trained to present themselves as perfectly baked loaves to bring dough worth sharing instead?

Chapter 6: Keep Your Best Self Out of My Gathering “provide innovative thinking” “1,500 World Leaders, Pioneers and Experts Volunteer to Tackle Global Challenges,” World Economic Forum, accessed September 25, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/press/2014/09/1500-world-leaders-pioneers-and-experts-volunteer-to-tackle-global-challenges/. “profound shift in the context” Lynda Gratton, “Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership,” World Economic Forum, 2012, http://reports.weforum.org/global-agenda-council-on-new-models-of-leadership/. Scholars like Brené Brown Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (New York: Gotham Books, 2012), 2.

., 72, 88, 128–30, 149, 181, 208 Washington Post, The, 91, 276 Wassaic Project, 160 Waterloo (Iowa), 117 Weddings, ix, 8, 10, 11, 94, 140, 146, 168, 250, 257–58, 271 number of guests at, 52–53 purpose of, 19–21 rules for, 97–98, 113 Welcoming, 1, 43, 96, 103, 134, 170, 178, 245, 257–58 absence of, 75–76, 100 to dinner parties, 107, 153, 168, 198, 220–21 to closings, 250, 254, 264 purpose and, 17, 18, 205 Werewolf game, 73 WhatsApp, 251 White House Office of Public Engagement, 102 Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, 161 Wilkins, Topher, 89–90 Williams, Tim, 203 Winters, Ann Colvin, 115 Wisdump, 112 Woon, Wendy, 55–57, 62, 63 Workbooks, digital, 154–55, 238 Workshops, 4, 57, 67, 143, 159, 247 World Bank, 200 World Cup, 53 World Economic Forum (WEF), 194–201 Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership, 195–201 Wurman, Richard Saul, 81–82 Young Presidents’ Organization, 51 YouTube, 230 Zeldin, Theodore, 216–17 Zen Buddhism, 251 Zen Center for Contemplative Care, 251–54 Zimbabwe, xi, xii, 63 Zimmerman, Eric, 66 Zulu tribe, 183 About the Author © Mackenzie Stroh Priya Parker is the founder of Thrive Labs, at which she helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators, and philanthropists create transformative gatherings.


pages: 275 words: 84,980

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand to Money That Understands Us (Perspectives) by David Birch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, business cycle, capital controls, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, creative destruction, credit crunch, cross-border payments, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, dematerialisation, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, index card, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Irish bank strikes, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, land bank, large denomination, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, Northern Rock, Pingit, prediction markets, price stability, QR code, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social graph, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, technoutopianism, The future is already here, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, wage slave, Washington Consensus, wikimedia commons

. ******** As payments expert Scott Loftesness said on Twitter when we were discussing this, we need to remember the ‘broken window’ theory of policing. Chapter 7 Moving to mobile Machine intelligence will make us far smarter [because] our smart phones are basically supercomputers. — Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2015 Cards transformed the payments world but they did not, as was once thought, spell the end for cash. We can now see, with the perspective of decades of use, that it was a later invention that brought about the reinvention of money. Not computers, not the Internet, not digital technology in general.

— David Wolman, author of The End of Money, quoted by CBS News (2012) Let us suppose that we accept the case against cash and plan to overcome the barriers to cashlessness set out in the previous chapter. We can then ask ourselves what issues we need to consider in planning the transition to a future that is going to include some form of electronic money as a replacement for physical money. At the 1997 World Economic Forum in Davos there was a discussion about electronic cash that attempted to cover all of the relevant topics (Kobrin 1997). Two decades on I still think it provides a useful starting point so I’ve updated that list of issues and brought them together in a structure that I think rather helpfully identifies nine key issues and four policy areas (as shown in figure 20 on the next page) to examine.

* * * ******** ‘Money creation and society’, Hansard, 20 November 2014, Column 434. Chapter 18 Coda: a manifesto for cashlessness Cash, I think, in ten years’ time probably won’t exist. There is no need for it, it is terribly inefficient and expensive. — John Cryan, CEO of Deutsche Bank, at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016 Having worked through the nine key issues around cashlessness in Part II of this book, I was inspired by my good friend Geronimo Emili and his colleagues in the Italian Cashless Way campaign to use the four policy areas (highlighted in figure 27) as building blocks for an actionable ‘manifesto for cashlessness’ in Europe********, so here goes!


pages: 351 words: 96,780

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, cuban missile crisis, declining real wages, disinformation, Doomsday Clock, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, invisible hand, launch on warning, liberation theology, long peace, market fundamentalism, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Strategic Defense Initiative, uranium enrichment

These have surely been factors in the general decline of trust in leadership revealed by a World Economic Forum poll released in January 2003. According to the poll, only NGO leaders had the trust of a clear majority, followed by UN and spiritual/religious leaders, then leaders of Western Europe and economic managers, and right below them, corporate executives. Far below, at the very bottom, were the leaders of the United States.59 A week after the poll was released, the annual World Economic Forum opened in Davos, Switzerland, but without the exuberance of earlier years. “The mood has darkened,” the press noted: for the “movers and shakers,” it was not “global party time” anymore.

Bush planners know as well as others that the resort to force increases the threat of terror, and that their militaristic and aggressive posture and actions provoke reactions that increase the risk of catastrophe. They do not desire these outcomes, but assign them low priority in comparison to the international and domestic agendas they make little attempt to conceal. As Colin Powell explained the National Security Strategy to a hostile audience at the World Economic Forum, Washington has a “sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves” from nations that possess WMD and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq. The collapse of the pretexts is well known, but there has been insufficient attention to its most important consequence: the NSS was effectively revised to lower the bars to aggression.

Selig Harrison, New York Times, 7 June 2003. 56. Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War (Doubleday, 1967). 57. See my For Reasons of State (Pantheon, 1973; New Press, 2003), p. 25, for a review of the final material in the Pentagon Papers, which ends at this point. 58. Maureen Dowd, New York Times, 23 February 1991. 59. World Economic Forum press release, 14 January 2003. Guy de Jonquières, Financial Times, 15 January 2003. 60. Alan Cowell, New York Times, 23 January 2003; Mark Landler, New York Times, 24 January 2003. Marc Champion, David Cloud, and Carla Anne Robbins, Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2003. 61. Foreign Desk, “Powell on Iraq: ‘We Reserve Our Sovereign Right to Take Military Action,’” New York Times, 27 January 2003. 62.


pages: 339 words: 103,546

Blood and Oil: Mohammed Bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power by Bradley Hope, Justin Scheck

"World Economic Forum" Davos, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, Boston Dynamics, clean water, coronavirus, distributed generation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, Exxon Valdez, financial engineering, Google Earth, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, megaproject, MITM: man-in-the-middle, new economy, NSO Group, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, South of Market, San Francisco, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, Vision Fund, WeWork, women in the workforce, young professional, zero day

One of the world’s largest money managers, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, was there, along with SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, former British prime minister Tony Blair, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Hollywood kingmaker Ari Emanuel. Foreign media called the event “Davos in the Desert,” a moniker also used in the early 2000s for a World Economic Forum event in Jordan. Top CEOs, bankers, consultants, and political figures, all of them clamoring for fees or investment, lined up for meetings with Rumayyan and Mohammed. It was a scene rarely found outside gala events in the capitals of global finance. Rumayyan invited luminaries to his house one evening for a lavish buffet, where men like Blair and SoftBank’s Masayoshi milled around chatting about the kingdom’s swift progress.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020015477 ISBNs: 978-0-306-84666-3 (hardcover), 978-0-306-92381-4 (international trade paperback), 978-0-306-84665-6 (ebook) E3-20200804-DA-ORI Table of Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Authors’ Note Cast of Characters The Al Saud Dynasty Epigraph Prologue Chapter 1: The King Is Dead Chapter 2: MBS Chapter 3: Party in Maldives Chapter 4: I Am the Mastermind Chapter 5: Bring Me McKinsey Chapter 6: Captain Saud Chapter 7: Billions Chapter 8: Little Sparta Chapter 9: Golden Gambit Chapter 10: “Blockade” Chapter 11: Sealed with a Kiss Chapter 12: Dark Arts Chapter 13: Davos in the Desert Chapter 14: Sheikhdown Chapter 15: Kidnapped Prime Minister Chapter 16: Da Vinci Chapter 17: Man of the Year Chapter 18: Cold Blood Chapter 19: Mister Bone Saw Chapter 20: Unstoppable Epilogue: Decisive Storm Discover More Acknowledgments Coauthored by Bradley Hope Photos To Wayne Hope and William LaRue—BH To Chelsea, Owen, and Henry—JS Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

The corruption allegations weren’t publicly aired or admitted to by the detainees; the settlements were all private. The Ritz arrests were all the more jarring because, just days beforehand, the same hotel and a neighboring conference center had hosted the top names in global finance, politics, and business for a three-day event referred to by organizers as “Davos in the Desert.” It was presented as an unveiling of the new Saudi Arabia, an overture from a formerly insular country to show it was joining the mainstream business world. In the grand marble lobby on October 30, the world’s biggest money manager, Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman, held court in one corner, while Tony Blair stood in another expounding on Mohammed’s plans to a crowd of bankers.


A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer A. Doudna, Samuel H. Sternberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Anthropocene, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, carbon footprint, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, CRISPR, double helix, Drosophila, dual-use technology, Higgs boson, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, mouse model, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Silicon Valley, Skype, stem cell, Steven Pinker, zoonotic diseases

I’m referring, of course, to the idea that Emmanuelle and I had when we first contemplated the outcome of our research collaboration: the dream that, someday, our work would help rewrite the DNA in human patients to cure disease. 6 To Heal the Sick AS 2015 WOUND DOWN, I was completing the usual end-of-semester chores: assigning grades to my students and generating project budgets and research goals for the year ahead. At the same time, however, I was also preparing for a very different kind of task: a presentation I would soon give with Vice President Joe Biden at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2016. The invitation to speak alongside the vice president had been the latest vote of confidence in CRISPR’s potential as a medical tool. I had already been planning to travel to Davos, where civic and private-sector leaders assemble each winter to discuss issues of pressing global importance. It would be my second time attending the meeting, and on this visit, like my previous one, I had been asked to speak about CRISPR technology and its global economic and social impacts, including the effects it would have on the world of medicine.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 127, 196, 235, 237 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, 229 uracil, 11 Urnov, Fyodor, 32, 221 V van der Oost, John, 57, 66, 67, 70, 71 vectors, viral, 17–18, 18, 20, 167–71 viral genomes, 49–50 viral vectors, 17–18, 18, 20, 167–71 viruses bacterial, 45–50 bacteria’s defense against, 56–57 as gene delivery vehicles, 17–18, 18, 20, 167–71 infecting archaea, 52 Vogel, Jörg, 71 W Watson, James, 10, 193 weapon, genome editing as, 217–18 Weissman, Jonathan, 109, 206 WHIM syndrome, 3–6, 14 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 128, 217 Wiedenheft, Blake, 51–52, 53, 57, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69, 74, 242 Wilmut, Ian, 191 Wilson, Ross, 35–36 Winkler, Hans, 8 Wiseman, Frederick, 36 Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, 6 woolly mammoths, 145–46 World Economic Forum, 154 Worldwide Threat Assessment, 217–18 X xenotransplantation, 118, 140–42, 141 X-linked diseases, 195 Y Yamamoto, Keith, 207 yeast, 26–27, 28 Yellowstone National Park, 52, 53 Z ZFNs (zinc finger nucleases), 32–33, 70, 81, 83, 88, 93, 165–66 Zhang, Feng, 89, 96, 180, 221 zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), 32–33, 70, 81, 83, 88, 93, 165–66 zinc finger proteins, 31–32, 34 Zuckerberg, Mark, 156 About the Authors JENNIFER A.

The fact that Biden’s son Beau had recently passed away after a years-long battle with brain cancer only made the occasion more compelling and brought home the human tragedy and indiscriminate pain that cancer causes so many families. Although it took some wangling, I was able to recruit a colleague to cover my January teaching commitments and travel to Davos early to participate in the Biden meeting, which turned out to be as fascinating as it was affecting. I learned a great deal from my fellow attendees, many of them scientists engaged in cancer-related research, drug development, and clinical practice. As they shared the latest findings from this outsize corner of the medical world, their revelations made clear to me how far we’d come in treating cancer since my father’s all-too-brief struggle with melanoma in 1995.


pages: 484 words: 136,735

Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis by Anatole Kaletsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, buy and hold, Carmen Reinhart, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, eat what you kill, Edward Glaeser, electricity market, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, geopolitical risk, George Akerlof, global rebalancing, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peak oil, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, statistical model, systems thinking, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

The most critical challenges facing the world in the coming decades—financial instability, trade imbalances, fiscal and monetary policy, carbon emissions, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and even the tension between the Chinese and Western models—must all be tackled in a global context. Is it then not inevitable that the closer coordination between markets and government described in this book will have to move from the national to the global level? In January 2010, President Sarkozy of France delivered a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos that took many of the arguments presented in this book to their logical conclusion—and then sometimes beyond. President Sarkozy’s comments, culminating in a call for an unprecedented leap forward toward global government, therefore serve as a fitting epilogue for this book: We are not asking ourselves what will replace capitalism, but what kind of capitalism we want . . .

Jeff Immelt, “Renewing American Leadership,” Washington Post, December 10, 2009. 8 “What we don’t know yet is whether my administration and this next generation of leadership is going to be able to hew to a new, more pragmatic approach that is less interested in whether we have big government or small government; they’re more interested in whether we have a smart, effective government.” Barack Obama in a December 2008 speech quoted in Dan Balz, “One Year Later Assessing Obama: Testing the Promise of Pragmatism,” Washington Post, January 17, 2010. 9 Lawrence Summers, remarks at the 40th World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 29, 2010. Chapter One 1 There are a few notable exceptions. Niall Ferguson, the Harvard economic historian, ends Ascent of Money, his world tour of economic history in just two hundred pages, with an appeal for economists and historians to learn from evolutionary biology.

By the middle of 2009, the Case-Shiller indices had fallen back and the CS National index showed a cumulative gain since 2000 only 2 percent higher than the NAR. 9 Professor Robert Shiller of Yale, probably the most famous and academically distinguished of these Cassandras, freely admitted in a talk he gave in January 2010 at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “many economists [presumably himself included] were predicting a housing crash for at least a decade before it occurred.” He added that Nouriel Roubini (another celebrated prophet of doom) “was predicting calamity for the U.S. economy from the moment I first met him back in 2000.” 10 Charles Prince quoted in Michiyo Nakamoto and David Wighton, “Citigroup Chief Stays Bullish on Buy-outs,” Financial Times, July 9, 2007. 11 Herbert Stepic, CEO of Raiffeisen International Bank, the second biggest lender in central Europe, speaking at the EBRD Annual Meeting in Kiev on May 19, 2008.


pages: 492 words: 118,882

The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory by Kariappa Bheemaiah

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, cellular automata, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, constrained optimization, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, Diane Coyle, discrete time, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, inventory management, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, large denomination, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, liquidity trap, London Whale, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, offshore financial centre, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, power law, precariat, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, private sector deleveraging, profit maximization, QR code, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, Real Time Gross Settlement, rent control, rent-seeking, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, seigniorage, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Stuart Kauffman, supply-chain management, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the market place, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, Von Neumann architecture, Washington Consensus

Patrick O'Sullivan, The Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Finance in the 21st Century: From Hubris to Disgrace (pp. 370-391). Routledge. WEF. (2015). Deep Shift Technology Tipping Points and Societal Impact . Davos: World Economic Forum - Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software & Society. WEF. (2015). The Future of Financial Services- How disruptive innovations are reshaping the way financial services are structured, provisioned and consumed . Davos: World Economic Forum. World Bank. (2015). Remittance Prices WorldWide - Issue Number 15 . World Bank. Yurcan, B. (2016, May 23). What Banks and Fintech Need to Ponder Before They Partner .

If this by itself is not enough reason to support the fragmentation argument, then there is one final reason worth considering: With the advent of technological progress and increasing support for entrepreneurial initiatives, the fragmentation of the financial sector is already underway. You may have heard of this fragmentation is less sinister terms… In today’s popular culture it is goes under the aliases of FinTech or Blockchain. Sharding In early 2015, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the current governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, told a room full of the most influential voices in business and economics that we’re now looking at “an Uber-type situation” for banking (Edwards, 2015). Carney, who is Canadian in origin, is a person worth listening to not only because of his past achievements in the private sector ,18 but also because he is in a truly unique position today.

As the Blockchain is suited to this environment and is digitally native, its continued use in various forms is bound to increase. While the current total worth of bitcoin in the Blockchain is around $20 billion, the growing popularity and use of Ethereum23 and Ripple is tipping the scale, and the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2027, up to 10% of the global GDP will be stored on the Blockchain (WEF, 2015). Some skeptics still stubbornly state that, owing to regulatory and operational limitations, this technology will remain on the fringes of finance and exist as just a cryptocurrency. But the evidence shows that it is much more.


pages: 384 words: 93,754

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

But basic statistics suggest that it is also likely to hold back—even derail—emerging Green Swan solutions. There is nothing new about this problem; indeed, it was central to The Power of Unreasonable People,23 a book I wrote with the late Pamela Hartigan. That book went into the hands of all three thousand participants at 2008’s annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos.24 One of my favorite perspectives on this theme had appeared a decade earlier, with the extraordinary 1997 Apple ad celebrating “the crazy ones, misfits, rebels, troublemakers, round pegs in square holes.” These are people who “see things differently,” who “push the human race forward.”

Stage 4: RESILIENCE When I first heard the fourth R-word, resilience, in the early 1970s, it was in relation to the Florida Everglades. Before they were massively engineered for water control and agriculture, they had a natural resilience that was increasingly being compromised. Then, early in the new century, I sensed the word mutating—as I heard consultants on the lawns in front of the World Economic Forum’s headquarters, overlooking Lake Geneva, arguing that the word resilience was bound to supplant sustainability. It didn’t, of course, but it did become an increasingly important part of the sustainability agenda and lexicon. Many such terms bubble up on the edges of such gatherings. Many wither on the vine, but sometimes events and wider trends push once-marginal concepts into the mainstream.

Designed in the right way, Green Swan technologies can perform the same magic. One striking example is the remarkable, exponential fall in the cost of energy generated by solar and wind farms. A DROP-DOWN MENU OF DISRUPTION Perhaps the best-known recent review of where we are in terms of technology came in the form of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) report, The Fourth Industrial Revolution.8 This upbeat assessment concluded the following: We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.


pages: 337 words: 101,440

Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation by Sophie Pedder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, ghettoisation, growth hacking, haute couture, Jean Tirole, knowledge economy, liberal capitalism, mass immigration, mittelstand, new economy, post-industrial society, public intellectual, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, urban planning, éminence grise

By 2015 the average age of the top 150 American firms by market capitalization was 91 years, compared to 132 years for the top 70 French firms, according to France Stratégie, a government think tank. Even after excluding Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon from the American sample, the average age of the top French firms is still 32 per cent older. Not enough French firms have invested in building a digital offering and in technology more broadly. The 2016 World Economic Forum competitiveness index ranked France 21st out of 138 countries for its overall performance, but only 33rd according to a ranking based on the adoption of technology by companies. Too few new businesses grow to achieve proper scale. France has tied its mid-sized firms in a tangle of rules that deter smaller ones from expanding.

Although French employers secured some flexibility in return, the new rules caused headaches, particularly in the service sector. Many office workers received up to three weeks of extra holiday, in addition to the normal five weeks of paid vacation, leaving companies to juggle constant absences. By 2017 the country had slid from 16th in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index in 2008 to 22nd place. As corporate France lost ground, and its attractiveness as a location for foreign investment declined, French politicians often seemed simply to make matters even worse. France earned a reputation as a country that not only had a cultural suspicion of wealth creation, and an ambivalent relationship to work, but also political misgivings about enterprise.

‘The Third Way, as conceived by Giddens, was justified in a country that emerged from 20 years of Thatcherism and that was hyper market-friendly,’ Macron told me. ‘France’s challenge is different: one of an over-dominant state that needs to become more efficient, and to prevent rather than cure.’31 In this sense, Macron insists, his ambition is very different in its philosophy. If anything, his model, as laid out in a speech at Davos in 2018, leans towards more protection and state control. The Third Way, Macron told me, ‘revealed its limits in the absence of, or weak, regulation of the market’. His university friend Marc Ferracci put it bluntly during the 2017 campaign: ‘Blair has never been a particular object of fascination for him.’


pages: 307 words: 17,123

Behind the cloud: the untold story of how Salesforce.com went from idea to billion-dollar company--and revolutionized an industry by Marc Benioff, Carlye Adler

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, business continuity plan, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, digital divide, iterative process, Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, Maui Hawaii, Nicholas Carr, platform as a service, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business

The commitment to set aside 1 percent of equity was the first step to building the 1-1-1 model that would eventually guide our foundation. The idea for the second 1 percent commitment—1 percent of employees’ time—was inspired by the program at Hasbro, the creator of such toys as Mr. Potato Head and G.I. Joe. I had met Hasbro’s chairman, Alan Hassenfeld, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Hasbro was started by Alan’s grandfather in the 1920s, and the company had embraced a tradition of philanthropy since its earliest days. Alan was extremely generous in sharing Hasbro’s experience and serving as a mentor. ‘‘It’s the job of the chairman or CEO to set the ethics of a company.

We hosted events in San Francisco and London and flew our young filmmakers in from all over the world to present their work. As we witnessed how these films resonated with audiences, I decided it would be remarkable to bring some of 150 The Corporate Philanthropy Playbook these films and several young filmmakers to the World Economic Forum. The students were excited to show their films at the conference in Davos, Switzerland, and they took their role as change agents very seriously. We spent months preparing and produced six films in three categories—health, poverty, and the Middle East. We invited young filmmakers, including Dannie, a sixteen-year-old from the United Kingdom; Ahmed, an eighteen-year-old from Bahariya Oasis, Egypt; and Dima, a fourteen-year-old from Sderot, Israel, to show their films and talk about their inspiration and the change they were trying to effect.

“Reading this book, I laughed out loud many times as Marc told his story, a story of great ideas, thunder-stealing pranks, and a world consciousness that is at the heart of salesforce.com.” —Neil Young “Reading, but also afterwards, practicing the 111 plays described by Marc Benioff opens the door for entrepreneurial success much better than any MBA program.” —Klaus Schwab, founder, World Economic Forum, and cofounder, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship “Cisco and salesforce.com share a vision of how the network is the platform to transform business. In his book, Benioff outlines how salesforce.com has used cloud computing to disrupt and reshape the enterprise software space. It is clear that we are just beginning to understand the potential of networked business and the future benefits and productivity gains of the next phase of the Internet.”


pages: 252 words: 78,780

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us by Dan Lyons

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

As a result, the middle class itself is shrinking—from 61 percent of Americans in 1971 to 50 percent in 2015, according to Pew. It took the election of Donald Trump to really wake people up. In January 2017, a few months after the election but before Trump actually took office, elites at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos were all talking about income inequality. The WEF itself cited widening income inequality as a threat to the global economy. Some saw the election of Trump as a warning that the victims of the Information Age were lashing out. “People around the world have become aware they are part of the bottom class, and they’re angry.

Why does work now involve such infantilization? I suspect it’s because companies are scared. We live in an age of chaos, a period when entire industries are collapsing. We’re headed into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and facing “transformation…unlike anything humankind has experienced before,” says Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum. Even the biggest, most powerful companies in the world are threatened with extinction. To survive, the Big Old Companies must evolve, and recode their DNA. That means replacing or transforming their people, which is why they’re digging into our brains and trying to rewire our circuits. But what does all this psychological poking and prodding do to us?

For thirty years researchers have been warning businesspeople that the stress of workplace change can traumatize people as severely as serving in combat, surviving a natural disaster, or suffering the loss of a loved one. As huge as the technological shifts of the past twenty years have been, even bigger transformations now hurtle toward us in the form of artificial intelligence and robotics. Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum, says we are entering the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” when the rate of change will continue to accelerate. The first quarter century of the Internet age has already pushed many people past their breaking point, making them “disillusioned and fearful,” with “a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and unfairness,” Schwab says.


pages: 335 words: 97,468

Uncharted: How to Map the Future by Margaret Heffernan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Anne Wojcicki, anti-communist, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, chief data officer, Chris Urmson, clean water, complexity theory, conceptual framework, cosmic microwave background, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, discovery of penicillin, driverless car, epigenetics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, George Santayana, gig economy, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Higgs boson, index card, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, liberation theology, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megaproject, Murray Gell-Mann, Nate Silver, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, passive investing, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, prediction markets, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Rosa Parks, Sam Altman, scientific management, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart meter, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tim Cook: Apple, twin studies, University of East Anglia

Subsequent studies, from the inter-governmental Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), concluded that just 9 per cent of jobs were automatable.16 A PWC report in 2017 plumped for 30 per cent of jobs at risk in the UK, 38 per cent in the US and just 21 per cent in Japan. McKinsey estimated that 60 per cent of occupations were at risk. A subsequent report from the World Economic Forum predicted that, while 75 million jobs globally would be destroyed, 133 million would be created.17 Among the cacophony of guesses, the only idea established without doubt was that these forecasts were guaranteed media attention. But the gritty Oxford Martin numbers performed mightily for their authors.

The nursery histories we favour aren’t only simplistic, they’re also selective. Which history do we attend to: the history of institutions or of protest? Of the powerful or the powerless? Each tells a different story with its own agenda, every bit as much as the models preferred by financial forecasters. In 2016, when the World Economic Forum christened the rise of AI and automation the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, the metaphor meant something – but it wasn’t anything that historians of the period recognise. ‘The (first) Industrial Revolution is a step change,’ Emma Griffin says. As professor of modern British history at the University of East Anglia, she is alert to how different the first Industrial Revolution was from today.

., 97 Welsh Assembly (Senedd), 309 Whitaker, Rupert, 257–9, 258, 261, 267, 270 Whitehead, Tony, 292, 321 WHO, 302 wilful blindness, 245, 260, 316 Wilkinson, Angela, 159 Wilson, Fiona, 113, 121, 231, 317 Wilson, Harold, 53 Wilson, Julia, 220–1 Wiseman, Frederick, 183–4 Wojcicki, Anne, 95 Woldenberg, José, 171 Wolfe’s Neck, 113–14, 115–16 Woolf, Virginia, 181 World Economic Forum (WEF), 59 World Health Organisation (WHO), 302 World Trade Center (WTC), 305 World Wide Web (WWW), 210 Yale, 15 Z boson, 207, 216 zeitgeist, 200, 245 Zika, 302 Zuboff, Shoshana, 6, 101 First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2020 A CBS COMPANY Copyright © Margaret Heffernan, 2020 The right of Margaret Heffernan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.


pages: 693 words: 169,849

The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business intelligence, central bank independence, circulation of elites, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, Corn Laws, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, COVID-19, creative destruction, critical race theory, David Brooks, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, feminist movement, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, intangible asset, invention of gunpowder, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jim Simons, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microaggression, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-oil, pre–internet, public intellectual, publish or perish, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, sexual politics, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, spinning jenny, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, three-martini lunch, Tim Cook: Apple, transfer pricing, Tyler Cowen, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators, women in the workforce

David Rockefeller worked tirelessly to support or build global organizations such as the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. Karl Schwab arguably topped both of them by creating the World Economic Forum. The WEF is famous for its annual jamboree in Davos, a Swiss village, where some 1,300 people descend every January to forge global connections and generally ‘pageant themselves about’. But that is not the half of it: the Geneva-based organization also publishes reports, selects ‘global leaders’ and holds other, smaller meetings all around the world. Mr Schwab got his timing exactly right. The 1,300 men and women who travel to Davos every winter are the leading members of a proliferating global class: the people who fill the business-class lounges of international airports and provide the officer class of the world’s companies and global institutions and, through their incessant travelling, networking and management-book reading, make the world a smaller place.

A 2014 calculation found that by far the biggest group of billionaires under forty – 40 per cent – made their money in technology (the next-largest group, with 16 per cent, made it in hotels and retail).2 High-IQ types have also revolutionized old-fashioned industries such as manufacturing thanks to their ability to subject production processes to the icy discipline of numbers. The new rich put a high value on raw brainpower. They like to socialize at ideas-rich conferences such as the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, in Switzerland, in the winter; at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival in Colorado in the summer; and at various meetings of TED throughout the year; indeed, they mark the passing of the seasons with conferences in the way that the old rich used to mark them out with horse races and regattas.

., Ring for Jeeves 234 Wolf Foundation prizes 86 Wolff, Christian 123 Wolfowitz, Paul 336 Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) 14, 263–4 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal 54, 104 Woman’s Rights Convention, First (1848), Declaration of Sentiments 262 women 256–76 and casual sexism 273 and children 276 and cult of domesticity 267 Declaration of Rights (1876) 262 discrimination in workplace 274, 276 and divorce 259 and dress 258 and dynastic rule 43–4 employment of 273, 275–6 and feminism 274 first university graduates 268–71 girls’ success at public schools 310 and information revolution 271–2 intellectual and physical fragility 259–60 as lower in evolutionary scale 261 and meritocracy 20–21, 367 and misogyny 260 in novels 266–7, 270–71 and open competition 257–8, 261–2 and patronage 49–50 in Plato’s society 60–61, 66 and post-war baby-boom 272–3 and property 258 rights for 257, 262, 264–5, 274 Rosie the Riveter 272 and ‘separate spheres’ 259 as single parents 324–5 subjection of 258–63, 265 suffragettes 257, 267 and temperance 267 tiger mothers 314, 356–7 and world wars 272 Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own 270 Worcester, Massachusetts 198 Wordsworth, William 131 Workers Educational Association (WEA) classes 172 working classes and educational difference 293, 313 lack of parliamentary representation 340–41 and ladder of opportunity 170–73 and meritocracy 14 and selective schools 282–3, 288 self-educated (autodidacts) 172–3 support for Conservatives 346 working men’s institutes 172 World Bank 362, 368 World Book Company 214 World Confucius Conference 360 World Economic Forum, Davos 307, 320–21, 369 World Health Organization, US withdrawal from 345 Wu, empress of China 77 Xi Jinping 2, 359, 360, 361 Xu Caihou 361–2 Yale University 194 admissions policy 232–3 exclusive clubs 194–5, 232 Law School 341 and meritocratic changes 241–2 Yellen, Janet 345 Yerkes, Robert 213–14 Yoakum, Clarence (with Yerkes), Army Mental Tests 215 Yoong, Dylan Lee Soon 350 Young, Michael 1, 185, 299, 395–6 Institute of Community Studies 247, 296 IQ plus effort 366 and revolt against meritocrats 330 The Rise of the Meritocracy 10, 257, 286–8, 292, 335 and socialist ideal of equality 286–7 Zhang Dai 84 Zingales, Luigi 369, 373–4 Zola, Émile 134 Zolli, Andrew 13 Zoroastrians 97 Zuckerberg, Mark 3, 308 THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING Find us online and join the conversation Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/penguinukbooks Like us on Facebook facebook.com/penguinbooks Share the love on Instagram instagram.com/penguinukbooks Watch our authors on YouTube youtube.com/penguinbooks Pin Penguin books to your Pinterest pinterest.com/penguinukbooks Listen to audiobook clips at soundcloud.com/penguin-books Find out more about the author and discover your next read at penguin.co.uk PENGUIN BOOKS UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.


pages: 585 words: 151,239

Capitalism in America: A History by Adrian Wooldridge, Alan Greenspan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Blitzscaling, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land bank, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, plutocrats, pneumatic tube, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, price stability, Productivity paradox, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, refrigerator car, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, savings glut, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, supply-chain management, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transcontinental railway, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, War on Poverty, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, white flight, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Classification: LCC HB501 (ebook) | LCC HB501 .G6454 2018 (print) | DDC 330.973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020397 Version_1 Greenspan: For my beloved Andrea Wooldridge: For my American-born daughters, Ella and Dora CONTENTS Also by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge Title Page Copyright Dedication INTRODUCTION One A COMMERCIAL REPUBLIC: 1776–1860 Two THE TWO AMERICAS Three THE TRIUMPH OF CAPITALISM: 1865–1914 Four THE AGE OF GIANTS Five THE REVOLT AGAINST LAISSEZ-FAIRE Six THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS BUSINESS Seven THE GREAT DEPRESSION Eight THE GOLDEN AGE OF GROWTH: 1945–1970 Nine STAGFLATION Ten THE AGE OF OPTIMISM Eleven THE GREAT RECESSION Twelve AMERICA’S FADING DYNAMISM CONCLUSION Appendix: Data and Methodology Photographs and Illustrations Acknowledgments Image Credits Notes Index About the Authors INTRODUCTION LET’S START THIS HISTORY with a flight of fancy. Imagine that a version of the World Economic Forum was held in Davos in 1620. The great and the good from across the world are assembled in the Alpine village: Chinese scholars in their silk robes, British adventurers in their doublets and jerkins, Turkish civil servants in their turbans and caftans . . . all edge along the icy paths, frequently tumbling over, or gather in the inns and restaurants, animated by alcohol.

Because it can never be at rest, capitalism can never be risk-free. But it will do more than our current well-intentioned but misguided arrangements to reduce the risk of contagion while preserving the dynamism of the financial system. UNLOCKING AMERICAN GROWTH We started the book by summoning up an imaginary meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1620 and argued that nobody would have imagined that America would eventually become the world’s most powerful economy. It is fitting to end it by readdressing the same question. Will America continue to dominate the world in the same sort of way as it has for the past hundred years?

General Electric has nine hundred people working in its tax division. In 2010, it paid hardly any tax. Smaller companies have to spend money on outside lawyers and constantly worry about falling foul of one of the Internal Revenue Service’s often contradictory rules. Based on a survey of small businesses, the World Economic Forum ranks the United States twenty-ninth in terms of ease of complying with regulations, just below Saudi Arabia. Even if overregulation provides big companies with short-term advantages, it handicaps them in the longer term, making them more bureaucratic and less innovative. Established companies expand the size of departments that deal with compliance rather than innovation.


pages: 493 words: 139,845

Women Leaders at Work: Untold Tales of Women Achieving Their Ambitions by Elizabeth Ghaffari

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Bear Stearns, business cycle, business process, cloud computing, Columbine, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, dark matter, deal flow, do what you love, family office, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, follow your passion, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, high net worth, John Elkington, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, Oklahoma City bombing, performance metric, pink-collar, profit maximization, profit motive, recommendation engine, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, trickle-down economics, urban planning, women in the workforce, young professional

Beck: As a member of the Manpower executive team, I began attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum beginning in 2005. The WEF takes place each January in an idyllic Alpine ski village in Davos, Switzerland. It's a remarkable forum that brings together the world's top business leaders, economists, government and educational leaders. My role at Davos each year was to represent the impact of current labor trends on economies across the globe. Through my work at the World Economic Forum, I was exposed to many prominent leaders who subsequently would offer me opportunities to engage in board work. In 2007, I was named to the advisory board of the World Economic Forum's Women Leaders Programme, which is dedicated to establishing strategies that address women's issues on a global basis.1 Through Davos, I had the opportunity to spend time with some of the leaders of The Women's Leadership Board2 at Harvard University's John F.

In 2007, I was named to the advisory board of the World Economic Forum's Women Leaders Programme, which is dedicated to establishing strategies that address women's issues on a global basis.1 Through Davos, I had the opportunity to spend time with some of the leaders of The Women's Leadership Board2 at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and was invited to join the WLB as a member. Also, at the World Economic Forum, I engaged in a panel discussion with Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, just at the time she was launching the Cherie Blair Foundation,3 and she invited me to join her advisory council. So, really, Davos was the launching pad for a lot of the philanthropic and board work that I embraced, starting around the 2007 and 2008 timeframe, all linked toward the common goal of improving the lives of women and girls across the globe.

Her tenure included leadership postions in technical sales and applications engineering, business development, customer service, operations, technical support, and program management. In between her assignments at Sprint and Manpower, Ms. Beck spent a year running her own business consultancy, Beck and Associates, advising companies on leadership topics. In 2007, she was named to the World Economic Forum's Women Leaders Board, an organization dedicated to establishing strategies that address women's issues on a global basis. That same year, she was invited to become a member of The Women's Leadership Board at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was also a founding member of Catalyst Europe's Board of Advisors and was an advisory board member of the Cherie Blair Foundation.


pages: 332 words: 109,213

The Scientist as Rebel by Freeman Dyson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asilomar, Boeing 747, British Empire, Claude Shannon: information theory, dark matter, double helix, Edmond Halley, Ernest Rutherford, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gregor Mendel, Henri Poincaré, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, kremlinology, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Norbert Wiener, Paul Erdős, Plato's cave, precautionary principle, quantum entanglement, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, traveling salesman, undersea cable

In April 2000, Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, a large and successful computer company, published an article in Wired magazine with the title “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” and the subtitle “Our most powerful 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species.” It was a big surprise to see one of the leaders of high-tech industry arguing passionately for a slowing down of technology that might become dangerous. Bill Joy became a spokesman for the precautionary view. Nine months later, in January 2001, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum was held in Davos, Switzerland. Most of the people at the forum are captains of industry, presidents of foundations, or government officials. But in 2001 they decided to invite some scientists and writers and artists to add some intellectual sparkle to the meeting. Bill and I were both invited and asked to debate the question: Is our technology out of control?

The bad news is that a tunnel large enough to walk through would require more than the total energy output of the sun to hold it open. Neither the teleporter nor the time machine is likely to contribute much to the welfare of our descendants. Greene describes these fantasies with a proper mixture of scientific accuracy and irony. In January 2001, I was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Brian Greene was also invited, and we were asked to hold a public debate on the question “When will we know it all?” In other words, when will the last big problems of science be solved? The audience consisted mainly of industrial and political tycoons. Our debate was intended to entertain the tycoons, not to give them a serious scientific education.

Postscript, 2006 After this review was published, Brian Greene wrote me a friendly letter, thanking me for the review but saying that my recollection of his remarks in the Davos debate was wrong. Since I have no wish to perpetuate errors, I deleted from this version of the review the sentences to which he objected. As a result, what is left of his remarks does not put his case forcefully. To set the record straight, here is an extract from his letter: “What I did say in Davos is that the search for the elementary ingredients making up the universe and the deepest laws governing their interactions may be a search that one day draws to a close.


pages: 458 words: 132,912

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Consider the annual, invitation-only assembly of some three thousand of the world’s elite at the World Economic Forum, held for the last fifty years each January at Davos in the eastern Swiss Alps. Most of the Davos community’s recent efforts have aimed, at least rhetorically, to systematize global finance and trade. Davos seminars loudly fixate on climate change. With like-minded certainty, attendees deplore global poverty, strategize how to stop epidemics, and worry about wealth inequality. But so far, the so-called Davos Man—a term coined by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington—is a similarly wealthy, sophisticated, highly educated Western or westernized cosmopolitan.

He is heavily invested in global capital profit making in an increasingly homogenized seven-billion-person market. And by needs, his mindset, ethics, and loyalties often transcend those of his own country. Davos Men—and Women—certainly seem to have a shared vision of how their own ideas, rather than those of the less gifted, should permeate the governments of the world. As such, the crowds of Davos are often insensitive to the effects of their policies and methods of global wealth creation on the middle classes and poor of their own countries. Instead, they feel nationalist efforts to retain regional and local traditions often impede superior transnational government organized by elites such as themselves and reflect a lack of education or awareness among the working classes of the world beyond their borders.

Instead, they feel nationalist efforts to retain regional and local traditions often impede superior transnational government organized by elites such as themselves and reflect a lack of education or awareness among the working classes of the world beyond their borders. Globalists’ chief constituencies are consumers who have the wherewithal to buy their products and services, or are not affected by their policies, or seek to enlist their money and influence. The sight of hundreds of private, carbon-spewing private jets flying into Davos to discuss curtailing excessive carbon emissions offers insight into the mindset of the gold-plated globalist class. Res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself. Of such a global elite, Huntington once wrote, They constitute a world within a world, linked to each other by myriad global networks but insulated from the more hidebound members of their own societies.… They are more likely to spend their time chatting with their peers around the world—via phone or e-mail—than talking with their neighbors in the projects around the corner.


pages: 346 words: 92,984

The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health by David B. Agus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, autism spectrum disorder, butterfly effect, clean water, cognitive dissonance, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, fake news, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Marc Benioff, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, microcredit, mouse model, Murray Gell-Mann, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, nocebo, parabiotic, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, publish or perish, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Salesforce, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Thomas Malthus, wikimedia commons

Pancras, showing Jenner’s cowpox vaccine being administered to frightened young women, and cow parts emerging from the subjects’ bodies. The cartoon was inspired by the controversy at the time over administering materials from animals to humans. The Nocebo Effect and the Limits of Nutritional Studies In 2015, while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I found myself in an uncomfortable position while on a panel about nutrition called “Let Food Be Thy Medicine.” I was once again reminded of the limits and pitfalls of our own belief systems. The panel was intended to explore how our daily diet and dietary habits can become a cornerstone of health.

., “No Effects of Gluten in Patients with Self-Reported Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity After Dietary Reduction of Fermentable, Poorly Absorbed, Short-Chain Carbohydrates,” Gastroenterology 145, no. 2 (August 2013): 320–28.e1-3, doi:10.1053/j.gastro.2013.04.051, Epub May 4, 2013. 8. Ross Pomeroy, “Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity May Not Exist,” RealClearScience.com, May 15, 2014. 9. “Davos 2015—Let Food Be Thy Medicine,” YouTube video, 46:10, published on January 24, 2015, by the World Economic Forum (http://www.weforum.org), https://youtu.be/f26wfQBf1s. 10. D. Ornish et al., “Intensive Lifestyle Changes May Affect the Progression of Prostate Cancer,” Journal of Urology, 174, no. 3 (September 2005): 1065–69; discussion 1069–70. 11. A. R.

But here’s the thing: this conversation gets corrupted by the same black-and-white thinking that plagues many other areas of health. There are lots of ways to reach a goal, and those ways should be distinct to each individual. The Hazards of Broad, Sweeping Statements Given my views on this subject, you can imagine my reaction on that World Economic Forum panel when my colleague Dean Ornish, a physician and researcher based in San Francisco who is focused on preventive medicine mostly through diet, said bluntly: “Drugs and surgery don’t work nearly as well as we once thought.”9 He was speaking within the context of treating heart patients, but then went on to say more specifically that diabetes and heart disease drugs don’t work in certain situations, and he referred to one of his own studies that concluded “intensive lifestyle interventions” can positively affect the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.


pages: 475 words: 149,310

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire by Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, classic study, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, David Graeber, Defenestration of Prague, deskilling, disinformation, emotional labour, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, global village, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, land tenure, late capitalism, liberation theology, means of production, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Paul Samuelson, Pier Paolo Pasolini, post-Fordism, post-work, private military company, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Richard Stallman, Slavoj Žižek, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Chicago School, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, transaction costs, union organizing, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus

The global political body is in this way also an economic body defined by the global divisions of labor and power. A TRIP TO DAVOS Davos, Switzerland, is the place where each year, except when protests make it impractical, the financial, industrial, and political oligarchies of the world go for a few days in winter to hold the World Economic Forum and plan the destiny of capitalist globalization. Many of the proponents and detractors of the present world order conceive of globalization as if it were determined by an unregulated capitalism—with free markets and free trade—which often goes by the name of “neoliberalism.” A brief trip to snow-covered Davos, however, can help dispel this notion of an unregulated capitalism because there we can see clearly the need for leaders of major corporations to negotiate and cooperate with the political leaders of the dominant nation-states and the bureaucrats of the supranational economic institutions.

Throughout the twentieth century, scholars have noted how the institutional structures of corporations and state offices develop to resemble each other ever more closely and how business firms become ever more solidly inserted into public institutions.83 It should be no surprise that the same few individuals so often pass effortlessly from the highest government offices to corporate boardrooms and back in the course of their careers. The business, bureaucratic, and political elites are certainly no strangers when they gather at the World Economic Forum. They already know each other quite well. Globalization therefore does not mean an end or even a lessening of political and legal controls over corporations and economic markets but indicates rather shifts in the kinds of controls. The constant interplay between global market forces and legal or political institutions can be grouped into three general categories or levels: private agreements and private forms of authority in the global market that are created and managed by corporations themselves; regulatory mechanisms established through trade agreements between nation-states that directly control specific practices of international trade and production; and general norms that operate at the international or global level and are supported by international or supranational institutions.

A brief trip to snow-covered Davos, however, can help dispel this notion of an unregulated capitalism because there we can see clearly the need for leaders of major corporations to negotiate and cooperate with the political leaders of the dominant nation-states and the bureaucrats of the supranational economic institutions. And there too we can see that the national and global levels of political and economic control do not, in fact, conflict with each other but actually work together hand in glove. At Davos, in short, we can see the institutional relationships that support and regulate the global political and economic system. This is a nerve center of the global body politic. The most important lesson to learn from Davos is simply that such a meeting is necessary: the economic, political, and bureaucratic elites of the world need to work together in constant relation. In more general terms, it demonstrates the old lesson that no economic market can exist without political order and regulation.


pages: 154 words: 47,880

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, Carl Icahn, clean water, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, financial deregulation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job automation, junk bonds, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, peak TV, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, stock buybacks, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, WeWork, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Tens of thousands of executives listen attentively to consultants who explain its importance. The world’s top CEOs, gathering annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, solemnly proclaim their commitment to it. Former president Bill Clinton had a global initiative based on it. Companies routinely produce glossy reports touting their dedication to it. At least eight hundred mutual funds worldwide are devoted to it. The United Nations Global Compact, launched at Davos in 1999, enumerates goals for it. Great Britain has a minister for it. Most of this is in earnest, much is sincere, and some of it has had a positive impact.

The Charles Koch Foundation has funded 350 programs at more than 250 colleges and universities across America. You can bet that funding doesn’t underwrite research on inequality and environmental justice. The oligarchy is not above bribing journalists and their news outlets, either. It wines and dines celebrity journalists in Aspen, Davos, and other upscale conclaves. It doles out high speaking fees to journalists for anodyne talks on the affairs of the day. It finances, in whole or in part, business journals, business columns, and internet-based curated news magazines. In return, the journalists and outlets report what the oligarchy wants them to report and avoid items the oligarchy prefers the public not know.


pages: 460 words: 131,579

Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse by Adrian Wooldridge

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Black Swan, blood diamond, borderless world, business climate, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Exxon Valdez, financial deregulation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, George Gilder, global supply chain, Golden arches theory, hobby farmer, industrial cluster, intangible asset, It's morning again in America, job satisfaction, job-hopping, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meritocracy, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Norman Macrae, open immigration, patent troll, Ponzi scheme, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, profit motive, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, the long tail, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, vertical integration, wealth creators, women in the workforce, young professional, Zipcar

A posse of management writers presented the 2008 credit crunch as a blessing in disguise: see, for example, The Upside of Turbulence (by Donald Sull) and The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times (by Scott B. Anthony). They are also purveyors of privilege. They not only promise to teach managers the secret language that is spoken by the powerful; they hold out invitations to secret conclaves such as meetings in Davos. Being sent for an MBA course means that a young manager is being singled out for the fast track to the top. Being elected a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum means that you might get to rub shoulders with Angelina Jolie. If management gurus are virtuosos at exploiting this combination of fear and greed, they also have something more admirable on offer: intellectual stimulation.

In Leading Minds (1995), he used the same technique to discuss people who had been geniuses at changing other people’s minds. These books were written for his fellow academics, but it so happened that business thinkers were increasingly interested in the same subjects. In 1996 the World Economic Forum invited Gardner to Davos, where he was surprised by how comfortable he felt talking to business people, and subsequently Harvard Business School Press began to pump him for ideas for books. Five Minds for the Future was one product of this pumping. The classification-obsessed Gardner argued that there are five different types of cognitive abilities—“minds,” in his phrase—that are essential for success (the five mind-types are disciplined, synthesizing, creative, respectful, and ethical).

., 129, 201, 310 Wiersema, Fred, 29, 31 Wikinomics, 240, 242, 326–333 Wikinomics, 67 Wikipedia, 48, 247 Wikipedia, 123–124 Williams, Anthony, 242, 243, 326–327 Williams, Raymond, 122 Williamson, Peter, 228, 230 Willow Creek, 87 Wilson, Sloan, 310 Winfrey, Oprah, 163 Wings Within, 380 Winning (Welch and Welch), 65–66, 306 Wipro, 206, 211, 380 Wired, 68, 121 The Witch Doctors (Wooldridge and Micklethwait), xii, 413 Wolfe, David, 262 Women, 304–305 birth control pill, 340–341 career versus having children, 351 in the workforce, 345–347 The Work of Nations (Reich), 126 Workplace, 339–341 brainworkers, 363–390 diversification of, 346–347 family and, 360–361 family friendly, 348–349 fun and, 352–353 moral contract and, 359–362 satellite offices, 348 social contract, 358–359 technology and, 348 underrepresentation of women in, 345–346 women and, 345–347 World Bank, 171, 181, 191, 199 WorldCom, 297 World Economic Forum, 132 The World Is Flat (Friedman), 117, 137 World Wild Life Fund, 36 Wozniak, Stephen, 194–195 The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 227 W. R. Grace, 66, 240 Wurtburgers, 326 Xerox, 248 X-factor, 162, 305 XING, 359 Yahoo!, 206, 279, 362 Yale School of Management, 61 Yang, Jerry, 358 Yew, Lee Kuan, 372 Yi, Wu, 183 Yingkui, Liu, 185 Yip, George, 59 Young, Michael, 129, 386, 387 YouTube, 184 Yozma, 180 Yum!


pages: 370 words: 107,983

Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All by Robert Elliott Smith

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, adjacent possible, affirmative action, AI winter, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, animal electricity, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, desegregation, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, Geoffrey Hinton, Gerolamo Cardano, gig economy, Gödel, Escher, Bach, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, John Harrison: Longitude, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Linda problem, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, new economy, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, p-value, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, Pierre-Simon Laplace, post-truth, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, stochastic process, Stuart Kauffman, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, twin studies, Vilfredo Pareto, Von Neumann architecture, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, Yochai Benkler

In fact, the process is already under way as increasing media reports and high-level policy conversations indicate, most notably at the 2016 World Economic Forum at Davos, where the focus was the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and whether intelligent automation might lay waste to a slew of human jobs. Or, in other words, for every given job someone holds today: ‘Can the tasks of this job be sufficiently specified, conditional on the availability of big data, to be performed by state-of-the-art, computer-controlled equipment?’ This was the central question of research on the subject of human job displacement by computers that has been broadly referenced in many articles and colloquia, including at Davos in 2016. The research, conducted at the Oxford Martin School in 2013, has led to a broad consensus that, yes, a great many of the jobs people do today will be taken by machines.3 However, these results are themselves based on algorithmic big-data processing, so it’s instructive to have a look at the realities of that processing.

The artificial intelligence (AI) in these computer programs is said to be advancing so rapidly that it will soon match or exceed human capabilities. In 2014, the term ‘superintelligence’1 emerged to describe AI, suggesting the apparently inevitable superiority of algorithms over human intelligence. And, at the 2016 World Economic Forum at Davos, the focus was on the predicted elimination of most human jobs by machines, which we’re told will soon be able to do those jobs just as well as, if not better than, people. Some of the greatest minds of our time, including Stephen Hawking, Henry Kissinger,2 Elon Musk3 and Bill Gates,4 have expressed concerns about the future dominance of intelligent machines over people.

See UCL Ursula Le Guin, here USENET groups, here Vaucanson, Jacques, here, here, here Verhulst, Pierre François, here Vlaams Belang, here Voltaire, here Von Neumann, John, here, here Von Neumann Architecture, here Von Neumann’s game theory, here Wallace, Alfred Russel, here, here, here Wallace/Darwin synchronicity, here Walras, Leon, here, here Washington, Booker T., here Watson, James, here, here Weizenbaum, Joseph, here Whale, James, here Whitman, Walt, here Williams, Robert, here Wollstonecraft, Mary, here, here, here, here, here World Economic Forum at Davos, here, here Yager, Chuck, here YouTube, here Zuckerberg, Mark, here, here, here, here, here BLOOMSBURY BUSINESS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY BUSINESS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © Robert Elliott Smith, 2019 Cover design by Alice Marwick Robert Elliott Smith has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.


pages: 497 words: 144,283

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

Furthermore, Russia’s threats to cut off gas supplies have inspired Europe to seek additional energy inflows from the United States and North Africa. Ukraine certainly lost a major battle, but Europe is winning the supply chain tug-of-war—one that began a quarter century ago. OIL IS THICKER THAN BLOOD Pilgrims to the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum are familiar with a long stretch of smooth highway and Alpine scenery stretching eastward from Zurich toward the hamlet of Davos. All gas stations along this route have been under the proprietorship of Esso (Mobil) since 1949. Yet within just one year from 2012 to 2013, all 160 Esso stations across Switzerland changed their name to SOCAR—State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic.

Maps are mere representations, but show people one they don’t like, and you’ll incur their wrath. Verbal warnings that the country was being gobbled up by Chinese mining companies merely pique interest, but a map showing their sovereignty being erased before their eyes is wicked sorcery. I was persona non grata. Some months later, at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, I had breakfast with Mongolia’s president. I only needed to be introduced as “Mr. Mine-Golia” for a seat at the table to be cleared. After we established that I was simply observing—not advocating—China’s takeover of his ancient and glorious homeland, the air warmed just a bit.

Princeton University Press, 2014. World Bank. “Special Economic Zones: Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions.” World Bank, 2011. World Bank Group. Global Economic Prospects: Having Fiscal Space and Using It. World Bank, 2015. World Economic Forum, Bain & Company, and World Bank. Enabling Trade: Valuing Growth Opportunities. World Economic Forum, 2013. World Input-Output Database. http://www.​wiod.​org/​new_site/​home.​htm. Writson, Walter B. The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World. Scribner, 1992. Zakaria, Fareed. The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.


pages: 356 words: 106,161

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

., A Treatise of Human Nature, Part 3 Section 3 1739 8 Rosling, H., Factfulness: Why Things Are Better Than You Think, (Sceptre, 2018), pg. 51 9 “Why are we working on Our World In Data?”, Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/motivation 10 Velasco, A., “Local Optimism and National Pessimism, or Why We’re All Above Average”, World Economic Forum, 2 May 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/05/hope-locally-hate-globally 11 “Public perceptions of crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2016”, Office of National Statistics, 2017, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/publicperceptionsofcrimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2016 12 “America’s Gun Culture in Charts”, BBC News, 5 Aug. 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41488081 13 The bestselling daily newspaper, The Times, had a circulation of less than a third compared to the top selling tabloid, the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Sun.

That is why it is producing such unfair outcomes.14 Given the perennial vilification of the state and its withering down via austerity, we are instead encouraged to find ways in which markets themselves can be used to solve the ills caused by the market mechanism itself, purely a milder version of the disease that makes the agony just a bit more tolerable. There might also be a psychological element in this, that these same elites can convince themselves that they did do something positive however inconsequential. But it never goes far enough. As Dutch historian Reuter Bergmann famously put it at the 2019 Davos Summit (the intellectual epicenter of this kind of thinking): “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water” given the pathological rejection by these elites to consider solutions like raising top marginal tax rates or clamping down on tax avoidance that would compromise their wealth.

With this in mind, the recent backlash against globalization from both sides of the political spectrum is not surprising in the least, especially when it is contrasted with the broad embracement of laissez-faire policies by traditional conservatives as well as the Third Way left during the 1980s and 1990s. When political scientist Samuel Huntington described the gilded beast known as “Davos Man” for the first time in a 2004 article,24 he perfectly captured the complete alienation of this “gold-collared” elite whose personal interests had become completely misaligned with that of wider society. That despite their astronomical wealth they still engage in practices such as widespread tax avoidance, as the Panama and Paradise Papers leaks have recently revealed, goes to show that these people inhabit a completely different plane of existence from the rest of us.


pages: 281 words: 69,107

Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order by Bruno Maçães

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Admiral Zheng, autonomous vehicles, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, cloud computing, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, Donald Trump, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global supply chain, global value chain, high-speed rail, industrial cluster, industrial robot, Internet of things, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, one-China policy, Pearl River Delta, public intellectual, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, trade liberalization, trade route, zero-sum game

INDEX Abbasi, Zafar Mahmood, 126 Abe, Shinzo, 118, 137 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 68 Aden Gulf, 72 Adil, Umer, 60 Advancing the Development of the One Belt, One Road Leading Group, 39 aerospace, 88, 103 Afghanistan, 53, 107, 127, 128, 129, 135, 172 Africa, 3, 8, 25, 44, 124, 163 Djibouti, 4, 12, 46, 63, 67–8, 101, 117 Ethiopia, 46, 68, 154, 170, 186 manufacturing, 68, 77 Maritime Silk Road, 23, 26, 45, 62 oil, 64 Partnership for Quality Infrastructure, 138 piracy, 72 telecommunications, 101, 170–71 aging population, 75 Agricultural Bank of China, 48 agriculture, 11, 61, 76, 99–100, 103 Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 138 aircraft, 81, 91, 103 Akto, Xinjiang, 60 Aktogay, East Kazakhstan, 103 Alibaba, 44 Allison, Graham, 7–8 Alps, 189 aluminum, 17, 20, 88 Andalusia, Spain, 189 Andijan, Uzbekistan, 54 anti-dumping, 92, 113 Antwerp, Flanders, 65 Apollo program, 9 aquaculture, 71 Arabian Sea, 72, 106 Arctic, 4, 62, 66, 188 artificial intelligence (AI), 44, 75, 88 Arunachal Pradesh, India, 111 Asian Development Bank, 45, 137 Asian Financial Forum, 49 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, 48 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 122 Astana International Exchange, 56 Astana, Kazakhstan, 25–6, 39, 56, 58 asteroids, 187 Athens, 8 Atlantic Ocean, 3, 115, 119, 138, 139 Atushi, Xinjiang, 60 Australia, 5, 12, 25, 119, 121, 122, 132–3, 135 automated vehicles, 88, 90, 186, 187, 190 automobile industry, 74, 81, 86, 90–91, 97, 104 Autor, David, 177 aviation, 81, 91, 103 Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 60 Azerbaijan, 186 Badakhshan, Afghanistan, 128 Baidu, 188 Baldwin, Richard, 74, 80 Balkans, 8, 12, 140 Balochistan, Pakistan, 60, 105 Gwadar port, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 105–7, 117 separatism and terrorism, 106, 127, 128 Baltic Sea, 51 Bangkok, Thailand, 65, 136–7 Bangladesh, 48, 53, 64, 109, 134, 136, 138, 150, 189 Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC), 52, 62 Bank of China, 48 banking, 46–51 bargaining theory, 152–3 Bay of Bengal, 22, 64, 72, 119 Beijing, China, 20, 28, 48, 126, 165 Beijing University, 183, 188 Belgium, 56, 65 Belgrade, Serbia, 143 Belt, see Silk Road Economic Belt Belt and Road Advancing the Development of the One Belt, One Road Leading Group, 39 backlash against, 12, 108, 121–4, 130–46, 155 bridges, 40, 54, 156, 173, 186 Buddhism, 112 cities, 11, 43, 44, 48, 149–52, 187–8 ‘community of shared destiny’, 26–9, 33, 36, 43, 45, 170 connectivity (wu tong), 42, 43, 52–3, 127, 158, 167 currency integration, 26 data, 44 debt, 12, 46, 47, 108, 109, 124, 126, 130, 132, 153–62 digital infrastructure, 43–4, 59, 86 e-commerce, 44, 59 economic corridors, 2, 11, 51–4, 55, 62 economic policy coordination, 28 energy, 11, 17, 19, 20–23, 40, 46, 48, 49, 52, 61, 64, 86, 92, 188 financing, 11, 36, 46–51, 54, 108–9, 124, 126, 130, 132, 138, 141, 153–64 Forum for International Cooperation (2017), 12, 108, 143, 152 impatience, 152–3 inauguration (2013), 11, 17, 23 industrial capacity cooperation, 85–8 industrial parks, 10, 43, 55, 61, 67, 99, 102 infrastructure, see infrastructure internal discontent, 163 international court, 28, 190 loans, 11, 36, 46–7, 54, 108–9, 124, 126, 130, 132, 138, 141, 153–62, 163 maps, 2–6, 24, 41, 64, 69 Maritime Silk Road, 24, 26, 28, 39, 41 market integration, 41 military bases, 12, 67, 71, 72, 101, 117, 126–7 overcapacity, 19 ports, see ports railways, 9–10, 11, 12, 18, 43, 46, 52, 53–4, 68, 86, 122, 130 roads, 9, 19, 40, 43, 52, 54 security, 127–9 Silk Road, 2, 9–10, 23–6, 45, 82, 138 Silk Road Economic Belt, 24, 25–6, 28, 39, 51–62, 83 success, definition of, 164, 174 telecommunications, 43–4, 52, 86, 101, 170–71 timeline, 10 TIR Convention, 55 transnational industrial policy, 81, 84 transport infrastructure, 9–10, 11, 18, 19, 25, 26, 40, 48, 49, 53–4, 83 urban development, 11, 43, 44, 48, 149–52 Vision and Actions document (2015), 40, 41, 45, 49, 50, 52, 62, 67, 78 Vision for Maritime Cooperation (2017), 62 Bering Strait, 66 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 110 Bhat, Vinayak, 107 Bhutan, 107–8 big data, 44 Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 127 Blackwater, 128 blue economic passage, 62 Boao Forum for Asia (2015), 27, 32 Brahmaputra river, 136 Brazil, 174 Brewster, David, 63 BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), 19, 174 bridges, 40, 54, 156, 173, 186 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 188 Budapest, Hungary, 143 Buddhism, 111–12 Bush, George Walker, 169 California, United States, 64 Cambodia, 52, 54, 70, 129, 132, 155 Cameroon, 68, 187 Canada, 136 car industry, see automobile industry Caribbean, 25 Carr, Robert ‘Bob’, 122 Cartagena, Spain, 92 Caspian Sea, 186 Caucasus, 20, 129 CDMA (code-division multiple access), 89 cement, 17, 49–50, 83 Center for Strategic and International Studies, 19, 123 center of gravity, 115 Central African Republic, 186 Central Asia, 9, 20, 25, 51, 52, 82–3, 188 energy, 22, 106 Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), 57–9 India, trade with, 107 industrial capacity cooperation, 104 Islamism, 127 Russia, relations with, 57–9, 129, 133 steel industry, 82–3 terrorism, 127 textile industry, 101 transport infrastructure, 9, 54 Central Huijin Investment, 49, 50 Central Military Commission, 166 century of humiliation (1839–1949), 165, 186 Chabahar, Sistan-Baluchistan, 106–7 Chalay Thay Saath, 60 Chao Phraya River, 65 ChemChina, 48 Chengdu Economic Daily, 129 China Abbasi’s visit (2018), 126 Academy of Information and Communications Technology, 44 aging population, 75 Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, 50 Bishkek Embassy bombing (2016), 127 Boao Forum for Asia (2015), 27, 32 Buddhism, 111–12 century of humiliation (1839–1949), 165, 186 Doklam plateau dispute, 107–8, 113 energy, see energy EU-China summit (2015), 138 five-year plan (2016–20), 41 Food and Drug Administration, 114 Foreign Policy Center of the Central Party School, 7 Gants Mod crossing closure (2016), 36 General Navigation Office, 69 ‘Going Out’ strategy, 86 Guangxi Nonferrous Metals Group bankruptcy (2016), 16 Guiding Opinion on Promoting International Industrial Capacity (2015), 86 Guiding Opinion on Standardizing the Direction of Overseas Investment (2017), 86 incremental approach, 7 Indian Dilemma, 21 Institute of International Studies, 92 International Trust and Investment Corporation, 132 Investment Corporation, 48 keeping a low profile (tao guang yang hui), 15, 18, 32 labour shortages, 75 Macron’s visit (2018), 146–7 Made in China 2025 strategy, 85, 87, 90–92, 93 Malacca Dilemma, 21–2, 64, 131 Merchants, 68–9 middle-income trap, 75–7, 85 migrant workers, 75 military, 12, 13, 59, 67, 71, 72, 101, 117, 126–7 minimum wage, 75 Ministry of Commerce, 21, 40, 93 Ministry of Communications, 69 Ministry of Finance, 49 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 40 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 19 Ministry of Transportation, 14 Modi–Xi summit (2018), 135 National Bureau of Statistics, 75 National Congress, 28, 29, 44, 165, 181 National Cybersecurity Work Conference (2018), 84 National Development and Reform Commission, 40, 98 National Health Commission, 114 Opium War, First (1839–1842), 165 overcapacity, 16, 19–20, 88 Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, 19 Overseas Investment Industrial Guiding Policy, 86 People’s Navigation Company, 69 Ports-Park-City model, 67 presidential term limits repeal (2018), 164, 174 real estate market, 16, 75 reform and opening up, 13–15, 73 renminbi, 22–3, 159 responsible stakeholder, 169 shipbuilding, 14, 17 soft power, 111, 170 Soviet Union, relations with, 13, 14, 15 State Administration of Foreign Exchange, 48 State Council, 19, 39, 40, 49, 66, 86 state-owned companies, 42, 153, 160–61, 189 steel industry, 16–17, 18, 20, 82–4, 86, 88 striving for achievement, 18 Swaraj’s visit (2018), 135 Taiwan, relations with, 14, 26, 142 technology transfers, 85–92, 97, 177–8 Thucydides’ trap, 8 Tianxia, 26–7, 29, 31–5, 78, 79, 192–3 TIR Convention, 55 Trump’s visit (2017), 124 ‘two heads abroad’ (liangtou zai haiwai), 17 United States, relations with, see Sino–US relations Working Conference on Neighborhood Policy (2013), 17–18 China Construction Bank, 48 China Development Bank, 16, 48, 49, 97, 98, 99, 103, 160 China Export & Credit Insurance Corp, 104 China Export-Import Bank, 46, 47, 48, 49, 103, 154 China Fantasy, The (Mann), 177 China Global Television Network, 188 China Nonferrous Metals Industry Group, 103 China Three Gorges Corp, 48 China-Indian Ocean-Africa-Mediterranean Sea Blue Economic Passage, 62 China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, 51, 52, 54, 62 China-Oceania-South Pacific, 62 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), 52, 59, 60, 62, 105–7, 108 Chinese Communist Party Advancing the Development of the One Belt, One Road Leading Group, 39 and Australia, 133 Constitution, 41, 164 founding of (1921), 165 National Congress, 18th (2012), 28 National Congress, 19th (2017), 29, 44, 165, 181 and New Zealand, 132 Politburo, 39, 40, 165 reform and opening up, 13–15 and steel industry, 16 Third Plenum of the 18th Party Central Committee (2013), 39 Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, 106 Christianity, 128 Churchill, Winston, 183 cities, 11, 43, 44, 48, 149–52, 187–8 climate change, 4, 66, 85, 171 Clinton, William ‘Bill’, 177 cloud computing, 44 CloudWalk Technology, 44 Club Med, 189 CNN, 188 cobalt, 81, 104 Cold War, 2, 14, 21–2, 36, 40, 125, 171 Colombo, Sri Lanka, 156, 162 colonialism, 120, 162 ‘community of shared destiny’, 26–9, 33, 36, 43, 45, 135, 170 Confucianism, 31, 34 Congo, Democratic Republic of, 81, 104 connectivity, 42, 43, 52–3, 109, 122, 127, 146, 158, 167 Connectivity Platform, 139 construction, 18, 75, 86, 98 convergence, 4, 14, 166, 167, 169, 174, 177 copper, 103, 104 corridors, see economic corridors corruption, 133, 155–6, 158, 187 cosmopolitan neighborhoods, 4 Country Garden, 151 Cowboys and Indians, 188 cultural exchanges, 42, 43, 56–7 currency, 22–3, 26, 159–60 customs cooperation, 55, 57, 59, 63 Cyprus, 140 Dalai Lama, 36, 112 Dalian, Liaoning, 55, 93 Daming Palace, Xi’an, 147 Dangal, 111 data, 44 Davidson, Phillip, 125–6 Davos, Switzerland, 168 Dawn of Eurasia, The (Maçães), 185, 191 Dawood, Abdul Razak, 158 debt, 12, 16, 46, 47, 108, 109, 124, 126, 130, 132, 153–62 democracy, 125, 133, 166, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 181–3 Democratic Republic of Congo, 81, 104 Deng Xiaoping, 13–15, 18, 31, 32, 69, 73, 183 Diaoyu Islands, 187 digital infrastructure, 43–4 division of labor, 53, 78, 79, 80 Djibouti, 4, 12, 46, 63, 67–8, 101, 117, 186 Doklam plateau, 107–8, 113 Doraleh, Djibouti, 63, 67–8 DP World, 68 dry ports, 57 Dubai, UAE, 62, 68, 160 Dudher Zinc project, 127 Duterte, Rodrigo, 156 DVD (digital versatile disc), 89 e-commerce, 44, 59 East China Sea, 118 economic corridors, 2, 11, 51–4, 55 economic nationalism, 102 economic policy coordination, 28 Economist, The, 190 Egypt, 101 electric cars, 81, 104 electricity, 40, 46, 49, 52, 61, 98, 156, 188 end of history, 36 energy, 4, 11, 17, 19, 20–23, 48, 49, 82, 86, 92, 188 electricity, 40, 46, 49, 52, 61, 98, 156, 188 gas, 21, 22, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 hydropower, 48 oil, 21, 22, 23, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 renewable, 21, 187, 188 English language, 111, 188 Enhanced Mobile Broadband coding scheme, 89 Enlightenment, 193 environmental sustainability, 75 Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, 55 Ethiopia, 46, 68, 154, 170, 186 Eurasia, 1–5, 11, 20, 26, 45, 52, 57, 63, 120, 121, 138 Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), 57–9 Eurasian Resources Group, 103 European Commission, 143, 145 European empires, 120–21 European Union (EU), 5, 29, 57, 58, 138–47, 159, 176, 179 and Belt and Road, 10, 12, 30, 138–47 Connecting Europe and Asia strategy (2018), 145–6 and Djibouti, 67 economic policy coordination, 28 5G mobile networks, 43 immigration, 187 steel industry, 17 tariffs, 83 technology transfers, 87–8, 178 transnational framework, 81 Turkey, relations with, 4 Export-Import Bank of China, 46, 47, 48, 49, 103, 154 exports, 15, 17, 19, 79 Facebook, 188 facial recognition, 44, 190 fashion industry, 101 fate, 34 Fergana Valley, 54 fertilizers, 19 fibre-optic connectivity, 101 fifth generation (5G) mobile networks, 43–4, 89 finance, 11, 36, 46–51, 54, 126, 138, 141, 153–64 Financial Times, 10, 63, 143, 154, 157, 158, 159 five-year plan (2016–20), 41 Folding Beijing (Hao), 150 food imports, 76 foreign direct investment, 46, 144–6 foreign exchange, 16, 94, 153 Forest City, Johor, 149–51, 155 France, 11, 96, 129, 141, 144, 146–7, 189 free and open order, 125 free-trade zones, 11, 42, 55–6, 71 freedoms of speech, 172, 189 French Foreign Legion, 129 French, Howard, 13 Frontier Services Group, 128–9 Fu Chen, 129 Fu Ying, 140 Fukuyama, Francis, 184–5 Gabon, 96 Gabriel, Sigmar, 142 Gang of Four, 14 Gants Mod crossing closure (2016), 36 gas, 21, 22, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 General Navigation Office, 69 generic drugs, 114 Genghis Khan, 2, 25 Georgia, 58 Germany, 11, 65, 80, 87–8, 90, 100, 141–2, 144, 189 ghost ships, 186 Gibraltar, 92 Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, 54, 60, 108 Gland Pharma, 113 glass, 17, 83 Global Energy Interconnection, 188 global financial crisis (2008), 16–17, 85, 161, 178 Global Infrastructure Center, 190 Global Times, 67, 109, 131 global value chain revolution, 74 global warming, 4, 66, 85 globalization, 19, 28, 66, 78, 102, 124, 144, 168, 174, 192 ‘Going Out’ strategy, 86 good governance, 183–4 Google, 152, 188 Goubet, Djibouti, 67 government procurement, 12, 59 Grand Palace, Bangkok, 65 Grand Trunk Road, 53 Greece, 30, 31, 65, 140, 141, 142 GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), 89 Guangdong, China, 28, 75, 151 Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group, 67 Guangxi Nonferrous Metals Group, 16 Guiding Opinion on Promoting International Industrial Capacity (2015), 86 Guiding Opinion on Standardizing the Direction of Overseas Investment (2017), 86 Guo Chu, 33 Gwadar, Balochistan, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 105–7, 117 Hainan, China, 71 Hambantota, Sri Lanka, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 117, 162 Hamburg, Germany, 65 Hamilton, Clive, 133 Han Empire (206 BC–220 AD), 25 Hao Jingfang, 150 ‘harmonious world’, 33, 36 Havelian, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 54 He Yafei, 19, 168 heavy industry, 75, 82 Hebei, China, 83 Heilongjiang, China, 55 Hesteel, 83 high-speed railways, 18, 53–4, 83, 89, 98, 122, 130, 137, 138, 143, 186–7 highways, see roads Hillman, Jonathan, 8 Hobbes, Thomas, 27 Holslag, Jonathan, 189 Hong Kong, 49, 103 Hongshi Holding Group, 49 Horgos, Xinjiang, 55, 55–6, 57 Horn of Africa, 3 Hu Huaibang, 49, 97 Hu Jintao, 21, 33, 70 Hu Xiaolian, 154 Huang Libin, 19 Huangyan Island, 187 Huawei, 89–90, 101, 171 Hub, Balochistan, 127 hukou (household registration), 76 human rights, 141–2, 170, 171, 189 Hun Sen, 155 Hungary, 30, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 Huntington, Samuel, 184 Hussain, Chaudhry Fawad, 157 hydropower, 48 Ibrahim Ismail, Sultan of Johor, 151 immigration, 187 impatience, 152–3 imports, 17, 19, 22, 79–84 India and the Indian Ocean (Panikkar), 118 India, 3, 5, 64, 105–25, 134–6, 174, 179 Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), 109 and Belt and Road, 11, 12, 52, 72, 105–15, 130, 133 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (2017), 12, 108 British Raj (1858–1947), 107 Buddhism, 111–12 cosmopolitan neighborhoods, 4 cultural mission to China (1952), 113 Doklam plateau dispute, 107–8, 113 economic autarchy, 110, 117 free and open order, 125 Grand Trunk Road, 53 imports, 113–14 and Indian Ocean, 3, 116–19 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125 Japan, relations with, 118 Kashmir dispute, 108–9, 117 Malabar naval exercises (2018), 135 and maritime hegemony, 72 migrant workers, 150 military bases, 3, 131 Modi–Xi summit (2018), 135 Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed railway, 138 nuclear tests (1998), 109 Pakistan, relations with, 105–7, 108–9, 117, 134 pharmaceuticals, 113, 114 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), 105–6 and Sabang Island, 131 Siliguri Corridor, 107–8 Southeast Asia, 113, 117–18 Swaraj’s visit to China (2018), 135 Tibet, relations with, 111–12, 117, 136 United States, relations with, 119, 121–2, 134, 135 Indian Dilemma, 21 Indian Ocean, 3, 8, 9, 26, 51, 62, 63, 66, 68, 71–2, 116–19 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125, 126 and Japan, 4 Kra Isthmus canal proposal, 65, 186 meticulous selection, 72 Myanmar oil and gas pipeline, 64, 72 oil, 21, 64 and Pakistan, 59, 61, 64 individualism, 27, 189 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125, 126 Indo-Pacific Business Forum, 122 Indo-Pacific Command, US, 126 Indochina, 51, 52, 54, 62 Indonesia, 2, 5, 18, 26, 39, 48, 83, 117, 131 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, 48, 49, 103 industrial capacity cooperation, 85–8, 98, 102–4 industrial internet, 44 industrial parks, 10, 43, 55, 61, 67, 99, 102 Industrial Revolution, 84 information technology, 43–4, 74, 81, 86, 90, 94, 111, 170–71, 190 infrastructure, 3, 23, 26, 30, 40–45, 48, 50, 55, 58, 63, 86, 88, 124, 139, 141, 162, 167, 186 Afghanistan, 135 communications, 81, 118 digital, 43–4 European Union, 10, 141, 145 India, 64, 118, 135 Japan, 4, 136–8 Maritime Silk Road, 66, 67 Mediterranean, 65 Pakistan, 54, 62, 99, 105 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Southeast Asia, 18–19, 70, 117, 130, 132 steel industry, 18 transportation, see transportation value chains, 96 Xinjiang, 20, 54 Inner Mongolia, China, 55 innovation, 76 Institute for International Finance, 153 intellectual property, 59, 88–9, 91, 97, 180, 190 international courts, 28, 190 international industrial capacity cooperation, 85–8, 98, 102–4 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 15, 156–7, 158–9, 172 Internet, 43–4, 86, 170–71 internet of things, 90, 94 Iran, 4, 22, 105–6 Iraq, 24 Irkeshtam, Xinjiang, 55 iron, 17 Islamabad, Pakistan, 60, 99, 101, 127, 157 Islamic State, 128 Islamism, 127–9 Istanbul, Turkey, 4, 24, 65 Italy, 48, 65, 140, 189 Izumi, Hiroto, 137 Jadhav, Kulbhushan, 105–6 Jakarta, Indonesia, 2, 5, 26, 39 Japan, 1, 5, 22, 123, 133, 136–8, 145, 165, 166, 169, 189 Buddhism, 111 Cold War, 21–2 India, relations with, 118 Indian Ocean, 4 infrastructure development, 4, 136–8 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Second World War (1937–45), 119, 165 Javaid, Nadeem, 46 Jiang Qing, 14 Jiang Shigong, 183–4 Jiang Zemin, 15 Jiangsu Delong, 83 Jin Qi, 98 Jinnah Town, Quetta, 128 Johor, Malaysia, 149–51 Joint Statement on Cooperation on EEU and Silk Road Projects (2015), 57–8 joint ventures, 97 Journey to the West, 186, 188 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 138 Kaeser, Joe 170 Karachi, Sindh, 59, 100, 105, 106, 127 Karakoram Highway, 54, 60, 64 Kashgar, Xinjiang, 54, 59, 60, 64, 101 Kashmir, 60, 108–9, 117 Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo, 104 Kaz Minerals 103 Kazakhstan, 8, 55–9, 129, 189 Astana International Exchange, 56 China–EEU free-trade agreement signing (2018), 58 and Eurasian Economic Union, 57 gateway to Europe, 56 Horgos International Cooperation Center, 55–6 industrial capacity cooperation, 103–4 railways, 54 Xi’s speech (2013), 23, 25–6, 39 Kazakhstan Aluminum, 103 keeping a low profile (tao guang yang hui), 15, 18, 32 Kenya, 101, 138, 171 Khan, Imran, 157–8 Khawar, Hasaan, 53 Khunjerab Pass, 101 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, 54, 60, 100 Kizilsu Kirghiz, Xinjiang, 60 knowledge, 74, 76, 87 Kolkata, West Bengal, 64 Kortunov, Andrey, 135 kowtow, 35 Kra Isthmus, Thailand, 65, 186 Kuala Linggi Port, Malacca, 63 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 130 Kuantan, Pahang, 63, 67 Kudaibergen, Dimash, 57 Kunming, Yunnan, 188 Kyaukpyu, Rakhine, 63, 64, 132, 154 Kyrgyzstan, 53, 54, 55, 103, 127 labor costs, 74, 83, 85, 99 labor shortages, 75 Lagarde, Christine, 158–9 Lahore, Punjab, 100, 157 Laos, 50, 52, 54, 129, 132 Latin America, 25, 187, 188 Leifeld Metal Spinning AG, 88 Lenin, Vladimir, 6, 78 Lenovo, 89–90 Li Hongzhang, 69 Li Keqiang, 44 Li Ruogu, 47 Liaoning, China, 55 liberal values, 123, 125, 133, 170 liberal world order, 141, 144, 167–86, 190, 192 Lighthizer, Robert, 91 lignite, 61 liquefied natural gas (LNG), 48, 66 Lisbon, Portugal, 2, 5 lithium-ion batteries, 81 Liu Chuanzhi, 89–90 Liu He, 92 loans, 11, 36, 46–7, 54, 108–9, 124, 126, 130, 132, 138, 141, 153–63, 190 London, England, 65, 160 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien), 1 Lou Jiwei, 76 Luo Jianbo, 7 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 31–4 machinery, 81, 90, 98, 156 Mackinder, Halford, 120 Macron, Emmanuel, 146–7 Made in China 2025 strategy, 85, 87, 90–92, 93 Mahan, Alfred, 120 Mahathir Mohamad, 130–31, 151, 155 Malabar naval exercises (2018), 135 Malacca, Malaysia, 3, 63 Malacca Strait, 21–2, 64, 65, 72, 117, 131 Malay Mail, 155 Malaysia, 3, 70, 117, 130–31, 154 debt, 154 Forest City, 149–51, 155 high-speed railways, 54, 130 Mahathir government (2018–), 130–31, 151, 155 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal (2015–), 155 ports, 63, 67 Maldives, 134, 155 Mali, 129 Malik, Ashok, 109 Malta, 140 Mandarin, 107, 149, 188 Manila, Philippines, 122 Mann, James, 177 manufacturing, 11, 19, 68, 77, 85, 99 outsourcing, 68, 99 value chains, 3, 43, 64, 73–4, 79–82, 84–5, 94–104, 141 Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia, 55 Mao Zedong, 13–14, 31, 183 maps, 2–6, 24, 41, 64, 69 Maritime Silk Road, 24, 26, 28, 39, 41, 53, 62–72, 117 market integration, 41 Mars, 187 Marshall Plan, 40 Marx, Karl, 6 Marxism, 78 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 177 Matarbari port, Bangladesh, 138 matchmaking services, 11 Mattis, James, 124 McMahon Line, 111 Mediterranean Sea, 4, 51, 62, 65, 119 Mei Xinyu, 21 Mekong Delta, 8 mergers and acquisitions, 42 Merkel, Angela, 88, 141, 144 meticulous selection, 72 Middle East, 4, 6, 22, 64, 120, 129, 163, 171 middle-income trap, 75–7, 85 migrant workers, 75 Milanovic, Branko, 173 military, 3, 12, 67, 71, 72, 101, 117, 126–7 Ming Empire (1368–1644), 163 Ming Hao, 30 minimum wage, 75 Ministry of Commerce, 21, 40, 93 Ministry of Communications, 69 Ministry of Finance, 49 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 40 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 19 Ministry of Transportation, 14 Minmetals International Trust Co, 16 mobile payments, 193 Modi, Narendra, 106, 135–6 Mohan, Raja, 3, 121 Mombasa, Kenya, 138 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 2, 25 Mongolia, 8, 36, 52, 55, 111 Moon, 187 Moraes, Frank, 112–13 Moscow, Russia, 4 Most Favored Nation status, 15 Mozambique, 138 multinationals, 74, 88–9 multipolar world system, 179 Mumbai, Maharashtra, 4, 105, 138 Myanmar, 52, 54, 63, 64, 72, 129, 132, 138, 154 Nacala, Nampula, 138 narcotics trade, 127 Nathan, Andrew, 159 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 9 National Bureau of Statistics, 75 National Congress 18th (2012), 28 19th (2017), 29 National Cybersecurity Work Conference (2018), 84 National Development and Reform Commission, 40, 98 National Health Commission, 114 National League for Democracy, Myanmar, 132 National Museum of China, Beijing, 165, 166 National Party of New Zealand, 132 National People’s Congress, 44 National Rescue Party of Cambodia, 155 Nazarbayev University, 25–6 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 113 Nepal, 134, 135, 150 Netherlands, 56, 65 New Zealand, 132–3 Nigeria, 68 Ning Jizhe, 137 Nordin, Astrid, 42 Northern Sea Route, 66 Northwest Passage, 66 NPK fertilizer, 99 nuclear power/weapons, 21, 83, 88, 109, 166, 187 oil, 21, 22, 23, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal (2015–), 155 One China policy, 142 Open Times, 183 Opium War, First (1839–1842), 165 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 79 Osh, Kyrgyzstan, 54 overcapacity, 16, 19–20, 88 Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, 19 Overseas Investment Industrial Guiding Policy, 86 Pacific Command, US, 125–6 Pacific Journal, 71 Pacific Ocean, 3, 5, 9, 26, 45, 62, 116, 117, 125–6, 139 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125, 126 Pakistan, 12, 20, 46, 48, 52, 59–62, 64, 98–102, 105, 126–9, 133–4, 155, 156–8 Abbasi’s Beijing visit (2018), 126 agriculture, 99–100 balance of payments crisis, 156–8 Economic Corridor, 52, 59, 60, 62, 105, 108, 156–8 electricity production, 61 fibre-optic connectivity, 101 gateway to the Indian Ocean, 59 Grand Trunk Road, 53 Gwadar port, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 105–7, 117 hydropower, 48 IMF loans, 156–7 India, relations with, 105–7, 108–9, 117, 134 investment, 48 Jadhav arrest (2016), 105–6 Karakoram Highway, 54, 60, 64 Kashmir dispute, 108–9 loans, 46, 54, 156–8 manufacturing, 99 safe city project, 101 Tehreek-e-Insaf, 157–8 television, 101 terrorism, 106, 127–8, 135 textiles, 100 Thar desert, 61 value chains, 98–102 Pakistan-East Africa Cable Express, 101 Pandjaitan, Luhut, 131 Panikkar, Kavalam Madhava, 118 Pantucci, Raffaello, 134 Partnership for Quality Infrastructure, 137–8 patents, 88–9, 190 Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, 103 Peak Pegasus, 93 Pearl River Delta, China, 152 Peking University, 183, 188 Penang, Malaysia, 63 People’s Daily, 57 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 32, 169 People’s Navigation Company, 69 Pericles, 8 Persian Gulf, 51, 64, 72 Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 100 petcoke, 103 Petrochina, 103 pharmaceuticals, 113, 114 Phaya Thai Station, Bangkok, 137 Philippines, 19, 70, 117, 122, 156 philosophy, 40, 183 Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 70 phosphate, 19 piracy, 72 Piraeus, Greece, 65 Pirelli, 48 Plato, 150 Poland, 58, 140 Polar Silk Road, 66 Politburo, 39, 40, 165 political correctness, 182 Polo, Marco, 2, 10 Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, 156 Pompeo, Michael, 122–3, 157 ports, 9, 10, 12, 19, 36, 40, 46–7, 57, 63–5, 67–9, 96 Chabahar, Iran, 106–7 Doraleh, Djibouti, 63, 67–8 Gwadar, Pakistan, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 117 Hambantota, Sri Lanka, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 117, 162 Kuala Linggi, Malaysia, 63 Kuantan, Malaysia, 63, 67 Kyaukpyu, Myanmar, 63, 64, 132, 154 Mediterranean, 65 Mombasa, Kenya, 138 Nacala, Mozambique, 138 Penang, Malaysia, 63 Ports-Park-City model, 67 Portugal, 2, 3, 5, 140, 163 power, see energy Prince, Erik, 128–9 property bubbles, 75 protectionism, 102, 114 public procurement, 12, 59 Punjab, Pakistan, 60, 99, 100, 157 Putin, Vladimir, 3, 57 Pyrenees, 189 Qing Empire (1636–1912), 107, 178 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Qualcomm, 89 Quetta, Balochistan, 128 Raikot, Gilgit-Baltistan, 54 railways, 9–10, 11, 12, 18, 43, 52, 53–4, 57, 68, 83, 86, 89, 98, 100, 135 Addis Ababa–Djibouti, 46, 68 Bangkok–Chiang Mai, 137 Belgrade–Budapest, 143 Djibouti–Yaoundé, 68, 186–7 Islamabad–Gwadar, 60 Kashgar–Andijan, 54 Kuala Lumpur–Singapore, 130 Lahore overhead, 157 Mumbai–Ahmedabad, 138 United States, 122 Yunnan–Southeast Asia, 54 Rawat, Bipin, 108 RB Eden, 92 real estate market, 16, 75 reciprocity, 178–80 Red Sea, 72 reform and opening up, 13–15, 73 Ren Zhengfei, 90 Renaissance, 7 renewable energy, 21, 187, 188 Renmin University, 106 renminbi, 22–3, 159 Rennie, David, 190 Republic (Plato), 150 Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), 105–6 responsible stakeholder, 169 Rio Tinto, 36 Road Towards Renewal exhibition (2012), 165 Road, see Maritime Silk Road roads, 9, 19, 40, 43, 52, 54, 55, 57, 67, 107–8 robotics, 75, 88, 90 Rogin, Josh, 122 Rolland, Nadège, 188, 190 Ross, Wilbur, 92 Rotterdam, South Holland, 65 Ruan Zongze, 92 rule of law, 28, 109, 111, 183–4 Russia, 5, 51, 52, 55, 133, 134, 139, 174, 175–6, 180, 181 and Central Asia, 57–9, 129, 133 energy, 22, 23 Eurasian Economic Union, 57–9 Eurasianism, 3–4 Joint Statement on Cooperation on EEU and Silk Road Projects (2015), 57–8 Pacific Fleet, 118 and renminbi internationalization, 23 Soviet era, see under Soviet Union steel industry, 82 Ukraine crisis (2013–), 176 Western values, rejection of, 175, 180, 181 Yamal LNG project, 48, 66 Sabang, Indonesia, 131 safe cities, 101, 171 salt, 67, 71 San Francisco, California, 151–2 Saravan, Sistan-Baluchistan, 105 Sargsyan, Tigran, 59 Sassanian Empire (224–651), 4 satellites, 187 second unbundling, 74 Second World War (1939–45), 165 self-driving vehicles, 88, 90, 186, 187, 190 Serbia, 83, 143 Set Aung, U, 132 Shandong University, 163 Shanghai, China, 2, 20, 92 Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 136 Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical, 113 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, 16 Shanghai Stock Exchange, 50, 56, 103 Sharif, Nawaz, 133–4 sharp power, 170 sheet glass, 17, 83 Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, 16 Shenzhen, Guangdong, 28, 151 shipbuilding, 14, 17, 81, 186 Sichuan, China, 149 Siemens, 170 silicon dioxide, 103 Siliguri Corridor, India, 107–8 Silk Road, 2, 9–10, 23–6, 45, 53, 82, 138 Silk Road Economic Belt, 24, 25–6, 28, 39, 51–62, 83 Silk Road Fund, 48, 56, 98 silk, 23–4 Sindh, Pakistan, 59, 60, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106, 127 Singapore, 54, 77, 92, 119, 130, 150, 151, 160 Sino–Myanmar oil and gas pipeline, 64, 72 Sino–US relations, 116, 119, 121–6, 136, 179–80 and Belt and Road, 5–6, 11, 12, 15, 72, 121–4, 130, 136, 168 and Cold War, 14 and foreign exchange reserves, 16 and Indo-Pacific, 116, 119, 121–3, 125, 126 and Kra Isthmus canal proposal, 65 and Malacca Dilemma, 21–2, 64 and maritime hegemony, 70, 72 and Most Favored Nation status, 15 and Pakistan, 157 and reciprocity, 179–80 and reform and opening up, 14–15 and renminbi internationalization, 23 and South China Sea, 70 and steel, 17 Strategic and Economic Dialogue, 39 and Taiwan, 14 and tariffs, 83, 90–94 and technology transfers, 90–92, 178 Thucydides’ trap, 8 and trade deficit, 90, 92 trade war, 92–4, 173 war, potential for, 5, 8, 13, 14 Yangtze River patrols (1854–1937), 165 and ZTE, 94 Sirisena, Maithripala, 155–6 Sistan-Baluchistan, Iran, 105, 106–7 SLJ900/32, 54 Small, Andrew, 59, 158 smart cities, 44, 151–2 Smederevo, Serbia, 83 soft power, 111, 170 solar power, 187, 188 Somalia, 72 Somersault Cloud, 186 sorghum, 92 South Africa, 101 South America, 25, 187, 188 South China Sea, 21, 62, 65, 69–71, 118, 142, 170, 179 South Korea, 1, 77, 96, 97, 128 South Sudan, 186 Southeast Asia, 6, 8, 12, 18, 100, 131–2, 189 Buddhism, 111 China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, 51, 52, 54, 62 Indo–Chinese relations, 113, 117–18 Kra Isthmus canal proposal, 65, 186 Maritime Silk Road, 26 phosphate market, 19 South China Sea dispute, 21, 69–71, 142, 170, 179 textile industry, 100 Soviet Union, 1, 13, 14, 15, 21–2, 57, 104 soybeans, 90, 93 space travel, 187 Spain, 92, 140, 189 Sparta, 8 Sri Lanka, 12, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 89, 117, 134, 155–6, 162 Hambantota port, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 117, 162 Sirisena’s grant announcement (2018), 156 standards, 89–90 State Administration of Foreign Exchange, 48 State Council, 19, 39, 40, 49, 66, 86 state-owned companies, 42, 153, 160–61, 189 steamships, 69 steel industry, 16–17, 18, 20, 67, 82–4, 86, 88 striving for achievement, 18 Stuenkel, Oliver, 167 subprime mortgage crisis (2007–10), 153 Suez Canal, 3, 66, 68, 72, 119 Suifenhe Port, Heilongjiang, 55 Sukkur, Sindh, 99, 101 Sulawesi, Indonesia, 83 Sumatra, Indonesia, 3 Sun Pharmaceuticals, 114 Sun Wenguang, 163 Surkov, Vladislav, 3–4 surveillance, 44, 101, 171, 187, 190 Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, 137 Swamy, Subramanian, 110 Swaraj, Sushma, 135 Switzerland, 160, 168 Syria, 24 Tadjoura gulf, Djibouti, 67 taikonauts, 187 Taiwan, 14, 142 Tajikistan, 48, 127 Tanjung Pelepas Johor, 150 Tanzania, 138 tao guang yang hui, 15, 18, 32 Taoism, 11, 51 tariffs, 17, 56, 58, 79, 82, 83, 179 Tawang Monastery, Arunachal Pradesh, 111 tax holidays, 61 TBM Slurry, 54 technology transfers, 85–92, 97, 118, 177–8 Tehreek-e-Insaf, 157–8 telecommunications, 43–4, 52, 86, 89–90, 98, 101, 170–71 television, 101 terrorism, 106, 127–9, 135, 171 Texas, United States, 92 textiles, 86, 100–101 Thailand, 18, 54, 65, 83, 89, 129, 132, 136–7, 186 Thakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 54 Thar desert, 61 Thein Sein, 132 Thilawa special economic zone, Myanmar, 138 throw-money diplomacy, 163 Thucydides’ trap, 8 Tianjin, China, 129 Tianxia, 26–7, 29, 31–5, 78, 79, 192–3 Tibet, 36, 111–12, 117, 136, 189 Tibetan Academy of Buddhism, 112 Tillerson, Rex, 11, 123, 125 timber, 96 Times of India, 109 Tinbergen, Jan, 20 TIR (Transports Internationaux Routiers) Convention, 55 titanium dioxide, 103 Tokyo, Japan, 137 Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel, 1 tourism, 10, 11, 61, 71 trade wars, 92–4, 113–14, 173 trains, 9–10, 11, 12, 18, 43, 46 Trans-Siberian railway, 10 Transatlantic trade, 3, 139 transnational industrial policy, 81, 84 Transpacific trade, 3, 139 transparency, 12, 28, 109, 143, 144, 146, 157, 173, 193 Transpolar Route, 66 transportation, 9–10, 19, 25–6, 48–9, 52–4, 63–4, 81–3, 99, 103, 104, 118, 143, 162, 186 maritime, 63 railways, see railways roads, 9, 19, 40, 43, 52, 54, 55, 57, 67, 107–8 tributary system, 34–5 Trieste, Italy, 65 Trump, Donald, 83, 91, 93, 122, 124, 167, 179 Tsinghua University, 76, 163 Tsingshan Group Holdings, 83 Tumshuq, Xinjiang, 60 Turkey, 4, 24, 65, 82 Turkmenistan, 186 Twitter, 188 ‘two heads abroad’ (liangtou zai haiwai), 17 Ukraine, 11, 82, 176 United Arab Emirates, 62, 68, 160 United Kingdom, 2, 3, 17, 43, 65, 107, 112, 160, 165, 189, 193 United Nations, 29, 55, 72, 142, 172 United States, 1–2, 5–7, 8, 11, 12, 121–6, 161, 166–9, 176, 185–6 Apollo program, 9 Bush administration (2001–9), 169 Camp Lemonnier Djibouti, 68 China, relations with, see Sino–US relations Clinton administration (1992–2001), 177 Cold War, 14 immigration, 187 India, relations with, 119, 121–2, 134, 135 industrial output per person, 193 and International Monetary Fund (IMF), 157 Marshall Plan, 40 midterm elections (2018), 12–13 National Defense Strategy (2018), 116 National Security Strategy (2017), 179–80 Pacific Command, 125–6 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Senate Armed Services Committee, 124 State Department, 123–4 steel industry, 17 subprime mortgage crisis (2007–10), 153 Taiwan, relations with, 14 Trump administration (2017–), 83, 90–94, 122–4, 167, 179 universal values, 175, 181, 184 Urdu, 128 Urumqi, Xinjiang, 20, 101, 188 Uyghurs, 20 Uzbekistan, 53, 54, 129 value chains, 3, 43, 64, 73–4, 79–82, 84–5, 94–104, 141 vanadium pentoxide, 103 Venice, Veneto, 65 Vietnam, 19, 54, 70, 100, 117, 132 Vision and Actions document (2015), 40, 41, 45, 49, 50, 52, 67, 78 Vision for Maritime Cooperation (2017), 62 Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai, 118 Wakhan corridor, Afghanistan, 128 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 78 Wang Changyu, 112 Wang Huning, 40 Wang Jisi, 31, 76 Wang Yang, 39 Wang Yi, 40, 60, 123 Wang Yingyao, 50–51 Wang Yiwei, 26 Wang Zhaoxing, 50 Warsaw, Poland, 140 Washington Post, 122 Wei Fenghe, 126 Weibo, 188 Weissmann, Mikael, 42 Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 83 West Asia corridor, 51, 52 West Germany (1949–90), 22, 166 Western world, 5, 30, 31, 165–86, 190–93 Asia-Pacific region, 13 Cold War, 1, 2 cultural imperialism, 28 democracy, 125, 133, 166, 171, 172, 174, 176, 181–3 end of history, 36 global financial crisis (2008), 16–17, 161 individualism, 27, 189 liberal world order, 141, 144, 167–86, 190, 192 Machiavellianism, 31–4 market economies, 16 Marxism, 78 polis, 31 rule of law, 183 rules-based order, 11, 35, 179 separation of powers, 182 soft power, 111 standards, 89 technology, 15, 87, 177–8 telecommunications, 101 and Tianxia, 30–34, 78, 192 value chains, 95, 96, 100, 104 values, 123, 125, 133, 167, 175, 177–8 white elephants, 51 Wickremesinghe, Ranil, 47 win-win, 27–8, 33, 37 wind power, 188 Witness to an Era (Moraes), 113 Working Conference on Neighborhood Policy (2013), 17–18 World Bank, 15, 172 World Economic Forum, 168 World Trade Organization, 170, 177 world-systems theory, 78 Wright, Thomas, 174 Xi Jinping, 11, 183 Astana speech (2013), 23, 25–6, 39 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (2017), 152 Boao Forum for Asia speech (2015), 27, 32 and Constitution, 164 Davos speech (2017), 168 Duterte, relationship with, 156 Jakarta speech (2013), 23, 26, 39 Joint Statement on Cooperation on EEU and Silk Road Projects (2015), 57 London visit (2015), 43 Mahathir’s letter (2018), 130–31 Modi, summit with (2018), 135 National Congress, 19th (2017), 29, 181 National Cybersecurity Work Conference (2018), 84 presidential term limits repeal (2018), 164, 174 Road Towards Renewal exhibition (2012), 165 Sirisena, grant to (2018), 156 and state-owned companies, 42, 153 Sun Wenguang’s letter (2018), 163 telecommunications, 43 Trump’s visit (2017), 124 and value chains, 94 Wang Huning, relationship with, 40 and Western democracy, 166, 181 Working Conference on Neighborhood Policy (2013), 17–18 Xi’an, Shaanxi, 24, 28, 147, 188 Xinhua, 24, 41, 64 Xinjiang, 20, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 100–101, 128–9, 188, 189 Xiong Guangkai, 32 Xu Jin, 33 Xu Zhangrun, 163–4 Yamal LNG project, 48, 66 Yang Jian, 132 Yang Jiechi, 39, 171 Yang Jing, 40 Yangtze River, 165 Yao Yunzhu, 169–70 Ye Peijian, 187 yuan, see renminbi Yunnan, China, 54, 129, 149, 188 Zeng Jinghan, 181 zero-sum, 27 Zhang Gaoli, 39 Zhang Qian, 25 Zhang Weiwei, 182–3, 184 Zhao Tingyang, 27 Zheng He, 162–3 Zhi Zhenfeng, 84 Zimbabwe, 12, 44 Zoellick, Robert, 169 ZTE, 94, 170–71 Zurich, Switzerland, 160 First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by C.

It would provide China with increased leverage, allowing it to exert pressure on the United States so that the existing international system could be reformed in a way that allowed China to have a degree of influence commensurate with its economic clout. But it would not be a tool to replace it with a new system since the existing one, generally speaking, still works quite well for China.15 When President Xi spoke in Davos in early 2017 he seemed to be saying just that, reassuring the audience that China was not about to embrace radical changes to the existing order—Davos is not the place to do that—while staking a claim to increase its power and influence. He Yafei, a former Chinese vice foreign minister, wrote in 2017 that “new emerging economies and developing countries represented by China strongly support globalization, while some Western countries including the US, the initiators and leaders of globalization, have reversed their positions.”16 Ultimately, the existing global order may prove more resilient than the sinews of American power supporting it.

INDEX Abbasi, Zafar Mahmood, 126 Abe, Shinzo, 118, 137 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 68 Aden Gulf, 72 Adil, Umer, 60 Advancing the Development of the One Belt, One Road Leading Group, 39 aerospace, 88, 103 Afghanistan, 53, 107, 127, 128, 129, 135, 172 Africa, 3, 8, 25, 44, 124, 163 Djibouti, 4, 12, 46, 63, 67–8, 101, 117 Ethiopia, 46, 68, 154, 170, 186 manufacturing, 68, 77 Maritime Silk Road, 23, 26, 45, 62 oil, 64 Partnership for Quality Infrastructure, 138 piracy, 72 telecommunications, 101, 170–71 aging population, 75 Agricultural Bank of China, 48 agriculture, 11, 61, 76, 99–100, 103 Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 138 aircraft, 81, 91, 103 Akto, Xinjiang, 60 Aktogay, East Kazakhstan, 103 Alibaba, 44 Allison, Graham, 7–8 Alps, 189 aluminum, 17, 20, 88 Andalusia, Spain, 189 Andijan, Uzbekistan, 54 anti-dumping, 92, 113 Antwerp, Flanders, 65 Apollo program, 9 aquaculture, 71 Arabian Sea, 72, 106 Arctic, 4, 62, 66, 188 artificial intelligence (AI), 44, 75, 88 Arunachal Pradesh, India, 111 Asian Development Bank, 45, 137 Asian Financial Forum, 49 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, 48 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 122 Astana International Exchange, 56 Astana, Kazakhstan, 25–6, 39, 56, 58 asteroids, 187 Athens, 8 Atlantic Ocean, 3, 115, 119, 138, 139 Atushi, Xinjiang, 60 Australia, 5, 12, 25, 119, 121, 122, 132–3, 135 automated vehicles, 88, 90, 186, 187, 190 automobile industry, 74, 81, 86, 90–91, 97, 104 Autor, David, 177 aviation, 81, 91, 103 Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 60 Azerbaijan, 186 Badakhshan, Afghanistan, 128 Baidu, 188 Baldwin, Richard, 74, 80 Balkans, 8, 12, 140 Balochistan, Pakistan, 60, 105 Gwadar port, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 105–7, 117 separatism and terrorism, 106, 127, 128 Baltic Sea, 51 Bangkok, Thailand, 65, 136–7 Bangladesh, 48, 53, 64, 109, 134, 136, 138, 150, 189 Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC), 52, 62 Bank of China, 48 banking, 46–51 bargaining theory, 152–3 Bay of Bengal, 22, 64, 72, 119 Beijing, China, 20, 28, 48, 126, 165 Beijing University, 183, 188 Belgium, 56, 65 Belgrade, Serbia, 143 Belt, see Silk Road Economic Belt Belt and Road Advancing the Development of the One Belt, One Road Leading Group, 39 backlash against, 12, 108, 121–4, 130–46, 155 bridges, 40, 54, 156, 173, 186 Buddhism, 112 cities, 11, 43, 44, 48, 149–52, 187–8 ‘community of shared destiny’, 26–9, 33, 36, 43, 45, 170 connectivity (wu tong), 42, 43, 52–3, 127, 158, 167 currency integration, 26 data, 44 debt, 12, 46, 47, 108, 109, 124, 126, 130, 132, 153–62 digital infrastructure, 43–4, 59, 86 e-commerce, 44, 59 economic corridors, 2, 11, 51–4, 55, 62 economic policy coordination, 28 energy, 11, 17, 19, 20–23, 40, 46, 48, 49, 52, 61, 64, 86, 92, 188 financing, 11, 36, 46–51, 54, 108–9, 124, 126, 130, 132, 138, 141, 153–64 Forum for International Cooperation (2017), 12, 108, 143, 152 impatience, 152–3 inauguration (2013), 11, 17, 23 industrial capacity cooperation, 85–8 industrial parks, 10, 43, 55, 61, 67, 99, 102 infrastructure, see infrastructure internal discontent, 163 international court, 28, 190 loans, 11, 36, 46–7, 54, 108–9, 124, 126, 130, 132, 138, 141, 153–62, 163 maps, 2–6, 24, 41, 64, 69 Maritime Silk Road, 24, 26, 28, 39, 41 market integration, 41 military bases, 12, 67, 71, 72, 101, 117, 126–7 overcapacity, 19 ports, see ports railways, 9–10, 11, 12, 18, 43, 46, 52, 53–4, 68, 86, 122, 130 roads, 9, 19, 40, 43, 52, 54 security, 127–9 Silk Road, 2, 9–10, 23–6, 45, 82, 138 Silk Road Economic Belt, 24, 25–6, 28, 39, 51–62, 83 success, definition of, 164, 174 telecommunications, 43–4, 52, 86, 101, 170–71 timeline, 10 TIR Convention, 55 transnational industrial policy, 81, 84 transport infrastructure, 9–10, 11, 18, 19, 25, 26, 40, 48, 49, 53–4, 83 urban development, 11, 43, 44, 48, 149–52 Vision and Actions document (2015), 40, 41, 45, 49, 50, 52, 62, 67, 78 Vision for Maritime Cooperation (2017), 62 Bering Strait, 66 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 110 Bhat, Vinayak, 107 Bhutan, 107–8 big data, 44 Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 127 Blackwater, 128 blue economic passage, 62 Boao Forum for Asia (2015), 27, 32 Brahmaputra river, 136 Brazil, 174 Brewster, David, 63 BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), 19, 174 bridges, 40, 54, 156, 173, 186 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 188 Budapest, Hungary, 143 Buddhism, 111–12 Bush, George Walker, 169 California, United States, 64 Cambodia, 52, 54, 70, 129, 132, 155 Cameroon, 68, 187 Canada, 136 car industry, see automobile industry Caribbean, 25 Carr, Robert ‘Bob’, 122 Cartagena, Spain, 92 Caspian Sea, 186 Caucasus, 20, 129 CDMA (code-division multiple access), 89 cement, 17, 49–50, 83 Center for Strategic and International Studies, 19, 123 center of gravity, 115 Central African Republic, 186 Central Asia, 9, 20, 25, 51, 52, 82–3, 188 energy, 22, 106 Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), 57–9 India, trade with, 107 industrial capacity cooperation, 104 Islamism, 127 Russia, relations with, 57–9, 129, 133 steel industry, 82–3 terrorism, 127 textile industry, 101 transport infrastructure, 9, 54 Central Huijin Investment, 49, 50 Central Military Commission, 166 century of humiliation (1839–1949), 165, 186 Chabahar, Sistan-Baluchistan, 106–7 Chalay Thay Saath, 60 Chao Phraya River, 65 ChemChina, 48 Chengdu Economic Daily, 129 China Abbasi’s visit (2018), 126 Academy of Information and Communications Technology, 44 aging population, 75 Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, 50 Bishkek Embassy bombing (2016), 127 Boao Forum for Asia (2015), 27, 32 Buddhism, 111–12 century of humiliation (1839–1949), 165, 186 Doklam plateau dispute, 107–8, 113 energy, see energy EU-China summit (2015), 138 five-year plan (2016–20), 41 Food and Drug Administration, 114 Foreign Policy Center of the Central Party School, 7 Gants Mod crossing closure (2016), 36 General Navigation Office, 69 ‘Going Out’ strategy, 86 Guangxi Nonferrous Metals Group bankruptcy (2016), 16 Guiding Opinion on Promoting International Industrial Capacity (2015), 86 Guiding Opinion on Standardizing the Direction of Overseas Investment (2017), 86 incremental approach, 7 Indian Dilemma, 21 Institute of International Studies, 92 International Trust and Investment Corporation, 132 Investment Corporation, 48 keeping a low profile (tao guang yang hui), 15, 18, 32 labour shortages, 75 Macron’s visit (2018), 146–7 Made in China 2025 strategy, 85, 87, 90–92, 93 Malacca Dilemma, 21–2, 64, 131 Merchants, 68–9 middle-income trap, 75–7, 85 migrant workers, 75 military, 12, 13, 59, 67, 71, 72, 101, 117, 126–7 minimum wage, 75 Ministry of Commerce, 21, 40, 93 Ministry of Communications, 69 Ministry of Finance, 49 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 40 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 19 Ministry of Transportation, 14 Modi–Xi summit (2018), 135 National Bureau of Statistics, 75 National Congress, 28, 29, 44, 165, 181 National Cybersecurity Work Conference (2018), 84 National Development and Reform Commission, 40, 98 National Health Commission, 114 Opium War, First (1839–1842), 165 overcapacity, 16, 19–20, 88 Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, 19 Overseas Investment Industrial Guiding Policy, 86 People’s Navigation Company, 69 Ports-Park-City model, 67 presidential term limits repeal (2018), 164, 174 real estate market, 16, 75 reform and opening up, 13–15, 73 renminbi, 22–3, 159 responsible stakeholder, 169 shipbuilding, 14, 17 soft power, 111, 170 Soviet Union, relations with, 13, 14, 15 State Administration of Foreign Exchange, 48 State Council, 19, 39, 40, 49, 66, 86 state-owned companies, 42, 153, 160–61, 189 steel industry, 16–17, 18, 20, 82–4, 86, 88 striving for achievement, 18 Swaraj’s visit (2018), 135 Taiwan, relations with, 14, 26, 142 technology transfers, 85–92, 97, 177–8 Thucydides’ trap, 8 Tianxia, 26–7, 29, 31–5, 78, 79, 192–3 TIR Convention, 55 Trump’s visit (2017), 124 ‘two heads abroad’ (liangtou zai haiwai), 17 United States, relations with, see Sino–US relations Working Conference on Neighborhood Policy (2013), 17–18 China Construction Bank, 48 China Development Bank, 16, 48, 49, 97, 98, 99, 103, 160 China Export & Credit Insurance Corp, 104 China Export-Import Bank, 46, 47, 48, 49, 103, 154 China Fantasy, The (Mann), 177 China Global Television Network, 188 China Nonferrous Metals Industry Group, 103 China Three Gorges Corp, 48 China-Indian Ocean-Africa-Mediterranean Sea Blue Economic Passage, 62 China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, 51, 52, 54, 62 China-Oceania-South Pacific, 62 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), 52, 59, 60, 62, 105–7, 108 Chinese Communist Party Advancing the Development of the One Belt, One Road Leading Group, 39 and Australia, 133 Constitution, 41, 164 founding of (1921), 165 National Congress, 18th (2012), 28 National Congress, 19th (2017), 29, 44, 165, 181 and New Zealand, 132 Politburo, 39, 40, 165 reform and opening up, 13–15 and steel industry, 16 Third Plenum of the 18th Party Central Committee (2013), 39 Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, 106 Christianity, 128 Churchill, Winston, 183 cities, 11, 43, 44, 48, 149–52, 187–8 climate change, 4, 66, 85, 171 Clinton, William ‘Bill’, 177 cloud computing, 44 CloudWalk Technology, 44 Club Med, 189 CNN, 188 cobalt, 81, 104 Cold War, 2, 14, 21–2, 36, 40, 125, 171 Colombo, Sri Lanka, 156, 162 colonialism, 120, 162 ‘community of shared destiny’, 26–9, 33, 36, 43, 45, 135, 170 Confucianism, 31, 34 Congo, Democratic Republic of, 81, 104 connectivity, 42, 43, 52–3, 109, 122, 127, 146, 158, 167 Connectivity Platform, 139 construction, 18, 75, 86, 98 convergence, 4, 14, 166, 167, 169, 174, 177 copper, 103, 104 corridors, see economic corridors corruption, 133, 155–6, 158, 187 cosmopolitan neighborhoods, 4 Country Garden, 151 Cowboys and Indians, 188 cultural exchanges, 42, 43, 56–7 currency, 22–3, 26, 159–60 customs cooperation, 55, 57, 59, 63 Cyprus, 140 Dalai Lama, 36, 112 Dalian, Liaoning, 55, 93 Daming Palace, Xi’an, 147 Dangal, 111 data, 44 Davidson, Phillip, 125–6 Davos, Switzerland, 168 Dawn of Eurasia, The (Maçães), 185, 191 Dawood, Abdul Razak, 158 debt, 12, 16, 46, 47, 108, 109, 124, 126, 130, 132, 153–62 democracy, 125, 133, 166, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 181–3 Democratic Republic of Congo, 81, 104 Deng Xiaoping, 13–15, 18, 31, 32, 69, 73, 183 Diaoyu Islands, 187 digital infrastructure, 43–4 division of labor, 53, 78, 79, 80 Djibouti, 4, 12, 46, 63, 67–8, 101, 117, 186 Doklam plateau, 107–8, 113 Doraleh, Djibouti, 63, 67–8 DP World, 68 dry ports, 57 Dubai, UAE, 62, 68, 160 Dudher Zinc project, 127 Duterte, Rodrigo, 156 DVD (digital versatile disc), 89 e-commerce, 44, 59 East China Sea, 118 economic corridors, 2, 11, 51–4, 55 economic nationalism, 102 economic policy coordination, 28 Economist, The, 190 Egypt, 101 electric cars, 81, 104 electricity, 40, 46, 49, 52, 61, 98, 156, 188 end of history, 36 energy, 4, 11, 17, 19, 20–23, 48, 49, 82, 86, 92, 188 electricity, 40, 46, 49, 52, 61, 98, 156, 188 gas, 21, 22, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 hydropower, 48 oil, 21, 22, 23, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 renewable, 21, 187, 188 English language, 111, 188 Enhanced Mobile Broadband coding scheme, 89 Enlightenment, 193 environmental sustainability, 75 Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, 55 Ethiopia, 46, 68, 154, 170, 186 Eurasia, 1–5, 11, 20, 26, 45, 52, 57, 63, 120, 121, 138 Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), 57–9 Eurasian Resources Group, 103 European Commission, 143, 145 European empires, 120–21 European Union (EU), 5, 29, 57, 58, 138–47, 159, 176, 179 and Belt and Road, 10, 12, 30, 138–47 Connecting Europe and Asia strategy (2018), 145–6 and Djibouti, 67 economic policy coordination, 28 5G mobile networks, 43 immigration, 187 steel industry, 17 tariffs, 83 technology transfers, 87–8, 178 transnational framework, 81 Turkey, relations with, 4 Export-Import Bank of China, 46, 47, 48, 49, 103, 154 exports, 15, 17, 19, 79 Facebook, 188 facial recognition, 44, 190 fashion industry, 101 fate, 34 Fergana Valley, 54 fertilizers, 19 fibre-optic connectivity, 101 fifth generation (5G) mobile networks, 43–4, 89 finance, 11, 36, 46–51, 54, 126, 138, 141, 153–64 Financial Times, 10, 63, 143, 154, 157, 158, 159 five-year plan (2016–20), 41 Folding Beijing (Hao), 150 food imports, 76 foreign direct investment, 46, 144–6 foreign exchange, 16, 94, 153 Forest City, Johor, 149–51, 155 France, 11, 96, 129, 141, 144, 146–7, 189 free and open order, 125 free-trade zones, 11, 42, 55–6, 71 freedoms of speech, 172, 189 French Foreign Legion, 129 French, Howard, 13 Frontier Services Group, 128–9 Fu Chen, 129 Fu Ying, 140 Fukuyama, Francis, 184–5 Gabon, 96 Gabriel, Sigmar, 142 Gang of Four, 14 Gants Mod crossing closure (2016), 36 gas, 21, 22, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 General Navigation Office, 69 generic drugs, 114 Genghis Khan, 2, 25 Georgia, 58 Germany, 11, 65, 80, 87–8, 90, 100, 141–2, 144, 189 ghost ships, 186 Gibraltar, 92 Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, 54, 60, 108 Gland Pharma, 113 glass, 17, 83 Global Energy Interconnection, 188 global financial crisis (2008), 16–17, 85, 161, 178 Global Infrastructure Center, 190 Global Times, 67, 109, 131 global value chain revolution, 74 global warming, 4, 66, 85 globalization, 19, 28, 66, 78, 102, 124, 144, 168, 174, 192 ‘Going Out’ strategy, 86 good governance, 183–4 Google, 152, 188 Goubet, Djibouti, 67 government procurement, 12, 59 Grand Palace, Bangkok, 65 Grand Trunk Road, 53 Greece, 30, 31, 65, 140, 141, 142 GSM (Global System for Mobile communications), 89 Guangdong, China, 28, 75, 151 Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group, 67 Guangxi Nonferrous Metals Group, 16 Guiding Opinion on Promoting International Industrial Capacity (2015), 86 Guiding Opinion on Standardizing the Direction of Overseas Investment (2017), 86 Guo Chu, 33 Gwadar, Balochistan, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 105–7, 117 Hainan, China, 71 Hambantota, Sri Lanka, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 117, 162 Hamburg, Germany, 65 Hamilton, Clive, 133 Han Empire (206 BC–220 AD), 25 Hao Jingfang, 150 ‘harmonious world’, 33, 36 Havelian, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 54 He Yafei, 19, 168 heavy industry, 75, 82 Hebei, China, 83 Heilongjiang, China, 55 Hesteel, 83 high-speed railways, 18, 53–4, 83, 89, 98, 122, 130, 137, 138, 143, 186–7 highways, see roads Hillman, Jonathan, 8 Hobbes, Thomas, 27 Holslag, Jonathan, 189 Hong Kong, 49, 103 Hongshi Holding Group, 49 Horgos, Xinjiang, 55, 55–6, 57 Horn of Africa, 3 Hu Huaibang, 49, 97 Hu Jintao, 21, 33, 70 Hu Xiaolian, 154 Huang Libin, 19 Huangyan Island, 187 Huawei, 89–90, 101, 171 Hub, Balochistan, 127 hukou (household registration), 76 human rights, 141–2, 170, 171, 189 Hun Sen, 155 Hungary, 30, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 Huntington, Samuel, 184 Hussain, Chaudhry Fawad, 157 hydropower, 48 Ibrahim Ismail, Sultan of Johor, 151 immigration, 187 impatience, 152–3 imports, 17, 19, 22, 79–84 India and the Indian Ocean (Panikkar), 118 India, 3, 5, 64, 105–25, 134–6, 174, 179 Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), 109 and Belt and Road, 11, 12, 52, 72, 105–15, 130, 133 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (2017), 12, 108 British Raj (1858–1947), 107 Buddhism, 111–12 cosmopolitan neighborhoods, 4 cultural mission to China (1952), 113 Doklam plateau dispute, 107–8, 113 economic autarchy, 110, 117 free and open order, 125 Grand Trunk Road, 53 imports, 113–14 and Indian Ocean, 3, 116–19 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125 Japan, relations with, 118 Kashmir dispute, 108–9, 117 Malabar naval exercises (2018), 135 and maritime hegemony, 72 migrant workers, 150 military bases, 3, 131 Modi–Xi summit (2018), 135 Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed railway, 138 nuclear tests (1998), 109 Pakistan, relations with, 105–7, 108–9, 117, 134 pharmaceuticals, 113, 114 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), 105–6 and Sabang Island, 131 Siliguri Corridor, 107–8 Southeast Asia, 113, 117–18 Swaraj’s visit to China (2018), 135 Tibet, relations with, 111–12, 117, 136 United States, relations with, 119, 121–2, 134, 135 Indian Dilemma, 21 Indian Ocean, 3, 8, 9, 26, 51, 62, 63, 66, 68, 71–2, 116–19 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125, 126 and Japan, 4 Kra Isthmus canal proposal, 65, 186 meticulous selection, 72 Myanmar oil and gas pipeline, 64, 72 oil, 21, 64 and Pakistan, 59, 61, 64 individualism, 27, 189 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125, 126 Indo-Pacific Business Forum, 122 Indo-Pacific Command, US, 126 Indochina, 51, 52, 54, 62 Indonesia, 2, 5, 18, 26, 39, 48, 83, 117, 131 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, 48, 49, 103 industrial capacity cooperation, 85–8, 98, 102–4 industrial internet, 44 industrial parks, 10, 43, 55, 61, 67, 99, 102 Industrial Revolution, 84 information technology, 43–4, 74, 81, 86, 90, 94, 111, 170–71, 190 infrastructure, 3, 23, 26, 30, 40–45, 48, 50, 55, 58, 63, 86, 88, 124, 139, 141, 162, 167, 186 Afghanistan, 135 communications, 81, 118 digital, 43–4 European Union, 10, 141, 145 India, 64, 118, 135 Japan, 4, 136–8 Maritime Silk Road, 66, 67 Mediterranean, 65 Pakistan, 54, 62, 99, 105 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Southeast Asia, 18–19, 70, 117, 130, 132 steel industry, 18 transportation, see transportation value chains, 96 Xinjiang, 20, 54 Inner Mongolia, China, 55 innovation, 76 Institute for International Finance, 153 intellectual property, 59, 88–9, 91, 97, 180, 190 international courts, 28, 190 international industrial capacity cooperation, 85–8, 98, 102–4 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 15, 156–7, 158–9, 172 Internet, 43–4, 86, 170–71 internet of things, 90, 94 Iran, 4, 22, 105–6 Iraq, 24 Irkeshtam, Xinjiang, 55 iron, 17 Islamabad, Pakistan, 60, 99, 101, 127, 157 Islamic State, 128 Islamism, 127–9 Istanbul, Turkey, 4, 24, 65 Italy, 48, 65, 140, 189 Izumi, Hiroto, 137 Jadhav, Kulbhushan, 105–6 Jakarta, Indonesia, 2, 5, 26, 39 Japan, 1, 5, 22, 123, 133, 136–8, 145, 165, 166, 169, 189 Buddhism, 111 Cold War, 21–2 India, relations with, 118 Indian Ocean, 4 infrastructure development, 4, 136–8 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Second World War (1937–45), 119, 165 Javaid, Nadeem, 46 Jiang Qing, 14 Jiang Shigong, 183–4 Jiang Zemin, 15 Jiangsu Delong, 83 Jin Qi, 98 Jinnah Town, Quetta, 128 Johor, Malaysia, 149–51 Joint Statement on Cooperation on EEU and Silk Road Projects (2015), 57–8 joint ventures, 97 Journey to the West, 186, 188 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 138 Kaeser, Joe 170 Karachi, Sindh, 59, 100, 105, 106, 127 Karakoram Highway, 54, 60, 64 Kashgar, Xinjiang, 54, 59, 60, 64, 101 Kashmir, 60, 108–9, 117 Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo, 104 Kaz Minerals 103 Kazakhstan, 8, 55–9, 129, 189 Astana International Exchange, 56 China–EEU free-trade agreement signing (2018), 58 and Eurasian Economic Union, 57 gateway to Europe, 56 Horgos International Cooperation Center, 55–6 industrial capacity cooperation, 103–4 railways, 54 Xi’s speech (2013), 23, 25–6, 39 Kazakhstan Aluminum, 103 keeping a low profile (tao guang yang hui), 15, 18, 32 Kenya, 101, 138, 171 Khan, Imran, 157–8 Khawar, Hasaan, 53 Khunjerab Pass, 101 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, 54, 60, 100 Kizilsu Kirghiz, Xinjiang, 60 knowledge, 74, 76, 87 Kolkata, West Bengal, 64 Kortunov, Andrey, 135 kowtow, 35 Kra Isthmus, Thailand, 65, 186 Kuala Linggi Port, Malacca, 63 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 130 Kuantan, Pahang, 63, 67 Kudaibergen, Dimash, 57 Kunming, Yunnan, 188 Kyaukpyu, Rakhine, 63, 64, 132, 154 Kyrgyzstan, 53, 54, 55, 103, 127 labor costs, 74, 83, 85, 99 labor shortages, 75 Lagarde, Christine, 158–9 Lahore, Punjab, 100, 157 Laos, 50, 52, 54, 129, 132 Latin America, 25, 187, 188 Leifeld Metal Spinning AG, 88 Lenin, Vladimir, 6, 78 Lenovo, 89–90 Li Hongzhang, 69 Li Keqiang, 44 Li Ruogu, 47 Liaoning, China, 55 liberal values, 123, 125, 133, 170 liberal world order, 141, 144, 167–86, 190, 192 Lighthizer, Robert, 91 lignite, 61 liquefied natural gas (LNG), 48, 66 Lisbon, Portugal, 2, 5 lithium-ion batteries, 81 Liu Chuanzhi, 89–90 Liu He, 92 loans, 11, 36, 46–7, 54, 108–9, 124, 126, 130, 132, 138, 141, 153–63, 190 London, England, 65, 160 Lord of the Rings, The (Tolkien), 1 Lou Jiwei, 76 Luo Jianbo, 7 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 31–4 machinery, 81, 90, 98, 156 Mackinder, Halford, 120 Macron, Emmanuel, 146–7 Made in China 2025 strategy, 85, 87, 90–92, 93 Mahan, Alfred, 120 Mahathir Mohamad, 130–31, 151, 155 Malabar naval exercises (2018), 135 Malacca, Malaysia, 3, 63 Malacca Strait, 21–2, 64, 65, 72, 117, 131 Malay Mail, 155 Malaysia, 3, 70, 117, 130–31, 154 debt, 154 Forest City, 149–51, 155 high-speed railways, 54, 130 Mahathir government (2018–), 130–31, 151, 155 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal (2015–), 155 ports, 63, 67 Maldives, 134, 155 Mali, 129 Malik, Ashok, 109 Malta, 140 Mandarin, 107, 149, 188 Manila, Philippines, 122 Mann, James, 177 manufacturing, 11, 19, 68, 77, 85, 99 outsourcing, 68, 99 value chains, 3, 43, 64, 73–4, 79–82, 84–5, 94–104, 141 Manzhouli, Inner Mongolia, 55 Mao Zedong, 13–14, 31, 183 maps, 2–6, 24, 41, 64, 69 Maritime Silk Road, 24, 26, 28, 39, 41, 53, 62–72, 117 market integration, 41 Mars, 187 Marshall Plan, 40 Marx, Karl, 6 Marxism, 78 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 177 Matarbari port, Bangladesh, 138 matchmaking services, 11 Mattis, James, 124 McMahon Line, 111 Mediterranean Sea, 4, 51, 62, 65, 119 Mei Xinyu, 21 Mekong Delta, 8 mergers and acquisitions, 42 Merkel, Angela, 88, 141, 144 meticulous selection, 72 Middle East, 4, 6, 22, 64, 120, 129, 163, 171 middle-income trap, 75–7, 85 migrant workers, 75 Milanovic, Branko, 173 military, 3, 12, 67, 71, 72, 101, 117, 126–7 Ming Empire (1368–1644), 163 Ming Hao, 30 minimum wage, 75 Ministry of Commerce, 21, 40, 93 Ministry of Communications, 69 Ministry of Finance, 49 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 40 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 19 Ministry of Transportation, 14 Minmetals International Trust Co, 16 mobile payments, 193 Modi, Narendra, 106, 135–6 Mohan, Raja, 3, 121 Mombasa, Kenya, 138 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 2, 25 Mongolia, 8, 36, 52, 55, 111 Moon, 187 Moraes, Frank, 112–13 Moscow, Russia, 4 Most Favored Nation status, 15 Mozambique, 138 multinationals, 74, 88–9 multipolar world system, 179 Mumbai, Maharashtra, 4, 105, 138 Myanmar, 52, 54, 63, 64, 72, 129, 132, 138, 154 Nacala, Nampula, 138 narcotics trade, 127 Nathan, Andrew, 159 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 9 National Bureau of Statistics, 75 National Congress 18th (2012), 28 19th (2017), 29 National Cybersecurity Work Conference (2018), 84 National Development and Reform Commission, 40, 98 National Health Commission, 114 National League for Democracy, Myanmar, 132 National Museum of China, Beijing, 165, 166 National Party of New Zealand, 132 National People’s Congress, 44 National Rescue Party of Cambodia, 155 Nazarbayev University, 25–6 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 113 Nepal, 134, 135, 150 Netherlands, 56, 65 New Zealand, 132–3 Nigeria, 68 Ning Jizhe, 137 Nordin, Astrid, 42 Northern Sea Route, 66 Northwest Passage, 66 NPK fertilizer, 99 nuclear power/weapons, 21, 83, 88, 109, 166, 187 oil, 21, 22, 23, 40, 52, 64, 72, 106 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal (2015–), 155 One China policy, 142 Open Times, 183 Opium War, First (1839–1842), 165 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 79 Osh, Kyrgyzstan, 54 overcapacity, 16, 19–20, 88 Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, 19 Overseas Investment Industrial Guiding Policy, 86 Pacific Command, US, 125–6 Pacific Journal, 71 Pacific Ocean, 3, 5, 9, 26, 45, 62, 116, 117, 125–6, 139 Indo-Pacific, 116–23, 125, 126 Pakistan, 12, 20, 46, 48, 52, 59–62, 64, 98–102, 105, 126–9, 133–4, 155, 156–8 Abbasi’s Beijing visit (2018), 126 agriculture, 99–100 balance of payments crisis, 156–8 Economic Corridor, 52, 59, 60, 62, 105, 108, 156–8 electricity production, 61 fibre-optic connectivity, 101 gateway to the Indian Ocean, 59 Grand Trunk Road, 53 Gwadar port, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 105–7, 117 hydropower, 48 IMF loans, 156–7 India, relations with, 105–7, 108–9, 117, 134 investment, 48 Jadhav arrest (2016), 105–6 Karakoram Highway, 54, 60, 64 Kashmir dispute, 108–9 loans, 46, 54, 156–8 manufacturing, 99 safe city project, 101 Tehreek-e-Insaf, 157–8 television, 101 terrorism, 106, 127–8, 135 textiles, 100 Thar desert, 61 value chains, 98–102 Pakistan-East Africa Cable Express, 101 Pandjaitan, Luhut, 131 Panikkar, Kavalam Madhava, 118 Pantucci, Raffaello, 134 Partnership for Quality Infrastructure, 137–8 patents, 88–9, 190 Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, 103 Peak Pegasus, 93 Pearl River Delta, China, 152 Peking University, 183, 188 Penang, Malaysia, 63 People’s Daily, 57 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 32, 169 People’s Navigation Company, 69 Pericles, 8 Persian Gulf, 51, 64, 72 Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 100 petcoke, 103 Petrochina, 103 pharmaceuticals, 113, 114 Phaya Thai Station, Bangkok, 137 Philippines, 19, 70, 117, 122, 156 philosophy, 40, 183 Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 70 phosphate, 19 piracy, 72 Piraeus, Greece, 65 Pirelli, 48 Plato, 150 Poland, 58, 140 Polar Silk Road, 66 Politburo, 39, 40, 165 political correctness, 182 Polo, Marco, 2, 10 Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka, 156 Pompeo, Michael, 122–3, 157 ports, 9, 10, 12, 19, 36, 40, 46–7, 57, 63–5, 67–9, 96 Chabahar, Iran, 106–7 Doraleh, Djibouti, 63, 67–8 Gwadar, Pakistan, 46, 59, 61–2, 63, 64, 99–100, 101, 117 Hambantota, Sri Lanka, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 117, 162 Kuala Linggi, Malaysia, 63 Kuantan, Malaysia, 63, 67 Kyaukpyu, Myanmar, 63, 64, 132, 154 Mediterranean, 65 Mombasa, Kenya, 138 Nacala, Mozambique, 138 Penang, Malaysia, 63 Ports-Park-City model, 67 Portugal, 2, 3, 5, 140, 163 power, see energy Prince, Erik, 128–9 property bubbles, 75 protectionism, 102, 114 public procurement, 12, 59 Punjab, Pakistan, 60, 99, 100, 157 Putin, Vladimir, 3, 57 Pyrenees, 189 Qing Empire (1636–1912), 107, 178 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Qualcomm, 89 Quetta, Balochistan, 128 Raikot, Gilgit-Baltistan, 54 railways, 9–10, 11, 12, 18, 43, 52, 53–4, 57, 68, 83, 86, 89, 98, 100, 135 Addis Ababa–Djibouti, 46, 68 Bangkok–Chiang Mai, 137 Belgrade–Budapest, 143 Djibouti–Yaoundé, 68, 186–7 Islamabad–Gwadar, 60 Kashgar–Andijan, 54 Kuala Lumpur–Singapore, 130 Lahore overhead, 157 Mumbai–Ahmedabad, 138 United States, 122 Yunnan–Southeast Asia, 54 Rawat, Bipin, 108 RB Eden, 92 real estate market, 16, 75 reciprocity, 178–80 Red Sea, 72 reform and opening up, 13–15, 73 Ren Zhengfei, 90 Renaissance, 7 renewable energy, 21, 187, 188 Renmin University, 106 renminbi, 22–3, 159 Rennie, David, 190 Republic (Plato), 150 Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), 105–6 responsible stakeholder, 169 Rio Tinto, 36 Road Towards Renewal exhibition (2012), 165 Road, see Maritime Silk Road roads, 9, 19, 40, 43, 52, 54, 55, 57, 67, 107–8 robotics, 75, 88, 90 Rogin, Josh, 122 Rolland, Nadège, 188, 190 Ross, Wilbur, 92 Rotterdam, South Holland, 65 Ruan Zongze, 92 rule of law, 28, 109, 111, 183–4 Russia, 5, 51, 52, 55, 133, 134, 139, 174, 175–6, 180, 181 and Central Asia, 57–9, 129, 133 energy, 22, 23 Eurasian Economic Union, 57–9 Eurasianism, 3–4 Joint Statement on Cooperation on EEU and Silk Road Projects (2015), 57–8 Pacific Fleet, 118 and renminbi internationalization, 23 Soviet era, see under Soviet Union steel industry, 82 Ukraine crisis (2013–), 176 Western values, rejection of, 175, 180, 181 Yamal LNG project, 48, 66 Sabang, Indonesia, 131 safe cities, 101, 171 salt, 67, 71 San Francisco, California, 151–2 Saravan, Sistan-Baluchistan, 105 Sargsyan, Tigran, 59 Sassanian Empire (224–651), 4 satellites, 187 second unbundling, 74 Second World War (1939–45), 165 self-driving vehicles, 88, 90, 186, 187, 190 Serbia, 83, 143 Set Aung, U, 132 Shandong University, 163 Shanghai, China, 2, 20, 92 Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 136 Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical, 113 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, 16 Shanghai Stock Exchange, 50, 56, 103 Sharif, Nawaz, 133–4 sharp power, 170 sheet glass, 17, 83 Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, 16 Shenzhen, Guangdong, 28, 151 shipbuilding, 14, 17, 81, 186 Sichuan, China, 149 Siemens, 170 silicon dioxide, 103 Siliguri Corridor, India, 107–8 Silk Road, 2, 9–10, 23–6, 45, 53, 82, 138 Silk Road Economic Belt, 24, 25–6, 28, 39, 51–62, 83 Silk Road Fund, 48, 56, 98 silk, 23–4 Sindh, Pakistan, 59, 60, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106, 127 Singapore, 54, 77, 92, 119, 130, 150, 151, 160 Sino–Myanmar oil and gas pipeline, 64, 72 Sino–US relations, 116, 119, 121–6, 136, 179–80 and Belt and Road, 5–6, 11, 12, 15, 72, 121–4, 130, 136, 168 and Cold War, 14 and foreign exchange reserves, 16 and Indo-Pacific, 116, 119, 121–3, 125, 126 and Kra Isthmus canal proposal, 65 and Malacca Dilemma, 21–2, 64 and maritime hegemony, 70, 72 and Most Favored Nation status, 15 and Pakistan, 157 and reciprocity, 179–80 and reform and opening up, 14–15 and renminbi internationalization, 23 and South China Sea, 70 and steel, 17 Strategic and Economic Dialogue, 39 and Taiwan, 14 and tariffs, 83, 90–94 and technology transfers, 90–92, 178 Thucydides’ trap, 8 and trade deficit, 90, 92 trade war, 92–4, 173 war, potential for, 5, 8, 13, 14 Yangtze River patrols (1854–1937), 165 and ZTE, 94 Sirisena, Maithripala, 155–6 Sistan-Baluchistan, Iran, 105, 106–7 SLJ900/32, 54 Small, Andrew, 59, 158 smart cities, 44, 151–2 Smederevo, Serbia, 83 soft power, 111, 170 solar power, 187, 188 Somalia, 72 Somersault Cloud, 186 sorghum, 92 South Africa, 101 South America, 25, 187, 188 South China Sea, 21, 62, 65, 69–71, 118, 142, 170, 179 South Korea, 1, 77, 96, 97, 128 South Sudan, 186 Southeast Asia, 6, 8, 12, 18, 100, 131–2, 189 Buddhism, 111 China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, 51, 52, 54, 62 Indo–Chinese relations, 113, 117–18 Kra Isthmus canal proposal, 65, 186 Maritime Silk Road, 26 phosphate market, 19 South China Sea dispute, 21, 69–71, 142, 170, 179 textile industry, 100 Soviet Union, 1, 13, 14, 15, 21–2, 57, 104 soybeans, 90, 93 space travel, 187 Spain, 92, 140, 189 Sparta, 8 Sri Lanka, 12, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 89, 117, 134, 155–6, 162 Hambantota port, 46–7, 63, 64, 68, 117, 162 Sirisena’s grant announcement (2018), 156 standards, 89–90 State Administration of Foreign Exchange, 48 State Council, 19, 39, 40, 49, 66, 86 state-owned companies, 42, 153, 160–61, 189 steamships, 69 steel industry, 16–17, 18, 20, 67, 82–4, 86, 88 striving for achievement, 18 Stuenkel, Oliver, 167 subprime mortgage crisis (2007–10), 153 Suez Canal, 3, 66, 68, 72, 119 Suifenhe Port, Heilongjiang, 55 Sukkur, Sindh, 99, 101 Sulawesi, Indonesia, 83 Sumatra, Indonesia, 3 Sun Pharmaceuticals, 114 Sun Wenguang, 163 Surkov, Vladislav, 3–4 surveillance, 44, 101, 171, 187, 190 Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, 137 Swamy, Subramanian, 110 Swaraj, Sushma, 135 Switzerland, 160, 168 Syria, 24 Tadjoura gulf, Djibouti, 67 taikonauts, 187 Taiwan, 14, 142 Tajikistan, 48, 127 Tanjung Pelepas Johor, 150 Tanzania, 138 tao guang yang hui, 15, 18, 32 Taoism, 11, 51 tariffs, 17, 56, 58, 79, 82, 83, 179 Tawang Monastery, Arunachal Pradesh, 111 tax holidays, 61 TBM Slurry, 54 technology transfers, 85–92, 97, 118, 177–8 Tehreek-e-Insaf, 157–8 telecommunications, 43–4, 52, 86, 89–90, 98, 101, 170–71 television, 101 terrorism, 106, 127–9, 135, 171 Texas, United States, 92 textiles, 86, 100–101 Thailand, 18, 54, 65, 83, 89, 129, 132, 136–7, 186 Thakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 54 Thar desert, 61 Thein Sein, 132 Thilawa special economic zone, Myanmar, 138 throw-money diplomacy, 163 Thucydides’ trap, 8 Tianjin, China, 129 Tianxia, 26–7, 29, 31–5, 78, 79, 192–3 Tibet, 36, 111–12, 117, 136, 189 Tibetan Academy of Buddhism, 112 Tillerson, Rex, 11, 123, 125 timber, 96 Times of India, 109 Tinbergen, Jan, 20 TIR (Transports Internationaux Routiers) Convention, 55 titanium dioxide, 103 Tokyo, Japan, 137 Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel, 1 tourism, 10, 11, 61, 71 trade wars, 92–4, 113–14, 173 trains, 9–10, 11, 12, 18, 43, 46 Trans-Siberian railway, 10 Transatlantic trade, 3, 139 transnational industrial policy, 81, 84 Transpacific trade, 3, 139 transparency, 12, 28, 109, 143, 144, 146, 157, 173, 193 Transpolar Route, 66 transportation, 9–10, 19, 25–6, 48–9, 52–4, 63–4, 81–3, 99, 103, 104, 118, 143, 162, 186 maritime, 63 railways, see railways roads, 9, 19, 40, 43, 52, 54, 55, 57, 67, 107–8 tributary system, 34–5 Trieste, Italy, 65 Trump, Donald, 83, 91, 93, 122, 124, 167, 179 Tsinghua University, 76, 163 Tsingshan Group Holdings, 83 Tumshuq, Xinjiang, 60 Turkey, 4, 24, 65, 82 Turkmenistan, 186 Twitter, 188 ‘two heads abroad’ (liangtou zai haiwai), 17 Ukraine, 11, 82, 176 United Arab Emirates, 62, 68, 160 United Kingdom, 2, 3, 17, 43, 65, 107, 112, 160, 165, 189, 193 United Nations, 29, 55, 72, 142, 172 United States, 1–2, 5–7, 8, 11, 12, 121–6, 161, 166–9, 176, 185–6 Apollo program, 9 Bush administration (2001–9), 169 Camp Lemonnier Djibouti, 68 China, relations with, see Sino–US relations Clinton administration (1992–2001), 177 Cold War, 14 immigration, 187 India, relations with, 119, 121–2, 134, 135 industrial output per person, 193 and International Monetary Fund (IMF), 157 Marshall Plan, 40 midterm elections (2018), 12–13 National Defense Strategy (2018), 116 National Security Strategy (2017), 179–80 Pacific Command, 125–6 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, 121–2 Senate Armed Services Committee, 124 State Department, 123–4 steel industry, 17 subprime mortgage crisis (2007–10), 153 Taiwan, relations with, 14 Trump administration (2017–), 83, 90–94, 122–4, 167, 179 universal values, 175, 181, 184 Urdu, 128 Urumqi, Xinjiang, 20, 101, 188 Uyghurs, 20 Uzbekistan, 53, 54, 129 value chains, 3, 43, 64, 73–4, 79–82, 84–5, 94–104, 141 vanadium pentoxide, 103 Venice, Veneto, 65 Vietnam, 19, 54, 70, 100, 117, 132 Vision and Actions document (2015), 40, 41, 45, 49, 50, 52, 67, 78 Vision for Maritime Cooperation (2017), 62 Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai, 118 Wakhan corridor, Afghanistan, 128 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 78 Wang Changyu, 112 Wang Huning, 40 Wang Jisi, 31, 76 Wang Yang, 39 Wang Yi, 40, 60, 123 Wang Yingyao, 50–51 Wang Yiwei, 26 Wang Zhaoxing, 50 Warsaw, Poland, 140 Washington Post, 122 Wei Fenghe, 126 Weibo, 188 Weissmann, Mikael, 42 Wenzhou, Zhejiang, 83 West Asia corridor, 51, 52 West Germany (1949–90), 22, 166 Western world, 5, 30, 31, 165–86, 190–93 Asia-Pacific region, 13 Cold War, 1, 2 cultural imperialism, 28 democracy, 125, 133, 166, 171, 172, 174, 176, 181–3 end of history, 36 global financial crisis (2008), 16–17, 161 individualism, 27, 189 liberal world order, 141, 144, 167–86, 190, 192 Machiavellianism, 31–4 market economies, 16 Marxism, 78 polis, 31 rule of law, 183 rules-based order, 11, 35, 179 separation of powers, 182 soft power, 111 standards, 89 technology, 15, 87, 177–8 telecommunications, 101 and Tianxia, 30–34, 78, 192 value chains, 95, 96, 100, 104 values, 123, 125, 133, 167, 175, 177–8 white elephants, 51 Wickremesinghe, Ranil, 47 win-win, 27–8, 33, 37 wind power, 188 Witness to an Era (Moraes), 113 Working Conference on Neighborhood Policy (2013), 17–18 World Bank, 15, 172 World Economic Forum, 168 World Trade Organization, 170, 177 world-systems theory, 78 Wright, Thomas, 174 Xi Jinping, 11, 183 Astana speech (2013), 23, 25–6, 39 Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (2017), 152 Boao Forum for Asia speech (2015), 27, 32 and Constitution, 164 Davos speech (2017), 168 Duterte, relationship with, 156 Jakarta speech (2013), 23, 26, 39 Joint Statement on Cooperation on EEU and Silk Road Projects (2015), 57 London visit (2015), 43 Mahathir’s letter (2018), 130–31 Modi, summit with (2018), 135 National Congress, 19th (2017), 29, 181 National Cybersecurity Work Conference (2018), 84 presidential term limits repeal (2018), 164, 174 Road Towards Renewal exhibition (2012), 165 Sirisena, grant to (2018), 156 and state-owned companies, 42, 153 Sun Wenguang’s letter (2018), 163 telecommunications, 43 Trump’s visit (2017), 124 and value chains, 94 Wang Huning, relationship with, 40 and Western democracy, 166, 181 Working Conference on Neighborhood Policy (2013), 17–18 Xi’an, Shaanxi, 24, 28, 147, 188 Xinhua, 24, 41, 64 Xinjiang, 20, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 100–101, 128–9, 188, 189 Xiong Guangkai, 32 Xu Jin, 33 Xu Zhangrun, 163–4 Yamal LNG project, 48, 66 Yang Jian, 132 Yang Jiechi, 39, 171 Yang Jing, 40 Yangtze River, 165 Yao Yunzhu, 169–70 Ye Peijian, 187 yuan, see renminbi Yunnan, China, 54, 129, 149, 188 Zeng Jinghan, 181 zero-sum, 27 Zhang Gaoli, 39 Zhang Qian, 25 Zhang Weiwei, 182–3, 184 Zhao Tingyang, 27 Zheng He, 162–3 Zhi Zhenfeng, 84 Zimbabwe, 12, 44 Zoellick, Robert, 169 ZTE, 94, 170–71 Zurich, Switzerland, 160 First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by C.


pages: 261 words: 81,802

The Trouble With Billionaires by Linda McQuaig

"World Economic Forum" Davos, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, carried interest, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, John Bogle, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, laissez-faire capitalism, land tenure, lateral thinking, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, very high income, wealth creators, women in the workforce

Figure 15 shows that the relationship between innovation and high tax levels is positive, as indicated by the upward sloping line, but it is not statistically significant. ‌ Fig. 15 Lower taxes do not lead to greater innovation28 Taxes and international competitiveness While it is frequently alleged in the business press that high taxes destroy a country’s competitiveness, the Nordic countries prove otherwise. The World Economic Forum, a business-financed, Geneva-based organization, releases an annual Global Competitiveness Index that measures countries according to a wide range of indicators, including economic institutions, infrastructure, education, training, labour market efficiency, and innovation, as well as financial market and business sophistication.

That bewilderment had been evident in January 2009, only months after the crash, at the elite get-together held every year in the Swiss town of Davos, where bankers, business leaders, political shakers and other big thinkers gather to celebrate the globalized world of liberated financial markets, shrunken government and reinvigorated capitalism. The headline on a dispatch that appeared on the website Slate captured the mood: ‘Davos Man, Confused.’ Journalist Daniel Gross explained in the piece that there was a broad consensus at Davos that ‘[s]uccess is the work of Great Men and Women, while failure can be pinned on the system.’ Or as Julian Glover noted in the Guardian: ‘The shock is real, the grief has hardly begun, but no one in Davos seems to think [this] means they should be less important or less rich.’

Or as Julian Glover noted in the Guardian: ‘The shock is real, the grief has hardly begun, but no one in Davos seems to think [this] means they should be less important or less rich.’ That would involve a change of mindset, which was not what this group seemed inclined toward. After all, a key concept behind the economic order of the past few decades has been the central importance of individual talent – and the need to bestow upon ‘talented individuals’ abundant rewards in order to lure them to the all-important jobs on Wall Street and in the City. The fact that these same individuals were, in part, behind the disastrous global economic meltdown didn’t seem to make a dent in the sky-high-pay mentality.


pages: 344 words: 93,858

The Post-American World: Release 2.0 by Fareed Zakaria

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, double entry bookkeeping, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mutually assured destruction, National Debt Clock, new economy, no-fly zone, oil shock, open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, The future is already here, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, Washington Consensus, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

Already, the cumulative effect of this new economics is apparent. More Indians have moved out of poverty in the last decade than in the preceding fifty years. The world has taken note. Every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, there is a national star—one country that stands out in the gathering of global leaders because of a particularly smart prime minister or finance minister or a compelling tale of reform. In the twelve years that I’ve been going to Davos, no country has so captured the imagination of the conference or dominated the conversation as India did in 2006. It goes well beyond one conference. The world is courting India as never before.

Is there such a thing as a “Hindu” worldview? Perplexed foreigners might be comforted to know that Indians themselves remain unsure of the answers to these questions. India is too full of exuberance right now for much serious reflection. Exuberance worked well enough at the World Economic Forum. As you got off the plane in Zurich, you saw large billboards extolling Incredible India! The town of Davos itself was plastered with signs. “World’s Fastest Growing Free Market Democracy,” proclaimed the local buses. When you got to your room, you found a pashmina shawl and an iPod shuffle loaded with Bollywood songs, gifts from the Indian delegation.

Its economy has received hundreds of billions of dollars in investment—a rarity for a country with much capital of its own. Its companies have entered new countries and industries with great success and used new technologies and processes, all to keep boosting their bottom lines. Despite two decades of a very expensive dollar, American exports have held ground. According to the World Economic Forum, the United States remains the most competitive major economy in the world. (Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore score higher, but their combined population is 22 million, about the size of greater Los Angeles.) It ranks first in innovation, seventh in availability of latest technologies, first in university-industry collaboration on R&D, and fourth in the quality of its scientific research institutions.


pages: 285 words: 81,743

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle by Dan Senor, Saul Singer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, Benchmark Capital, Boycotts of Israel, call centre, Celtic Tiger, clean tech, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Fairchild Semiconductor, friendly fire, Gene Kranz, immigration reform, labor-force participation, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, new economy, pez dispenser, post scarcity, profit motive, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, smart grid, social graph, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Suez crisis 1956, unit 8200, web application, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War

He was the world’s most famous living Israeli, an erudite two-time prime minister and Nobel Prize winner. At eighty-three years old, Shimon Peres certainly did not need another adventure. Just securing these meetings had been a challenge. Shimon Peres was a perennial fixture at the annual Davos World Economic Forum. For the press, waiting to see whether this or that Arab potentate would shake Peres’s hand was an easy source of drama at what was otherwise a dressed-up business conference. He was one of the famous leaders CEOs typically wanted to meet. So when Peres invited the CEOs of the world’s five largest carmakers to meet with him, he expected that they would show up.

Israel High-Tech and Investment Report, September 2004. http://www.ishitech.co.il/0904ar5.htm. Wieseltier, Leon. “Brothers and Keepers: Black Jews and the Meaning of Zionism.” New Republic, February 11, 1985. Wilson, Stewart. Combat Aircraft Since 1945. Fyshwick: Aerospace Publications, 2000. World Economic Forum. “Utility Patents (Hard Data).” Global Information Technology Report 2008–2009. ———. “Venture Capital Availability.” World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2007, 2008. Wyman, David S. Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941. New York: Pantheon, 1985. Yefet, Orna. “McDonalds.” Yediot Ahronot, October 29, 2006. “Yossi Sela, Managing Partner.”

Yet here Agassi was, with the next president of Israel, trying to instruct an auto executive on the future of the auto industry. Even he was beginning to wonder if this entire idea was preposterous, especially since it had begun as nothing more than a thought experiment. At what Agassi calls “Baby Davos”—the Forum for Young Leaders—two years before, he had taken seriously a challenge to the group to come up with a way to make the world a “better place” by 2030. Most participants proposed tweaks to their businesses. Agassi came up with an idea so ambitious that most people thought him naive. “I decided that the most important thing to do was to figure out how to take a single country off of oil,” he told us.


pages: 561 words: 87,892

Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, junk bonds, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Naomi Klein, new economy, old age dependency ratio, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spice trade, statistical model, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transaction costs, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

In this view of the world, it is relatively easy to incorporate the hopes, aspirations and economic muscle of the emerging nations into an already established world economic order. This is the kind of message that found favour in books such as Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and which still finds sympathy today in international gatherings such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (where the great and the good of the global community can solve mass poverty for the benefit of the international media before heading off to the nearest champagne reception or ski slope). Admittedly it’s a seductive view. If globalization is inevitable, the only things that can hold it back are evil men, stupid ideas and wars.

It’s like trying to challenge Microsoft’s supremacy in computer software.7 Yet the dollar’s supremacy may be on the wane. The threat comes not so much from the rise of the euro, even though it, too, now offers deep and liquid currency markets, but, rather, from countries within the emerging world. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 28 January 2009, Vladimir Putin, prime minister of Russia, said: The entire economic growth system, where one regional centre prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional centre manufactures inexpensive goods and saves money printed by other governments, has suffered a major setback … excessive dependence on a single reserve currency is dangerous for the global economy.

(i) Wills Moody, Helen (i) Wimbledon (i), (ii), (iii) Winder, Robert (i) wine (i), (ii), (iii) WIR see World Investment Report Wolf, Martin (i) women’s vote (i) wool industry (i), (ii) workers see also labour nationalism (i) running out of workers (i) command over limited resources (i) demographic dividends and deficits (i) demographic dynamics (i) infant mortality (i) Japan: an early lesson in ageing (i) not the time to close the borders (i) pensions and healthcare (i) a renewed look at migration (i) scarcity (i) working-age population (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) World Bank (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) WorldCom (i) World Development Indicators (i) World Economic Forum (i), (ii) World Economic Outlook (i) World Financial Center, Shanghai (i) World Investment Report (WIR) (i) World Trade Organization (WTO) (i), (ii), (iii) Wright Brothers (i) The Writing on the Wall (Hutton) (i), (ii) WTO see World Trade Organization Wu, Ximing (i), (ii) xenophobia (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Y2K threat (i) yen (i), (ii), (iii) Yom Kippur War (i) Yugoslavia (i) Yu Zhu (i) Zaidi, S.


pages: 311 words: 99,699

Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, book value, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, easy for humans, difficult for computers, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, Kickstarter, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, McMansion, Michael Milken, money market fund, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, Plato's cave, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, tail risk, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, value at risk, yield curve

For five long decades, American finance had worshiped at the altar of free-market ideals. A new era of finance had dawned. EPILOGUE On January 29, 2009, JPMorgan Chase hosted a cocktail party for two hundred of its key clients and contacts in the elegant surroundings of the Piano Bar, in the smart Swiss ski resort of Davos. The occasion was the much-buzzed-about annual gathering of the World Economic Forum, which for the first seven years of the decade had been dominated by the investment banking elite. Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Lehman Brothers, and others threw lavish dinners for favored guests, and bank executives strutted on the conference room stages, extolling the virtues of free markets, globalization, and financial innovation.

But really this crisis is not to do with derivatives. It is about bad mortgage lending, bad risk management practices, how the innovation was used.” It was a message, though, that was hard to get across. As Winters circulated at Davos, he repeatedly tried to explain to people that he still believed that innovation—used correctly—could be a good thing. Almost nobody wanted to listen. What bankers said no longer received much respect. Time and again in Davos, delegates had lashed out against “derivatives,” and credit derivatives in particular. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, pointedly berated the Western financial world for its lack of self-discipline.

At the European Central Bank, in Frankfurt, Jean-Claude Trichet appeared sympathetic to the view of the BIS. “We are currently seeing elements in global financial markets which are not necessarily stable,” he observed in January 2007 at the annual meeting of financiers and global leaders in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. “There is now such creativity of new and very sophisticated financial instruments—that we don’t know fully where the risks are located. We are trying to understand what is going on, but it is a big, big challenge,” he added, with a Gallic shrug. He pointed to the “low level of rates, spreads, and risk premiums” as factors that could trigger a potentially violent “repricing” of assets.


pages: 526 words: 158,913

Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America by Greg Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbus A320, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bonus culture, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, Long Term Capital Management, mass affluent, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Nelson Mandela, plutocrats, Ronald Reagan, six sigma, sovereign wealth fund, technology bubble, too big to fail, US Airways Flight 1549, yield curve

CNBC’s reporter at the exchange, Bob Pisani, would give the Big Board chief feedback after their sessions and over time, Thain, ever the quick study, improved his on-air style. Like Grasso before him, Thain evolved into a quasi-governmental figure, meeting with finance ministers from around the world during their visits to New York, or on his own trips abroad. In particular, Thain became a regular fixture at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where his appointment book would fill up quickly with meetings with foreign dignitaries. Thain’s plain looks, glasses, and modest Midwestern manners suggested Clark Kent prior to visiting a phone booth. After pulling off the Archipelago deal and bringing the NYSE public, Thain had indeed become Superman, at least on Wall Street.

On multiple occasions, including his appearance in Arizona just two days earlier, Thain had talked about all the talented people at Merrill and how important the firm’s culture was. Now, with one statement in a newspaper interview, he had reinforced the notion that Merrill’s own executives weren’t good enough to assume leadership roles in his turnaround of the company. · · · IN THE LAST WEEK of January, Thain and Fleming headed to Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum, where leaders from business and government gathered each year to discuss the global economic situation. The greatest minds of the economic world debated by day whether the recent downturn in the U.S. economy and the collapse of the real estate bubble would have a wide impact.

He had finally succeeded in getting his restricted shares of Merrill Lynch converted into BofA stock, so his total stake in the Charlotte bank was 764,546 shares. Only two other insiders, Lewis (with 2.3 million shares) and Meredith Spangler (with 6.3 million), held more. Thain also continued planning his annual trip to Davos for the following week. He had lined up interviews with the BBC and other media outlets, even though some of his own people asked him if he really thought it was a good idea to assume such a visible role at the World Economic Forum following everything that had been going on at Bank of America. On Monday, January 19, the Financial Times—which had been planning to publish a long feature about how John Thain was the one Wall Street executive smart enough to avoid disaster in 2008—started preparing a different story, one that focused on the December bonus payments at Merrill Lynch.


pages: 583 words: 182,990

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, cakes and ale, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cryptocurrency, dark matter, decarbonisation, degrowth, distributed ledger, drone strike, European colonialism, failed state, fiat currency, Food sovereignty, full employment, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, High speed trading, high-speed rail, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, Kim Stanley Robinson, land reform, liberation theology, liquidity trap, Mahbub ul Haq, megacity, megastructure, Modern Monetary Theory, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, place-making, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rewilding, RFID, Robert Solow, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, synthetic biology, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, wage slave, Washington Consensus

Perhaps it’s time to pull down our pants and have a seat. I invite everyone listening to join us, next week this same time. It might take longer. 39 Davos is one of my favorite parties. The World Economic Forum, held every year at the end of January. It’s touted as an international gathering of power-brokers, those “stateless elites” who come to congratulate themselves and talk about how their plans for the future will make everything all right, especially for the elites themselves, who sometimes get called “Davos Man,” that newly emergent subspecies of Homo sapiens, eighty percent male and in the top ten percent of the top one percent when it comes to personal wealth among other attributes.

Some in Switzerland criticized the cost of this, but then again, if the annual meeting of the rulers of the world wants to be in Switzerland, this probably helps Switzerland hold on to its weird position as one of the wealthiest countries on Earth despite having nothing at all to base that on. Maybe the beauty of the Alps and the brains of its people, but I’m dubious about both. Call me Doubtful in Davos. There used to be protests at Davos, but not now. For one thing, the town is hard to get to and easy to defend. For another, the conference is more and more regarded as irrelevant, just a bunch of rich guys partying; which is true, as I said. So protests had mostly gone away. This perhaps represented an opportunity, or so people said afterward.

The soundtrack here toggled between “All You Need Is Love” and “Can’t Buy Me Love,” to add ridiculous Beatles wisdom to this part of the show. It was actually getting pretty annoying at this point. How could it go on for so long? Where were the fucking Swiss police? Were they in on this? Was this a Swiss plot, like the Red Cross or something? You are one of the Davos Hostages, a voice said at the end of this income comparison film. You will have been a participant at the Captured Davos. What will you do with that? We will be interested to watch you live the rest of your lives. With that the incarceration ended. The drones in the airspace overhead flew away, our helmeted guards were suddenly nowhere to be seen. We cheered when we realized this, and told each other that our indoctrination had been a complete failure and a sad example of bankrupt leftist notions that couldn’t get purchase in the great marketplace of ideas.


pages: 399 words: 114,787

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction by David Enrich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, buy low sell high, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Donald Trump, East Village, estate planning, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, forensic accounting, high net worth, housing crisis, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Jeffrey Epstein, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, Lyft, Mikhail Gorbachev, NetJets, obamacare, offshore financial centre, post-materialism, proprietary trading, Quicken Loans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Renaissance Technologies, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, rolodex, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, Vision Fund, yield curve

Michele Faissola would be among those charged with aiding the Italian bank as it deceived investors and regulators about its finances. BaFin prepared to open an investigation into whether Deutsche helped Paschi conceal losses. The inquiry, led by an outside law firm, was scheduled to begin on Monday, January 27, 2014. On Friday, January 24, Anshu was in the Swiss ski village of Davos. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum—where the world’s most important and self-important people gather each year to admire each other under the guise of making the world a better place—was in full swing. Among its longtime skeptics was Broeksmit. “That’s where the world’s great issues are really solved, with the aid of alcohol and unburdened of opposing viewpoints,” he had snarked in an email to his friends several months earlier.

No Confidence Interviews with Deutsche executives and board members. Sewing’s father: Dirk Laabs, Bad Bank: Aufstieg und Fall der Deutschen Bank, 2018, 498. 7,000 outstanding legal actions: James Shotter, Laura Noonan, and Martin Arnold, “Deutsche Bank: Problems of Scale,” Financial Times, July 28, 2016. Jain at World Economic Forum: Martin Arnold and Tom Braithwaite, “Anshu Jain in Davos Regulation Clash with Jack Lew and Mark Carney,” Financial Times, January 23, 2015. “repeatedly misleading us”: Eyk Henning and David Enrich, “Deutsche Bank to Pay $2.5 Billion to Settle Libor Investigation,” Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2015. Board members were appalled: Daniel Schäfer and Michael Maisch, “Riding with the King,” Handelsblatt, May 13, 2016.

See Trump, Donald, presidential campaign of 2016 United States elections of 2018, 353 United States Football League (USFL), 270 United States housing bubble, 134, 137–40, 157–58 University Club, 242, 284–86 University of Massachusetts (UMass), 46, 47, 57 University of Pennsylvania, 126 Ursuline School, 166, 168–69 US Open, 113 Vaccaro, Jon, 78 Vekselberg, Viktor, 338 Venmo, 351 Villard, Henry, 13–15, 16–18, 310 Northern Pacific Railway loan, 13, 14–15, 17–18 Virgin Atlantic, 229 Virgin Gorda, 207–208 Volcker Rule, 343 Vonnegut, Kurt, 68 Vrablic, Rosemary background of, 166–67 at Bank of America, 168–69 at Citicorp, 167–68 Trump presidency and, 320 Vrablic, Rosemary, at Deutsche Bank Kushners and, 169, 172, 275–77, 306–307, 312 Trump Jr. loan, 275 Vrablic, Rosemary, at Deutsche Bank, and Trump loans, 6–7, 172–74, 270–71, 306–308, 354 Doral property, 175–77, 270, 278 McFadden review, 310–11 Washington, D.C. property, 273–75 VTB Bank, 109–10, 197, 317–18, 327, 328–29 Walker, Dick, 93, 93n, 264, 344–45 Wall Street Journal, 41, 49, 64, 255, 323, 329 DBTCA and Federal Reserve story, 241–42, 249–50 Val’s contact with author, 247–48, 252, 257, 279 Washington Monument, 271 Waters, Maxine, 353 Waugh, Seth, 113–14, 116, 119, 187 Wauthier, Pierre, 203–204, 227, 244 Weber, Axel, 180 Weinstein, Boaz, 128, 137 West, Kanye, 178 Wilcox, Fiona, 287–89 Wilhelm, German Emperor, 15, 178 Wimbledon, 220 Wisley Golf Club, 60, 61, 83 Wiswell, Tim, 198–99, 202, 232–33, 236, 329, 358 Wolfe, Tom, 172 World Economic Forum (Davos), 209–10, 261 World War I reparations, 21 World War II, 19–21. See also Nazi Party Xanax, 226, 285, 287 Yale Club (New York City), 334–35 Yallop, Mark, 81 Yield curve swaps, 34 Young, Neil, 245 Young, Pegi, 244–45, 248, 279, 353, 354–55 Zurich Insurance Group, 203–204, 204n, 210, 227, 338 Zyklon B, 20 About the Author DAVID ENRICH is the finance editor at the New York Times.


pages: 329 words: 102,469

Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West by Timothy Garton Ash

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, centre right, clean water, Columbine, continuation of politics by other means, cuban missile crisis, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, illegal immigration, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Peace of Westphalia, postnationalism / post nation state, Project for a New American Century, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Washington Consensus, working poor, working-age population, World Values Survey

It was estimated that in 1999 the assets of the world’s three richest people at that time, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Paul Allen, exceeded the total annual gross national product of all the world’s least developed countries, with a combined population of some 600 million.76 At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2001, where companies with combined annual sales of around $5 trillion were represented, the immensely decent-seeming John Thornton, then president of Goldman Sachs, said that when he contemplated the way in which some parts of the world were so focused on accumulating ever more private wealth he felt “almost a kind of embarrassment.”77 Almost . . .

Food and Agricultural Organization, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003, quoted in International Herald Tribune, November 26, 2003. 76. This figure is given in the Human Development Report 1999 (New York: UNDP, 1999), p. 38. My attention was drawn to it by Singer, One World, p. 81, from which I take the population figure of 600 million. 77. My notes of a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, Davos, 2001. 78. I owe this thought to Singer, One World, p. 151, drawing on the UNICEF 2001 report on The State of the World’s Children. 79. I take this figure from the 2003 Report of the Commission on Human Security, available on http://www.humansecurity-chs.org/finalreport/index.htm. 80.

T-57. 104. Ibid., p. 22. 105. Ibid., p. 21. 106. German Marshall Fund et al., Transatlantic Trends, p. 9. 107. Article II-11.4 of the Draft Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (Brussels: European Convention, 2003), p. 17. 108. Hubert Vedrine, “The Europe of the Future,” Newsweek, Special Davos edition, December 2002–February 2003, p. 34. 109. See note 5, above. 110. In the Feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 24, 2003. 111. In his introductory speech to the Convention on February 26, 2002, available on http://european-convention.eu.int. 112. Quoted in Lacouture, De Gaulle: The Ruler, p. 393. 113.


pages: 267 words: 74,296

Unhappy Union: How the Euro Crisis - and Europe - Can Be Fixed by John Peet, Anton La Guardia, The Economist

"World Economic Forum" Davos, bank run, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, debt deflation, Doha Development Round, electricity market, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, illegal immigration, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, light touch regulation, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Money creation, moral hazard, Northern Rock, oil shock, open economy, pension reform, price stability, quantitative easing, special drawing rights, supply-chain management, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, transaction costs, éminence grise

., A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas, available at: www.aeaweb.org/aer/top20/51.4.657-665.pdf 11Report of a study group on the role of public finance in European integration, available at: ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/emu_history/documentation/chapter8/19770401en73macdougallrepvol1.pdf 12The story of the single market and the path to 1992 is told in Europe Relaunched: Truths and Illusions on the Way to 1992 by Nicolas Colchester and David Buchan (Hutchison, 1990). 13David Cameron, speech to World Economic Forum in Davos, January 26th 2012, available at: www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2012/01/26/david-cameron-s-davos-speech-in-full 14“Banking on a crisis?”, The Economist, October 29th 1998, available at: www.economist.com/node/174327 15Reported in www.causeur.fr/%C2%AB-on-ne-rejette-pas-platon-%C2%BB,12999 3 How it all works 1Appendix 2 summarises the main treaties, regulations and pacts governing the European Union and the euro. 2This section has drawn on the two best general guides to the European Union: The Penguin Companion to European Union by Anthony Teasdale and Timothy Bainbridge (4th edition, Penguin, 2012) and Guide to the European Union by Dick Leonard (10th edition, Profile Books, 2010 – 11th edition due in 2014).

But there were crucial differences between the American system and the euro zone. Perhaps ironically, it was the UK’s David Cameron, prime minister of a country that will probably never join the single currency, who best summed up these defects, speaking 12 years after the euro was launched at a Davos World Economic Forum. As he then put it:13 There are a number of features common to all successful currency unions: a central bank that can comprehensively stand behind the currency and financial system; the deepest possible economic integration with the flexibility to deal with economic shocks; and a system of fiscal transfers and collective debt issuance that can deal with the tensions and imbalances between different countries and regions within the union.


pages: 398 words: 105,917

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism by Richard Brooks

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blockchain, BRICs, British Empire, business process, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Strachan, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, energy security, Etonian, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks

He co-chairs a Russian investment committee with prime minister and Putin placeman Dmitry Medvedev; does something similar in Shanghai; sat on Donald Trump’s strategy forum until it disbanded in 2017 when the US president went fully toxic by appeasing neo-Nazis; and revels in the status of ‘Global Agenda Trustee’ for the World Economic Forum. The latter is the annual convention of political and business leaders in Davos that Financial Times columnist Edward Luce calls a ‘gathering of the world’s wealthiest recyclers of conventional wisdom’, something that a ‘steward of the proper functioning of global financial markets’ should be challenging, not recycling.35 All the other Big Four firms also send platoons of senior partners to the Swiss mountain resort to get ‘connected with global stakeholders’, as Deloitte puts it.

At the heart of the case was $1bn in cash and revenues, based on fake bank confirmations created in the (later jailed) chairman’s office, which appeared on the company’s books under its auditor’s nose. PwC’s response to the affair said much about the Big Four’s self-interested view of shoddy auditing performed in their name. When the scandal broke, the firm’s worldwide chief executive Sam DiPiazza cut short his stay at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos and jetted to Mumbai. A couple of auditors were suspended and DiPiazza was soon making the requisite noises about conducting ‘an extensive review of our processes globally’. He claimed to one interviewer, however, that ‘we are as much a victim as anyone’. His audit partners ‘were clearly misled’.26 The notion that PwC’s auditors should not have been hoodwinked to the tune of $1bn appeared to have escaped DiPiazza.

., 73, 277 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 143 and Sarbanes–Oxley Act (2002), 122 Connolly, John, 89–90, 136, 137, 139, 146, 148, 150, 201 Conservative Party, 95, 185, 186 consultancy, 6, 10–12, 69, 70–83, 97, 114, 183–210, 261–7, 284–5 Continental Baking, 59 Continental Bank, 101 convergence, 123 Cook, Martin, 16 ‘cooking the books’, 36 Cooper, Cynthia, 109 Cooper, William and Arthur, 49 Coopers & Lybrand, 49, 56, 65, 87–8, 95, 185, 216 Coopers Brothers, 87 Copeland, James, 239 Corbyn, Jeremy, 201 Cornwall, England, 43 corruption, 211–32, 240 cost accounting, 42–4, 70–71, 76 cost–profit calculus, 3 Cotswolds, England, 26 Countrywide Financial Corporation, 48, 118, 257 Court of Appeal, 211 credit default swaps (CDSs), 120, 122, 134–5 credit rating agencies, 130, 149 Cruickshank, David, 166 Crystal Park, Luxembourg, 170 Cuba, 239 Cuomo, Andrew, 133 currency swaps, 156–7 cyber-security, 272–3 Daily Mirror, 88 Daniel, Vincent, 112–13 Dante, 33 Dassler, Horst, 220 Datini, Francesco di Marco, 25 Davey, Horace, Baron Davey, 52 Davos, see World Economic Forum Defoe, Daniel, 38 DeLany, Clarence Martin, 72 Delaware, United States, 8, 57, 92, 236, 284 Deloitte, 2, 5, 8, 12–13, 82, 90, 98, 276, 277 and Adelphia, 109 and bankers’ bonuses, 158 and Bankia, 241 in Brazil, 242–3 Brexit memo (2017), 195, 203 charity, 16–17 in China, 244, 251–2 client relationship partners, 12–13 cyber-security, 272 and Deutsche Bank, 158 dot after name, 12 and Duke Energy, 109 and Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 145 Global Impact Report, 17 global operations, 236 and Gol, 242–3 government, advice to, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194 and GPT, 216 and Hong Kong protests (2014), 251–2 and House of Lords committee (2010), 146 integrated reporting, 18 Journey Declaration, 275 and National Health Service (NHS), 193, 194 and Parmalat, 239, 243 and private finance initiative (PFI), 187, 189, 190, 191, 203 and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), 145 revolving door, 207, 208 and Royal Ahold, 238–9 and Royal Bank of Scotland, 47, 90, 136–40, 142, 147, 241, 259 and securitization, 121 and Standard Chartered Bank, 230 and tax avoidance, 157, 158, 166, 203 and technology, 271 and thrifts, 87 and World Economic Forum, 18 Deloitte, Haskins & Sells, 89 Deloitte, William Welch, 46–7, 49, 158 Deloitte & Touche, 89, 91, 136–40 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 239 Deltour, Antoine, 166–8, 171, 173–4, 175, 175 Democratic Party, 58, 80, 159 Deng Xiaoping, 243 Department for Business, UK, 201 Department for Exiting the EU, 204 Department of Health, UK, 188, 191, 192 Department of Justice, US, 144, 161, 223 deregulation, 84, 85, 95, 112, 163, 273–4 derivatives, 117, 119–23, 125, 129–31, 133–40, 148, 265 Desmond, Dermot, 163 Deutsche Bank, 158, 166, 258 Deutsche Treuhand-Gesellschaft, 235 Devon, England, 73 Dickinson, Arthur, 55, 62, 73, 82 DiPiazza, Sam, 242 dirty pooling, 63 discrezione, 26, 29 Disney, 171 Dissenters, 43 dividends, 31, 39, 45 Donovan, John, 116–17 Doty, James, 260 ‘Double Irish’ scheme, 164 double-entry bookkeeping, 3–4, 6, 18, 22–41, 42–4, 96 Bank of England, 38 and Catholicism, 24–5, 26, 29, 34 Christoffels, 36 East India Company, 37 Goethe, 235 Japan, 235 Medicis, 26–32, 36 Pacioli, 32–6, 100, 124 and Protestantism, 42 Royal African Company, 37 South Sea Company, 39–41, 42 Washington, 53 Watt, 42–3, 44 Wedgwood, 43, 44 Dow Jones, 5, 95 Drucker, Jesse, 164, 165 drug trafficking, 229, 231 Dublin, Ireland, 163 Duke Energy, 109 Duncan, David, 103–4, 105, 106, 107, 108 Duranton International Ltd, 214 EADS, 216 East India Company, 37 Economist, The, 67, 238 EDF (Électricité de France), 205 Edinburgh, Scotland, 54 Edinburgh Society of Accountants, 47 Edison, Thomas, 55 Edward IV, king of England, 30 Edward VII, king of the United Kingdom, 68 Egypt, 21 Einzelunterschrift, 221 Eisenhower, Dwight, 76 Eisman, Steve, 112 Electronic Data Systems, 82 Elizabeth II, queen of the United Kingdom, 111–12 Elkind, Peter, 101 Ellis, Kevin, 256, 258 Enfield rifles, 71 England Bank of England, 38 East India Company, 37 Royal African Company, 37 slave trade, 37 Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), 30 woollen industry, 26, 30 see also United Kingdom Ennis, Jessica, 196 Enron, 16, 40, 99–108, 110, 130, 186, 190, 209, 221, 240, 261, 264 and Arthur Andersen & Co., 4, 7, 11, 74, 102–8, 113, 117 and consultancy arms, sale of, 262 and mark-to-market, 99–102, 113 and regulation, 6, 10, 122, 162, 222, 274, 279 Ernst & Ernst, 63, 71, 87 Ernst & Whinney, 86, 87 Ernst & Young, 2, 56, 91, 97, 132–3, 148–9 alumni system, 17 and Anglo Irish Bank, 144 Arthur Andersen structured finance purchase (2002), 121 ‘Building a Better Working World’, 12 and Civil Service Awards, 200 and Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 145 global operations, 236 government, advice to, 180, 187, 199, 202 and HealthSouth, 109 and Hong Kong protests (2014), 251–2 integrated reporting, 18 in Japan, 240–41 and Lehman Brothers, 12, 13, 132–3, 145, 148–9 and limited liability partnerships, 94, 95 and Lincoln Savings and Loan, 86–7 mark-to-model, 124 Panama Papers scandal (2016), 247 and private finance initiative (PFI), 187 and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), 144–5 ‘Quality in Everything We Do’, 12 revolving door, 206, 207, 208 and securitization, 121 and Sino-Forest, 244 Tate sponsorship, 16 and tax avoidance, 7, 156–7, 162, 180, 182, 246, 247 tax policy development team, 180, 199 thought leadership, 12 and VAT avoidance, 7 and Warner, 224 Weinberger’s leadership, 17–18 and World Economic Forum, 17 European Central Bank, 10 European Commission, 170, 253–5, 268, 280 European Union (EU), 168, 170, 203, 253–5 eurozone, 273 Evans, Jonathan, 207 Evening Standard, 256 Everson, Mark, 159 executive pay, 76 ‘expectations gap’, 65, 257 ‘Eye of the Tiger’ (Survivor), 103 Facebook, 164 fair value, 123–5, 126 Fairhead, Rona, 230 Faisaliah Tower, Riyadh, 217 Falcon 900 jets, 100–101 Farah, Mohamed ‘Mo’, 196 Farrar, Michael, 208 Fastow, Andrew, 101–3, 104–5, 108, 109 Federal National Mortgage Association (‘Fannie Mae’), 118–19, 145, 257 Federal Reserve, 122, 133 Federal Trade Commission, 79 Fiat, 170 Fibonacci, Leonardo, 21–2, 32 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), 219–28 Fife, Scotland, 48 Financial Conduct Authority, 140, 149, 281 financial crisis (2007–8), x, 4, 7, 10, 13–14, 18, 111–50, 210, 253, 256–9, 265 American International Group bailout, 133–5, 144, 145, 148 Anglo Irish Bank bailout, 144 Bear Stearns bailout, 139, 145 and China, 111 Fannie Mae crisis, 118–19, 145, 257 HBOS bailout, x, 140–41, 142–3, 149, 257 Lehman Brothers collapse, 12, 13, 92, 131–3, 138, 144, 145, 148–9 and IAS39 rules, 123–5, 126, 127, 147 and mark-to-market, 129–31 New Century Financial Corporation collapse, 115–18, 257 Northern Rock collapse, 125–9, 142–3, 148 Royal Bank of Scotland bailout, 47, 136–40, 142, 241 and securitization, 119–23, 129–31, 133–40, 265 and subprime mortgages, x, 10, 36, 48, 111–22, 126, 130, 133, 136, 142, 274 Washington Mutual collapse, 145 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 134, 135, 144, 145 Financial Reporting Council, 138, 142, 144, 149, 182, 209–10, 213–14, 259, 261 Financial Services Authority, 127, 128, 137, 138, 140 Financial Times, 17, 94, 169, 275 Finland, 246 First World War (1914–18), 71 Flint, Douglas, 229 FLIP (Foreign Leveraged Investment Program), 159, 162, 181 Florence, Republic of (1115–1532), 16, 21, 25, 26–32 Flynn, Timothy, 149 Ford, 71, 181 Ford, Henry, 71 Fortune, 62 fossil fuels, 18 Foul!


pages: 239 words: 62,311

The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa by Irene Yuan Sun

"World Economic Forum" Davos, asset light, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, business logic, capital controls, clean water, Computer Numeric Control, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, European colonialism, floating exchange rates, full employment, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, invisible hand, job automation, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, manufacturing employment, means of production, mobile money, Multi Fibre Arrangement, post-industrial society, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Skype, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, tacit knowledge, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population

The initiative is breathtaking in its ambition: to connect more than half the world’s population and a third of global GDP. In January 2017, a mere two months after US voters elected Donald Trump on a platform of “America First” and six months after British voters opted to leave the European Union, Xi gave a rousing defense of globalization at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Responding implicitly to Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from pursuing major trade deals with Asia and Europe, Xi asserted, “No one would emerge as a winner in a global trade war. Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room. Wind and rain might be kept outside but so are light and air.”2 China is the first developing country to assume such a global leadership position in modern history.

See also McKinsey Global Institute, “Harnessing Automation for a Future that Works,” http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/digital-disruption/harnessing-automation-for-a-future-that-works. 2. Matt Clinch, “China President Xi Jinping: ‘No One Will Emerge as a Winner in a Trade War,’” CNBC, January 17, 2017, http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/17/chinas-president-xi-jinping-takes-to-the-stage-at-world-economic-forum-in-davos.html. 3. Graham Boynton, “Richard Leakey: What Does Angelina Jolie See in This Man?” Telegraph, September 23, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11114617/Richard-Leakey-What-does-Angelina-Jolie-see-in-this-man.html. 4. Richard Leakey, interview by author, Nairobi, Kenya, July 6, 2016.

Metro Economies GMP and Employment Report: 2015–2017,” The United States Conference of Mayors, January 20, 2016, https://www.usmayors.org/2016/01/20/u-s-metro-economies-gmp-and-employment-report-2015-2017/. 14. World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/country/nigeria. 15. Jennifer Chen, interview by author, Maseru, Lesotho, January 20, 2016. 16. World Economic Forum, http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2014-2015/rankings/; World Economic Forum, http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings. Chapter 4 1. Alan Lin, interview by author, Maseru, Lesotho, January 20, 2016. 2. Marina Bizabani, interview by author, Maseru, Lesotho, January 21, 2016. 3. Sun Jian, interview by author, Ogun, Nigeria, July 2, 2014. 4.


pages: 532 words: 139,706

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, AltaVista, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Ben Horowitz, bioinformatics, Burning Man, carbon footprint, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, death of newspapers, digital rights, disintermediation, don't be evil, facts on the ground, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Google Earth, hypertext link, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet Archive, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Long Term Capital Management, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, Peter Thiel, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Feynman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, semantic web, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, social graph, spectrum auction, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, Susan Wojcicki, systems thinking, telemarketer, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tipper Gore, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, X Prize, yield management, zero-sum game

Not surprising, many governments are hostile to the idea of a free and open Web that Google advances, believing their national values—or the governing regime—are threatened. I soured on attending the World Economic Forum in Davos several years ago because I found too many panels there to be insufferably polite and boring—designed to bestow backslaps on corporate and government attendees. But what is mind stretching about Davos, and different from most conferences, is that attendees come from all over the world and bring with them different sets of values and assumptions about the meaning of words. I remember a panel in the late nineties moderated by Esther Dyson, an early champion of the Internet.

Michael Moritz, who as a director was unhappy with Schmidt’s toughness during his first year at the helm, now said, “I’ve become a huge cheerleader and fully paid-up member of his fan club. He’s done the most important thing for a chief executive, and that’s to recruit and lead a wonderful management team.” Andrew Lack, then the chairman and CEO of Sony Music, who is a friend of Schmidt‘s, remembers an incident at the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the chairman of the New York Times Company and publisher of its flagship newspaper, spoke at a dinner attended by Schmidt and about fifty media executives and journalists. Schmidt remembers the evening vividly, thinking, “I was the guest.” What he did not know, said Lack, was that he “would become a target.”

Starting in 2000, long before Google established its own effort, the Gates Foundation has been extraordinarily generous and smart about leveraging its resources to affect real change. More recently, Gates has enlarged his view of a corporation’s role. In a speech to the 2007 graduating class at Harvard, and again in a January 2008 address to business and government leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Gates called for a “creative capitalism” that relies on market forces to address the needs of poor countries. In an interview with Robert Guth of the Wall Street Journal, Gates spoke of the shortcomings of capitalism. He said he was troubled that innovations in education or health care tend to skip over poor people, and he proposed that successful companies spin off businesses that have “a twin mission” of making money and “improving lives.”


pages: 688 words: 147,571

Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence by Jacob Turner

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Basel III, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Babbage, Clapham omnibus, cognitive dissonance, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, effective altruism, Elon Musk, financial exclusion, financial innovation, friendly fire, future of work, hallucination problem, hive mind, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Loebner Prize, machine readable, machine translation, medical malpractice, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, nudge unit, obamacare, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, Philippa Foot, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, technological singularity, Tesla Model S, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Future of Employment, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, trolley problem, Turing test, Vernor Vinge

As to which, see the website of the International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law, “Homepage”, http://​www.​iaail.​org/​, accessed 30 December 2017. 60“House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence”, Fifth Report of Session 2016–17, 13 September 2016, para. 64. 61Theresa May, “Address to World Economic Forum”, 25 January 2018, https://​www.​weforum.​org/​agenda/​2018/​01/​theresa-may-davos-address/​, accessed 1 June 2018. 62Rowan Manthorpe, “May’s Davos Speech Exposed the Emptiness in the UK’s AI Strategy”, Wired, 28 January 2018, http://​www.​wired.​co.​uk/​article/​theresa-may-davos-artificial-intelligence-centre-for-data-ethics-and-innovation, accessed 1 June 2018. 63Rebecca Hill, “Another Toothless Wonder? Why the UK.gov’s Data Ethics Centre Needs Clout”, The Register, 24 November 2017, https://​www.​theregister.​co.​uk/​2017/​11/​24/​another_​toothless_​wonder_​why_​the_​ukgovs_​data_​ethics_​centre_​needs_​some_​clout/​, accessed 1 June 2018. 64Ibid. 65House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, AI in the UK : Ready, Willing and Able?

It is not clear, however, if any cross-fertilisation of ideas, or learning, is taking place across these layers of governance or between the public and private sectors. As the Chief Executive of Nesta [a charitable foundation focussed on innovation] has argued, ‘it’s currently no-one’s job to work out what needs to be done’.60 In a speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May emphasised the importance of AI to the UK’s economy and signalled its willingness to participate in international regulation.… in a global digital age we need the norms and rules we establish to be shared by all. This includes establishing the rules and standards that can make the most of Artificial Intelligence in a responsible way, such as by ensuring that algorithms don’t perpetuate the human biases of their developers.

So we want our new world-leading Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation to work closely with international partners to build a common understanding of how to ensure the safe, ethical and innovative deployment of Artificial Intelligence…. the UK will also be joining the World Economic Forum’s new council on Artificial Intelligence to help shape global governance and applications of this new technology.61 Despite these fine words, specific policy developments remain elusive. Rowan Manthorpe, writing in the influential technology magazine Wired, argued that “May’s Davos speech exposed the emptiness in the UK’s AI strategy”. He continued: “…there are only bland pronouncements about the promise of innovation, that brush aside difficult questions, elide compromises, and obscure the trade-offs made in the name of the national good”.62 Another journalist, Rebecca Hill, has wondered whether the vaunted Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation will turn out to be “[a]nother toothless wonder”.63 Likewise, AI policy expert Michael Veale has voiced concerns that this body “will descend into one of many talking shops, producing a series of one-off reports looking at single abstract issues”.64 So long as it continues to lack a clear mandate, leadership or programme of action these concerns will remain.


pages: 354 words: 110,570

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright, Bradley Hope

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, Donald Trump, failed state, family office, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Frank Gehry, Global Witness, high net worth, junk bonds, low interest rates, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, Oscar Wyatt, Ponzi scheme, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, Snapchat, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Virgin Galactic

To ensure that didn’t happen, Low set about raising even more money. Once more, he relied on Goldman Sachs. The World Economic Forum, held each year in the Swiss ski village of Davos, is a microcosm of elite networks that span the globe, attracting world leaders, Wall Street titans, and chief executives of Fortune 500 companies. The events, in which panels of experts debate high-minded topics like radical Islam or the “democratic deficit” in front of audiences, is only the public face of Davos. In rooms open only to the chosen few with special white VIP passes—the highest in a color-graded hierarchy—the real deal making occurs.

In late January, Michael Evans, a Goldman vice chairman in New York overseeing “growth markets,” had an important person to see on the sidelines of Davos: the prime minister of Malaysia. Evans’s audience was with Prime Minister Najib, brokered by Tim Leissner—just the kind of meeting between a Wall Street banker and a world leader that was typical at the event in the Swiss Alps. In public appearances at Davos, Najib was in his element, deepening the impression of Malaysia as a beacon of democracy in the Islamic world, and himself as an urbane technocrat. “We have to take care of the young people, we have to give them jobs,” he told Fareed Zakaria of CNN during an interview on the sidelines of Davos. But here, with Evans and Leissner, Najib had a strikingly different agenda.

Sitting in a horseshoe of chairs, laid out in one of the yacht’s staterooms, the prime minister was talking business with Sheikh Mohammed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, who also was Sheikh Mansour’s brother. Low helped arrange the meeting in early July 2013. The group also included Michael Evans, the Goldman vice president who met Najib at Davos, and Tim Leissner. As he held forth, Najib was in an ebullient mood. The money Low had put at his disposal had kept him securely in power. And now Abu Dhabi was preparing to pour money into a financial center that would carry the Razak family name, with Goldman standing by to help. Turning to Evans and Leissner, the prime minister heaped praise on the bankers for their role so far and promised it was just the tip of the iceberg.


pages: 606 words: 157,120

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Automated Insights, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, Dava Sobel, digital divide, disintermediation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, future of journalism, game design, gamification, Gary Taubes, Google Glasses, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of the printing press, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, lifelogging, lolcat, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, moral panic, Narrative Science, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, pets.com, placebo effect, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, smart meter, social graph, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler

,” GigaOm, October 16, 2012, http://gigaom.com/data/will-monitoring-our-health-be-like-managing-a-stock-portfolio-2. 232 “many of our problems come from”: Wolf, “The Data-Driven Life.” 233 “total explicitness” that rests “on a misunderstanding”: Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 234 “personal data are ideally suited”: Wolf, “The Data-Driven Life.” 234 published a New York Times op-ed: Bill Wasik, “Bright Lights, Big Internet,” New York Times, July 30, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/opinion/30wasik.html. 234 “I’m not just tickled by Instant Pages”: Farhad Manjoo, “My PC Needs ESP,” Slate, August 3, 2011, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/08/my_pc_needs_esp.html. 235 World Economic Forum in Davos is already hosting discussions: “Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class,” World Economic Forum, January 2011, http://www.weforum.org/reports/personal-data-emergence-new-asset-class. 235 “We are trying to shift the focus”: Julia Angwin and Emily Steel, “Web’s Hot New Commodity: Privacy,” Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703529004576160764037920274.html. 235 “The parasitism of corporations snooping”: David Mitchell, “There’s No Point Resisting Corporate Websites.

After all, once users can self-track, they can decide what to do with their data—so concerns about privacy become concerns about finding the right market and charging the right price. It’s not particularly surprising, then, that the World Economic Forum in Davos is already hosting discussions to explore how personal data can be made into a new “asset class” on a par with wheat or widgets. As a high-placed Bain & Company executive who led the Davos discussion put it, “We are trying to shift the focus from purely privacy to what we call property rights.” A recent column in the Observer illustrates how market logic can easily invade discussions of privacy.

See also Authenticity Truth Goggles Tsoukas, Nikolas Tuomi, Ilkka Turow, Joseph Twitter and algorithms, and Trends and memes and predictive policing and public engagement and technocratic pose Two-party system Uniformity Usability Utopianism Verizon Video cameras Virtue and citizenship, and efficiency Volf, Miroslav Voting, proxy Walzer, Michael Warner, Mark Wasik, Bill Water consumption feedback devices Water consumption metering systems Wattcher Wayland, Kent Weight tracking Weinberger, David Whitney, Joel WiFi networks WikiLeaks Wikipedia Wilde, Oscar “the will to improve,” Williams, Anthony Williams, Bernard Willpower Winn, Peter Winner, Langdon Wolf, Gary Wolfram, Stephen Wolfram Alpha Worboys, Michael Words with Friends World Economic Forum, Devos Wu, Tim Wulff, Bettina Yelp YouTube Yu, Harlan Zagat Zamzee Zichermann, Gabe Zittrain, Jonathan and digital preemption Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerman, Ethan Zynga Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, a New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and winner of Harvard’s Kennedy School’s 2012 Goldsmith Book Prize.


pages: 307 words: 88,180

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, bike sharing, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Chrome, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, ImageNet competition, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, low skilled workers, Lyft, machine translation, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, OpenAI, pattern recognition, pirate software, profit maximization, QR code, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, SoftBank, Solyndra, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, vertical integration, Vision Fund, warehouse robotics, Y Combinator

Guo had used the tools at his disposal—cash, cement, and manual labor—to give a strong nudge toward indigenous innovation in the local startup. It was a landmark moment for Zhongguancun, but one that wasn’t destined to stay sequestered to this corner of Beijing. Indeed, Guo’s approach was about to go national. INNOVATION FOR THE MASSES On September 10, 2014, Premier Li Keqiang took the stage during the 2014 World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” in the coastal Chinese city of Tianjin. There he spoke of the crucial role technological innovation played in generating growth and modernizing the Chinese economy. The speech was long and dense, heavy on jargon and light on specifics. But of note during the speech, Li repeated a phrase that was new to the Chinese political lexicon: “mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation.”

Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. . . . Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate. Fink’s letter dropped just days before the 2018 World Economic Forum, an annual gathering of the global financial elite in Davos, Switzerland. I was attending the forum and watched as CEOs anxiously discussed the stern warning from a man whose firm controlled substantial ownership stakes in their companies. Many publicly professed sympathy for Fink’s message but privately declared his emphasis on broader social welfare to be anathema to the logic of private enterprise.

See also global economic inequality WeChat AI community and, 88 Chinese students and, 83 development of, 58–59 as digital Swiss Army knife, 17, 54 mobile payments and, 60–61, 74, 75, 112 super-app model and, 70–71 Tencent and, 58–59, 60–61, 93 WeChat Wallet, 60, 69, 70, 74, 76, 77, 121 Weibo (micro-blogging platform), 40, 181, 189 Weixin, 58. See also WeChat WhatsApp, 59 white-collar workers, 146, 153, 166, 167, 168 Whitman, Meg, 36–37 work-sharing arrangements, 205–6 World Economic Forum (2018), 215 World Health Organization, 101 X Xiaomi (hardware startup), 127 Xiaonei (Facebook clone), 22–23, 42, 46, 47 Xiong’an New Area, China, 133–34 Y Yahoo!, 31, 41 Yang, Jerry, 31 Y Combinator, 208 Yelp, 71–72, 77 YouTube, 107 Z Zhang, Charles, 30–31 Zhongguancun Bank, 68 Zhongguancun neighborhood/technology zone, 3, 51–52, 53, 61–62 Zhou Hongyi, 40–42 Zhu Yuanzhang, 48 Zuckerberg, Mark, 22, 28, 33, 208 About the Author DR.


pages: 654 words: 120,154

The Firm by Duff McDonald

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset light, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, book value, borderless world, collective bargaining, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, family office, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, new economy, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, Ralph Nader, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Solow, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, The Nature of the Firm, vertical integration, young professional

But the firm remained at the top of the Vault.com survey of the most prestigious consulting firms in 2011, a spot it had held for a decade. McKinsey’s Thursday night party at the Belvedere Hotel during the World Economic Forum in Davos is still considered the best event of the week. There is talk in WEF circles of when Klaus Schwab, the seventy-three-year-old founder of Davos, lets go of the reins that McKinsey will take over management of the Forum. McKinsey Man is Davos Man, after all. In March 2012 McKinsey partners quietly reelected Dominic Barton to a second term as managing director. No one even bothered running against him, which wasn’t surprising.

Oliver, 31, 32, 37, 38 Wells Fargo, 108, 166, 255 Westchester Country Club: McKinsey strategy experts meeting (1977) at, 139–40 Westinghouse Electric, 17, 18, 114, 303 Westlaw, 323 Wharton School of Finance and Economy (University of Pennsylvania), 20, 215 White House: reorganization of staff at, 67 Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance (Gerstner), 82, 304 Whyte, William, 64 Wiesel, Elie, 314 The Will to Lead (Bower), 44 Willner, Barry, 68, 70 WilmerHale and Cravath, 310 Wilson and Company, 18 Wilson, Greg, 287 Wirstschaftswoche magazine: Henzler story in, 158 Woetzel, Jonathan, 228 Wolf, Michael, 210 women: at McKinsey, 106, 169–70, 207. See also specific person Wooldridge, Adrian, 112 World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland), 311, 324 World War II, 52, 55, 62, 95 The World’s Newest Profession (McKenna), 260 Wright, Bob, 189–90 Wriston, Walter, 91 Wuffli, Peter, 232, 253 Yokoyama, Isamu, 164 Young, John, 148 Young, Lew, 148 youth: as prized over experience, 4, 7, 80–82, 229 Zelazny, Gene, 123 Zumwinkel, Klaus, 296 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2013 by Duff McDonald All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

In 2001 he helped raise $1 billion in relief funds after the Gujarat earthquake in India. He co-founded the American India Foundation with Bill Clinton. Gupta co-founded the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He took on roles with the United Nations and joined the board of the World Economic Forum. He chaired the India AIDS initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He was, in effect, the de facto chairman of the international division of India, Inc. He also stayed connected to the corporate realm, and his long career as a well-connected corporate consigliere made him highly coveted as a director.


pages: 363 words: 105,039

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, air gap, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, Citizen Lab, clean water, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, false flag, global supply chain, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, machine readable, Mikhail Gorbachev, no-fly zone, open borders, pirate software, pre–internet, profit motive, ransomware, RFID, speech recognition, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, tech worker, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

Everything that he and every other Maersk employee had stored locally on their machines, from notes to contacts to family photos, was gone. * Fernández is not his real name. Like Henrik Jensen, this source asked that I refer to him using a pseudonym. 27 THE COST Five months after Maersk had recovered from its NotPetya attack, the company’s chair, Jim Hagemann Snabe, sat onstage at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and lauded the “heroic effort” that went into Maersk’s IT rescue operation. From June 27, when he was first awakened by a 4:00 a.m. phone call in California, ahead of a planned appearance at a Stanford conference, he said, it took just ten days for the company to rebuild its entire network of four thousand servers and forty-five thousand PCs.

Even with firmer attribution, the statement had claimed naively or legalistically, NotPetya didn’t actually inflict “consequences comparable to an armed attack,” and thus didn’t trigger Article 5 of NATO’s collective defense provision—the one that required member states to treat a military attack against one of them as an act of war against them all.*1 Other than brief public statements like those of Maersk’s chairman, Snabe, at the World Economic Forum, the international victims of NotPetya shared the very minimum amount of information necessary to explain the ballooning damages they were legally required to report to shareholders. Even as red ink poured down their balance sheets, none of those major multinationals would name Russia as their abuser.

The security revamp was green-lighted and budgeted. But its success was never made a so-called key performance indicator for Maersk’s most senior IT overseers, so implementing it wouldn’t contribute to their bonuses. They never carried the security makeover forward. Few firms have paid more dearly for dragging their feet on security. In his Davos talk, Snabe claimed that the company suffered only a 20 percent reduction in total shipping volume during its NotPetya outage, thanks to its quick efforts and manual workarounds. But aside from the company’s lost business and downtime, as well as the cost of rebuilding an entire network, Maersk reimbursed many of its customers for the expense of rerouting or storing their marooned cargo.


pages: 1,066 words: 273,703

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , book value, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, break the buck, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, company town, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, dark matter, deindustrialization, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial engineering, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, friendly fire, full employment, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paradox of thrift, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, post-truth, predatory finance, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, structural adjustment programs, tail risk, The Great Moderation, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade liberalization, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, white flight, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, éminence grise

Graham, “The Wrong Side of ‘the Right Side of History,’” Atlantic, December 21, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/obama-right-side-of-history/420462/. 125. IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2017, 23, 187, 204. CHAPTER 25: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME 1. N. Barkin and E. Piper, “In Davos, Xi Makes Case for Chinese Leadership Role,” Reuters, January 17, 2017. 2. “President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full,” World Economic Forum, January 17, 2017. 3. E. Wong and C. Buckley, “Stock Market Plunge in China Dents Communist Party’s Stature,” New York Times, July 9, 2015. 4. C. Walter and F. Howie, Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise (Singapore: Wiley, 2011). 5.

The real force of the question becomes apparent if we direct our attention, in conclusion, not to America and Europe, the old hub of transatlantic globalization, but to China and the emerging markets, where the future of the world economy will be decided. There the years prior to 2017 had been anything but calm. Chapter 25 THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME On January 17, 2017, as the World Economic Forum assembled at Davos to consider the implications of Brexit and Trump, China’s President Xi Jinping stepped to the rostrum to deliver the opening plenary. It was a speech widely seen as announcing China’s new role as an “anchor of globalization.”1 Eight years earlier the governor of PBoC had made headlines around the world by proposing a new Bretton Woods.

We have to do what the UN General Assembly in September 2008 could not do. We have to grapple with the economics of the financial system. This is a necessarily technical and at times perhaps somewhat coldhearted business. There is a chilly remoteness to much of the material that this book will be dealing with. This is a choice. Tracing the inner workings of the Davos mind-set is not the only way to understand how power and money operated in the course of the crisis. One can try to reconstruct their logic from the boot prints they left on those they impacted or through the conformist and contradictory market-oriented culture that they molded.13 But the necessary complement to those more tactile renderings is the kind of account offered here, which attempts to show how the circulation of power and money was understood to function—and not to function—from within.


pages: 261 words: 86,905

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means by John Lanchester

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, asset allocation, Basel III, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Swan, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, forward guidance, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, High speed trading, hindsight bias, hype cycle, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kodak vs Instagram, Kondratiev cycle, Large Hadron Collider, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, McJob, means of production, microcredit, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Nikolai Kondratiev, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working poor, yield curve

What’s needed is for more people to behave countercyclically. In a similar way, banks and governments should in future be encouraged to build up greater reserves during the good times. Davos Another metonym: it’s a place in Switzerland, the setting for Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain, but also the place where the World Economic Forum has its annual meeting of 2,500-odd delegates and hacks. The World Economic Forum is run by a Swiss academic called Klaus Schwab, who founded it in 1971 as the less grandiose European Management Forum; its self-published history of its first forty years calls itself “a partner in shaping history.”

In practice it is mainly a rich people’s club, committed to preserving the existing world order. It is funded by donations from “member companies,” which are the usual Dr. Evil wannabes—Goldman, Google, GE, and that’s only the Gs. The annual theme is always some magnificent piece of content-free corporate bullshit: 2013 was “dynamic resilience.” Note that Davos is also the first name of the pirate Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones, and is nearly the same word as Davros, evil creator of the Daleks, in the BBC series Doctor Who. dead cat bounce An apparent but illusory recovery in a falling market. It’s the same kind of bounce a dead cat would give if you chucked it out a window: not a very big one.


pages: 353 words: 81,436

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Wolfgang Streeck

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, basic income, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, currency risk, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial repression, fixed income, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, income inequality, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, means of production, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Occupy movement, open borders, open economy, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, profit maximization, risk tolerance, shareholder value, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck

See thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com (last accessed 26 November 2012). 7 Of course, throughout the long Keynesian era this was true also of the Hayekian utopia. 8 This view is already surprisingly widespread, even in circles where one would least expect to find it. See a report in Die Welt (26 January 2012) on the opening of the world economic forum in Davos: ‘Ben Verwaayen, chairman of the telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent, spoke of the unfulfilled promises of capitalism…“The task is to learn from the excesses,” said Brian Moynihan, chairman of Bank of America. But the banker did not seem too confident. “Will we get it right next time?” he asked the meeting. And he immediately gave the answer himself: “The Lord only knows.”…In fact, according to the widely held view in Davos, capitalism simply has not delivered … For David Rubinstein, founder and boss of the American private equity firm Carlyle Group, the problems lie deeper.

Against this background, Monday’s internet edition of the right-populist Libero ratcheted up the Italian attacks still further: “The Nazi Germans want to give us lessons in democracy.” ’ 82 As repeatedly done by the grand speculator George Soros with major public effect. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (26 January 2012), Soros warned at the Davos world economic forum ‘that the euro is undermining the political cohesion of the EU … Germany carries the main responsibility in this … To contain the danger, Soros recommended that the Europeans should exercise strict financial discipline and implement structural reforms … One means to this end are Eurobonds.’


pages: 25 words: 5,789

Data for the Public Good by Alex Howard

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Atul Gawande, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, data science, Hernando de Soto, Internet of things, Kickstarter, lifelogging, machine readable, Network effects, openstreetmap, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social intelligence, social software, social web, web application

If consumers and regulators had access to that data, they could tap it to make better choices about everything from finance to healthcare to real estate, much in the same way that web applications like Hipmunk and Zillow let consumers make more informed decisions. Personal Data Assets When a trend makes it to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, it’s generally evidence that the trend is gathering steam. A report titled “Personal Data Ownership: The Emergence of a New Asset Class” suggests that 2012 will be the year when citizens start thinking more about data ownership, whether that data is generated by private companies or the public sector.


pages: 486 words: 150,849

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, airport security, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, American ideology, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, Burning Man, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer age, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, Erik Brynjolfsson, feminist movement, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Future Shock, game design, General Motors Futurama, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, High speed trading, hive mind, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, Joan Didion, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, Naomi Klein, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Overton Window, Peter Thiel, Picturephone, plutocrats, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Seaside, Florida, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, tech billionaire, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, very high income, wage slave, Wall-E, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional, éminence grise

A few years ago the founder and operator of the annual weeklong convocation of masters of the universe known as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, started using “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” to describe what’s happening. It stuck, and in 2019 at Davos it was a main topic for the three thousand CEOs and bankers (and government officials and consultants and academics and journalists), a third of them American. The technology reporter Kevin Roose wrote a bracingly honest account in The New York Times called “The Hidden Automation Agenda of the Davos Elite.” In the public panel discussions and on-the-record interviews, he wrote, executives wring their hands over the negative consequences that artificial intelligence and automation could have for workers….But in private settings…these executives tell a different story: They are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers….They crave the fat profit margins automation can deliver, and they see A.I. as a golden ticket to savings, perhaps by letting them whittle departments with thousands of workers down to just a few dozen.

As for when and how many particular jobs will be taken over by machines, either disembodied AI or robots, the estimates range widely, but pre-pandemic most predicted that between 15 and 30 percent of current jobs in the United States and the rest of the developed world will be eliminated during the next ten to twenty years, with many more “at risk.” A survey conducted of Davos celebrants of the Fourth Industrial Revolution gives a more focused sense of the remarkable speed of the rise of the machines in the immediate future. The Davos researchers asked the relevant executives at three hundred big corporations employing 15 million people about the impact of automation on their companies’ work and workers. In 2018, machines were doing 29 percent of all the work at all those companies combined, the “total task hours”; just four years later, in 2022, the executives collectively forecast, it would be up to 42 percent.

In the public panel discussions and on-the-record interviews, he wrote, executives wring their hands over the negative consequences that artificial intelligence and automation could have for workers….But in private settings…these executives tell a different story: They are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers….They crave the fat profit margins automation can deliver, and they see A.I. as a golden ticket to savings, perhaps by letting them whittle departments with thousands of workers down to just a few dozen. The president of Infosys, a big global technology services and consulting company, told Roose at Davos that their corporate clients used to have “incremental, 5 to 10 percent goals in reducing their work force,” in other words shrinking them by half or more over the next decade. “Now they’re saying” about their near futures, “ ‘Why can’t we do it with 1 percent of the people we have?’ ” There’s a whole new subdiscipline of technologists and economists predicting and debating what work can or can’t be automated partly or entirely and, depending on the cost, what jobs will or won’t be done mainly by smart machines by what year in the twenty-first century.


pages: 555 words: 80,635

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital by Kimberly Clausing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, climate change refugee, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, fake news, floating exchange rates, full employment, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, investor state dispute settlement, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, uber lyft, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, zero-sum game

A Better Partnership with the Business Community 1. International organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have long promoted inclusive growth. Inclusive growth has even become a marquee goal of the World Economic Forum, an organization best known for its annual meeting hosting the global elite each winter in Davos, Switzerland. Since 2015, the World Economic Forum has compiled and published an Inclusive Development Index. Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, the United States ranks twenty-third among advanced economies in the Inclusive Development Index in 2018. 2.

Eventually, the GATT evolved into the World Trade Organization in 1995, after the Uruguay Round of trade liberalization. 5. This process began with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Originally the European Economic Community, the European Union was established in 1993. 6. See Max Roser, “War and Peace,” Our World in Data, 2016, https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace/. 7. At a recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Xi Jinping said: “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so are light and air.” 8. The phrasing of this last line evokes a book that I found inspirational early in my college education: Alan S. Blinder, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough-Minded Economics for a Just Society (Reading, MA: Basic Books, 1987).

The United States ranked sixth for ease of doing business, and the World Economic Forum determined that the United States is the world’s second most competitive economy.2 The US rank is buttressed by highly sophisticated businesses, a huge market, innovation, and strong institutions of higher education, overcoming the negative effects of relatively poor infrastructure and primary education. ________________________ 1.  The full set of rankings can be found at its website: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings. 2.  World Economic Forum, The Global Competitiveness Report 2017–2018, September 26, 2017.


pages: 455 words: 133,322

The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, Benchmark Capital, billion-dollar mistake, Burning Man, delayed gratification, demand response, don't be evil, global village, happiness index / gross national happiness, Howard Rheingold, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Network effects, Peter Thiel, rolodex, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, social software, social web, SoftBank, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, UUNET, Whole Earth Review, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

He started saying he couldn’t wait for 2010 so he could stop wearing that damned tie. 17 The Future “My goal was never to just create a company.” Mark Zuckerberg is sitting under the beams of an elegant old Swiss restaurant in Davos during the January 2009 World Economic Forum, the celebrated annual gathering of government and industry leaders. To his right is Sheryl Sandberg, and at the other end of the small table is Larry Page, Google’s co-founder. Accel Partners, Facebook’s primary venture capital investor, is hosting an annual Davos gathering for technologists and scientists called the “Nerd’s Dinner.” This year Accel has flown in not one but two American sommeliers to present several varieties of $600-a-bottle California wine.

“We’ll never know what really happened in the Harvard dorms four years ago,” the article concluded. “The question remains: Whose idea was it?” Sandberg was concerned when she read it and queried her friend McNamee, who assured her of Zuckerberg’s honesty. Late in January both of them were heading to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Sandberg invited Zuckerberg to join her for the flight from San Francisco to Zurich on Google One, as the 767 owned by its co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin is known. The two talked conspiratorially the entire flight, a fact not unnoticed by some of her Google colleagues.

Records, 54, 125 Warner Music Group, 54, 125 Washington Post, 108, 224, 248 Washington Post Company, 107–10, 113, 117, 120, 121, 122, 136, 233, 254, 321 Wealth of Nations (Smith), 223 We Are Marshall, 176 Wedding Crashers, The, 98, 151 Weinberger, David, 206 Weiner, Jeff, 252 Weinreich, Andrew, 68, 69, 70, 71 Weisblatt, Jon, 334 Werdegar, Maurice, 95, 112–13, 126 Wesleyan University, 79 WesMatch, 79 West, Denmark, 159–60 West Bank, 279 Western Technology Investment (WTI), 95–96, 112–13, 126, 322 Whalley, Tom, 54 Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link, The (Well), 66 Wikinomics (Tapscott), 265 Wikipedia, 43 Williams College, 79 Windows, 215, 218 Winkelvoss, Cameron, 26, 39, 40, 65, 71, 80, 81, 82–83, 85, 97, 101, 173 Winkelvoss, Tyler, 26, 39, 40, 65, 71, 80, 82, 83, 85, 97, 101, 173 Wired, 325 Wirehog, 44, 46, 50, 53, 54, 64, 86, 89, 94, 98, 99–100, 153, 157, 218 launch of, 100 Sequoia Capital and, 104–5 Wolf, Michael, 160–61, 166–67, 168, 170, 178, 179 World Economic Forum, 253–54, 318, 327 World of Warcraft, 230 World Wide Web, 66, 68 Wright, Robert, 202 Xbox, 56, 98, 131, 306 Xiaonei, 282 Y2M, 42–44, 60, 102, 126, 129, 140–41 Yahoo, 48, 104, 116, 161, 162, 163, 168, 169, 178, 188, 216, 241, 252, 296 purchase of Facebook desired by, 182–87, 195–98 YaleStation, 36, 79 Yale University, 35, 36, 79 Yang, Jerry, 216 Yoda, Hiroko, 213 Young Civilian, 290–91 YouTube, 104, 129, 236, 272 Yu, Gideon, 236, 243 Zakaria, Fareed, 291–92 02138, 253 Ziemann, Tyler, 77–78 Zittrain, Jonathan, 310 Zoolander, 57 Zuckerberg, Mark: academic success of, 20–21, 25–26, 38 as ambivalent towards advertising, 43, 61–62, 101–2, 140, 159, 175, 177, 235, 255, 257, 260, 271 around-the-world trip of, 257 attempted mugging of, 127 author’s interview with, 10–11 blog of, 191–92, 250, 308, 309 board as controlled by, 125, 146, 148, 236, 320 casual appearance of, 10, 14, 20, 89, 119, 160–61, 221, 224, 283, 302 confidence of, 41, 44, 51–52, 57–58, 248–49, 250, 318 and creation of Facebook, 26–27 DeWolfe’s meeting with, 139 dorm room of, 21–22 Facebook ownership of, 11, 34, 62, 124–25, 321, 322 in Facemash episode, 23–25, 26, 28, 29, 158 first website of, 67 growth over profits philosophy of, 43, 230, 258–59, 271, 277–78, 283–84, 315, 319, 330–31 as Harvard drop-out, 64 health of, 164 idealism of, 10–11, 43, 228, 229, 330 immaturity of, 128 introverted personality of, 20, 29, 43, 51, 89, 97, 108, 120, 122–23, 134, 162–63 investments by, 30, 38, 63, 86 journal and diary of, 23, 134–35, 295 leadership qualities learned by, 135–36, 164–65, 179 in meetings with Viacom, 160, 167–71, 182 in meeting with Levinsohn, 152–153 in meeting with Sequoia Capital, 104–5 in move to California, 44–45 and Parker’s arrest and resignation, 146, 147, 148 Parker’s meeting in New York with, 47 platform strategy of, 11, 215–16, 217, 220, 221–22, 227–28, 230, 234, 262–63, 305–7 on political activism, 6 recruiting by, 47, 106, 130, 131, 175 sale of Facebook disdained by, 11, 41, 113, 139, 160, 161, 162, 164, 172, 182, 183–86, 197–98, 236, 240, 244 Saverin’s disagreement with, 59–63, 64, 65, 89 Spain trip of, 274, 276, 278, 283 as squeamish about venture capitalists and investors, 48, 87, 104, 109, 110, 114, 117, 119–20, 123–25, 126, 236 Synapse built by, 25, 26, 37, 98, 218 in talks with Washington Post Company, 107–10, 123–24 tie worn by, 302, 307, 317 on transparency, 11, 14–15, 202–203, 207, 214, 333 whiteboard used by, 19, 32–33 Wirehog and, 44, 53, 54, 86, 89, 99–100, 104–5, 218 see also Facebook; Wirehog Zuckerberg, Randi, 21, 186 Zynga, 228–29, 232, 233, 283 In December 2003, the residents of two adjoining rooms in Harvard’s Kirkland House posed for this photo.


The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, clean water, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Edward Glaeser, end world poverty, European colonialism, failed state, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, George Akerlof, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, intentional community, invisible hand, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, land tenure, Live Aid, microcredit, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, publication bias, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, structural adjustment programs, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, TSMC, War on Poverty, Xiaogang Anhui farmers

He saw that preparing hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes on an assembly-line basis was a way to run a successful chain of fast-food restaurants. He forgot all about the Multimixer, and the rest is a history of Golden Arches stretching as far as the eye can see. How many Ray Krocs has foreign aid lost by its emphasis on plans? Getting Bed Nets to the Poor At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005, celebrities from Gordon Brown to Bill Clinton to Bono liked the idea of bed nets as a major cure for poverty. Sharon Stone jumped up and raised a million dollars on the spot (from an audience made up largely of middle-aged males) for more bed nets in Tanzania. Insecticide-treated bed nets can protect people from being bitten by malarial mosquitoes while they sleep, which significantly lowers malaria infections and deaths.

By contrast, a study of a program to hand out free nets in Zambia to people, whether they wanted them or not (the favored approach of Planners), found that 70 percent of the recipients didn’t use the nets. The “Malawi model” is now spreading to other African countries. The Washington headquarters of PSI, much less the Davos World Economic Forum, did not dictate this particular solution. The local PSI office in Malawi (which is staffed mostly by Malawians who have been with the program for years) was looking for a way to make progress on malaria. They decided that bed nets would do the job, then hit upon the antenatal clinic and the two-channel sales idea.

., Wolfensohn, James women education for girls hunger in in Igbo revolt malnutrition in pregnancy maternal mortality in Millennium Development Goals and polygamy World Bank AIDS programs aid volume emphasized by author as employee of and bad government Big Push thinking influencing in Bolivian free-market reforms China aid from Congolese strategy of creation of and democracy Development Impact Evaluation Task Force differences among aid bureaucracies evaluation of formal rules preferred by Haiti program of and heavily indebted poor countries India aid from in international aid bureaucracy Lesotho agricultural project of on maintenance and Mexican banking crisis in Millennium Project Nicaragua aid from observable efforts shown by Operations Evaluation Department “Our Dream Is a World Free of Poverty,” Pakistan aid from on participation on peacekeeping postmodern imperialism and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper progress reports on Africa research department of scholarship program of and selection effect SMEs supported by social action program in Pakistan “structural adjustment” programs of successful programs of Sudan aid from in Western interventions in world poverty World Development Report World Economic Forum World Economic Outlook World Health Organization (WHO) and AIDS Chinese tuberculosis project creation of on health spending in poor countries in international aid bureaucracy vaccination campaigns of Xiaogang (China) Yamagata Aritomo Yeltsin, Boris Yugoslavia Yukos Yunus, Mohammad Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) AIDS in Belgian Congo cellular phone network in government corruption and violence in Luba dominating trade in mineral wealth in Mobuto negative growth in “post-conflict reconstruction” aid to state collapse in ten worst per capita growth rates U.S. military intervention in Zakaria, Fareed Zambia Zimbabwe AIDS in bad government in as failed state white-minority regime in whites and Asians in business in Zinga, Silvia Neyala Page numbers are in Sachs’s book The End of Poverty: Economic ossibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2005).


The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, business logic, Cass Sunstein, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, electricity market, energy security, Exxon Valdez, Ford Model T, IBM and the Holocaust, joint-stock company, laissez-faire capitalism, market fundamentalism, Naomi Klein, new economy, precautionary principle, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, South Sea Bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, urban sprawl

Business schools launch new courses on social responsibility, and universities create centers devoted to its study (at the University of Nottingham, tobacco giant ABT donated $7 million to create an International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility). Social responsibility is on the agenda wherever business leaders meet-at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, WTO ministerial meetings, industry conferences, and international trade and investment summits-and corporations compete against one another for ever higher moral ground.' Pious social responsibility themes now vie with sex for top billing in corporate advertising, whether on television or in the pages of glossy magazines and newspapers.

At the same time, it consistently has refused to commit to not drilling. See, e.g., www.bpamoco.com/ alaskaqanda/qanda.htm (print version on file with author). 32. From the following speeches by Sir John Browne: "International Relations ("guilt," "self-interest"); "Public Pressure and Strategic Choice," World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, February 2, 1998 ("good busiNOTES Back Matter Page 10 179 ness"); "The Case for Social Responsibility" ("reality," "hard-headed," "direct"); "Mobility and Choice," Detroit Economic Club, January 25, 1999 ("coldly," "imperative"). 33. BP Press Release, "BP Beats Greenhouse Gas Target by Eight Years and Aims to Stabilise Net Future Emissions," March 11, 2002, available at www.bp.com (under Press Center Archives). 34.


pages: 575 words: 171,599

The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund by Anita Raghavan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, British Empire, business intelligence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, delayed gratification, estate planning, Etonian, glass ceiling, high net worth, junk bonds, kremlinology, Larry Ellison, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Marc Andreessen, mass immigration, McMansion, medical residency, Menlo Park, new economy, old-boy network, Ponzi scheme, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, technology bubble, too big to fail

Bryan was also the person on Goldman’s board who knew Gupta the best. Bryan had been a mentor to Gupta, helping him break into the upper echelons of the global business elite. It was Bryan who got Gupta on the board of trustees of the University of Chicago in 1995 and it was Bryan who introduced Gupta to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Bryan had been the US chairman of Davos three times during the 1990s and thought Gupta might benefit from the global exposure. Palm told Bryan that the US attorney’s office had evidence that might draw Gupta into the Galleon hedge fund scandal. Worse than that, Palm’s source had reported that the inside information that Gupta had trafficked in came from the Goldman board meeting in which the board had discussed whether or not to approve Warren Buffett’s $5 billion investment in the firm.

“I got a sense that the firm had grown way too fast and we had lost a sense of professionalism in the process,” says Waterman. As Gupta approached a potential third term, colleagues sensed he yearned to burnish his legacy outside the notoriously discreet firm. He was a regular fixture at the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, and, closer to home, he plunged into a diverse array of outside activities. One was the American India Foundation. In early February 2001, just six months after Gupta was invited to the White House for a dinner in honor of India’s prime minister, Bill Clinton, now out of office, reached out to Gupta and Victor Menezes, a Citibank executive, to brainstorm ways to help the earthquake-hit Indian state of Gujarat.

“In these turbulent times, with our serving more than half the Fortune 500 companies, there are bound to be some clients who get into trouble,” he told BusinessWeek magazine in July 2002. He started spending more time in Stamford, Connecticut, where he had an office, and he distracted himself with outside interests—the World Economic Forum at Davos, AIF—and in 2002, he joined the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, one of his most important philanthropic achievements. Gupta helped conceive the “one-stop shop” organization, believing that a unified effort was the best way to combat the three killer diseases.


pages: 385 words: 118,901

Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Carl Icahn, Donald Trump, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, fear of failure, financial deregulation, hiring and firing, income inequality, junk bonds, light touch regulation, locking in a profit, margin call, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, medical residency, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, p-value, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, rent control, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, The Predators' Ball

Insider Case,” Bloomberg News, September 28, 2012. Chiasson and Newman’s convictions were overturned on appeal in December 2014. The SEC hypothesized a likely scenario: It should be noted that Plotkin and Vaccarino were never charged with any wrongdoing. He attended the World Economic Forum in Davos: Katherine Burton, “Cohen Travels to Davos for Lesson in ‘Resilient Dynamism,’ ” Bloomberg News, January 23, 2013. In 2005, he’d made several significant purchases: Carol Vogel and Peter Lattman, “$616 Million Poorer, Hedge Fund Owner Still Buys Art,” The New York Times, March 26, 2013. “the width of a pencil tip”: Kelly Magee, “Wynn’s $troke of Luck,” New York Post, October 15, 2008.

He was doing everything he could to delay and distract them and waste their time. — Steven Cohen was not in hiding. He was eager to project confidence and reassure his investors about SAC’s future, and he made a point of being visible during the early months of 2013. He attended the World Economic Forum in Davos in January and made a rare appearance at a hedge fund conference in Palm Beach, in part to show the world that he wasn’t daunted by the enormous payment he had just agreed to hand over to the SEC. At the end of March, he received a call from the art dealer William Acquavella. Steve Wynn, the casino owner and prodigious art collector, was ready to sell Picasso’s Le Rêve; seven years had passed since Cohen’s original deal with Wynn had had to be canceled due to Wynn’s expensive bout of clumsiness.

While his former protégé Martoma was appealing his conviction and preparing for a new life behind bars, Cohen had been anything but quiet. With assurances from his legal team that the threat of criminal charges was all but gone, he started to move aggressively to show the world that he was still as powerful as ever. He made a trip to Davos and sat courtside at Madison Square Garden, in full view of the television cameras. On November 10, the day Martoma was supposed to start serving his prison term, Cohen made news by spending $101 million at Sotheby’s to buy an Alberto Giacometti sculpture called The Chariot. “Steve is a very serious, very astute collector,” gushed William Acquavella, one of Cohen’s art dealers, in The New York Times.


pages: 482 words: 149,351

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, forensic accounting, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Global Witness, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land value tax, late capitalism, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, two and twenty, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, wealth creators, white picket fence, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

The emphasis, for instance, was not so much on education – the stuff that creates rounded, knowledgeable, social, politically engaged and honest human beings – but skills, the part of education that business needs.17 And by framing public policy strategies in corporate terms, Porter helped political leaders of the left develop a common language and empathy with big banks and multinationals, while at the same time making the parties of the left seem less scary to big business. This globalising quasi-leftist love-in was reinvigorated each year in the Swiss ski resort of Davos at the annual jamboree of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an organisation which was set up in 1971 originally as a discussion forum for the world’s biggest multinationals, but which has expanded every year. Through the 1990s it became increasingly important for world leaders to come to Davos and discuss the state of the world with financial and business bosses, think-tank glitterati and prominent journalists – incidentally providing Swiss bankers with fabulous opportunities to market their anti-tax, criminalised wealth management services and offshore attitudes to the assembled global elites.

The second question is: when states or countries compete to attract businesses or citizens, is this good for the world at large, or is it a harmful race to the bottom between the participating states?26 As I’ve explained, the neoliberals used Tiebout’s big idea to argue that such ‘competition’ is healthy and efficient. And if you look for this argument, as I do, you’ll find it everywhere. For example, in 2013 Switzerland’s president Ueli Maurer told the World Economic Forum at Davos, ‘Locational competition exists within our own borders. Diversity stimulates competition: that is not only the case in business, but also in politics. This leads to good infrastructure, to restraint in creating red tape and to low taxes.’ These arguments can be boiled down to an appealing sound bite: competition is good; if it works for companies, then it works for countries.

The Appelbaum and Batt quote is from Private Equity at Work, p.65. The AA quote is from Daniel Rasmussen, ‘Private Equity’. 21. See ‘Tamara Mellon puts the boot into buyouts’, Financial Times, 6 April 2012. On gender, see Theresa Whitmarsh, ‘My locker room rally cry for women in private equity’, World Economic Forum, 2 November 2015; and ‘Overview of the health and social care workforce’, kingsfund.org.uk, undated. The comparable figure for investment bankers is 16 per cent women. 22. The 2 and 20 is especially lucrative for bigger funds, principally because the overheads are relatively smaller: it doesn’t take fifty times as many people to run a £5 billion fund as it does a £100 million fund.


pages: 407 words: 90,238

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Future Shock, Hacker News, high batting average, hive mind, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, hype cycle, Hyperloop, impulse control, independent contractor, informal economy, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microdosing, military-industrial complex, mirror neurons, music of the spheres, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, science of happiness, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, TED Talk, time dilation, Tony Hsieh, urban planning, Virgin Galactic

“A few years ago, we attended the event to speak at their annual TEDx series and then got invited to a small salon hosted by Danger Ranger. And it wasn’t just Silicon Valley tech titans in attendance. Senior vice presidents from Goldman Sachs, heads of the largest creative ad agencies in the world, and leaders of the World Economic Forum, were all discreetly there, using fanciful assumed names, far from the flashbulbs and scrutiny of the media and the markets. Their goal was to forge a future based on the shared experience of communitas writ large: a permanent Burning Man community, a place where experiments with the four forces could be conducted year round.

., 188, 192 Vice Kardaras comments in, 196–97 Zaitchik comments in, 64 Vicodin, 29 video games, 30, 196–97 Virgin Galactic, 173–74 virtual reality, 74–75, 108 visionary art, 142–45, 149, 150, 151, 152, 157, 198 visions and neurotheology, 109 and pharmacology, 126–32 vitamin D, 112 von Lila, Rosie, 167 VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous), of Navy SEALs, 13, 19 wabi sabi concept, 218 Wade, Jenny, 83 Waking Up (Harris), 57–58 Wal-Mart, 195 Wallace, David Foster, 7 Walshe, Andy, 46 Warner, Dave, 165–66 Watts, Alan, 90, 91 webcams, 96, 101 Welwood, John, 216 White House: Summit at, 171 wicked problems solutions to, 46–50, 158–79 See also specific problem Winfrey, Oprah, 75, 76, 78, 81 wingsuiting, 135–36, 137, 138 Wolfe, Tom, 189 Wonder Woman posture, 98, 99 World Anti-Doping Agency, 186 World Economic Forum, 162 World War II, 77, 120 Wu, Tim, 185–87, 199, 200 Yale University: neurobiology studies at, 98 Yeats, W.B., 186 yoga, 79, 99, 147, 175–76, 177, 214 “You Are a Receiver” (Silva video), 33, 44 Young, Ed, 86 Zaitchik, Alexander, 64 Zappos, 161–62 Zectran, 120 Zeidan, Fadel, 48 Zeus, 4, 221–22 Zimbardo, Philip, 40 Zoloft, 88 About the Authors Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and the cofounder and director of research for the Flow Genome Project.

“So embedded, so accepted has Burning Man become4 in parts of tech culture,” wrote journalist Vanessa Hua in the San Francisco Chronicle, “that the event alters work rhythms, shows up on resumes, is even a sanctioned form of professional development—all signs that the norm has adopted parts of the formerly deviant happening.” Over the last decade in particular, the festival has become a regular stop for those whose calendar might include Davos, TED, and a slew of other high-profile gatherings. In 2013, John Perry Barlow, a fellow at Harvard Law School5 and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, casually tweeted from Burning Man: “Spent much of the afternoon in conversation with Larry Harvey, Mayor of Burning Man and Gen. Wesley Clark, who is here.”


pages: 716 words: 192,143

The Enlightened Capitalists by James O'Toole

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bletchley Park, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, business process, California gold rush, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, collective bargaining, company town, compensation consultant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, desegregation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, end world poverty, equal pay for equal work, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, garden city movement, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inventory management, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioff, means of production, Menlo Park, North Sea oil, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, white flight, women in the workforce, young professional

., 315 hiring practices, 316, 317–18 labor unions and, 316 minority hiring at, 316 “organizational entropy” and, 319 profitability and, 315 Schacht as CEO, 318 test of values (2010), 319 customers Body Shop and, 352–53 corporate social responsibility and, xxxviii–xxxix Herman Miller Company and, 237 John Lewis Partnership and, 128 Lewis and, 122 Lincoln’s philosophy and, 96 Marks & Spencer and, 210, 211–12, 213–17 no consumer demand for virtue, 429 Nucor and, 275 Owen’s ethical practices and, 8, 19 Penney and Penney Principles, 33, 37–39, 45–46 SWA and, 293–94 Dale, David, 11–12, 27 Dalton, John, 10 Dana, 424 D’Antonio, Michael, 80, 92, 489n Hershey, 489n Datini, Francesco (the Merchant of Prato), xxii, xxiii–xxv, xxxvii, xlii, 362, 396, 444 double-entry bookkeeping, xxiii foundation established by, xxv historical record of, xxiii motto of, xxiii Davids, Bob, 285–86 Davis, Jacob, 176–77, 179 Davis, Simon, 179–80 “Davos Conscience,” xii Davos World Economic Forum, 461 2018: social responsibility discussion, xiv Dayton-Hudson (now Target), 424 Deere, 424 Deere, John, xxxiii Defoe, Daniel, 3, 4 Della Femina, Jerry, 172 Del Monte, 470 De Pree, Dirk Jan (D.J.), 227–30 entrepreneurial skills, 228 founding of Herman Miller Company, 227 human-centered organizational culture and, 229–30 legacy of, 228–30 religious motivation for virtuous practices, 227–28 De Pree, Hugh, 230 De Pree, Max, 318, 323, 427 Chappell compared to, 365–66 Christian values and managerial philosophy, 227–28, 231, 360, 365 employee relationships as “covenantal,” 231 ethical principle of respect, 235–36 Herman Miller Company and, 227–42 institutionalization of practices, 435 intellectual influences on, 430 Leadership Is an Art, 231 “organizational entropy” and, 242, 319, 426 retirement from the Herman Miller board, 240 “servant leadership” and, 233, 317 “theory fastball” (philosophy of enlightened leadership), 228, 231–38 “tribal story telling,” 231, 365, 366 Dewhirst, I.

Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, a firm that manages $6 trillion in savings and retirement funds, announced that his firm would use its clout to encourage corporate boards to “not only deliver financial performance, but also show how [their companies make] a positive contribution to society” with regard to such issues as the environment, automation, and worker retraining.31 Weeks later, Fink’s comments were echoed at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos by Bill McNabb, chairman of Vanguard asset managers. A few months later, both Fink’s and McNabb’s pledges were put to the test in the wake of the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida, when it was revealed that both Vanguard and BlackRock held stock in gun manufacturers. In fact, BlackRock turned out to be the largest index investor in gun company stock.

Their ethical and responsible acts were not add-ons, afterthoughts, or atonement for bad behavior, but integral to the way they did business, incorporated in how they made products and delivered services. Their actions went far beyond the current executive affirmation that “our company serves the needs of all our stakeholders.” Unlike practitioners of the “Davos Conscience”—executives who migrate to the Swiss Alps to speak high-mindedly for a few days a year, then go back to business as usual for the next eleven and three-quarter months—the enlightened capitalists have steadfastly attempted to practice what they preach. I admire the moral courage these men and women have displayed when doing what they felt was right, whatever the personal cost.


pages: 652 words: 172,428

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order by Colin Kahl, Thomas Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, deglobalization, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, future of work, George Floyd, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, job automation, junk bonds, Kibera, lab leak, liberal world order, lockdown, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, mobile money, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, one-China policy, open borders, open economy, Paris climate accords, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey, zoonotic diseases

Every January for the past half century, the world’s financial, technological, and political elite have converged at the Alpine village of Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. In recent years, the international development charity Oxfam has been shaming them with startling statistics on inequality. During the lead-up to the 2017 Davos session, Oxfam reported that the sixty-one richest people in the world in 2016 had the same net worth as the poorest half of humanity (around 3.7 billion people); in 2017 that number was forty-three people, and in 2018 it was twenty-six.25 In its final Davos-timed report before the coronavirus spread, Oxfam found that the world’s richest 1 percent in 2019 had more than twice as much wealth as the other 6.9 billion people on earth put together; the world’s 2,153 billionaires had more wealth than 4.6 billion people (60 percent of the global population); and the twenty-two richest men in the world had more wealth than all the women living on the continent of Africa.26 As we shall see in Part III of this book, the COVID-19 crisis laid bare all these vulnerabilities and inequalities.

Cotton, Tom COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) COVID-19 pandemic economic impact elections during geopolitical impact hotspots national lockdowns national variations in responses to origins of pre-pandemic trends superspreader events in Wuhan See also COVID-19 vaccines; Great Lockdown; SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 vaccines AstraZeneca BBIBP-CorV CoronaVac COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) emergency use authorizations in Europe Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance Johnson & Johnson Moderna Novavax Operation Warp Speed (OWS) Pfizer-BioNTech in Russia and China trial phases in the United States Craft, Kelly Cramer, Kevin Crosby, Alfred Crosby, Sawyer Cui, Tiankai CureVac Daszak, Peter Davos (World Economic Forum) de Rivière, Nicolas democratic backsliding Diamond, Larry Diamond Princess displaced persons Dobbs, Lou Donohoe, Paschal Draghi, Mario Drezner, Daniel drone technology Duterte, Rodrigo Ebola Egypt Elder, Kate elections (during COVID-19 pandemic) Embarek, Peter Ben Esper, Mark euro crisis European Central Bank (ECB) European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) European Medicines Agency (EMA) European Union Brexit China and COVID-19 response in COVID-19 vaccines and historical origins of hyperglobalization and impact of COVID-19 on Mechanism of Civil Protection Schengen Area See also individual nations eurozone Fang, Fang Farewell Address (Washington) Fauci, Anthony Fazal, Tanisha Ferdinand, Archduke Franz Fidler, David financial crisis (2008–9) Fischer, Thea Kølsen “flatten the curve” Fleck, Zoltán Floyd, George Flynn, Michael France China and COVID-19 response in COVID-19 vaccines and G7 and interwar period World War I and the Great Influenza World War II Franco, Francisco Fu, Ying G7 (Group of 7) cancellation of 2020 summit COVID-19 pandemic and euro crisis and February 2021 summit history and origins of June 2021 leaders meeting March 2020 leaders meeting G20 (Group of 20) Galea, Gauden Gallina, Sandra Gantz, Benny Gao, George Garrett, Laurie Gates Foundation Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Georgieva, Kristalina Germany COVID-19 response in COVID-19 vaccines and G7 and globalization and interwar period World War I and the Great Influenza Gerwitz, Julian Global Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness (GAPP) Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Here’s the Story,” Washington Post, February 24, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/24/chinas-early-warning-system-didnt-work-covid-19-heres-story/.     8.  [Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention: Should not lose confidence in China’s vaccines], China News, March 5, 2019, http://www.chinanews.com/gn/2019/03–05/8771355.shtml.     9.  Josephine Moulds, “How Is the World Health Organization Funded?,” World Economic Forum, April 15, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/who-funds-world-health-organization-un-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-trump/.   10.  Global Health Security Index, Johns Hopkins University, October 2019, https://www.ghsindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2019-Global-Health-Security-Index.pdf.   11.  


pages: 286 words: 79,305

99%: Mass Impoverishment and How We Can End It by Mark Thomas

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, additive manufacturing, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banks create money, behavioural economics, bitcoin, business cycle, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, circular economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, creative destruction, credit crunch, CRISPR, declining real wages, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, fake news, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, Gini coefficient, gravity well, income inequality, inflation targeting, Internet of things, invisible hand, ITER tokamak, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Ellison, light touch regulation, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, North Sea oil, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Own Your Own Home, Peter Thiel, Piper Alpha, plutocrats, post-truth, profit maximization, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, warehouse automation, wealth creators, working-age population

The next industrial revolution will be worse We are on the brink of another Industrial Revolution as artificial intelligence, coupled with a range of other technologies, begins to make it possible for machines to do jobs which currently require people. As Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum that meets annually at Davos, put it: There are many challenges in the world today, and I feel that one of the most intense and impactful will be shaping the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ – driven by the speed, the breadth and the complete ‘systems innovation’ of technological change underway. The challenges are as daunting as the opportunities are compelling.

Nor is it just at the early stages of technological development that government has a key role to play. The UK, for example, has under-invested in civic infrastructure for several decades. The Conservative MP, Stephen Hammond (while he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport) described the state of Britain’s roads thus: … we’ve underinvested in roads for decades. The World Economic Forum ranks the UK twenty-fourth in the world for the quality of its road network at the moment. By contrast, France and Germany are in the top ten. It is a simple fact that since 1990, France has built 2,700 miles of new motorway – more than the entire UK motorway network. We have built just forty-six, between 2001 and 2009.

Appendix I – What Current Policies Would Mean for 2050 (Supporting analysis for Chapter 1) Appendix II – Comparison of Golden Age and Market Capitalism (Supporting analysis for Chapter 2) Appendix III – Mass Impoverishment (Supporting analysis for Chapter 3) Appendix IV – The Impact of Poverty Appendix V – Automation (Supporting analysis for Chapter 5) Appendix VI – How Current Policy Sustains Mass Impoverishment (Supporting analysis for Chapter 7) Appendix VII – Myth Busting (Supporting analysis for Chapters 9 to 12) Appendix VIII – What Makes a Happy Society (Supporting analysis for Chapter 13) Appendix IX – Two Stories of Value Creation Appendix X – Bibliography (Full details and website links for data and citations) Endnotes How This Book Came About 1 McKinsey Global Institute, 2016 2 Tatlow, 2017 3 Wearden & Fletcher, 2017 4 Monaghan, 2017 5 Bulman, 2017 Chapter 0: Economics – The Five Things You Need to Know 1 Wren-Lewis, 2014 2 Ghizoni, 1971 3 McLeay, Radia, & Thomas, 2014 4 If you are curious, the paper by McLeay, Radia, & Thomas does an excellent job of explaining it 5 ONS, 2015 6 Credit Suisse, 2015 7 OECD, 2015 8 OECD, 2015 Part 1: The Burning Platform 1 Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, 1532 2 Conner, 2012 Chapter 1: The Age of Anxiety 1 Benarde, 1973 2 Stanley, 2017 3 CNBC, 2014 4 Shelter, 2016 5 Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017 6 Jivanda, 2014 7 Centre for Poverty Research, University of California, Davis, 2018 8 Centre for Poverty Research, University of California, Davis, 2018 9 US Census Bureau, 2018 10 Deaton, 2018 11 Again, Appendix I contains the basis for these estimates 12 US Census Bureau, 2018 13 O’Brien, 2014 Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Systems 1 Dickens, Charles, A Tale of Two Cities, London, 1859 2 Macrotrends, 2018 3 Spence, 2018 4 Lawson, 1992 5 Duncan, 2010 6 BBC, 2009 7 Pfanner, 2008 8 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 2011 9 Evans, 2018 10 Campbell, Denis, ‘Hidden toll of ambulance delays at A&E revealed’, The Guardian, 2 April 2018 11 Campbell, Denis , Marsh, Sarah and Helm, Toby, ‘NHS in crisis as cancer operations cancelled due to lack of beds’, The Guardian, 14 January 2017 12 Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2015 / St Louis Federal Reserve Bank, 2015 Chapter 3: Mass Impoverishment – Coming to a Street Near You 1 Córdoba & Verdier , 2007 2 Robbins, 1935 3 Mankiw, 2009 4 Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, 2018 5 St Louis Federal Reserve, 2016 6 Anderson & Pizzigati, 2018 7 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015 8 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2017 9 World Hunger, 2016 10 Sen, 2001 11 Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, 2018 12 Statista, 2018 13 See the full analysis in Appendix III 14 May, We can make Britain a country that works for everyone, 2016 15 World Bank, 2018 16 OECD, 2018 17 Glasmeier, 2015 18 Centre for Research in Social Policy, 2015 19 Tiplady, 2017 20 Buffett, 2015 21 OECD, 2015 Chapter 4: An Alternative Morality 1 Wilde, Oscar, Lady Windemere’s Fan; London, 1893 2 Oxford Dictionaries, 2018 3 Soros, George, The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, New York, 1998 4 Melin, 2017 5 Ziprecruiter.com, 2018 6 Morningstar.com, 2018 7 Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, William, The Sovereign Individual (London, 1997), p. 131 8 Sohn, 2014 9 Romney, Full Transcript Mitt Romney, 2012 10 Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, William, The Sovereign Individual (London, 1997), p. 310 11 Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, William, The Sovereign Individual (London, 1997), p. 393 12 Thiel, 2009 13 Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, William, The Sovereign Individual (London, 1997), p. 140 14 Cowen, 2013 15 Mason, Rowena, ‘Benefit freeze to stay for working people costing typical family £300 a year’, The Guardian, 27 November 2017. 16 Tighe & Rovnick, 2018 17 Morley N., 2017 18 Greenfield & Marsh, 2018 19 Fleming, 2018 20 Wikipedia, 2018 Wikipedia, 2018 21 Mayer, 2016 22 Freedland, 2017 Chapter 5: The Fork in the Road 1 Carney, Mark, ‘Keeping the patient alive: Monetary policy in a time of great disruption’, World Economic Forum, 6 December 2016 2 Miller, 2014 3 US Census Bureau, 2015 4 Rigby, 2016 5 Royal Academy of Engineering, 2013 6 University of Manchester, 2016 7 Walsh, 2016 8 Kirkpatrick & Light, 2015 9 Driverless car market watch, 2016 10 Yadron, 2016 11 Bostrom, Superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies, 2014 12 United Nations, 2016 13 ITER, 2016 14 Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, 2016 15 Noakes, 2016 16 Hudson, 2013 17 Murgia, 2016 18 Rajesh, 2015 19 Smart Cities Council, 2016 20 The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2016 21 Andersen, 2006 22 Allen R.


pages: 798 words: 240,182

The Transhumanist Reader by Max More, Natasha Vita-More

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Bill Joy: nanobots, bioinformatics, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, cellular automata, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Conway's Game of Life, cosmological principle, data acquisition, discovery of DNA, Douglas Engelbart, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, experimental subject, Extropian, fault tolerance, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, friendly AI, Future Shock, game design, germ theory of disease, Hans Moravec, hypertext link, impulse control, index fund, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, Louis Pasteur, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, phenotype, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, presumed consent, Project Xanadu, public intellectual, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, reversible computing, RFID, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, silicon-based life, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, stem cell, stochastic process, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, the built environment, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, Upton Sinclair, Vernor Vinge, Von Neumann architecture, VTOL, Whole Earth Review, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

However, in the “intelligence explosion” perspective, AGI plays a special role – it’s the main technology catalyzing the next wave of radical change, taking us from the state of “humans with advanced tools but old fashioned bodies and brains” to a new ­condition that includes radically posthuman features. The Top Priority for Mankind In early 2009 I was contacted by some folks associated with the World Economic Forum – best known for their annual conference in Davos, Switzerland – to write an article for distribution at the Summer Davos World Economic Forum that summer in Dalian, China. The attendees at Davos are the world’s political and business movers and shakers – top politicians and CEOs and philanthropists and so forth. My contribution was to be included in a collection of articles on the theme of “Mankind’s Top Priority.”

I then proceeded to articulate the massive benefits that advanced AGI technology could offer various areas of endeavor, such as biomedical research, nanotechnology, energy research, ­cognitive enhancement, and so forth – as well as the possibility of AGIs that program AGIs, intelligence explosion style. Davos is supposed to be about thinking big, and I wanted to ­encourage the participants to think really big. The creation of AGI with general intelligence at the human level or beyond will have a more dramatic, important, and fascinating impact than anything on the program at Davos that year, or any other year so far. AGI and the Transformation of Individual and Collective Experience For the Davos audience, I decided to focus on practical business, engineering, and science ­applications – energy, medicine, and so forth.

I like to get right to the point, so the title of my article was: “Mankind’s Top Priority Should Be the Creation of Beneficent AI with Greater than Human Intelligence.” The Summer Davos Forum is also called the “Annual Meeting of the New Champions,” so I thought this was ­particularly appropriate. The “New Champions” phrase was presumably chosen to refer to the leaders of China, India, and other emerging markets. But I wanted to question the assumption that the new champions leading humanity onwards would always continue to be humans. What I told the Davos participants is that: Our top priority should be the creation of beneficent artificial minds with greater than human ­general intelligence, which can then work together with us to solve the other hard problems and explore various positive avenues.


pages: 372 words: 100,947

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, hockey-stick growth, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, offshore financial centre, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WikiLeaks

In spite of the fact that he had been rejected by both Zuckerberg and Sandberg, Don Graham remained close with them, and they continued to seek his counsel. When each asked him for his opinion about the other, he encouraged them to join forces. Toward the end of January 2008, less than a month after they first met, Zuckerberg accompanied Sandberg and other executives on Google’s corporate jet to the World Economic Forum in Davos, and over several days in the Swiss Alps, they continued to discuss a vision for Facebook.9 On March 4, Facebook sent out a press release naming Sandberg as chief operating officer of the company. The headline the Wall Street Journal gave its coverage of the hire, “Facebook CEO Seeks Help as Site Grows Up,” spelled out Sandberg’s challenge.

On March 19, Facebook hired a digital forensics firm: “Pursuing Forensic Audits to Investigate Cambridge Analytica Claims,” Newsroom post, March 19, 2018. 17. from a report in the Guardian: Harry Davies, “Ted Cruz Using Firm that Harvested Data on Millions of Unwitting Facebook Users,” Guardian, December 11, 2015. 18. In a panel called “In Technology We Trust?”: “Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: There Will Have to Be More Regulation on Tech from the Government,” video posted on CNBC, January 23, 2018. 19. George Soros delivered a speech: “Remarks Delivered at the World Economic Forum,” George Soros website, January 25, 2018. 20. Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian activist: “Organizer of ‘Revolution 2.0’ Wants to Meet Mark Zuckerberg,” NBC Bay Area website, February 11, 2011. 21. Sandberg responded defensively: “Sheryl Sandberg Pushes Women to ‘Lean In’,” 60 Minutes, CBS, March 10, 2013, can be viewed on YouTube. 22.

He was an intimidating figure; with his piercing eyes; rectangular glasses; dark, curly hair; and low, gravelly voice, he bore a striking resemblance to film director Sydney Pollack. Sandberg and Schrage, a Chicago native with a Harvard Law degree and a wry sense of humor, had bonded at Google. They were non-techies in an industry that looked down on MBAs and lawyers. For them, Davos, not TechCrunch Disrupt or the Wall Street Journal’s D conference, was the highlight of their year. And both voraciously kept up with the who’s-up-who’s-down rhythm of national politics. In public, Schrage presented a friendly and earnest demeanor, though he was tough with reporters and known to quibble over details in stories, sometimes barking on the phone with editors about word choices in headlines.


pages: 341 words: 98,954

Owning the Sun by Alexander Zaitchik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, business cycle, classic study, colonial rule, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donald Trump, energy transition, informal economy, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, knowledge economy, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, Philip Mirowski, placebo effect, Potemkin village, profit motive, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, The Chicago School, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Whole Earth Catalog

Alongside Gates at the front of this effort was Richard Wilder, a former head of intellectual property at Microsoft who serves as general counsel and director of business development at Gates’s flagship infectious disease research initiative, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). A public-private initiative launched with Gates seed funding at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, CEPI embodies the intellectual property–friendly philanthropic model that his organization would replicate in his attempt to orchestrate the global response to COVID-19. “Early on, when governments and the companies were using a rhetoric of global public goods, there was space for Gates to have a major impact in favor of open models, like pooling,” says Manuel Martin, a policy adviser to Médecins Sans Frontières.

., 103 Wallace Laboratories, 126 Walmsley, Emma, 228 War Production Board, 76, 88, 103, 104 Washington, George, 10, 13 Washington Post, 115, 185, 187, 188, 211 Waxman, Henry, 177–79, 187–89 White, Philip R., 87 Whitney, Eli, 13 Wilder, Richard, 231 Wilson, Woodrow, 44, 57, 60, 76 Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), 49–52, 54–55, 67, 109, 162, 163 Wofsy, Leon, 169 Wood, Gordon, 13 World Bank, 202 World Economic Forum in Davos, 231, 234 World Health Assembly, 206, 211, 222, 223, 225, 236–37 World Health Organization (WHO), 108–109, 194–95, 203n, 206, 209–10, 240, 256; COVID-19 and, 217, 218, 230, 232, 233; COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), 218–27, 233, 243–44, 254 World Trade Organization (WTO), xiv, 205–207, 210–13, 241, 246, 247, 252 World War I, 44–45, 46, 73, 75, 76, 88 World War II, 58, 68, 75, 76, 102, 109, 191; monopolies and, 61–62, 73, 76, 80–81, 87; penicillin and, 101–106, 108 Wyeth Laboratories, 113, 124, 125, 128–30 yellow fever, 72–73 Yeutter, Clayton, 202, 203 Zachary, G.

“CEPI helped jumpstart CureVac’s work on the vaccine, but then seemingly waived away its own leverage to expand production around the world.” The CureVac deletion was reminiscent of the fate suffered by the access obligation written into CEPI’s original contract with participating drug companies. At the CEPI launch at Davos in 2017, much was made about the initiative’s pricing pledge to hold partner companies accountable to the social values and mission of the initiative. After the media spotlight went dark, the companies decided the language went too far. CEPI dutifully watered the language down to a see-through gruel.


pages: 489 words: 111,305

How the World Works by Noam Chomsky, Arthur Naiman, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, capital controls, clean water, corporate governance, deindustrialization, disinformation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, glass ceiling, heat death of the universe, Howard Zinn, income inequality, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, land reform, liberation theology, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, single-payer health, strikebreaker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, transfer pricing, union organizing, War on Poverty, working poor

Soros made his money by financial speculations that become possible when telecommunications innovations and the government’s destruction of the Bretton Woods system (which regulated currencies and capital flow) allowed for very rapid transfers of capital. That isn’t global capitalism. As we sit here, the World Economic Forum is being held in Davos, Switzerland. It’s a six-day meeting of political and corporate elites, with people like Bill Gates, John Welch of GE, Benjamin Netanyahu, Newt Gingrich and so on. The companies represented at this forum do something like $4.5 trillion worth of business a year. Do you think it’s a significant event that we should pay attention to?

See also Israel American Jews in antisemitism in Israel occupation of Palestinians expelled from Rabin in Gehlen, Reinhard Gehlen, Richard General Electric General Motors in conspiracy factories moved to East Germany foreign investments by in Poland genocide Germany corporations based in demonstrations in East Germany Holocaust in industrial policy in labor costs in labor in POWs in public control possible in racism in unemployment in as world power Ghandi, Indira Gingrich, Newt conference attended by globalization and Lockheed used as example by military budget and Gitlin, Todd “glass ceiling,” globalization conspiracy theories about of corporate mercantilism in early 20th century economic resistance to World Economic Forum GNP of US “God-and-country” rally Godoy, Julio Golan Heights Golden, Tim Golden Triangle Goldwater, Barry good examples, threat of Goodland, Robert Good Neighbor policy “Good Samaritan” robbery Gore-Perot NAFTA debate government corporate welfare of as modifiable need to use at this point seen as enemy, in US “grace, paradox of,” Grand Area grassroots propaganda Greece intervention after WWII Serb conflict and Green Party Greider, William Grenada drug trafficking in US aid to US invasion of Grossman, Richard group vs. individual advantage Guaraní Guatemala CIA in CIA memorandum (1952) example made of Jennifer Harbury case in La Epoca destruction military coup in 1944 revolution peace treaty (December, 1996) right-wing view of atrocities in torture and slaughter in Guinea (former) Gulf crisis Iraqi issues with Kuwait “linkage,” rejection of diplomacy in UN response to Iraq US opposition to “linkage” in Gulf War gun control gun culture Gush Katif Gusmao, Xanana Gypsies Ha’aretz Haddad, Sa’ad Haganah Haiti aftermath of coup in Aristide’s election in baseball production in Bush administration policies toward civil society in Clinton administration policies toward Clinton backing down on democratic institutions in Disney exploitation in drug trafficking in embargo and US trade with invasion by US nonviolence and poverty in prospects for refugees from, US policy toward softball production in US hostility to wages in Hamas Hamilton, Alexander Harbury, Jennifer Harding, Tonya hard times, myth of Harlem Harper’s Harvard Business School Harvard Medical School Harvard University Hasanfus, Eugene Havel, Vaclav health class as determinant of in Kerala US vs.

See also Israel educational system in legal system confusions re Palestinians expelled from “peace process” and threat of moderation in US-Israel disagreement on West Bengal See also India Western Europe WGBH (Boston) what you can do When Time Shall Be No More Wicker, Tom Wilson, Woodrow Winship, Tom Witness for Peace Wolfe, Tom Wolin, Richard women in Argentina in India in Kerala low voter turnout in 1924, rights won by women’s rights workers. See labor Workers’ PartySee also Brazil working class solidarity working conditions Chinese Nicaraguan US World Bank World Court World Economic Forum world government (de facto) World Health Organization world order, change in World Orders, Old and New critiqued in Dissent on Palestinians on the UN “world trade,” World Trade Organization World War II POWs World Watch Wretched of the Earth, The Yad Vashem Yaseen, Sheikh Yeltsin, Boris Yemenis yen-based economic block Yugoslavia (former) Zapatistas Zepezauer, Mark Zinn, Howard Zionism.


pages: 552 words: 168,518

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, bioinformatics, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, buy and hold, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, collaborative editing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, demographic transition, digital capitalism, digital divide, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fault tolerance, financial innovation, Galaxy Zoo, game design, global village, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, hive mind, Home mortgage interest deduction, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, medical bankruptcy, megacity, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, oil shock, old-boy network, online collectivism, open borders, open economy, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, scientific mainstream, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, social web, software patent, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, systems thinking, text mining, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, transfer pricing, University of East Anglia, urban sprawl, value at risk, WikiLeaks, X Prize, Yochai Benkler, young professional, Zipcar

., national governments, business associations, and organized labor) are no longer the right ones to help rebuild the global economy or fashion a new form of sustainable governance. A TIME FOR RENEWAL AND TRANSFORMATION, NOT FOR TINKERING In his opening address to the 2010 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, French president Nicolas Sarkozy remarked on the financial crisis that brought the world to the very edge of economic apocalypse. “This is not just a global financial crisis,” he said, “it is a crisis of globalization.” He called on world leaders to correct the systemic imbalances that led to the triumph of markets over democracy and justice.

But how can it be done and where will the leadership come from? The Global Agenda Partnership Shows a Way Forward The World Economic Forum has an interesting history, and today it is in transformation. Forty years ago, Klaus Schwab was a Swiss academic on a mission to find new ways of “improving the state of the world” and launched the Forum as a meeting place. Since then it has grown in stature and is renowned for its annual summit of world leaders held in the idyllic Swiss ski village called Davos. Over the last few years Professor Schwab and his team noted an alarming disconnect between the scale of the problems the world faces and the apparent capacity of our existing institutions to solve them.

Army; Kay Carson, MassRIDES; Fred Carter, Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario; Joel Cawley, IBM; Robin Chase, Zipcar; Bob Chen, Columbia University; Calvin Chin, Qifang; Aneesh Chopra, federal chief technology officer, U.S. government; Jacob Colker, The Extraordinaries; Peter Corbett, iStrategy Labs; Marilyn Cornelius, Stanford University; Jim Cortada, IBM; Robert Crandall, formerly at American Airlines; Duane Dahl, EarthLab; Ron Dembo, Zerofootprint; Sean Dennehy, CIA; John De Souza, MedHelp; Peter Diamandis, X-Prize; Paul Dickinson, Carbon Disclosure Project; Teddy Diggs, Educause; Frank DiGiammarino, executive office of the president; Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing; Chris Dorobek, FederalNewsRadio; Jodi Echakowitz, Echo; Ken Eklund, World Without Oil; Derek Elley, Ponoko; Michael Evans, University of Toronto; Niki Fenwick, Google; Ariel Ferreira, Local Motors; Matt Flannery, Kiva; Ann Florini, Brookings Institution; Maryantonett Flumian, Institute On Governance; Joe Fontana, former member of parliament in the government of Canada; Gordon and Susan Fraser, the Ravina Project; Tory Gattis, Houston Strategies; Ian Gee, Nokia; Dan Gluckman, BBC; Heather Green, Twilight; Robert Greenhill, World Economic Forum; Bill Greeves, Virginia county government; Jim Griffin, Pho; Peter Gruetter, Cisco; Simon Hampton, Google; Lisa Hansen, Twilight; Rahaf Harfoush, author; Craig Heimark, Open Models Corporation; Kim Henderson, Ministry of Citizens’ Services, government of British Columbia; Ben Heywood, PatientsLikeMe; Paul Hodgkin, Patient Opinion; Paul Hofheinz, Lisbon Council; Mathew Holt, Health 2.0; Rob Hopkins, Transition Towns; Steve Howard, Climate Group; Lee Howell, World Economic Forum; Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post; John C. Hull, University of Toronto; Tara Hunt, HPC; Larry Huston, inno360; Jessica Jackley, Kiva; Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine; Chris Johnson, Virtual Alabama; Jason Karas, Carbonrally; Jason Kelly, Ginkgo BioWorks; Kevin Kimberlin, Spencer Trask; Andrew King, MapEcos; Amanda Kistindey; Lakshmi Krishnamurthy, iCarpool; Vivek Kundra, U.S. federal chief information officer; Jonathon Landman, New York Times; Andrew Lang, Oral Roberts University; Leo Laporte, TWiT; Kelly Lauber, Nike; David W.


pages: 308 words: 99,298

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe by Denis MacShane

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, fixed income, Gini coefficient, greed is good, illegal immigration, information security, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low cost airline, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, post-truth, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reshoring, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Thales and the olive presses, trade liberalization, transaction costs, women in the workforce

Despite claims by anti-Europeans that the EU is a super-state interfering to destroy national economies, the long history of the crisis since the US caused world financial crisis of 2007/9 has shown up the lack of power and authority in the European Commission and the European Parliament. The two presidents of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy and Donald Tusk, were bystanders in the crisis as all decisions reverted to national states. In a speech at the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2007, Jean-Claude Trichet, then president of the ECB, had alerted European policy makers to the coming turbulence. ‘The recent explosion of financial products based on derivatives makes it increasingly difficult for regulators and investors to evaluate risks. […] Investors have to get ready for a significant reduction in value of certain shares.’

When the chance came for a massive vote against the three parties who had failed to deliver the labour market holy trinity of good jobs, fair pay and social provision – especially in the form of affordable housing – many voters may have enjoyed the novelty of having a chance to give most big-name politicians a kicking, especially as they were told money would flow into the NHS. It has become a cliché to say the Brexit vote was a revolt of the masses against the elites. This is too simple. The pro-Brexit camp was led by elite, wealthy men and women perfectly at home at the annual gatherings of the world’s rich and powerful in Davos or at Bilderberg conferences. The struggle to stay in Europe was between two establishment elites. The side with most money and most populist passion won. But it was a victory for an elite establishment. So we know that 17 million people voted for Brexit and 16 million did not. But how permanent and how porous are those voting blocs?

Charles Grant of the Centre of European Reform wrote during the campaign, ‘I met large numbers of voters, including younger ones, who wanted to hear something good about the EU and how Britain could play a leading role in it.’ There was no such language from Cameron, Osborne or the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond. President Obama, Japan’s Prime Minister Abe and the heads of the IMF and OECD and bosses of Goldman Sachs and Hitachi, along with other denizens of Davos, spoke or wrote warning about the dangers of Brexit. But how was this playing in Bradford, Bootle, Bournemouth or Bolsover? The Stronger In/Remain campaign simply came too late in the day. It sounded and looked like the elite establishment of globalisation’s chattering class. It might have been helped if the opposition parties had commanding leaders.


pages: 246 words: 116

Tyler Cowen-Discover Your Inner Economist Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist-Plume (2008) by Unknown

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Andrei Shleifer, big-box store, British Empire, business cycle, cognitive dissonance, cross-subsidies, fundamental attribution error, gentrification, George Santayana, haute cuisine, low interest rates, market clearing, microcredit, money market fund, pattern recognition, Ralph Nader, retail therapy, Stephen Hawking, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

Human imperfection is not the end of the story, but rather the beginning of a search for all kinds of riches. 2 How to Control the World, the Basics MONEY MAY HAVE bought Judas's betrayal and the infamous local government of New York's Tammany Hall, but it often isn't the best motivator, whether in the family or at work. If you want to control more of what happens around you, you need to know how to balance the kinds of incentives you offer. Economist Colin Camerer took a poll at the Davos World Economic Forum, which plays host to many of the world's business titans and idea gurus. When asked what makes people tick, the responding participants cited "recognition and respect" as the number-one motivating factor in the workplace. "Achievement and accomplishment" came in second. But not so fast-we cannot dismiss money altogether.

Even ordinary personal things like falling in love, surviving your next meeting, and motivating your dentist. The real purpose of economics is to get more of the good stuff in life. Of course, economics is also about the national and global scale as reported in the evening news, stock prices, and world economic forums. Economists have long dreamed of making the whole world a better place. And yes, economic analyses do explain why the citizens of some countries are taking delightful vacations in Paris, while others are plowing field corn under a lOO-degree sun. The founders of the science developed economics because they felt the world was full of injustices and squandered life opportunities.

See sin and human failings terrorism, 129-30, 172, 174,220-21 Thomas, Sonya, 172 time and relationships, 87-88 scarcity of, 48, 50, 54 value of, 43-44 tipping point, 199 tipping practices, 121, 208-10 titles, 108, 109-10 To, Theodore, 109-10 toilet seats, 81, 91 Index torture, 99-107 tourism, 156 trade, 2,15-16,163-64 "tragedy of the commons," 58 transaction costs, 176, 181 Tropic of Cancer (Miller), 65 truth-telling, 104-7 tsunami of 2004, 197,200 Twitchell, James, 57-58 Ulysses (Joyce), 64 United Kingdom, 149, 186 United Nations diplomats, 16-19, 22 United States, 103-4, 149 United Way, 205 values, 166, 219-22 vanity, 175-76 Vincent, Gene, 58 virtues, 117, 136-37, 183 volunteerism, 186 I 245 Waldfogel, Joel, 185,210,211 warranties, 90-91 Washington, George, 57 Washington Crossing the Delaware (Leutze), 57 weaknesses. See sin and human failings Whistler's Mother (Whistler), 57 Wilder, Thornton, 66 William Tell Overture (Rossini), 58 women, 79-85, III, 176, 179 World Bank, 215 World Economic Forum, II World Grilled Cheese Eating Championship, 172 Wright, Richard T., 27 writing, 123, 125 Yunus, Muhammad, 215 zoos, 56-57 About the Author Ty L E R COW EN is professor of economics at George Mason University. He blogs at www.marginalrevolution.com. the world's leading economics blog. He also writes regularly for the New York Times, and he has written for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, the Wash- ington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Wilson Quarterly.


pages: 223 words: 10,010

The Cost of Inequality: Why Economic Equality Is Essential for Recovery by Stewart Lansley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Curtis, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Basel III, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Edward Glaeser, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, full employment, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, high net worth, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job polarisation, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Ellison, light touch regulation, Londongrad, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mittelstand, mobile money, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, proprietary trading, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, shareholder value, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working-age population

‘The distribution of income is another important issue. The consequences of rising inequality and its effects on social cohesion can no longer be ignored. Rising inequality may also have increased vulnerability to crisis.’47 Similar views were aired at the 2011 World Economic Forum, the influential gathering of the world’s political, economic and business elites held each year in the small Swiss ski resort of Davos. Here the question of the growing global divide became something of a theme in an agenda crowded with topics from stalling recovery to the tackling of mounting budget deficits. ‘Inequality is the big wildcard in the next decade of global growth’, Kenneth Rogoff, a leading authority on the history of financial crises, told one gathering at the Forum.

In the same year Ben Bernanke said that corporations should ‘use some of those (higher) profit margins to meet demands for higher wages from workers. 434 In 2007 Germany’s finance minister called on European companies to ‘give workers a fairer share of their soaring profits.’435 In 2007, Robert Shiller warned that: ‘The most essential long-term economic problem of this century is the risk that income inequality will get substantially worse… The mere prospect of a winner-takes-all world ought to strike fear into our hearts.’436 It was a theme echoed at the 2011 World Economic Forum at Davos. One senior business leader admitted to the meeting that during the crisis, companies across the world had ‘sacrificed the workers to please the shareholders’ and called for a more ‘humanistic’ approach. At one plenary session, Bob Diamond, the chief executive of Barclays thanked the authorities for bailing out the financial system.

New business-start up rates have marginally improved and there has been a steady rise in the number of small businesses. But the rate of business failure has remained pretty static in recent years while the UK’s record on patent applications has been slipping. The UK fell from 7th in the world competitiveness rankings (compiled by the World Economic Forum) in 1997 to 13th in 2009.216 Britain’s weak record on enterprise is reflected in its productivity performance. Although productivity rates improved sharply in the 1980s in parts of manufacturing, this was largely because of the mass shedding of jobs at the time. Privatisation of state owned firms also led to improved productivity in several industries such as steel, which lost close to half its workforce.217 Overall, however, as shown in figure 6.2, productivity growth has deteriorated since 1980, averaging 1.9 per cent a year to 2008 compared with an annual average rise of 2.95 per cent from 1961-1973.


pages: 487 words: 151,810

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, assortative mating, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, business process, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, classic study, clean water, cognitive load, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, fake it until you make it, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial independence, Flynn Effect, George Akerlof, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, impulse control, invisible hand, Jeff Hawkins, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, language acquisition, longitudinal study, loss aversion, medical residency, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Monroe Doctrine, Paul Samuelson, power law, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school vouchers, six sigma, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Walter Mischel, young professional

He wasn’t always happy when Erica would disappear for weeks at a time, but he felt he was making some contribution to the world. He was confident that his “socialist” approach, in one guise or another, would someday have a large impact on the world. CHAPTER 21 THE OTHER EDUCATION EVERY WINTER THE GREAT AND THE GOOD MEET IN DAVOS, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. And every night during that week at Davos, there are constellations of parties. The people in the outer-ring parties envy the people in the mid-ring parties, and the people in the mid ring wish they were invited to the ones in the inner ring. Each ring features a slightly more elevated guest list than the last—with economists and knowledgeable people on the outside and ascending levels of power, fame, and lack of expertise toward the center.

At the molten core of the party constellation, there is always one party that forms the social Holy of the Holies—where former presidents, cabinet secretaries, central bankers, global tycoons, and Angelina Jolie gather to mingle and schmooze. And this party is without question the dullest in the whole constellation. The Davos social universe, like social universes everywhere, consists of rings of interesting and insecure people desperately seeking entry into the realm of the placid and self-satisfied. After a few decades of business success and eight years of ever more prominent public service—as deputy chief of staff during the first Grace term and commerce secretary in the second—Erica had gained entry to the Davos epicenter. She was the sort who got invited to all the most exclusive and boring parties. In retirement, she now served on worthy commissions on intractable problems—deficit spending, nuclear proliferation, the trans-Atlantic alliance, and the future of global trade agreements.

While working as an associate editor, he edited essays advocating the full range of oxymoronic grand strategies: practical idealism, moral realism, cooperative unilateralism, focused multilateralism, unipolar defensive hegemony, and so on and so on. These essays were commissioned by executive editors who had been driven insane by attending too many Davos conferences. The jobs sounded exciting on the outside, but they often involved doing a lot of unnecessary research. Harold had spent the years before college graduation in upper-level seminars discussing Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and the problem of evil. He spent the years after graduation operating a Canon copying machine.


Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, American ideology, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate personhood, David Brooks, discovery of DNA, double helix, drone strike, failed state, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, land reform, language acquisition, Martin Wolf, Mohammed Bouazizi, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, Powell Memorandum, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, single-payer health, sovereign wealth fund, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Tobin tax, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

15 Turkey was the only major country, certainly the only NATO country, to have protested very sharply against the U.S.-Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008–09.16 And it was a U.S.-Israeli attack. Israel dropped the bombs, but the United States backed it, with Obama’s approval.17 Turkey came out very strongly in condemnation. In a famous incident in Davos at the World Economic Forum, Erdoan spoke out strongly against the attack while Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, was onstage with him.18 Of course, the United States didn’t like that. Having cordial relations with Iran and condemning Israeli crimes does not make you a favored figure at Georgetown cocktail parties.

Moustafa Bayoumi (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010). 16. Megan K. Stack, “Israel Flotilla Raid Deals a Blow to Ties with Turkey,” Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2010. 17. For discussion, see Paul Street, “Obama-Gaza: No Surprise,” ZCommunications.org, 4 January 2009. 18. Katrin Bennhold, “Leaders of Turkey and Israel Clash at Davos Panel,” New York Times, 29 January 2009. 19. Talila Nesher, “Israeli MKs to Discuss Recognizing Turkey’s Armenian Genocide,” Ha’aretz (Tel Aviv), 26 December 2011. 20. Peter Balakian, “State of Denial,” Tablet, 19 October 2010. See also Israel W. Charney, “A Moral Israel Must Recognize the Armenian Genocide,” Jerusalem Post Magazine, 24 January 2012. 21.


pages: 375 words: 88,306

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset light, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Burning Man, call centre, Carl Icahn, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, distributed ledger, driverless car, Eben Moglen, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, future of work, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, gig economy, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, job automation, job-hopping, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, megacity, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, moral panic, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, peer-to-peer rental, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, WeWork, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Of course, by the time I met Chesky in 2013, he and his co-founders Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk had taken Airbnb from the tiny AirBed and Breakfast to a global platform with hundreds of thousands of “hosts”—people who rent their spare bedrooms, apartments, houses, tree-houses, beach homes, boats, and more to millions of paying guests—and over $100 million in venture capital funding. And as of 2016, their exponential growth continues. As Blecharczyk noted during a panel discussion at the 2016 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, “To date, 70 million guests have now stayed in a stranger’s home, and 40 million last year alone, so last year was more than the previous 7 years combined.” Part of the promise I have always sensed in Airbnb’s business model is the huge economic efficiency it seems to represent. People have accommodation space they aren’t always using.

Innovative new products and services will flow from platforms that are gateways to innovation or, as Lisa Gansky engagingly described them in a 2013 conversation with me, “finishing schools for entrepreneurs.” Average workers will work fewer hours on a more flexible schedule from wherever they want and make more money doing work that they choose. Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of the labor platform Upwork, explained the draw of making a living on-demand at a September 2015 World Economic Forum panel: “The younger generation really aspires for this kind of career. They don’t want the nine-to-five job, working with the same employer, needing to be on-premise. They like the flexibility, they like the independence, and the control they have.”9 Of course, both camps will eventually be right to some degree.

Chapter 7 paints a clearer picture of what changes, beyond offshoring and automation, we should expect for our workforce, and chapter 8 equips you with an understanding of the key policy challenges these will induce in the years to come. The complexity of this ongoing transition—part of a broader set of changes that Professor Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum calls the “fourth industrial revolution,” may explain society’s struggle to come up with a shared label for the phenomenon I call crowd-based capitalism.2 Perhaps, like most interesting things in life, the sharing economy is shaped by its internal contradictions. Capitalist or socialist? Commercial economy or gift economy?


pages: 566 words: 163,322

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World by Ruchir Sharma

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, backtesting, bank run, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, currency peg, dark matter, debt deflation, deglobalization, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Freestyle chess, Gini coefficient, global macro, Goodhart's law, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, hype cycle, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, Internet of things, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Malacca Straits, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, megacity, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, military-industrial complex, mittelstand, moral hazard, New Economic Geography, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open immigration, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, Snapchat, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, trade route, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, work culture , working-age population

Bloomberg named Sharma one of the 50 Most Influential People in the world in October 2015. In 2012, he was selected as one of the Top Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, and in June 2013, India’s premier weekly magazine, Outlook, named him as one of the World’s 25 Smartest Indians. The World Economic Forum in Davos selected Sharma as one of the world’s Top Young Leaders in 2007. A committed runner, he regularly trains with his former Olympics coach and competes in sprinting events. Copyright © 2016 by Ruchir Sharma All rights reserved First Edition For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W.

Russia is still dependent on raw materials, and although it has a few dynamic Internet companies, it lacks a tech sector to speak of and has been one the world’s slowest-growing economies in the 2010s. I also see limited use for various surveys that try, in essence, to make a science of measuring some of the factors that can contribute to productivity. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report focuses on twelve basic categories, but many are slow-moving forces like institutions and education. Finland, for example, has been near the top of the forum’s ranking system for a long time, and in 2015 it ranked fourth in the world and first in a dozen subcategories ranging from primary schools to antimonopoly policies.

Financial Times, May 8, 2013. ——. “India’s Modi Fills a Void of Congress Party’s Making.” Financial Times, September 25, 2013. Polan, Magdalena. “EM Markets: EM Macro Daily.” Goldman Sachs Research, September 12, 2013. Putin, Vladimir. “Answers to Questions for Participants in the Russian Meetings.” Interview, World Economic Forum, 2001. “The Quest for Prosperity.” Economist, May 15, 2007. Rapoza, Kenneth. “Why Lula Was Better for Brazil than Dilma.” Forbes, December 9, 2013. Rosenberg, Mark. “African Frontiers: Diverging Political Trajectories Highlight Varying Growth Paths in 2014.” Eurasia Group, 2014. “Russia: A Smooth Political Transition.”


pages: 173 words: 53,564

Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn by Chris Hughes

"World Economic Forum" Davos, basic income, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, end world poverty, full employment, future of journalism, gig economy, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, new economy, oil rush, payday loans, Peter Singer: altruism, Potemkin village, precariat, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

Cash-Based Transfers Factsheet, April 2017. http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp284171.pdf?_ga=2.147298738.421457413.1501242755-996685541.1501242755. Yamamori, Toru. “Christopher Pissarides, a Nobel Laureate, Argues for UBI at the World Economic Forum at Davos.” Basic Income Earth Network, February 6, 2016. http://basicincome.org/news/2016/02/international-christopher-pissarides-a-nobel-economist-argues-for-ubi-at-a-debate-in-davos/. Zuckerberg, Mark. “2017 Harvard Commencement Speech.” Harvard University, May 25, 2017. https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/harvard-commencement-2017/10154853758606634/. Notes Introduction 5 income floor of $500 per month: The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that 18.5 million people would be lifted out of poverty with an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) paying $500 to every adult living in a household in which total income is less than $50,000.


pages: 475 words: 155,554

The Default Line: The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on the Edge by Faisal Islam

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , book value, Boris Johnson, British Empire, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Crossrail, currency risk, dark matter, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, energy security, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Eyjafjallajökull, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, forensic accounting, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, ghettoisation, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, inflation targeting, Irish property bubble, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market clearing, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, negative equity, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pearl River Delta, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, shareholder value, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Chicago School, the payments system, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, two tier labour market, unorthodox policies, uranium enrichment, urban planning, value at risk, WikiLeaks, working-age population, zero-sum game

He initially blamed it on the disruption caused by cold weather and heavy snow in December. But in Germany the weather had been worse and its economy had delivered strong growth. The British press mocked these ‘Snowmageddon’ excuses mercilessly. Soon afterwards I spoke to Mr Osborne at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Normally, interviews with politicians at Davos take place outside, with a backdrop of glorious snowy mountains. But this year, British ministers, including the chancellor, were only to be filmed indoors, with not a flake of snow in view. ‘The fall in GDP according to the Office for National Statistics was caused by the very bad weather,’ Osborne insisted.

‘The Treasury can advise on the feasibility; our advice on the advisability is that it is sensible to take measures in this fiscal year to demonstrate the genuine commitment and determination of the new government.’ The coalition agreement had made the £6 billion in-year cuts contingent on advice to this end from the Bank of England. The Bank of England was being used as an alibi for the LibDem change of policy. Earlier in 2010 I had interviewed the then Opposition leader David Cameron at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He was selling the early cuts plan. I asked Cameron repeatedly if he would proceed with the cuts even if Britain’s economy fell back into ‘a severe renewed contraction’: ‘You must make a start in 2010,’ Cameron told me, ‘but clearly the scale of what you can do needs to be worked out in conjunction with the Bank of England, because we want to keep those interest rates low.’

It works best at the point where such countries ask for financial help to reduce their public debt or rescue their bankrupt banks. This is why more sceptical observers of Germany might refer to the Bundeskanzleramt as the Temple of Sado-Austerity. But that is not entirely fair. The core sentiment, though, is not entirely wrong. Earlier in 2012, a G7 finance minister had told me at Davos: ‘The Germans feel the need to keep their feet on the neck of the small Eurozone countries, so we feel the need to keep our feet on theirs.’ Germany’s weary domination of Europe in the twenty-first century is more by accident than by design. Berlin gets criticised by London and Washington for doing too little.


pages: 229 words: 75,606

Two and Twenty: How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win by Sachin Khajuria

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, bank run, barriers to entry, Big Tech, blockchain, business cycle, buy and hold, carried interest, COVID-19, credit crunch, data science, decarbonisation, disintermediation, diversification, East Village, financial engineering, gig economy, glass ceiling, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, index fund, junk bonds, Kickstarter, low interest rates, mass affluent, moral hazard, passive investing, race to the bottom, random walk, risk/return, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, two and twenty, Vanguard fund, zero-sum game

He emerged from incarceration to devote the rest of his life to philanthropy and politics, a transformation that did not convince some of his critics. He was perhaps not the ideal role model, but his advice was always crisp and helpful to recall at the right moment. The CNBC cameras are about to roll for the Founder’s first interview in Davos, Switzerland. Like other billionaires in asset management, he attends the World Economic Forum every year, but until now he has declined all invitations to speak. It was smarter to maintain his aura; let the bankers and politicians talk, and absorb the atmosphere and feel which way the winds of sentiment were headed. But this time is different, and it is in his interest to be vocal as well as visible.

Only institutional investors, such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, can invest. This will soon change. * * * — After the Davos conference, the Founder travels onward to elite gatherings in California and Asia. Billionaires and other powerful public figures travel in Gulfstream private jets to attend these private forums to discuss the problems facing society and the economy and to explain how their businesses are helping as well as thriving through them. At these subsequent events, the Founder makes similar comments to his statements at the World Economic Forum, and they are well received. It becomes clear in the next year that the Firm is likely to achieve the objectives he previewed in his CNBC interview.


pages: 573 words: 115,489

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

On Black Monday, it was thought to be so imminent that a former advisor to the UK Prime Minister was infamously warning people to stock up on tinned food and bottled water and make sure they had a wad of hard cash to survive on.56 By early 2016, such warnings had become almost commonplace. William White, former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements, warned the Davos World Economic Forum that the situation building in the global financial system was ‘worse than it was in 2007’ in a context in which central bankers had ‘used up all their ammunition’. The head of Swiss banking giant UBS, Axel Weber, added to the angst by warning that the world was now stuck in an era of low growth.57 These comments illustrate the visceral fear that haunts the prospect of an economic slowdown.

INDEX Locators in italic refer to figures absolute decoupling 84–6; historical perspectives 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; mathematical relationship with relative decoupling 96–101, 111 abundance see opulence accounting errors, decoupling 84, 91 acquisition, instinctive 68 see also symbolic role of goods adaptation: diminishing marginal utility 51, 68; environmental 169; evolutionary 226 advertising, power of 140, 203–4 Africa 73, 75–7; life-expectancy 74; philosophy 227; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; growth 99; relative income effect 58, 75; schooling 78 The Age of Turbulence (Greenspan) 35 ageing populations 44, 81 agriculture 12, 148, 152, 220 Aids/HIV 77 algebra of inequality see inequality; mathematical models alienation: future visions 212, 218–19; geographical community 122–3; role of the state 205; selfishness vs. altruism 137; signals sent by society 131 alternatives: economic 101–2, 139–40, 157–8; hedonism 125–6 see also future visions; post-growth macroeconomics; reform altruism 133–8, 196, 207 amenities see public services/amenities Amish community, North America 128 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith) 123, 132 angelised growth see green growth animal welfare 220 anonymity/loneliness see alienation anthropological perspectives, consumption 70, 115 anti-consumerism 131 see also intrinsic values anxiety: fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; novelty 116–17, 124, 211 Argentina 58, 78, 78, 80 Aristotle 48, 61 The Art of Happiness (Dalai Lama) 49 arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 assets, stranded 167–8 see also ownership austerity policies xxxiii–xxxv, 189; and financial crisis 24, 42–3; mathematical models 181 Australia 58, 78, 128, 206 authoritarianism 199 autonomy see freedom/autonomy Ayres, Robert 143 backfire effects 111 balance: private interests/common good 208; tradition/innovation 226 Bank for International Settlements 46 bank runs 157 banking system 29–30, 39, 153–7, 208; bonuses 37–8 see also financial crisis; financial system basic entitlements: enterprise as service 142; income 67, 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; limits to growth 63–4 see also education; food; health Basu, Sanjay 43 Baumol, William 112, 147, 222, 223; cost disease 170, 171, 172, 173 BBC survey, geographical community 122–3 Becker, Ernest 69 Belk, Russ 70, 114 belonging 212, 219 see also alienation; community; intrinsic values Bentham, Jeremy 55 bereavement, material possessions 114, 214–15 Berger, Peter 70, 214 Berry, Wendell 8 Better Growth, Better Climate (New Climate Economy report) 18 big business/corporations 106–7 biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 biological perspectives see evolutionary theory; human nature/psyche biophysical boundaries see limits (ecological) Black Monday 46 The Body Economic (Stuckler and Basu) 43 bond markets 30, 157 bonuses, banking 37–8 Bookchin, Murray 122 boom-and-bust cycles 157, 181 Booth, Douglas 117 borrowing behaviour 34, 118–21, 119 see also credit; debt Boulding, Elise 118 Boulding, Kenneth 1, 5, 7 boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) bounded capabilities for flourishing 61–5 see also limits (flourishing within) Bowen, William 147 Bowling Alone (Putnam) 122 Brazil 58, 88 breakdown of community see alienation; social stability bubbles, economic 29, 33, 36 Buddhist monasteries, Thailand 128 buen vivir concept, Ecuador xxxi, 6 built-in obsolescence 113, 204, 220 Bush, George 121 business-as-usual model 22, 211; carbon dioxide emissions 101; crisis of commitment 195; financial crisis 32–8; growth 79–83, 99; human nature 131, 136–7; need for reform 55, 57, 59, 101–2, 162, 207–8, 227; throwaway society 113; wellbeing 124 see also financial systems Canada 75, 206, 207 capabilities for flourishing 61–5; circular flow of the economy 113; future visions 218, 219; and income 77; progress measures 50–5, 54; role of material abundance 67–72; and prosperity 49; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; role of shame 123–4; role of the state 200 see also limits (flourishing within); wellbeing capital 105, 107–10 see also investment Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty) 33, 176, 177 Capital Institute, USA 155 capitalism 68–9, 80; structures 107–13, 175; types 105–7, 222, 223 car industry, financial crisis 40 carbon dioxide emissions see greenhouse gas emissions caring professions, valuing 130, 147, 207 see also social care Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 213 causal path analysis, subjective wellbeing 59 Central Bank 154 central human capabilities 64 see also capabilities for flourishing The Challenge of Affluence (Offer) 194 change see alternatives; future visions; novelty/innovation; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Chicago school of economics 36, 156 children: advertising to 204; labour 62, 154; mortality 74–5, 75, 206 Chile xxxiii, xxxvii, 58, 74, 74, 75, 76 China: decoupling 88; GDP per capita 75; greenhouse gas emissions 91; growth 99; life expectancy 74; philosophy 7; post-financial crisis 45–6; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; relative income effect 58; resource use 94; savings 27; schooling 76 choice, moving beyond consumerism 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy Christian doctrine see religious perspectives chromium, commodity price 13 Cinderella economy 219–21, 224 circular economy 144, 220 circular flow of the economy 107, 113 see also engine of growth citizen’s income 207 see also universal basic income civil unrest see social stability Clean City Law, São Paulo 204 climate change xxxv, 22, 47; critical boundaries 17–20; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 98; fatalism 186; investment needs 152; role of the state 192, 198, 201–2 see also greenhouse gas emissions Climate Change Act (2008), UK 198 clothing see basic entitlements Club of Rome, Limits to Growth report xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16, Cobb, John 54 collectivism 191 commercial bond markets 30, 157 commitment devices/crisis of 192–5, 197 commodity prices: decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; fluctuation/volatility 14, 21; resource constraints 13–14 common good: future visions 218, 219; vs. freedom and autonomy 193–4; vs. private interests 208; role of the state 209 common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199 see also public services/amenities communism 187, 191 community: future visions of 219–20; geographical 122–3; investment 155–6, 204 see also alienation; intrinsic values comparison, social 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect competition 27, 112; positional 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also struggle for existence complexity, economic systems 14, 32, 108, 153, 203 compulsive shopping 116 see also consumerism Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (CoP21) 19 conflicted state 197, 201, 209 connectedness, global 91, 227 conspicuous consumption 115 see also language of goods consumer goods see language of goods; material goods consumer sovereignty 196, 198 consumerism 4, 21, 22, 103–4, 113–16; capitalism 105–13, 196; choice 196; engine of growth 104, 108, 120, 161; existential fear of death 69, 212–15; financial crisis 24, 28, 39, 103; moving beyond 216–18; novelty and anxiety 116–17; post-growth economy 166–7; role of the state 192–3, 196, 199, 202–5; status 211; tragedy of 140 see also demand; materialism contemplative dimensions, simplicity 127 contraction and convergence model 206–7 coordinated market economies 27, 106 Copenhagen Accord (2009) 19 copper, commodity prices 13 corporations/big business 106–7 corruption 9, 131, 186, 187, 189 The Cost Disease: Why Computers get Cheaper and Health Care Doesn’t (Baumol) 171, 172 Costa Rica 74, 74, 76 countercyclical spending 181–2, 182, 188 crafts/craft economies 147, 149, 170, 171 creative destruction 104, 112, 113, 116–17 creativity 8, 79; and consumerism 113, 116; future visions 142, 144, 147, 158, 171, 200, 220 see also novelty/innovation credit, private: deflationary forces 44; deregulation 36; financial crisis 26, 27, 27–31, 34, 36, 41; financial system weaknesses 32–3, 37; growth imperative hypothesis 178–80; mortgage loans 28–9; reforms in financial system 157; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–19; and stimulation of growth 36 see also debt (public) credit unions 155–6 crises: of commitment 192–5; financial see financial crisis critical boundaries, biophysical see limits (ecological) Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi 127 Cuba: child mortality 75; life expectancy 74, 77, 78, 78; response to economic hardship 79–80; revolution 56; schooling 76 Cushman, Philip 116 Dalai Lama 49, 52 Daly, Herman xxxii, 54, 55, 160, 163, 165 Darwin, Charles 132–3 Das Kapital (Marx) 225 Davidson, Richard 49 Davos World Economic Forum 46 Dawkins, Richard 134–5 de Mandeville, Bernard 131–2, 157 death, denial of 69, 104, 115, 212–15 debt, public-sector 81; deflationary forces 44; economic stability 81; financial crisis 24, 26–32, 27, 37, 41, 42, 81; financial systems 28–32, 153–7; money creation 178–9; post-growth economy 178–9, 223 Debt: The First Five Thousand Years (Graeber) 28 decoupling xix, xx, xxxvii, 21, 84–7; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 84, 86, 87, 88, 95, 104; green growth 163, 163–5; historical perspectives 87–96, 89, 90, 92, 94, 95; need for new economic model 101–2; relationship between relative and absolute 96–101 deep emission and resource cuts 99, 102 deficit spending 41, 43 deflationary forces, post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 degrowth movement 161–3, 177 demand 104, 113–16, 166–7; post-financial crisis 44–5; post-growth economy 162, 164, 166–9, 171–2, 174–5 dematerialisation 102, 143 democratisation, and wellbeing 59 deposit guarantees 35 deregulation 27, 34, 36, 196 desire, role in consumer behaviour 68, 69, 70, 114 destructive materialism 104, 112, 113, 116–17 Deutsche Bank 41 devaluation of currency 30, 45 Dichter, Ernest 114 digital economy 44, 219–20 dilemma of growth xxxi, 66–7, 104, 210; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; decoupling 85, 87, 164; degrowth movement 160–3; economic stability 79–83, 174–6; material abundance 67–72; moving beyond 165, 166, 183–4; role of the state 198 diminishing marginal utility: alternative hedonism 125, 126; wellbeing 51–2, 57, 60, 73, 75–6, 79 disposable incomes 27, 67, 118 distributed ownership 223 Dittmar, Helga 126 domestic debt see credit dopamine 68 Dordogne, mindfulness community 128 double movement of society 198 Douglas, Mary 70 Douthwaite, Richard 178 downshifting 128 driving analogy, managing change 16–17 durability, consumer goods 113, 204, 220 dynamic systems, managing change 16–17 Eastern Europe 76, 122 Easterlin, Richard 56, 57, 59; paradox 56, 58 eco-villages, Findhorn community 128 ecological investment 101, 166–70, 220 see also investment ecological limits see limits (ecological) ecological (ecosystem) services 152, 169, 223 The Ecology of Money (Douthwaite) 178 economic growth see growth economic models see alternatives; business-as-usual model; financial systems; future visions; mathematical models; post-growth macroeconomics economic output see efficiency; productivity ‘Economic possibilities for our grandchildren’ (Keynes) 145 economic stability 22, 154, 157, 161; financial system weaknesses 34, 35, 36, 180; growth 21, 24, 67, 79–83, 174–6, 210; post-growth economy 161–3, 165, 174–6, 208, 219; role of the state 181–3, 195, 198, 199 economic structures: post-growth economy 227; financial system reforms 224; role of the state 205; selfishness 137 see also business-as-usual model; financial systems ecosystem functioning 62–3 see also limits (ecological) ecosystem services 152, 169, 223 Ecuador xxxi, 6 education: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; and income 67, 76, 76; investment in 150–1; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements efficiency measures 84, 86–8, 95, 104, 109–11, 142–3; energy 41, 109–11; growth 111, 211; investment 109, 151; of scale 104 see also labour productivity; relative decoupling Ehrlich, Paul 13, 96 elasticity of substitution, labour and capital 177–8 electricity grid 41, 151, 156 see also energy Elgin, Duane 127 Ellen MacArthur Foundation 144 emissions see greenhouse gas emissions employee ownership 223 employment intensity vs. carbon dioxide emissions 148 see also labour productivity empty self 116, 117 see also consumerism ends above means 159 energy return on investment (EROI) 12, 169 energy services/systems 142: efficiency 41, 109–11; inputs/intensity 87–8, 151; investment 41, 109–10, 151–2; renewable xxxv, 41, 168–9 engine of growth 145; consumerism 104, 108, 161; services 143, 170–4 see also circular flow of the economy enough is enough see limits enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 158 see also novelty/innovation entitlements see basic entitlements entrepreneur as visionary 112 entrepreneurial state 220 Environmental Assessment Agency, Netherlands 62 environmental quality 12 see also pollution environmentalism 9 EROI (energy return on investment) 12, 169 Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus) 9–11, 132–3 evolutionary map, human heart 136, 136 evolutionary theory 132–3; common good 193; post-growth economy 226; psychology 133–5; selfishness and altruism 196 exchange values 55, 61 see also gross domestic product existential fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15 exponential expansion 1, 11, 20–1, 210 see also growth external debt 32, 42 extinctions/biodiversity loss 17, 47, 62, 101 Eyres, Harry 215 Fable of the Bees (de Mandeville) 131–2 factor inputs 109–10 see also capital; labour; resource use fast food 128 fatalism 186 FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change) 92 fear of death, existential 69, 104, 115, 212–15 feedback loops 16–17 financial crisis (2008) 6, 23–5, 32, 77, 103; causes and culpability 25–8; financial system weaknesses 32–7, 108; Keynesianism 37–43, 188; nationalisation of financial sector 188; need for financial reforms 175; role of debt 24, 26–32, 27, 81, 179; role of state 191; slowing of growth 43–7, 45; spending vs. saving behaviour of ordinary people 118–21, 119; types/definitions of capitalism 106; youth unemployment 144–5 financial systems: common pool resources 192; debt-based/role of debt 28–32, 153–7; post-growth economy 179, 208; systemic weaknesses 32–7; and wellbeing 47 see also banking system; business-as-usual model; financial crisis; reform Findhorn community 128 finite limits of planet see limits (ecological) Fisher, Irving 156, 157 fishing rights 22 flourishing see capabilities for flourishing; limits; wellbeing flow states 127 Flynt, Larry 40 food 67 see also basic entitlements Ford, Henry 154 forestry/forests 22, 192 Forrester, Jay 11 fossil fuels 11, 20 see also oil Foucault, Michel 197 fracking 14, 15 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) 92 France: GDP per capita 58, 75, 76; inequality 206; life-expectancy 74; mindfulness community 128; working hours 145 free market 106: financial crisis 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; ideological controversy/conflict 186–7, 188 freedom/autonomy: vs. common good 193–4; consumer 22, 68–9; language of goods 212; personal choices for improvement 216–18; wellbeing 49, 59, 62 see also individualism Friedman, Benjamin 176 Friedman, Milton 36, 156, 157 frugality 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 fun (more fun with less stuff) 129, 217 future visions 2, 158, 217–21; community banking 155–6; dilemma of growth 211; enterprise as service 140, 141–4, 147–8, 158; entrepreneur as visionary 112; financial crisis as opportunity 25; and growth 165–6; investment 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208; money as social good 140, 153–7, 158; processes of change 185; role of the state 198, 199, 203; timescales for change 16–17; work as participation 140, 144–9, 148, 158 see also alternatives; post-growth macroeconomics; reform Gandhi, Mahatma 127 GDP see gross domestic product gene, selfish 134–5 Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) 54, 54 geographical community 122–3 Germany xxxi; Federal Ministry of Finance 224–5; inequality 206; relative income effect 58; trade balance 31; work as participation 146 Glass Steagal Act 35 Global Commodity Price Index (1992–2015) 13 global corporations 106–7 global economy 98: culture 70; decoupling 86–8, 91, 93–5, 95, 97, 98, 100; exponential expansion 20–1; inequality 4, 5–6; interconnectedness 91, 227; post-financial crisis slowing of growth 45 Global Research report (HSBC) 41 global warming see climate change Godley, Wynne 179 Goldman Sachs 37 good life 3, 6; moral dimension 63, 104; wellbeing 48, 50 goods see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods Gordon, Robert 44 governance 22, 185–6; commons 190–2; crisis of commitment 192–5, 197; economic stability 34, 35; establishing limits 200–8, 206; growth 195–9; ideological controversy/conflict 186–9; moving towards change 197–200, 220–1; post-growth economy 181–3, 182; power of corporations 106; for prosperity 209; signals 130 government as household metaphor 30, 42 governmentality 197, 198 GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) 54, 54 Graeber, David 28 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act 35 Great Depression 39–40 Greece: austerity xxxiii–xxxiv, xxxvii, 43; energy inputs 88; financial crisis 28, 30, 31, 77; life expectancy 74; schooling 76; relative income effect 58; youth unemployment 144 Green Economy initiative 41 green: growth xxxvii, 18, 85, 153, 166, 170; investment 41 Green New Deal, UNEP 40–1, 152, 188 greenhouse gas emissions 18, 85, 86, 91, 92; absolute decoupling 89–92, 90, 92, 98–101, 100; dilemma of growth 210–11; vs. employment intensity 148; future visions 142, 151, 201–2, 220; Kyoto Protocol 18, 90; reduction targets 19–20; relative decoupling 87, 88, 89, 93, 98–101, 100 see also climate change Greenspan, Alan 35 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita 3–5, 15, 54; climate change 18; decoupling 85, 93, 94; financial crisis 27, 28, 32; green growth 163–5; life expectancy 74, 75, 78; as measure of prosperity 3–4, 5, 53–5, 54, 60–1; post-financial crisis 43, 44; post-growth economy 207; schooling 76; wellbeing 55–61, 58 see also income growth xxxvii; capitalism 105; credit 36, 178–80; decoupling 85, 96–101; economic stability 21, 24, 67, 80, 210; financial crisis 37, 38; future visions 209, 223, 224; inequality 177; labour productivity 111; moving beyond 165, 166; novelty 112; ownership 105; post-financial crisis slowing 43–7, 45; prosperity as 3–7, 23, 66; role of the state 195–9; sustainable investment 166–70; wellbeing 59–60; as zero sum game 57 see also dilemma of growth; engine of growth; green growth; limits to growth; post-growth macroeconomy growth imperative hypothesis 37, 174, 175, 177–80, 183 habit formation, acquisition as 68 Hall, Peter 106, 188 Hamilton, William 134 Hansen, James 17 happiness see wellbeing/happiness Happiness (Layard) 55 Hardin, Garrett 190–1 Harvey, David 189, 192 Hayek, Friedrich 187, 189, 191 health: Baumol’s cost disease 171, 172; inequality 72–3, 205–6, 206; investment 150–1; and material abundance 67, 68; personal choices for improvement 217; response to economic hardship 80; role of the state 193 see also basic entitlements Heath, Edward 66, 82 hedonism 120, 137, 196; alternatives 125–6 Hirsch, Fred xxxii–xxxiii historical perspectives: absolute decoupling 86, 89–96, 90, 92, 94, 95; relative decoupling 86, 87–9, 89 Holdren, John 96 holistic solutions, post-growth economy 175 household finances: house purchases 28–9; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–20, 119 see also credit household metaphor, government as 30, 42 HSBC Global Research report 41 human capabilities see capabilities for flourishing human happiness see wellbeing/happiness human nature/psyche 3, 132–5, 138; acquisition 68; alternative hedonism 125; evolutionary map of human heart 136, 136; intrinsic values 131; meaning/purpose 49–50; novelty/innovation 116; selfishness vs. altruism 133–8; short-termism/living for today 194; spending vs. saving behaviour 34, 118–21, 119; symbolic role of goods 69 see also intrinsic values human rights see basic entitlements humanitarian perspectives: financial crisis 24; growth 79; inequality 5, 52, 53 see also intrinsic values hyperbolic discounting 194 hyperindividualism 226 see also individualism hyper-materialisation 140, 157 I Ching (Chinese Book of Changes) 7 Iceland: financial crisis 28; life expectancy 74, 75; relative income effect 56; response to economic hardship 79–80; schooling 76; sovereign money system 157 identity construction 52, 69, 115, 116, 212, 219 IEA (International Energy Agency) 14, 152 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 45, 156–7 immaterial goods 139–40 see also intrinsic values; meaning/purpose immortality, symbolic role of goods 69, 104, 115, 212–14 inclusive growth see inequality; smart growth income 3, 4, 5, 66, 124; basic entitlements 72–9, 74, 75, 76, 78; child mortality 74–5, 75; decoupling 96; economic stability 82; education 76; life expectancy 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; poor nations 67; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; tax revenues 81 see also gross domestic product INDCs (intended nationally determined commitments) 19 India: decoupling 99; growth 99; life expectancy 74, 75; philosophy 127; pursuit of western lifestyles 70; savings 27; schooling 76 indicators of environmental quality 96 see also biodiversity; greenhouse gas emissions; pollution; resource use individualism 136, 226; progressive state 194–7, 199, 200, 203, 207 see also freedom/autonomy industrial development 12 see also technological advances inequality 22, 67; basic entitlements 72; child mortality 75, 75; credible alternatives 219, 224; deflationary forces 44; fatalism 186; financial crisis 24; global 4, 5–6, 99, 100; financial system weaknesses 32–3; post-growth economy 174, 176–8; role of the state 198, 205–7, 206; selfishness vs. altruism 137; symbolic role of goods 71; wellbeing 47, 104 see also poverty infant mortality rates 72, 75 inflation 26, 30, 110, 157, 167 infrastructure, civic 150–1 Inglehart, Ronald 58, 59 innovation see novelty/innovation; technological advances inputs 80–1 see also capital; labour productivity; resource use Inside Job documentary film 26 instant gratification 50, 61 instinctive acquisition 68 Institute for Fiscal Studies 81 Institute for Local Self-Reliance 204 institutional structures 130 see also economic structures; governance intended nationally determined commitments (INDCs) 19 intensity factor, technological 96, 97 see also technological advances intentional communities 127–9 interconnectedness, global 91, 227 interest payments/rates 39, 43, 110; financial crisis 29, 30, 33, 39; post-growth economy 178–80 see also credit; debt Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 18, 19, 201–2 International Energy Agency (IEA) 14, 152 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 45, 156–7 intrinsic values 126–31, 135–6, 212; role of the state 199, 200 see also belonging; community; meaning/purpose; simplicity/frugality investment 107–10, 108; ecological/sustainable 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; and innovation 112; loans 29; future visions 22, 101–2, 140, 149–53, 158, 169, 208, 220; and savings 108; social 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 invisible hand metaphor 132, 133, 187 IPAT equation, relative and absolute decoupling 96 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 18, 19, 201–2 Ireland 28; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75; schooling 76; wellbeing 58 iron cage of consumerism see consumerism iron ore 94 James, Oliver 205 James, William 68 Japan: equality 206; financial crisis 27, 45; life expectancy 74, 76, 79; relative income effect 56, 58; resource use 93; response to economic hardship 79–80 Jefferson, Thomas 185 Jobs, Steve 210 Johnson, Boris 120–1 Kahneman, Daniel 60 Kasser, Tim 126 keeping up with the Joneses 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect Kennedy, Robert 48, 53 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesianism 23, 34, 120, 174, 181–3, 187–8; financial crisis 37–43; financial system reforms 157; part-time working 145; steady state economy 159, 162 King, Alexander 11 Krugman, Paul 39, 85, 86, 102 Kyoto Protocol (1992) 18, 90 labour: child 62, 154; costs 110; division of 158; elasticity of substitution 177, 178; intensity 109, 148, 208; mobility 123; production inputs 80, 109; structures of capitalism 107 labour productivity 80–1, 109–11; Baumol’s cost disease 170–2; and economic growth 111; future visions 220, 224; investment as commitment 150; need for investment 109; post-growth economy 175, 208; services as engine of growth 170; sustainable investment 166, 170; trade off with resource use 110; work-sharing 145, 146, 147, 148, 148, 149 Lahr, Christin 224–5 laissez-faire capitalism 187, 195, 196 see also free market Lakoff, George 30 language of goods 212; material footprint of 139–40; signalling of social status 71; and wellbeing 124 see also consumerism; material goods; symbolic role of goods Layard, Richard 55 leadership, political 199 see also governance Lebow, Victor 120 Lehman Brothers, bankruptcy 23, 25, 26, 118 leisure economy 204 liberal market economies 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6 life expectancy: and income 72, 73, 74, 77–9, 78; inequality 206; response to economic hardship 80 see also basic entitlements life-satisfaction 73; inequality 205; relative income effect 55–61, 58 see also wellbeing/happiness limits, ecological 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 20–2; climate change 17–20; decoupling 86; financial crisis 23–4; growth 21, 165, 210; post-growth economy 201–2, 226–7; role of the state 198, 200–2, 206–7; and social boundaries 141; wellbeing 62–63, 185 limits, flourishing within 61–5, 185; alternative hedonism 125–6; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 215, 218, 219, 221; paradox of materialism 121–23; prosperity 67–72, 113, 212; role of the state 201–2, 205; selfishness 131–8; shame 123–4; spending vs. saving behaviour 118–21, 119 see also sustainable prosperity limits to growth: confronting 7–8; exceeding 20–2; wellbeing 62–3 Limits to Growth report (Club of Rome) xxxii, xxxiii, 8, 11–16 ‘The Living Standard’ essay (Sen) 50, 123–4 living standards 82 see also prosperity Lloyd, William Forster 190 loans 154; community investment 155–6; financial system weaknesses 34 see also credit; debt London School of Economics 25 loneliness 123, 137 see also alienation long-term: investments 222; social good 219 long-term wellbeing vs. short-term pleasures 194, 197 longevity see life expectancy love 212 see also intrinsic values low-carbon transition 19, 220 LowGrow model for the Canadian economy 175 MacArthur Foundation 144 McCracken, Grant 115 Malthus, Thomas Robert 9–11, 132–3, 190 market economies: coordinated 27, 106; liberal 27, 35–6, 106, 107 market liberalism 106, 107; financial crisis 27, 35–6; wellbeing 47 marketing 140, 203–4 Marmot review, health inequality in the UK 72 Marx, Karl/Marxism 9, 189, 192, 225 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 11, 12, 15 material abundance see opulence material goods 68–9; identity 52; language of 139–40; and wellbeing 47, 48, 49, 51, 65, 126 see also symbolic role of goods material inputs see resource use materialism: and fear of death 69, 104, 115, 212–15; and intrinsic values 127–31; paradox of 121–3; price of 126; and religion 115; values 126, 135–6 see also consumerism mathematical models/simulations 132; austerity policies 181; countercyclical spending 181–2, 182; decoupling 84, 91, 96–101; inequality 176–8; post-growth economy 164; stock-flow consistent 179–80 Mawdsley, Emma 70 Mazzucato, Mariana 193, 220 MDG (Millennium Development Goals) 74–5 Meadows, Dennis and Donella 11, 12, 15, 16 meaning/purpose 2, 8, 22; beyond material goods 212–16; consumerism 69, 203, 215; intrinsic values 127–31; moving towards 218–20; wellbeing 49, 52, 60, 121–2; work 144, 146 see also intrinsic values means and ends 159 mental health: inequality 206; meaning/purpose 213 metaphors: government as household 30, 42; invisible hand 132, 133, 187 Middle East, energy inputs 88 Miliband, Ed 199 Mill, John Stuart 125, 159, 160, 174 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 74–5 mindfulness 128 Minsky, Hyman 34, 35, 40, 182, 208 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 11, 12, 15 mixed economies 106 mobility of labour, loneliness index 123 Monbiot, George 84, 85, 86, 91 money: creation 154, 157, 178–9; and prosperity 5; as social good 140, 153–7, 158 see also financial systems monopoly power, corporations 106–7 The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (Friedman) 82, 176 moral dimensions, good life 63 see also intrinsic values moral hazards, separation of risk from reward 35 ‘more fun with less stuff’ 129, 217 mortality fears 69, 104, 115, 212–15 mortality rates, and income 74, 74–6, 75 mortgage loans 28–9, 35 multinational corporations 106–7 national debt see debt, public-sector nationalisation 191; financial crisis 38, 188 natural selection 132–3 see also struggle for existence nature, rights of 6–7 negative emissions 98–9 negative feedback loops 16–17 Netherlands 58, 62, 206, 207 neuroscientific perspectives: flourishing 68, 69; human behaviour 134 New Climate Economy report Better Growth, Better Climate 18 New Deal, USA 39 New Economics Foundation 175 nickel, commodity prices 13 9/11 terrorist attacks (2001) 121 Nordhaus, William 171, 172–3 North America 128, 155 see also Canada; United States Norway: advertising 204; inequality 206; investment as commitment 151–2; life expectancy 74; relative income effect 58; schooling 76 novelty/innovation 104, 108, 113; and anxiety 116–17, 124, 211; crisis of commitment 195; dilemma of growth 211; human psyche 135–6, 136, 137; investment 150, 166, 168; post-growth economy 226; role of the state 196, 197, 199; as service 140, 141–4, 158; symbolic role of goods 114–16, 213 see also technological advances Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Thaler and Sunstein) 194–5 Nussbaum, Martha 64 nutrient loading, critical boundaries 17 nutrition 67 see also basic entitlements obesity 72, 78, 206 obsolescence, built in 113, 204, 220 oceans: acidification 17; common pool resources 192 Offer, Avner 57, 61, 71, 194, 195 oil prices 14, 21; decoupling 88; financial crisis 26; resource constraints 15 oligarchic capitalism 106, 107 opulence 50–1, 52, 67–72 original sin 9, 131 Ostrom, Elinor and Vincent 190, 191 output see efficiency; gross domestic product; productivity ownership: and expansion 105; private vs. public 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; new models 223–4; types/definitions of capitalism 105–7 Oxfam 141 paradoxes: materialism 121–3; thrift 120 Paris Agreement 19, 101, 201 participation in society 61, 114, 122, 129, 137; future visions 200, 205, 218, 219, 225; work as 140–9, 148, 157, 158 see also social inclusion part-time working 145, 146, 149, 175 Peccei, Aurelio 11 Perez, Carlota 112 performing arts, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 personal choice 216–18 see also freedom/autonomy personal property 189, 191 Pickett, Kate 71, 205–6 Piketty, Thomas 33, 176, 177 planetary boundaries see limits (ecological) planning for change 17 pleasure 60–1 see also wellbeing/happiness Plum Village mindfulness community 128 Polanyi, Karl 198 policy see governance political leadership 199 see also governance Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts 41 pollution 12, 21, 53, 95–6, 143 polycentric governance 191, 192 Poor Laws 10 poor nations see poverty population increase 3, 12, 63, 96, 97, 190; Malthus on 9–11, 132–3 porn industry 40 Portugal 28, 58, 88, 206 positional competition 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison positive feedback loops 16–17 post-growth capitalism 224 post-growth macroeconomics 159–60, 183–4, 221; credit 178–80; degrowth movement 161–3; economic stability 174–6; green growth 163–5; inequality 176–8; role of state 181–3, 182, 200–8, 206; services 170–4; sustainable investment 166–70 see also alternatives; future visions; reform poverty 4, 5–6, 216; basic entitlements 72; flourishing within limits 212; life expectancy 74, 74; need for new economic model 101; symbolic role of goods 70; wellbeing 48, 59–60, 61, 67 see also inequality; relative income effect power politics 200 predator–prey analogy 103–4, 117 private credit see credit private vs. public: common good 208; ownership 9, 105, 191, 219, 223; salaries 130 privatisation 191, 219 product lifetimes, obsolescence 113, 204, 220 production: inputs 80–1; ownership 191, 219, 223 productivity: investment 109, 167, 168, 169; post-growth economy 224; services as engine of growth 171, 172, 173; targets 147; trap 175 see also efficiency measures; labour productivity; resource productivity profits: definitions of capitalism 105; dilemma of growth 211; efficiency measures 87; investment 109; motive 104; post-growth economy 224; and wages 175–8 progress 2, 50–5, 54 see also novelty/innovation; technological advances progressive sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 progressive state 185, 220–2; contested 186–9; countering consumerism 202–5; equality measures 205–7, 206; governance of the commons 190–2; governance as commitment device 192–5; governmentality of growth 195–7; limit-setting 201–2; moving towards 197–200; post-growth macroeconomics 207–8, 224; prosperity 209 prosocial behaviour 198 see also social contract prosperity 1–3, 22, 121; capabilities for flourishing 61–5; and growth 3–7, 23, 66, 80, 160; and income 3–4, 5, 66–7; limits of 67–72, 113, 212; materialistic vision 137; progress measures 50–5, 54; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; social perspectives 2, 22, 48–9; state roles 209 see also capabilities for flourishing; post-growth macroeconomics; sustainable prosperity; wellbeing prudence, financial 120, 195, 221; financial crisis 33, 34, 35 public sector spending: austerity policies 189; countercyclical spending strategy 181–2, 182; welfare economy 169 public services/amenities: common pool resources 190–2, 198, 199; future visions 204, 218–20; investment 155–6, 204; ownership 223 see also private vs. public; service-based economies public transport 41, 129, 193, 217 purpose see meaning/purpose Putnam, Robert 122 psyche, human see human nature/psyche quality, environmental 12 see also pollution quality of life: enterprise as service 142; inequality 206; sustainable 128 quality to throughput ratios 113 quantitative easing 43 Queen Elizabeth II 25, 32, 34, 37 quiet revolution 127–31 Raworth, Kate 141 Reagan, Ronald 8 rebound phenomenon 111 recession 23–4, 28, 81, 161–3 see also financial crisis recreation/leisure industries 143 recycling 129 redistribution of wealth 52 see also inequality reforms 182–3, 222; economic structures 224; and financial crisis 103; financial systems 156–8, 180 see also alternatives; future visions; post-growth economy relative decoupling 84–5, 86; historical perspectives 87–9, 89; relationship with absolute decoupling 96–101, 111 relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72 see also social comparison religious perspectives 9–10, 214–15; materialism as alternative to religion 115; original sin 9, 131; wellbeing 48, 49 see also existential fear of death renewable energy xxxv, 41, 168–169 repair/renovation 172, 220 resource constraints 3, 7, 8, 11–15, 47 resource productivity 110, 151, 168, 169, 220 resource use: conflicts 22; credible alternatives 101, 220; decoupling 84–9, 92–5, 94, 95; and economic output 142–4; investment 151, 153, 168, 169; trade off with labour costs 110 retail therapy 115 see also consumerism; shopping revenues, state 222–3 see also taxation revolution 186 see also social stability rights: environment/nature 6–7; human see basic entitlements risk, financial 24, 25, 33, 35 The Road to Serfdom (Hayek) 187 Robinson, Edward 132 Robinson, Joan 159 Rockström, Johan 17, 165 romantic movement 9–10 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 35, 39 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 9, 131 Russia 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 sacred canopy 214, 215 salaries: private vs. public sector 130, 171; and profits 175–8 Sandel, Michael 150, 164, 218 São Paulo, Clean City Law 204 Sardar, Zia 49, 50 Sarkozy, Nicolas xxxi, 53 savage state, romantic movement 9–10 savings 26–7, 28, 107–9, 108; investment 149; ratios 34, 118–20, 119 scale, efficiencies of 104 Scandinavia 27, 122, 204 scarcity, managing change 16–17 Schumpeter, Joseph 112 Schwartz, Shalom 135–6, 136 schooling see education The Science of Desire (Dichter) 114 secular stagnation 43–7, 45, 173 securitisation, mortgage loans 35 security: moving towards 219; and wellbeing 48, 61 self-development 204 self-expression see identity construction self-transcending behaviours see transcendence The Selfish Gene (Dawkins) 134–5 selfishness 133–8, 196 Sen, Amartya 50, 52, 61–2, 123–4 service concept/servicization 140–4, 147–8, 148, 158 service-based economies 219; engine of growth 170–4; substitution between labour and capital 178; sustainable investment 169–70 see also public services SFC (stock-flow consistent) economic models 179–80 shame 123–4 shared endeavours, post-growth economy 227 Sheldon, Solomon 214 shelter see basic entitlements shopping 115, 116, 130 see also consumerism short-termism/living for today 194, 197, 200 signals: sent out by society 130, 193, 198, 203, 207; social status 71 see also language of goods Simon, Julian 13 simplicity/simple life 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 simulations see mathematical models/simulations slow: capital 170; movement 128 smart growth 85, 163–5 see also green growth Smith, Adam 51, 106–7, 123, 132, 187 social assets 220 social boundaries (minimum standards) 141 see also basic entitlements social care 150–1 see also caring professions social comparison 115, 116, 117 see also relative income effect social contract 194, 198, 199, 200 social inclusion 48, 69–71, 114, 212 see also participation in society social investment 155, 156, 189, 193, 208, 220–3 social justice 198 see also inequality social logic of consumerism 114–16, 204 social stability 24, 26, 80, 145, 186, 196, 205 see also alienation social status see status social structures 80, 129, 130, 137, 196, 200, 203 social tolerance, and wellbeing 59, 60 social unrest see social stability social wage 40 social welfare: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 socialism 223 Sociobiology (Wilson) 134 soil integrity 220 Solon, quotation 47, 49, 71 Soper, Kate 125–6 Soros, George 36 Soskice, David 106 Soviet Union, former 74, 76, 77–80, 78, 122 Spain 28, 58, 144, 206 SPEAR organization, responsible investment 155 species loss/extinctions 17, 47, 62, 101 speculation 93, 99, 149, 150, 154, 158, 170; economic stability 180; financial crisis 26, 33, 35; short-term profiteering 150; spending: behaviour of ordinary people 34, 119, 120–1; countercyclical 181–2, 182, 188; economic stability 81; as way out of recession 41, 44, 119, 120–1; and work cycle 125 The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett) 71, 205–6 spiritual perspectives 117, 127, 128, 214 stability see economic stability; social stability stagflation 26 stagnant sector, Baumol’s cost disease 171 stagnation: economic stability 81–2; labour productivity 145; post-financial crisis 43–7, 45 see also recession state capitalism, types/definitions of capitalism 106 state revenues, from social investment 222–3 see also taxation state roles see governance status 207, 209, 211; and possessions 69, 71, 114, 115, 117 see also language of goods; symbolic role of goods Steady State Economics (Daly) xxxii steady state economies 82, 159, 160, 174, 180 see also post-growth macroeconomics Stern, Nicholas 17–18 stewardship: role of the state 200; sustainable investment 168 Stiglitz, Joseph 53 stock-flow consistent (SFC) economic models 179–80 Stockholm Resilience Centre 17, 201 stranded assets 167–8 see also ownership structures of capitalism see economic structures struggle for existence 8–11, 125, 132–3 Stuckler, David 43 stuff see language of goods; material goods; symbolic role of goods subjective wellbeing (SWB) 49, 58, 58–9, 71, 122, 129 see also wellbeing/happiness subprime lending 26 substitution, between labour and capital 177–178 suffering, struggle for existence 10 suicide 43, 52, 77 Sukdhev, Pavan 41 sulphur dioxide pollution 95–6 Summers, Larry 36 Sunstein, Cass 194 sustainability xxv–xxvi, 102, 104, 126; financial systems 154–5; innovation 226; investment 101, 152, 153, 166–70, 220; resource constraints 12; role of the state 198, 203, 207 see also sustainable prosperity Sustainable Development Strategy, UK 198 sustainable growth see green growth sustainable prosperity 210–12; creating credible alternatives 219–21; finding meaning beyond material commodities 212–16; implications for capitalism 222–5; personal choices for improvement 216–18; and utopianism 225–7 see also limits (flourishing within) SWB see subjective wellbeing; wellbeing/happiness Switzerland 11, 46, 157; citizen’s income 207; income relative to wellbeing 58; inequality 206; life expectancy 74, 75 symbolic role of goods 69, 70–1; existential fear of death 212–16; governance 203; innovation/novelty 114–16; material footprints 139–40; paradox of materialism 121–2 see also language of goods; material goods system dynamics model 11–12, 15 tar sands/oil shales 15 taxation: capital 177; income 81; inequality 206; post-growth economy 222 technological advances 12–13, 15; decoupling 85, 86, 87, 96–8, 100–3, 164–5; dilemma of growth 211; economic stability 80; population increase 10–11; role of state 193, 220 see also novelty/innovation Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 8 terror management, and consumption 69, 104, 115, 212–15 terrorist attacks (9/11) 121 Thailand, Buddhist monasteries 128 Thaler, Richard 194 theatre, Baumol’s cost disease 171–2 theology see religious perspectives theory of evolution 132–3 thermodynamics, laws of 112, 164 Thich Nhat Hanh 128 thrift 118–20, 127–9, 215–16 throwaway society 113, 172, 204 timescales for change 16–17 tin, commodity prices 13 Today programme interview xxix, xxviii Totnes, transition movement 128–9 Towards a Green Economy report (UNEP) 152–3 Townsend, Peter 48, 61 trade balance 31 trading standards 204 tradition 135–6, 136, 226 ‘Tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin) 190–1 transcendence 214 see also altruism; meaning/purpose; spiritual perspectives transition movement, Totnes 128–9 Triodos Bank 156, 165 Trumpf (machine-tool makers) Germany 146 trust, loss of see alienation tungsten, commodity prices 13 Turkey 58, 88 Turner, Adair 157 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015) 19 UBS (Swiss bank) 46 Ubuntu, African philosophy 227 unemployment 77; consumer goods 215; degrowth movement 162; financial crisis 24, 40, 41, 43; Great Depression 39–40; and growth 38; labour productivity 80–1; post-growth economy 174, 175, 183, 208, 219; work as participation 144–6 United Kingdom: Green New Deal group 152; greenhouse gas emissions 92; labour productivity 173; resource inputs 93; Sustainable Development Strategy 198 United Nations: Development Programme 6; Environment Programme 18, 152–3; Green Economy initiative 41 United States: credit unions 155–6; debt 27, 31–32; decoupling 88; greenhouse gas emissions 90–1; subprime lending 26; Works Progress Administration 39 universal basic income 221 see also citizen’s income University of Massachusetts, Political Economy Research Institute 41 utilitarianism/utility, wellbeing 50, 52–3, 55, 60 utopianism 8, 38, 125, 179; post-growth economy 225–7 values, materialistic 126, 135–6 see also intrinsic values Veblen, Thorstein 115 Victor, Peter xxxviii, 146, 175, 177, 180 vision of progress see future visions; post-growth economy volatility, commodity prices 14, 21 wages: and profits 175–8; private vs. public sector 130, 171 walking, personal choices for improvement 217 water use 22 Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes (Smith) 123, 132 wealth redistribution 52 see also inequality Weber, Axel 46 welfare policies: financial reforms 182–3; public sector spending 169 welfare of livestock 220 wellbeing/happiness 47–50, 53, 121–2, 124; collective 209; consumer goods 4, 21, 22, 126; growth 6, 165, 211; intrinsic values 126, 129; investment 150; novelty/innovation 117; opulence 50–2, 67–72; personal choices for improvement 217; planetary boundaries 141; relative income effect 55–61, 58, 71, 72; simplicity 129; utilitarianism 50, 52–3, 55, 60 see also capabilities for flourishing western lifestyles 70, 210 White, William 46 Whybrow, Peter 68 Wilhelm, Richard 7 Wilkinson, Richard 71, 205–6 Williams, Tennessee 213 Wilson, Edward 134 wisdom traditions 48, 49, 63, 128, 213–14 work: as participation 140–9, 148, 157, 158; and spend cycle 125; sharing 145, 146, 149, 175 Works Progress Administration, USA 39 World Bank 160 World Values Survey 58 youth unemployment, financial crisis 144–5 zero sum game, growth as 57, 71

Trend labour productivity growth has been negative since 2013 (Jackson and Webster 2016: figure 3). 54 IMF (2015). 55 www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/08/china-stock-market-crisis-explained (accessed 17 October 2015). 56 www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stock-up-canned-food-after-6313506. See also www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/01/financial-armageddon-crash-warning-signs (accessed 4 November 2015). 57 See www.theguardian.com/business/live/2016/jan/20/davos-2016-day-1-economic-fears-markets-migration-robots-live#block-569f392ee4b0938bb7d2a069; www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/20/ftse-100-heads-closer-to-bear-market-amid-sharp-global-falls?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other (accessed 15 March 2016). 3 Redefining prosperity 1 According to Herodotus, this quote was part of Solon’s answer to Croesus, king of Greece from 560 to 545 bce, on being asked by Croesus who was the happiest man alive.


pages: 500 words: 115,119

Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age by Robert D. Kaplan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Anton Chekhov, Berlin Wall, British Empire, coronavirus, COVID-19, dematerialisation, disinformation, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, European colonialism, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, geopolitical risk, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, mega-rich, megacity, open borders, Parag Khanna, Pax Mongolica, South China Sea, Suez canal 1869, trade route, urban planning

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2 Ballinger, History in Exile, p. 1. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3 John Rupert Martin, Baroque (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977), p. 13. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 Timothy Snyder, “Mapping Eastern Europe” (presentation at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2018). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5 Boris Pahor, Necropolis, trans. Michael Biggins (Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, [1967] 2010), pp. 9–10, 22, 41, 104, and 147. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6 Pahor, Necropolis, pp. 83 and 109.

Smith, Stephen. The Scramble for Europe: Young Africa on Its Way to the Old Continent. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019. Snyder, Timothy. The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Snyder, Timothy. “Mapping Eastern Europe.” Presentation at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2018. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. November 1916: The Red Wheel / Knot II. Translated from the Russian by H. T. Willetts. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1984) 1999. Southern, R. W. The Making of the Middle Ages. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953.

With all of their problems, Western European countries have stronger states and bureaucracies than their counterparts in the east, where nearly a half century of Communism has left a lingering legacy of institutional decrepitude. In such a circumstance, the declining power of Brussels leaves countries in the eastern half of the continent more vulnerable to Moscow. So rather than listen to the platitudes and clichés of big shots at conferences in Munich and Davos, where everyone is performing for an audience, I would rather have one-on-one conversations at café tables in Ljubljana, closer to the borders of the Near East and Orthodox worlds, where geopolitical risk is more immediate, less abstract. Ljubljana: known in German as Laibach, a place more historically associated with the Habsburg Empire than with any particular nation-state.


pages: 447 words: 111,991

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

By the final third of the twentieth century, there was an array of international institutions propping up a globalising economic order: the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Multilateral institutions, including the European Union, were helping flatten the world too – creating multinational political systems premised on free internal trade. The private sector had its own infrastructure of globalisation. Annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, political and business elites would get together to find common ground in this increasingly flat world. The power of globalisation was transformative. In 1970, trade represented about a quarter of global GDP. By 2019 it comprised nearly 60 per cent of a much larger global GDP. This brought many benefits.

The result is a tension over where decisions about many aspects of the daily lives of more than half of humanity should occur: at the level of the nation state, or closer to home, in the city. John Perry Barlow, the former lyricist of the Grateful Dead, was also an internet rights activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. At the World Economic Forum’s Davos summit in 1996 he issued a Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace: Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us.

Azeem Azhar * * * EXPONENTIAL How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It Contents Preface: The Great Transition Chapter 1: The Harbinger Chapter 2: The Exponential Age Chapter 3: The Exponential Gap Chapter 4: The Unlimited Company Chapter 5: Labour’s Loves Lost Chapter 6: The World Is Spiky Chapter 7: The New World Disorder Chapter 8: Exponential Citizens Conclusion: Abundance and Equity Acknowledgements Notes Select Bibliography Index About the Author Azeem Azhar is the creator of Exponential View, Britain’s leading platform for in-depth tech analysis. His weekly newsletter is read by 200,000 people from around the world, and his hit podcast has featured guests including Yuval Noah Harari, Tony Blair and Kate Raworth. A member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council, Azhar contributes to publications including the Financial Times, Wired and the MIT Technology Review. To Salman, Sophie and Jasmine and the Exponential View community Preface: The Great Transition My home lies between the neighbourhoods of Cricklewood and Golders Green in north-west London.


pages: 464 words: 121,983

Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe by Antony Loewenstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, benefit corporation, British Empire, business logic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chelsea Manning, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, Corrections Corporation of America, do well by doing good, Edward Snowden, facts on the ground, failed state, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, full employment, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Leo Hollis, mandatory minimum, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open borders, private military company, profit motive, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satyajit Das, Scramble for Africa, Slavoj Žižek, stem cell, the medium is the message, trade liberalization, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, work culture

Inter Press Service, June 27, 2012, at ipsnews.net. 40Jane Regan, “Haiti’s Rush for Gold Gives Mining Firms a Free Rein Over the Riches,” Guardian, May 30, 2012. 41“UN Envoy Says Haiti ‘Not Yet’” Open for Business,” Associated Press, February 16, 2013. 42Digicel coincidentally funded the trip of President Michel Martelly to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in 2011. 43Mark Schuller, “Tectonic Shifts? The Upcoming Donors’ Conference for Haiti,” Huffington Post, March 24, 2010. 44Randal C. Archibold, “Already Desperate, Haitian Farmers Are Left Hopeless After Storm,” New York Times, November 17, 2012. 45Jacob Kushner, “Haitian Farmers Call on US to Stop Subsidising Its Own,” GlobalPost, April 12, 2012, at globalpost.com. 46“With Poor Track Records, For-Profit Development Companies Team Up to Fight Reform,” CEPR, December 1, 2011, at cepr.net. 47Jake Johnston, “Is USAID Helping Haiti to Recover or US Contractors to Make Millions?”

Such debates are starting to emerge even among the class who most benefits from such inequality. During the annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, in 2015, where the world’s business and political leaders gather to congratulate themselves, some sessions concluded that inequality was a serious problem facing the globe, and participants were pessimistic about solving it. Such talk was a start, but hardly enough when the dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president—a man responsible for the death of thousands of his own people—was warmly welcomed in Davos and allowed to pontificate about his vision for “sustainable development.” Human rights and economic freedom must not be mutually exclusive concepts.

Index Abbott, Tony 279, 286 Abdul (asylum seeker) 286 Abu Ghraib prison 15 abuse 258–62 aid 123 child 102 drug 37–9 human rights 110 labor 29 outsourced 260–1 in prisons 216–17, 218 sexual 252–8, 280–1 accountability 16, 30–1, 180, 277, 291, 310 Adam, Harry 118 AECOM 53–4 Aegis Defence Services 33 Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies 44 Afghanistan 12, 19–56, 59–63, 117, 175 arrival of PMCs 20 asylum seekers from 69–70 Australian contractors 60 casualties 32, 326n27 Chinese support for 37 contractors 28–31 corruption 22, 24, 27, 42, 45, 328n48, 329–30n58 counterinsurgency 43, 52–3 departure of foreign troops 62–3 dependence on America 45 development support 62–3, 324n2, 324n3 drug economy 37–9 election, 2004 31–2 election, 2009 32 election, 2014 32 entrepreneurs 56 fear of resurgent Taliban 44–5 financial situation 62–3 future of PMCs in 23 GDP 330n61 human rights 42 inequality 56 insurgency 12, 32 intelligence gathering 51–6 intelligence-sharing nations 21 invasion of 20, 31 labor abuses 29 laws against PMCs 21 locals’ view of 48 mineral rights 24, 330n65 mining industry 24, 49–50, 330n65 Ministry of Interior 21, 40–2 Ministry of Mines 50 natural resources 49 night raids 43, 46, 52, 54, 55, 328–9n50 occupation of 22, 31–5, 36, 43, 44, 52–3, 63, 325n10 official line 40–3 past conflicts 36–7 PMC numbers 20 population surveys 330–1n66 private military companies 16, 19–25, 33–5, 41–3, 44, 46–8, 48, 50, 59–62, 331n69 propaganda 26 reconstruction 325n11 resource exploitation 49–50 security forces 27, 330n61 Soviet invasion 37 suicide attacks 41 suicide rates 332n83 Taliban rule 25 translators 55, 325n19 USAID 327–28n46 US military bases 28 violence 20 war economy 25–31, 38, 63 warlords 32–3, 44, 326n28, 326–7n30 women in 44, 47–8, 48–9, 50–1, 330n59 Afghanistan Analysts Network 54–6, 328–9n50 Afghanistan Reconstruction Group 26 Afghan police force 27 Afghan Public Protection Force 21 Africa 23 African-Americans, incarceration rates 195, 196 Agility Logistics 124 aid Afghanistan 62–3 Australia 50 contracts 123–5 corruption 126, 171 criticism of process 144–7 food 145–6 fraud 123–4 Haiti 12, 108, 120, 144–7, 340n56, 342n89 human rights abuses 123 NGO-ization of 137–41 Papua New Guinea 13, 158–9, 167, 171–5, 179 profiteering 139 waste 146 aid dependency 121, 126 AIDS 89 Alexander, Michelle 195–6 Alex, Commander 156–7 Al-Hussein, Zeid Ra’ad 277 Al Jazeera America 29 American Correctional Association (ACA) conference, 2014 202–11 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 201 American University of Afghanistan 43–4 Amnesty International 259 Anastasiou, Vassilis 102 Anti-Defamation League 93 anti-fascist activism 93–4 anti-Semitism 90–1, 93 Arab Spring 97, 127–8 Arawa, Papua New Guinea 158, 167, 180–4 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand 26, 112–13, 151 Arizona 200–2 AshBritt 108 Ashton, Paul 201 assassinations 323n33, 331n69 Assessing Progress in Haiti Act (US) 124 Asylum Help 234 asylum seekers abuse 258–62 austerity 69 Australia 269–305 children 249–50 closed hospitality centers 67–8 costs 304 demonization of 77, 288 deportations 258–63 destinations 68 detention centers 13, 64–71, 76, 77–80, 230–5, 245–51, 271 detention costs 281–3 detention network privatization 77 Greece 64–71, 75–7, 77–80, 89 indefinite detention 68 lack of sympathy for 287–8 medical care 77–80, 256–8 mental health 254–5, 285, 286, 295, 302 motivation 68, 302–3 numbers reaching Europe 96 privatized housing 230–5 processing times 300–1 public sympathy 271 racist violence 71 reception centers 67 refugee crisis 95–8 self-harm 295–6 sexual abuse 280–1 Syntagma Square protest, 2014 70 United Kingdom 230–5, 244, 245–51, 252–8, 258–63 women 253–4 Athens 67, 102–3 Metropolitan Community Clinic 80–4 AusAID 158–9, 161, 171–5, 182, 189–91, 331–2n77 austerity, opposition to 72–5 Austin American-Statesman 108 Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility 190 Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) 282 Australia 8, 104 and Afghanistan 50 aid 50 asylum policy development 275–85, 286, 357n4, 357n9 asylum seeker network 269–305 asylum seekers 13 Community Assistance Program 304 complicity with BCL 160 Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) 271, 274, 279, 281–2, 284,286, 289–93, 295, 297–8, 300–1, 303 detention centers 13, 271, 274, 276, 278–9, 280–5, 285–305, 356n2, 357n11 detention costs 281–3 economic reforms 322n16 exploitation of Papua New Guinea 169–75 foreign policy 173–4 goals in PNG 172 immigration policy 278 “Mining for Development” initiative 190 the Pacific Solution 276–81 and Papua New Guinea 154, 160, 163, 167, 169–75, 176–7, 179, 188–91 PMC contractors 60 privatization 361n51 and Rio Tinto 162 state-ownership approach to resources 177 tender process 289–90 turnback policy 280, 286 Australian Mercy 285 Australian Navy 276 Australian Strategic Policy Institute 190 Autonomous Bougainville Government 161, 167, 178–80, 184, 346n33 Avera eCare 205 Avon Protection 203 Bagram prison 31 Bainimarama, Frank 346–7n41 Baker, Charles 117 Baldry, Eileen 285 Balkonis, Thomas 78–80 Bamazon (TV program) 306–7 Bangladesh 341n65 bank bailouts 3 bankers bonuses 4 Ban Ki-moon 113 Bank of America 3 Barnardo’s 249–50, 266 Barrick Gold 174 Batay Ouvriye 126 Bauer, Shane 204, 207–8, 210 bearing witness 9–10 Becket House, London 263 Bedford, Yarl’s Wood detention centre 252–8, 265 Behavioral International 227 Berati, Reza, murder of 283 Berghorn, George H. 204 Berman, Steve 187 BHP Billiton 172–3, 187, 189 Bigio, Gilbert 108 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 114 Bishop, Julie 176, 182 black sites 16 Blackwater 16, 35, 59, 323–4n40, 331n69 Blair, Tony 60, 236 Blanchard, Olivier 99 bloggers 308 Bloom, Devin D. 307 Blue Mountain Group 30 Boeing 15–16 Bolivia 26, 125 Booz Allen Hamilton 15 border controls, privatization 241 Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) 159, 159–61, 162, 163, 184–6, 188, 190, 343n6 Bougainville, Papua New Guinea 154–64, 167–9, 176, 178–80, 184–5 Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) 154–5, 163–4, 176, 343n6 Bougainville Women in Mining 183–4 Bozorg (asylum seeker) 232–3 Brand, Russell 267–8 bribery 22, 38, 41, 329–30n58 Brown, Bob 174 Brown, Michael, killing 203 Buckles, Nick 283 Burma 14 Bush, George W. 7, 25, 43, 118, 149 Cable, Vince 236 CACI 15–16 California 5, 196–7, 208 Callick, Rowan 176 Call Sense 210 Cambodia 276 Cameron, David 50, 62, 243, 244, 252, 263 Campbell, Chad 201 Campbell, David 284, 359n30 Campsfield detention facility 246–9, 266–7 Canada 120, 304 Capita 241–2 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) 6 capitalism 1–2 critiques 361n5 disaster 6–9 Klein’s critique of 7–8 predatory 11, 13–14, 162, 310–11 unregulated 135–6 Caracol industrial park, Haiti 116, 128–33, 133–6, 148 Carol (senior analyst) 54–6 Carr, Bob 188–9 Cash, Linda 279 Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) 124–5 Centre for Public Integrity 34 Chalmers, Camille 151–2 Chaman (Afghan refugee) 64–71 Channel 4 News 253, 267 Chaparro, Enrique Mari 137–9 cheap labor 117, 127, 132, 133, 144 Chemonics 123 Cheney, Dick 28, 30 CHF International 138–9 child abuse 102 children detention 249–50, 272 immigrants 212, 225 malnourished 82 in prisons 208 child slaves 145 China 14, 16, 24, 37, 49, 170 China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) 24 cholera 113–16 Chomsky, Noam 238, 310 Christmas Island 269–75, 356n1 Christmas Island Community Reference Group 356–7n3 Christmas Island detention facility 271, 272–3, 274, 276, 278–9, 285–9, 299–305, 356n2 Chrysohoidis, Michalis 67–8 CIA 15, 59, 110, 331n69, 331n73 Citizens for a Free Kuwait 25 City AM (newspaper) 236–7 civilian casualties, Afghanistan 32 Clarke, Victoria 26 Clayton Homes 118 climate change 1–2, 8 Clinton, Bill 116, 118–19, 122, 123, 135 Clinton Foundation 118, 126, 136 Clinton, Hillary 8, 30, 118, 125, 131, 135, 171 Clive (information management consultant) 51–2 Clive (Serco contractor) 289–92 Coffey International 162 Colas, Landry 131 Cold War 33, 111 Collective Against Mining 121 colonialism 109, 160 Comcast 5 Commission on Wartime Contracting (US) 34 Community Assistance Program, Australia 304 community mapping 58 Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan since 1978 (Independent Human Rights Commission) 32 Congo, Democratic Republic of 120 contractors, Afghanistan 28–31 Conway, Jim 208–9 copper mining, ecological damage of 173 Corcoran, Thomas J. 110–11 Corinth detention centre 64, 78–80 Corizon 209 corporate ideology 14 corporate power 7 Corporate Responsibility Coalition 187–8 Corporate Watch 255, 263 CorrectHealth 199 Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) 13, 197–8, 199, 201–2, 211–22, 227, 228, 284–5 corruption Afghanistan 24, 27, 42, 45, 328n48, 329–30n58 aid 126, 171 Greece 64, 72 Haiti 141 overcharging 240–1 Papua New Guinea 170, 171, 188 price-gouging 292 counternarcotics information campaign 26 Crocker, Ryan C. 43 Crockett, Greg 204–5 Crossbar 204–5 Cuba 122 cultural sensitivity 21 Daily Mail 235 Daily Telegraph (Sydney newspaper) 172 Damana, Chris 184–5 Das, Satyajit 309 Daveona, Lawrence 177–8 David (Serco source) 292 Davis, Raymond 57, 331n73 Davis, Troy 199 Davos conference, 2015 2–3 debtocracies 99 Defence Logistics Agency 29 democracy 16, 311 Democracy Now! 35, 112–13, 139–40, 221 detention centers access 252–3, 299, 359n31 Australia 271, 274, 276, 278–9, 280–5, 285–305, 356n2, 357n11 conditions 66–71, 79, 299–304, 334n14, 357n11 costs 96, 281–3, 304 economic logic of privatization 289–99 Greece 64–71, 76, 77–80, 96, 98, 336n14 guards 64–5, 68–9 house rules 232–4 medical care 77–80, 266, 295 price-gouging 292 privatization 13, 98, 230–5, 245–51, 280–5, 289–99 racism 65, 259–60, 294 sexual abuse 252–8 size 76 staff numbers 294 staff pain and suffering 296–8 United Kingdom 230–5, 245–51, 252–8, 263–7 United States of America 211–28 workers’ health and safety 298 working conditions 297–8 Detention Watch Network 216, 222, 227–8 diabetes 14 Digicel 122 Dilley, Texas 221 disaster capitalism, definition 6–9 disaster, definition 9 disaster economics 322n18 disaster relief NGO-ization of 137–41 privatization 108–9 Droneshield 205 drones (UAVs) 97–8 drug abuse 37–9, 102 drug trade, Afghanistan 37–9 Dubai 45 Duma, William 186 Dungavel detention centre 266 Dupuy, Alex 133 Dutton, Peter 281 Duvalier, Francois (“Papa Doc”) 109–10 Duvalier, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) 110–12 DynCorp 16, 26–7, 124 ecological damage, copper mining 173 Ecolog International 29 economic empowerment 162 economic exploitation, Haiti 132, 133–6 Economist 117 eco-system damage, Haiti 130 Eldorado Gold 100 Elie, Patrick 119–22 El Refugio 223 embassies, security of 30 embedded journalism 10, 26, 324n5 enlightened dictatorship 2 environmental destruction 157–8, 173, 273–4 Eppright, Fred 136 equality 311 Equatorial Guinea 14 Etienne, Yanick 126–8 Eurasian Minerals 120 Eurobank 101 European Central Bank 72 European Commission 72, 73 European Court of Human Rights 68 European External Border Surveillance System 97 European Refugee Fund 66 European Union asylum seeker numbers 96 development aid 324n3 and drones 97–8 and Greece 12 questions of identity 103–4 refugee crisis 95–8 Euro, the, Greece and 84 Evans, Tim 306 Evergreen Aviation 34 Evros 66–7 executions 199 Executive Outcomes 180 exploitation 107–8 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) 190–1 extraordinary rendition 16, 34 extremism 25 ExxonMobil LNG pipeline 166 Facebook 308 Fahim (Afghan engineer) 46–8 Farage, Nigel 236 Farmer, Paul 113–14, 139 fascism 85 Fatal Assistance (aid) 118–19 Ferguson, Missouri, riots in 203 Fiji 346–7n41 Financial Times 6, 191, 242 Finn, Noel 255 fiscal policy 84 Fisher, Nigel 122 Flores, Anton 223 Flynn, Michael T. 55 Fonteyne, Jean-Pierre 357n4 food aid 3, 145–6 food and drink multinationals 14 Foreign Policy 6, 45, 123 fossil fuel industry 8–9 Four Horseman International 60 fracking 8–9 France 99, 120, 311 fraud 240–1 Friedmann, Alex 216, 222 Frontex 67, 96, 97 Frontex Plus 95 Funk, McKenzie 9 Fyssas, Pavlos, murder of 90 G4S 13, 16, 23, 57, 230–5, 235, 240, 248, 255, 256–8, 258–60, 264, 277, 278, 280, 282, 283–4, 289, 290 Gaddafi, Muammar 16, 30 Gap 132 Garoute, Hans P. 147–9 Gates Foundation 202 General Atomics 31 GEO Group 124, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 227, 255, 266 Georgia Detention Watch 223 Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) 224 Georgia, USA 199–200 immigrants 211–28 Stewart immigration detention centre 211–22 Germany 75, 84, 239 Gertler, Dan 120 Ghana 339n38 Ghani, Ashraf 27, 32, 45, 62 Gibney, Matthew J. 284 Gilbert, Sylvie 190 Glass, Charles 27 global capitalism, Klein’s critique of 7–8 Global Detention Project 68 global financial crisis, 2008 3, 72, 239, 309 Global Solutions Limited (GSL) 289–90 Golden Dawn 12, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78, 80, 104 aims 91–2 anti-Semitism 90–1 appeal 87 and the Greek Orthodox Church 88 iconography 89–90, 92 and immigration 88–9, 92 leadership 86, 91 Luqman trial 94 opposition 93–5 patriotism 88 popularity 85–6 and privatization 92–3 relationship with police 86 supporters 86, 87 violence 92, 94 worldview 87–93 Goldman Sachs 4 Gopal, Anand 32–3, 46–7 Gopnik, Adam 196 Government Accountability Office (US) 35 government, role of 4 Grainger 206 Grayling, Chris 261–2 Grayson, John 235, 262 Greece 4, 12, 64–104 ANEL (Independent Greeks) 73 anti-Semitism 93 asylum seeker infrastructure 66–8, 76–7 asylum seekers 64–71, 75–7, 77–80, 89 Asylum Service 66–7 austerity 71–5, 99–103, 307–8 closed hospitality centers 67–8 corruption 64, 72 debt crisis 71–5, 84 detention centers 64–71, 76, 77–80, 96, 98, 334n14 economic policies 12, 73 election, 2015 72–3, 91, 101 and the Euro 84 Eurozone exit 95 foreign investment 100–1 and Germany 75 Golden Dawn 12, 71, 72, 74, 75, 78, 80, 85–95, 104 healthcare system 80–4 Health Ministry 82 immigrants 74, 88–9, 92 immigration policy 96 medical care, asylum seekers 77–80 Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection 76 police brutality 83 potato movement 78 poverty rate 98–9 press freedom 74, 75 pressure on 73 privatization 72, 98, 100–2, 307–8 privatization of the detention network 77 questions of identity 103–4 racism 71, 80 reception centers 67 refugee crisis 95–8 sovereignty 104 suicide rate 102 Syntagma Square protest, 2014 70 Syriza 12, 72–5, 83, 91, 95, 103 unemployment 67, 99 Greek Council for Refugees 66 greenhouse gases 1–2 Green Prison 204 green technology, prisons 204 Greenwald, Glenn 219 Greg (PMC contractor) 60–1 Greiner, Robert 15 GTL 210 Guantánamo Bay 28, 240 Guardian 75, 261 Guatemala 134 Gulf War, First 25 Gulf War, Second 60 Gurkhas 20, 22, 25 Habib-Ur-Rahman 46–8 Hadawal, Khan Afzal 61 HADOM 140 Haidari, M.


pages: 411 words: 108,119

The Irrational Economist: Making Decisions in a Dangerous World by Erwann Michel-Kerjan, Paul Slovic

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, availability heuristic, bank run, behavioural economics, Black Swan, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-subsidies, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, endowment effect, experimental economics, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, George Akerlof, hindsight bias, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Kenneth Arrow, Loma Prieta earthquake, London Interbank Offered Rate, market bubble, market clearing, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Oklahoma City bombing, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, placebo effect, precautionary principle, price discrimination, price stability, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, social discount rate, source of truth, statistical model, stochastic process, subprime mortgage crisis, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, transaction costs, ultimatum game, University of East Anglia, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto

His books include Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and At War with the Weather, with Howard Kunreuther (MIT Press, 2009). He currently serves as chairman of the OECD’s Secretary General High Level Advisory Board on Financial Management of Large-Scale Catastrophes. In 2007, Professor Michel-Kerjan was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (in Davos, Switzerland), a five-year nomination bestowed to recognize and acknowledge the most extraordinary leaders of the world under the age of 40. David A. Moss, Harvard University David Moss is the John G. McLean Professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches classes in business, government, and the international economy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An Unusual Journey Homage to Howard Kunreuther ON THE WAY BACK FROM BEIJING September 2007. I was on my way back to the United States from Beijing, China, where I attended the inaugural annual meeting of the “New Champions” jointly organized by the People’s Republic of China and the World Economic Forum—a gathering of top leaders in business, politics, nonprofits, the arts, and economics among whom “think new” was the leitmotiv. The fourteen-hour flight offered one of those rare and precious opportunities for deep, uninterrupted contemplation. My thoughts turned to my senior colleague and friend Howard Kunreuther.

“It works in theory; how can we make it work in practice?” Over the years this approach called not only for respect and trust but also enhanced knowledge, which was ultimately transferred to decision makers, thereby changing behaviors, institutions, and markets, step by step. In 2008, Klaus Schwab, the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), established several global agenda councils on the most pressing issues facing the world today. These ranged from international security and conflicts, global trade, and education to pandemics and natural disasters. Each group included some of the most brilliant minds on the topic in question.


pages: 772 words: 203,182

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Christopher Caldwell notes in the epigraph to this chapter that the French are not averse to hard work. Indeed, international experts, including business elites at the annual mid-winter conclaves in Davos, Switzerland, have concluded that they have a sturdier work ethic than Americans. Here is how editors at the Economist summarized the conclusion of surveys at Davos conducted at the behest of the World Economic Forum: “The French rank and file has a much stronger work ethic than American, British, or Dutch employees.”2 The same can be said of Australian employees and those in the balance of northern Europe, as we now see.

Moreover, below the PhD level, the share of STEM in total graduates has not increased over the past decade despite wage data pointing to persistent, and at lower qualifications levels, worsening shortages of STEM workers.” Moreover, it seems that the quality of American technical teaching has stagnated as well, while competitors edged past: the World Economic Forum at Davos ranked the United States 48th out of 133 nations in 2010 in the quality of science and math instruction.12 What these impartial IMF, National Academies, and OECD analyses reveal is that, in an era where superior job skills are the key to future prosperity, Australia and every northern European nation has surpassed the United States to acquire a more skilled and competitive labor force.

Firm for firm, that nation enjoys the world’s most competitive capitalist base, and is the world’s second-greatest exporter after China from an economic base barely one-fifteenth as large. Its economic superiority is globally acknowledged by those with the most at stake: the Edelman Trust Barometer survey of five thousand wealthy investors taken at the 2011 Davos conclave ranked German firms over all others for their sound management and “innovativeness” as the world’s best.57 And one-half of German firm board members are employees. It is the best-performing economy on the face of the globe, because codetermination conjures vigorous competition and a long-term perspective at the pivot point of capitalism, at the pinnacle of corporate control in corporate boardrooms.* Codetermination Succeeds by Maximizing Competition in Board Deliberations Competition!


pages: 184 words: 60,229

Re-Educated: Why It’s Never Too Late to Change Your Life by Lucy Kellaway

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, lockdown, Martin Wolf, stakhanovite, wage slave

Now that I’ve spent longer teaching there is another reason I try not to put ability labels on students: the word is too narrow. Last year I had a student called Desiree who, no matter how hard I tried to explain it, could not comprehend that the demand curve slopes downwards. One day I decided to stage a fake World Economic Forum press conference at Davos, and got my class to play Prince Charles, Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg. With some misgivings I gave Desiree the part of Trump, and found that although the simplest academic tasks defeated her, being President of the United States was well within her reach. Desiree electrified the class with a Trump-like contortion of her bottom lip and the way she pointed and shouted ‘Fake news!’

Later, I heard through the grapevine that the Pearson boss didn’t see the funny side, and even less so when the story was picked up by Private Eye, but she never let on to me. The FT also seemed fine about my losing the paper millions of pounds. There was the time I made a passing swipe at Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard, for having said something vacuous at Davos. The next day I got an email from her PR man saying that the FT ‘should take more seriously its relationship with its advertisers before writing such things’. I set to and wrote a column about the man’s menacing email, pointing out that, on the contrary, what made the FT such a great newspaper was that we never took into account this relationship before writing what we believed to be the truth.


pages: 318 words: 85,824

A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, creative destruction, crony capitalism, debt deflation, declining real wages, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial intermediation, financial repression, full employment, gentrification, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, labour market flexibility, land tenure, late capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, megaproject, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage tax deduction, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Pearl River Delta, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, The Chicago School, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, union organizing, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Winter of Discontent

While this disparate group of individuals embedded in the corporate, financial, trading, and developer worlds do not necessarily conspire as a class, and while there may be frequent tensions between them, they nevertheless possess a certain accordance of interests that generally recognizes the advantages (and now some of the dangers) to be derived from neoliberalization. They also possess, through organizations like the World Economic Forum at Davos, means of exchanging ideas and of consorting and consulting with political leaders. They exercise immense influence over global affairs and possess a freedom of action that no ordinary citizen possesses. Freedom’s Prospect This history of neoliberalization and class formation, and the proliferating acceptance of the ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society as the ruling ideas of the time, makes for interesting reading when placed against the background of counter-arguments laid out by Karl Polanyi in 1944 (shortly before the Mont Pelerin Society was established).

(and Federal Reserve) 1–2, 51, 69, 217 freedom concept 23–5, 29 freedom’s prospect 189, 190, 193, 205 neoliberalism on trial 153, 162 uneven development 99, 103 Wade, R. 162–3, 214 wages see income/wages Wall Street see financial system Wallace, T. 220 Wal-Mart 34, 38, 137, 190 Walras, L. 20 Walton, J. 221 Wang, H. 81, 123–4, 142–3, 146, 215, 222 war 79, 86, 160, 189 Vietnam 42, 118, 196 see also military; pre-emptive action Warner, J. 216 ‘Washington Consensus’ 37–8, 121 wealth see elites Wei, L. 217 Weisbrot, M. 218 welfare, public 11, 12–13, 125, 195 consent, construction of 53–7 passim, 61 cuts/decline 3, 8, 23, 76 neoliberalism on trial 153, 160, 165, 168, 171 uneven development 88, 92, 100–1, 113 neoliberalism on trial 153, 160–1, 165, 168, 171 West Bank 54, 176, 182 Wignaraja, P. 221 Wilson, R. 220 Woo-Cummings, M. 214 working class see labour World Bank 3, 10, 29, 73, 121 freedom’s prospect 201, 205 uneven development 92, 93, 99–100, 116, 117 World Economic Forum 36 World Social Forum 201 World Trade Center attacked 5, 83, 195 World Trade Organization see WTO Wright, M. 219 Wriston, W. 27, 45, 46 WTO (World Trade Organization) 3 China 123, 137, 141 freedom’s prospect 201, 205 neoliberal state 66, 72, 78, 80 neoliberalism on trial 160, 176, 180–2 uneven development 92, 93, 106 Wu, X. 142 Yardley, J. 215, 218, 220 Yasheng, H. 216 Yergin, D. 51, 208, 211 Zakaria, F. 184 Zapata, E. 103 Zevin, Z. 45–6 Zhang, Z. 216, 218

The inevitable response is to reconstruct social solidarities, albeit along different lines—hence the revival of interest in religion and morality, in new forms of associationism (around questions of rights and citizenship, for example) and even the revival of older political forms (fascism, nationalism, localism, and the like). Neoliberalism in its pure form has always threatened to conjure up its own nemesis in varieties of authoritarian populism and nationalism. As Schwab and Smadja, organizers of the once purely celebratory neoliberal annual jamboree at Davos, warned as early as 1996: Economic globalization has entered a new phase. A mounting backlash against its effects, especially in the industrial democracies, is threatening a disruptive impact on economic activity and social stability in many countries. The mood in these democracies is one of helplessness and anxiety, which helps explain the rise of a new brand of populist politicians.


Propaganda and the Public Mind by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, deindustrialization, digital divide, European colonialism, experimental subject, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, interchangeable parts, language acquisition, liberation theology, Martin Wolf, one-state solution, precautionary principle, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, structural adjustment programs, Thomas L Friedman, Tobin tax, Washington Consensus

They haven’t seen it as a crisis because it’s benefiting them, not harming them. Now it’s a crisis, and now there’s general talk for the first time of instituting some sort of new financial architecture. They’re talking about some form of regulation of completely irrational financial markets right now, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Jagdish Bhagwati, a free-trade true believer and economist at Columbia University, has been writing about how we have to understand elementary economics. He claims free trade is great for manufacturing but it’s a disaster for finance. Financial markets just don’t work like markets in goods.

The bad kind of liberation theology, which has in some mysterious way become extinct, called on priests to do what Dom Hélder Câmara was doing: organize base communities of poor people who might organize to take their fate into their own hands. That’s not right, according to the preferred morality. You’re supposed to at most plead with the ruler to be a benefactor. If you want another example of that, take today’s article on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in the New York Times. It talks about how the rich have to have more of a sense of social responsibility.52 It’s not that poor people ought to organize and take what’s their right. Not that we should have a democratic society in which people organize and take over and make their own decisions.


pages: 327 words: 102,322

Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Andy Rubin, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, corporate governance, diversified portfolio, indoor plumbing, Iridium satellite, Jeff Hawkins, junk bonds, Marc Benioff, Mary Meeker, Michael Milken, PalmPilot, patent troll, QWERTY keyboard, rolodex, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, the new new thing

Arab Spring was gaining momentum and Mubarak’s thirty-year-old regime wouldn’t survive unless it found a way to quell the uprising. Balsillie was in a Swiss mountain town when he learned what kind of retaliation Mubarak had in mind. RIM’s chief had flown to Davos to join his friend, Wall Street legend George Soros, for the annual gathering of business and political royalty at the World Economic Forum. Other visitors included Microsoft’s Bill Gates, China’s prime minister Wen Jiabao, and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Balsillie and Soros had come to announce a $50 million joint investment in a new global economic think tank, the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

A senior official from Egypt’s telecommunications regulator had just called to deliver an ultimatum, she said. State-owned Telecom Egypt had yanked the plug on BlackBerry service in the country, and it would stay off-line until RIM handed over encryption keys for coded e-mails and messages traveling through Egypt over RIM’s secure network. As his car moved through the snow-quilted streets of Davos, RIM’s boss struggled to make sense of what was happening. What did a phone maker from Waterloo know about tyrants and revolutions? “I’m shitting my pants,” Balsillie says, shaking his head, remembering the stress that night. “I didn’t take this course in business school.” Balsillie did, however, understand that by allowing Egypt to decode encrypted BlackBerry messages he could be giving up protestors who relied on BBM messages to coordinate covert activities.

Anyone who questioned them didn’t understand the rough-and-tumble wireless industry. Faced with rebellious investors, RIM’s bosses did not respond with grace or introspection. Their standard defense was to fix bayonets and charge. Balsillie learned about shareholder complaints upon returning from Davos. An early challenger was the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, one of Canada’s largest retirement savings reservoirs and a vocal enemy of poor corporate governance. Although the pension fund held a modest amount of stock, one portfolio manager was so alarmed by what he saw at RIM that he contacted a company director about his concerns.


pages: 337 words: 103,273

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, biodiversity loss, Bob Geldof, BRICs, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, data science, decarbonisation, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fear of failure, geopolitical risk, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuclear winter, Ocado, ocean acidification, oil shock, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, systems thinking, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, University of East Anglia, warehouse automation

The best I can conclude is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but alas, it didn’t work. Why not? When I left Greenpeace in 1995, I moved into the rarefied world occupied by global corporation CEOs. I engaged them through private conversations as a corporate adviser and personal provocateur and spent time with them in places like the World Economic Forum at Davos and other gatherings like the annual meeting of the Business Council in the United States and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Switzerland. I flew in their private jets and had dinner with them in their executive dining rooms. I was delighted when this began. I thought, “At last, I’m working with the people in charge, the ones who really run the world!

But they will do these things as a reaction to the system changing around them, not as those in charge of it. We have a system problem, so we need a system solution. How do we do that? The only force on earth powerful enough to fix this now is us. The woman entrepreneur bringing energy to her village in India, the organic farmer in Australia locking up carbon in the soil, the CEO in Davos cleverly using his power to shift market attitudes, the scientists taking ice cores in Antarctica, and the mother in China teaching her children how to shop less and live more. All of us, acting collectively. The world is now connected as never before. Remember how if a friend of a friend is happy, you’re more likely to be happy?

And to Julie Birtles for much personal counsel and many reviews of the original “Great Disruption” letter in 2008. Your strength and passion for transformational change is a wonderful gift. Sometimes small acts by one lead to major consequences for another. Tom Friedman, a friend and intellectual sparring partner since our walk up the mountain at Davos in 1995, wrote about the Great Disruption in his New York Times column in March 2009. That column triggered the invitation for me to write this book. So without your involvement, Tom, I doubt this book would exist. Thank you for the way you use your extraordinary leverage and brilliant writing to tirelessly push the United States and the world to act on climate, and for making the geopolitical and economic case for doing so.


pages: 381 words: 101,559

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Gobal Crisis by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dr. Strangelove, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, full employment, game design, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, high net worth, income inequality, interest rate derivative, it's over 9,000, John Meriwether, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Myron Scholes, Network effects, New Journalism, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, oil shock, one-China policy, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, power law, price mechanism, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, short squeeze, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, time value of money, too big to fail, value at risk, vertical integration, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

“The Monetary System: What’s Wrong and What Might Be Done.” Time, November 29, 1968. “Money: Aquarius in the Foreign Exchanges.” Time, October 10, 1969. “Money: De Gaulle v. the Dollar.” Time, February 12, 1965. “More Credit with Fewer Crises: Responsibly Meeting the World’s Growing Demand for Credit.” A World Economic Forum Report in Collaboration with McKinsey & Company, January 2010. “Nations Act to Put Brakes on Yen’s Rise.” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2011. Newman, Mark. “Power Laws, Pareto Distributions and Zipf’s Law.” Contemporary Physics 46 (September 2005): 323–51. Nixon, Richard M. “Address to the Nation Outlining a New Economic Policy: ‘The Challenge of Peace,’” August 15, 1971.

., Myron Scholes and Bob Barbera. Given my heterodox theoretic approach to their field, I thank them for listening and sharing their thoughts and views. Thanks also to my market mentors, Ted Knetzger, Bill Rainer, John Meriwether, Jim McEntee, Gordon Eberts, Chris Whalen, Peter Moran and Dave “Davos” Nolan. Davos and I shorted Fannie Mae stock at $45 per share in 2005 and lost money when it went to $65. Today it trades for 39 cents. Timing is everything. With Washington, D.C., now the financial as well as political center of the universe, a book like this could not have been written without the support and encouragement of, and many sets of intellectual ping-pong with, those who are closest to the power.

Today, when nuclear weapons have already become frightening mantelpiece decorations that are losing their real operational value . . . financial war has become a “hyperstrategic” weapon that is attracting the attention of the world. This is because financial war is easily manipulated and allows for concealed actions, and is also highly destructive. Consideration of such military doctrine suggests that the future of geopolitics might not be the benign multilateral ethos of Davos Man but a rather more dark and dystopian world of resource scarcity, infrastructure collapse, mercantilism and default. China’s call to replace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, routinely dismissed by bien-pensant global elites, might be taken more seriously if they were as familiar with Chinese financial warfare strategy as with Keynesian theory.


pages: 519 words: 155,332

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It by Steven Brill

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset allocation, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, electricity market, ending welfare as we know it, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, future of work, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, immigration reform, income inequality, invention of radio, job automation, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paper trading, Paris climate accords, performance metric, post-work, Potemkin village, Powell Memorandum, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, Ralph Nader, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stock buybacks, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, telemarketer, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

One of Foroohar’s most compelling data points: “The top twenty-five hedge fund managers in America make more than all the country’s kindergarten teachers combined.” Beginning with his early efforts to ward off raiders, Lipton had become an increasingly vocal—some said, cranky—critic of the kind of short-termism that Judith Samuelson of Aspen decried. He was a leading adviser to her group, as well as a similar one formed in conjunction with the Davos World Economic Forum. Critics argued that Lipton was trying to find moral high ground for the cause of entrenched corporate clients who did not want to be held accountable for poor boardroom performance. However, the pace of deals, as well as the financial sleights of hand often behind them—plus the conduct of some of the raiders he contended with as the financialization accelerated—gave Lipton a lot of ammunition.

“And we also try to steer them to long-term investors, like some of the Asian funds, who understand long-term value.” Those like Barton who have taken up the short-termism fight in the business world have been doing so since 2016 under a variety of banners, in addition to Aspen. The Davos World Economic Forum has promulgated, under Martin Lipton’s authorship, a “New Paradigm Roadmap for an Implicit Corporate Governance Partnership Between Corporations and Investors to Achieve Sustainable Long-Term Investment and Growth.” It calls on boards to “guide, debate, and oversee a thoughtful, long term strategy” for corporations to set high standards for human rights, sustainability, and environmental and social responsibility.

National Income and Product Accounts tables, which Wessel used to make his calculations: https://www.bea.gov/​iTable/​index_nipa.cfm. home to 70 million more: See the Census Bureau’s 2014 report on population projections: https://www.census.gov/​content/​dam/​Census/​library/​publications/​2015/​demo/​p25-1143.pdf. It ranked fifteenth: Based on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report: https://www.weforum.org/​reports/​the-global-competitiveness-report-2017-2018. See also McKinsey’s “Building Global Infrastructure Gaps” report: https://www.mckinsey.com/​industries/​capital-projects-and-infrastructure/​our-insights/​Bridging-global-infrastructure-gaps.


pages: 347 words: 97,721

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines by Thomas H. Davenport, Julia Kirby

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Amazon Robotics, Andy Kessler, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, carbon-based life, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, commoditize, conceptual framework, content marketing, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, deliberate practice, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, estate planning, financial engineering, fixed income, flying shuttle, follow your passion, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Freestyle chess, game design, general-purpose programming language, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Hans Lippershey, haute cuisine, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, industrial robot, information retrieval, intermodal, Internet of things, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter Thiel, precariat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, robo advisor, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, speech recognition, spinning jenny, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, tech worker, TED Talk, the long tail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Works Progress Administration, Zipcar

Silicon Valley investor Bill Davidow and tech journalist Mike Malone, writing recently for Harvard Business Review, declared that “we will soon be looking at hordes of citizens of zero economic value.”6 They say figuring out how to deal with the impacts of this development will be the greatest challenge facing free market economies in this century. Many seem to agree. When the World Economic Forum (WEF) surveyed more than seven hundred leading thinkers in advance of its 2014 annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the issue they deemed likeliest to have a major impact on the world economy in the next decade was “income disparity and attendant social unrest.” Explaining that “attendant social unrest,” WEF’s chief economist, Jennifer Blanke, noted that “disgruntlement can lead to the dissolution of the fabric of society, especially if young people feel they don’t have a future.”7 And indeed, various studies have shown that idle hands really are the devil’s playground.

William H. Davidow and Michael S. Malone, “What Happens to Society When Robots Replace Workers?” Harvard Business Review, December 10, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/12/what-happens-to-society-when-robots-replace-workers. 7. Ben Hirschler, “World Economic Forum Warns of Dangers in Growing Inequality,” Reuters, January 16, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/davos-risks-idUSL5N0KP0QO20140116. 8. Bruce Weinberg, Eric Gould, and David Mustard, “Crime Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States: 1979–1997,” Review of Economics and Statistics 84, no. 1 (2002): 45-61. 9. “The Great Decoupling,” interview with Robert Schiller, McKinsey Quarterly, September 2014, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/public_sector/the_great_decoupling. 10.

Department of Defense (DOD), 66 “Using the Head and Heart at Work” (Sadler-Smith), 117 Vanguard Group, 198–99, 223 augmentation approach, 88, 208, 210–11, 214, 217–20 Personal Advisor Services, 210–11, 213, 221 preparing employees, 219–20 technology vendors for, 213 Vardakostas, Alex, 205 Varshney, Lav, 122 Veale, Tony, 126 Warley, Richard, 183 War of the Worlds, The (Wells), 18–19 Washington Mutual (WaMu), 89–91, 95 Wealthfront, 198, 213 Weaver, John Frank, 228, 229 Weikart, David, 118 Weinberg, Bruce, 7 Wells, H. G., 18 Wenger, Albert, 246–47 Wenger, Brittany, 46 Wiener, Norbert, 26–27, 64 Williams, Anson, 75 Wilson, Jim, 131 Wolfram, Stephen, 57 Wolfram Research, 57 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 238, 240, 243 World Economic Forum (WEF), survey, 7 World Poll, 7–8 “World Without Work, A” (Thompson), 242 Wozniak, Steve, 112 writing, 24, 126. See also journalism human-generated, 127 Scheherazade program, 126 What-If Machine (WHIM), 126 X.ai, 3 Xchanging, 49, 221, 222–23 XL Catlin, 131 Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, 116, 117 Yeager, Chuck, 67 Zimmermann, Andy, 132, 139 Zinsser, William, 118 Zipcar, 100–102, 195 Zuin, Daniela, 183–85 ABOUT THE AUTHORS THOMAS H.


pages: 469 words: 132,438

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet by Varun Sivaram

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, blockchain, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, currency risk, decarbonisation, deep learning, demand response, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, gigafactory, global supply chain, global village, Google Earth, hive mind, hydrogen economy, index fund, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market design, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, mobile money, Negawatt, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shock, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, renewable energy transition, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, SoftBank, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, Ted Nordhaus, Tesla Model S, time value of money, undersea cable, vertical integration, wikimedia commons

Such a grid could modulate customer demand so that it matches up with fluctuating solar output. This demand-side solution to the problem of solar’s intermittent supply is what we turn to next. A Grid Hive Mind Each January, while the world’s most powerful business and political leaders hobnob at the World Economic Forum, leaders of the North American energy industry meet in Vail, Colorado, for the “Davos of Energy.” Just as Davos has increasingly shined a spotlight on clean energy and climate change, so too has the Vail crowd expanded beyond just the oil and gas industry. On the final day of the 2017 summit, when participants took to the ski slopes, I found myself seated on a chair lift next to Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer, Rob Bernard, with a long ride ahead of us.

See Venture capital Venture capital (VC), 39, 257, 258f, 288g Verizon, 216 Vertical integration, 125 Villaraigosa, Antonio, xiii, xiv, 204 Virtual power plants, 215 Virtual transmission lines, 215–216 Volatility, power supply, 55–56, 82 Volkswagen, 169 Voltage (electric voltage), 148, 149, 280g Voltage converters, 203, 204 Voltage losses, 151 Voltage source converter, 204 Volvo, 171 W (Watt), 280g Walmart, 110 WA Parish Generating Station (Houston, Texas), 238 Warehousing approach, 101–102 Washington State, 213 Water heaters, 30–31, 244 Water system, energy sector and, 245–247 Watt (W), 280g Waxman-Markey Bill, 270 West Africa, 136 Westinghouse, 33, 236 Wholesale power market, 69, 243–244, 287g Wide-gap semiconductors, 204 Wind power China Light and Power’s deployment of, 106 commercial adoption of, 11 in cross-national grids, 201–202 and decline in nuclear power, 239, 240 for deep decarbonization, 61, 62, 234 defined, 287g in Denmark, 200–201 and future of solar energy, 5, 10, 59 Work, from sunlight, 30 Working capital, 128, 138–139 Working fluid, 186 World Bank, 67, 92, 111, 123, 128 World Bank Group, 111 World Economic Forum, 212 Xerox PARC, 27 Yang, Peidong, 182 Yangsui, 29 YieldCos and Master Limited Partnerships, 92–98, 270 oil and gas industry as model for, 91 of SunEdison, 88, 89 Zero-carbon power sources, 61 Zero-carbon solar fuels, 9

See Climate Policy Initiative Credit, for off-grid customers, 127–128 Crescent Dunes CSP plant (Nevada), 185 CREZ (Competitive Renewable Energy Zone), 269 Cross-national grids, 200–207 Crystal lattice, 150, 152 CSP. See Concentrated solar power Cuomo, Andrew, 207–208 Currency risk, 113 Current (electric current), 148, 149, 279g Curtailment, 77 Cyclotron Road program, 264 Cypress Semiconductor, 42 Czech Republic, 78 DARPA. See Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Davos, Switzerland, 212 DC microgrids, 130–134, 138, 217 DC transmission lines, 202–203, 203f high-voltage, 202–204, 203f, 206, 217, 219, 269, 285g ultra-high-voltage, 196, 204–205 Death spiral, 107 Debt capital, 91, 98, 100–101, 126 Decarbonization, 171, 284g. See also Deep decarbonization Decentralization, of power, 119, 219 Decentralized control algorithms, 214–215 Decentralized grids in California, 211 expanding central grid vs. building, 193 in Reforming the Energy Vision program, 208–210 solar power in, 215 systemic innovation to accommodate, 199–200 Deep decarbonization global electricity mix for, 60–63, 62f power sources for, 232–239 U.S. roadmap for, 245 Deep learning, 241 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 249, 259, 265 Delos, 29 Demand for electricity in cross-national grids, 202 “duck curve” of, 74–78 forecasted growth of, 60–61 in India, 14 Demand response, 212–216, 284g Demonstration projects, 264–265, 289g Denmark, 200–201, 244 Department of Water and Power (Los Angeles, California), xiii Deregulation, of energy industry, 106–107 Derisking insurance, 105 Desalination, 82, 246, 284g DESERTEC, 205 Developed countries, 64, 122 Developing countries applications of elastic solar materials in, 162 funding/capital for solar projects in, 64, 65, 105, 113, 114, 126 future of solar power in, 4–5 microgrids in, 129 SunEdison YieldCo for, 88 Development banks, 45, 65, 102, 111, 113, 290g Devi, Shaiyra, 119 Diesel-powered microgrids, 122 Direct current (DC), 217, 279g.


pages: 444 words: 127,259

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, always be closing, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chris Urmson, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, creative destruction, data science, Didi Chuxing, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, family office, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hustle culture, impact investing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lolcat, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, off grid, peer-to-peer, pets.com, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, South China Sea, South of Market, San Francisco, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork, Y Combinator

He’d then find a way to parlay that deal into yet another venture investment, bailing out the company for a year or so longer. “In a weird way it sort of kept me going, because there was always this shiny ball that was just right there,” he said. “I could almost taste it, but it kept never happening.” One of his most painful episodes happened in Davos, Switzerland, home to the annual elite conference for the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people: the World Economic Forum. Kalanick, who had managed to get an invitation to the event, was in the middle of negotiating a $1-million annual revenue deal for Red Swoosh with AOL, a potentially lucrative partner. Before he could close the deal, Kala­nick received an email from his last remaining engineer—the one who hadn’t quit despite being paid irregularly for months.

See also Uber becomes Uber, 63 rollout of, 59–63 Uber Cap Bill, 116, 116n Uber Eats, 338 Uberettos, 3, 3n, 7, 10 UberPeople.net, 248 “Uberpool,” 120 “Uber Super Duper,” 184 UberX, xv, 82–83, 87, 112, 114, 227, 244, 245, 250–51 UCLA, 20–22 University of California, Berkeley, 107 University of Florida at Gainesville, 66–67 University of Pennsylvania, 214–15 University of Texas at Austin, 67 Urmson, Chris, 110 US Department of Justice, 247 US Postal Service, 231n Utah, 246 VanderZanden, Travis, 188 Vanity Fair, 126, 163n, 230 VentureBeat, 55 Violation of Terms of Service (VTOS) playbook, 246 Virgin America, 93 Vishria, Eric, 283, 294 “Vision Fund,” 317–18 Von Furstenberg, Diane, 307–8 Voytek, Bradley, 136 Wahlberg, Mark, 286n Wall Street Journal, 55, 131, 199, 332 Walmart, 115 The Walt Disney Company, 23 Washington, DC, 84, 144 Waverly Inn, 126–28 Waymo, 233–35, 236, 255–56, 338–39 Webvan, 26 WeChat, 147–48 Weiner, Mark, 115 Weinstein, Harvey, 241 Wellington Capital Group, 300 Wells Fargo, 33 West, Tony, 332, 335–36 Westchester, New York, 93, 94 WeWork, 4 WhatsApp, 257, 295, 303 Whetstone, Rachel, 6, 224–25, 237, 239, 240, 252, 260, 262, 337 Whitman, Meg, 311–13, 311n, 314, 319, 320, 321, 322–25 W Hotel, 79 Wickr, 258 Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, 100 Windows, 37 Winfrey, Oprah, 193–94, 227 WIRED, 9, 26, 333 Wolf, Charlie, 67 Wolff, Michael, 128, 129, 129n Woodside, California, 64 “Workation,” 187–88 World Economic Forum, 31 Wozniak, Steve “Woz,” 39 Wuhan, China, 142 Xchange leasing program, 218–19 Xi Jinping, 141 Xooglers, 182 XS, 7 “X to the x” celebration, 1–8, 242 Yadav, Shiv Kumar, 149–50 Yarnell, Arizona, 213 Yoo, Salle, 124, 244–45, 310 You, Angie, 32, 264 YouTube, 96, 199 Yucaipa Companies, 23 Zalanick, Travis, 129n Zappos, 92n Zillow, 65 Zimmer, John, 85, 86, 88–89, 120, 132, 186, 187, 188, 189, 211 Zimride, 85–86 Zuckerberg, Mark, 9, 21–22, 34, 45, 74, 121, 165, 171, 199 China and, 140, 202 influence of, 77, 77n purchases Instagram, 96–97 Sandberg and, 239n warns Kalanick to keep an eye on Sidecar, 86 Zynga, 77

Cuban sent Kalanick a private message, offering him money to invest $1.8 million in the company. That was a crucial lifeline which eventually led to more contracts with important partners. Another investment from August Capital, a respected Valley firm, pumped even more life into the company. There was a silver lining to his disappointing trip to Davos: He met the CEO of Akamai Technologies, his largest competitor, and began to make inroads with the company. Finally, after six years of tireless hustling, Kalanick negotiated his best deal yet: he sold Red Swoosh to Akamai for nearly $20 million. After taxes, Travis personally netted roughly $2 million.


Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asperger Syndrome, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean tech, clean water, climate anxiety, Corn Laws, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, gentleman farmer, global value chain, Google Earth, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, index fund, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, land tenure, Live Aid, LNG terminal, long peace, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microplastics / micro fibres, Murray Bookchin, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, renewable energy transition, Rupert Read, School Strike for Climate, Solyndra, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, WikiLeaks, Y2K

FAO, “FAOSTAT Statistical Database,” FAOSTAT, accessed January 15, 2020, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data. Between 1995 and 2015, forested area in Europe increased by over 17 million hectares. Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark are a combined 15.6 million hectares. 26. Alex Gray, “Sweden’s forests have doubled in size over the last 100 years,” World Economic Forum, December 13, 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/swedens-forests-have-been-growing-for-100-years. 27. Jing M. Chen, Weimin Ju, Philippe Ciais et al., “Vegetation Structural Change Since 1981 Significantly Enhanced the Terrestrial Carbon Sink,” Nature Communications 10, no. 4259 (October 2019): 1–7, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12257-8.pdf. 28.

Miller, “Evidence for a Recent Increase in Forest Growth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 8 (February 2010): 3611–3615, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2840472. 33. Alex Gray, “Sweden’s Forests Have Doubled in Size over the Last 100 Years,” World Economic Forum, December 13, 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/swedens-forests-have-been-growing-for-100-years. 34. A major study of 111 nations found a negative relationship between temperature and labor productivity that was statistically significant. In fact, researchers found that a nation’s temperature level is the second-most contributing factor to explaining labor productivity overall.

After two weeks of Extinction Rebellion parading coffins through the street, blocking traffic, and stopping Tube trains, many Britons had had enough. “Let us no longer beat around the bush about these people,” wrote one British columnist. “This is an upper-middle-class death cult.”71 “I want you to panic,” said Thunberg to a gathering of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019.72 “If standing up against the climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken,” she tweeted in October.73 Two days later, two male Extinction Rebellion protesters stood on top of a train, to block it from moving forward, in the London Tube.


pages: 651 words: 162,060

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

. / 5.14 Lessons from the Pandemic David Wallace-Wells In early December 2019, just weeks after 2 million climate strikers gathered around the world to protest the business-as-usual beginning of the COP25 conference in Madrid, the first human case of SARS-CoV-2 was registered in Wuhan. In January, as the World Economic Forum in Davos tried to rebrand itself as a ‘climate conference’, the first deaths were recorded. In February, as the world outside of China began to panic about the ‘novel coronavirus’ and the way it might threaten and upend the lives of many millions, 2,718 people died globally of the disease. That same month, approximately 800,000 died globally from the effects of air pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuel.

See individual name and type of event weathering, enhanced, 237 well to wheel emissions, 268 West African Monsoon Shift 38 West Antarctic Ice Sheet 38, 39 wetlands, 96, 236, 245, 253, 346, 416 wheat, 149, 250, 254, 342, 343 white supremacy, 162, 163, 391, 400 wildfires, 50, 51, 62, 96–8, 102–5, 104, 130–31, 133, 193, 218, 314, 378–9, 415, 432 Wilkes Basin East Antarctica 38 willow ptarmigan, 114 willow warbler, 113 wind patterns, 58, 81–2 wind power, 28, 174, 220, 222, 224–5, 225, 226, 227, 228, 268, 270, 280, 297, 343–6, 376, 388, 431; offshore, 220, 228, 343–4, 345, 346 wolves, 9, 103, 174, 349, 350 women, climate crisis and, 172, 176, 177, 309, 398–9, 402–4 wood fuel burning, 4, 92, 100, 102, 121, 156, 216, 224, 225, 226, 229, 233 woolly rhinoceroses, 9 World Bank, 167, 306, 376; Groundswell Report Part II, 187 World Economic Forum, Davos, 378 World Health Organization (WHO), 134, 135; Health Emergency Programme, 133; Special Report on Climate Change and Health, 136 Wounded Knee, US, 387 Y Yellow fever, 143 Yucatàn Peninsula, 417 Z Zika virus, 143, 145 zinc, 149, 150, 151 zombie fires, 379 zoonotic disease, 133 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Illustration Credits 1: ‘Global Average Temperature 1850–2020’ adapted for 2017–21 from ‘Changes over time of the global sea surface temperature as well as air temperature over land’ by Robert Rohde, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, http://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2020.

About the Author Greta Thunberg was born in 2003. In August 2018, she started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish Parliament that has since spread all over the world. She is an activist in Fridays for Future and has spoken at climate rallies across the globe, as well as at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the US Congress, and the United Nations. What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now. _142488116_ * Experts sometimes cite differing figures for this increase in global temperatures, within a range of 1–1.3°C.


pages: 327 words: 90,542

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril by Satyajit Das

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, accounting loophole / creative accounting, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collaborative economy, colonial exploitation, computer age, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital divide, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Downton Abbey, Emanuel Derman, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial repression, forward guidance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, geopolitical risk, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, margin call, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, open economy, PalmPilot, passive income, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Fry, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the market place, the payments system, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transaction costs, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

The influence of economic policymakers was directly related to postwar prosperity, which they claimed was the result of their prudent stewardship. Alan Greenspan, a master of politics and public relations, succeeded in making the US Fed chairman the second most powerful person on the planet, after PotUS (President of the United States). Feted as rock stars at the annual Davos World Economic Forum, their every gnomic utterance was reported reverently in the media and meticulously parsed by analysts. But the GFC and the Great Recession posed the supreme challenge to policymakers and their theories. Many economists modestly consider economics the most important social science, applicable to all human behavior as well as to financial and social problems.1 The appearance of rigor and science relies on statistics and complex mathematics used to model and forecast outcomes.

The answer is no.” By November 2014, he was recycling 2012: “we must do what we must.” In January 2015, announcing the Eurozone version of QE some six years after the GFC and five years into the European debt problems, Draghi did not acknowledge any errors. Exactly a year earlier, at the Davos World Economic Forum, he had dismissed warnings of deflation and stated that QE was out of the question. The president now thought the program demonstrated his personal credibility and that of the European Central Bank. In March 2015, even before the program had actually commenced, Draghi pronounced it a complete success.


pages: 292 words: 92,588

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Anthropocene, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, climate change refugee, creative destruction, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, failed state, fixed income, Frank Gehry, global pandemic, Google Earth, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Large Hadron Collider, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, negative emissions, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, urban planning, urban renewal, wikimedia commons

Near the end of Obama’s second term, the White House went so far as to recommend a federally funded research project to better understand the risks and benefits of geoengineering (alas, nothing came of it). But just as awareness of the need for further research has grown, so has awareness of the potential downside. At the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, geoengineering was cited as one of the top risks that the world faces. And what Wood said ten years ago at that meeting remains true today—when you think about big technological fixes for sea-level rise, spraying particles in the atmosphere to reflect away sunlight is the only planetary-scale fix we know of that could plausibly stop or slow sea-level rise.

Aeon, September 30, 2014. Accessed March 12, 2017. https://aeon.co/essays/elon-musk-puts-his-case-for-a-multi-planet-civilisation 3. research project: Henry Fountain. “White House Urges Research on Geoengineering to Combat Climate Change.” New York Times, January 10, 2017. 4. Davos: The Global Risks Report 2017. World Economic Forum, Geneva, 43. Accessed March 12, 2017. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GRR17_Report_web.pdf 5. Antarctica: Chris Mooney. “This Mind-Boggling Study Shows Just How Massive Sea-Level Rise Really Is.” Washington Post, March 10, 2016. 6. $2 billion a year: David Keith. A Case for Climate Engineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 43. 7. subsidies: Coming up with an accurate number for fossil fuel subsidies is difficult, in part because it depends on how you define a subsidy.


pages: 515 words: 126,820

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World by Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, altcoin, Alvin Toffler, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business logic, business process, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, decentralized internet, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, future of work, Future Shock, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Google bus, GPS: selective availability, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, holacracy, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, information security, intangible asset, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, litecoin, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microcredit, mobile money, money market fund, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price mechanism, Productivity paradox, QR code, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, search costs, Second Machine Age, seigniorage, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, smart grid, Snow Crash, social graph, social intelligence, social software, standardized shipping container, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Nature of the Firm, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, wealth creators, X Prize, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

They also have reputation at stake, and so they have multiple incentives to protect the value of their brand and the value of the coins held in account wallets. However, with more coins in circulation, a greater diversity of value, and more strategic assets registered on PoW and PoS blockchains, an attacker may not care about any of these costs. 6. THE BLOCKCHAIN IS A JOB KILLER At the 2015 World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a panel of technology executives from Microsoft, Facebook, and Vodaphone discussed the impact of technology on jobs. All agreed that, although technological innovations may disrupt labor markets temporarily, overall they generate new and incrementally more jobs. “Why should this time be any different?”

Networked Institutions Some networks provide such a wide range of capabilities that we describe them as “networked institutions.” They are not state-based but true multistakeholder networks. The value they generate can range from knowledge, advocacy, and policy to actual delivery of solutions. Blockchain Implications: The World Economic Forum (WEF), a leading networked institution, has been a vocal proponent of blockchain technology. The blockchain was front and center at Davos in January 2016. Jesse McWaters, financial innovation lead at the WEF, believes blockchain technology is a general-purpose technology, like the Internet, which we can use to make markets radically more efficient and improve access to financial services.

Clippinger, CEO, ID3, Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab Bram Cohen, Creator, BitTorrent Amy Cortese, Journalist, Founder, Locavest J-F Courville, Chief Operating Officer, RBC Wealth Management Patrick Deegan, CTO, Personal BlackBox Primavera De Filippi, Permanent Researcher, CNRS and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School Hernando de Soto, President, Institute for Liberty and Democracy Peronet Despeignes, Special Ops, Augur Jacob Dienelt, Blockchain Architect and CFO, itBit and Factom Joel Dietz, Swarm Corp Helen Disney, (formerly) Bitcoin Foundation Adam Draper, CEO and Founder, Boost VC Timothy Cook Draper, Venture Capitalist; Founder, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Andrew Dudley, Founder and CEO, Earth Observation Joshua Fairfield, Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University Grant Fondo, Partner, Securities Litigation and White Collar Defense Group, Privacy and Data Security Practice, Goodwin Procter LLP Brian Forde, Former Senior Adviser, The White House; Director, Digital Currency, MIT Media Lab Mike Gault, CEO, Guardtime George Gilder, Founder and Partner, Gilder Technology Fund Geoff Gordon, CEO, Vogogo Vinay Gupta, Release Coordinator, Ethereum James Hazard, Founder, Common Accord Imogen Heap, Grammy-Winning Musician and Songwriter Mike Hearn, Former Google Engineer, Vinumeris/Lighthouse Austin Hill, Cofounder and Chief Instigator, Blockstream Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab Eric Jennings, Cofounder and CEO, Filament Izabella Kaminska, Financial Reporter, Financial Times Paul Kemp-Robertson, Cofounder and Editorial Director, Contagious Communications Andrew Keys, Consensus Systems Joyce Kim, Executive Director, Stellar Development Foundation Peter Kirby, CEO and Cofounder, Factom Joey Krug, Core Developer, Augur Haluk Kulin, CEO, Personal BlackBox Chris Larsen, CEO, Ripple Labs Benjamin Lawsky, Former Superintendent of Financial Services for the State of New York; CEO, The Lawsky Group Charlie Lee, Creator, CTO; Former Engineering Manager, Litecoin Matthew Leibowitz, Partner, Plaza Ventures Vinny Lingham, CEO, Gyft Juan Llanos, EVP of Strategic Partnerships and Chief Transparency Officer, Bitreserve.org Joseph Lubin, CEO, Consensus Systems Adam Ludwin, Founder, Chain.com Christian Lundkvist, Balanc3 David McKay, President and Chief Executive Officer, RBC Janna McManus, Global PR Director, BitFury Mickey McManus, Maya Institute Jesse McWaters, Financial Innovation Specialist, World Economic Forum Blythe Masters, CEO, Digital Asset Holdings Alistair Mitchell, Managing Partner, Generation Ventures Carlos Moreira, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, WISeKey Tom Mornini, Founder and Customer Advocate, Subledger Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance Adam Nanjee, Head of Fintech Cluster, MaRS Daniel Neis, CEO and Cofounder, KOINA Kelly Olson, New Business Initiative, Intel Steve Omohundro, President, Self-Aware Systems Jim Orlando, Managing Director, OMERS Ventures Lawrence Orsini, Cofounder and Principal, LO3 Energy Paul Pacifico, CEO, Featured Artists Coalition Jose Pagliery, Staff Reporter, CNNMoney Stephen Pair, Cofounder and CEO, BitPay Inc.


pages: 788 words: 223,004

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alexander Shulgin, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Hebdo massacre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, death of newspapers, digital twin, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, East Village, Edward Snowden, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, haute couture, hive mind, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Khyber Pass, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, Paris climate accords, performance metric, Peter Thiel, phenotype, pre–internet, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social intelligence, social web, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, telemarketer, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, vertical integration, WeWork, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

Vice was of course not bound by such rules, but Larsen’s career there would be implicated when he was embroiled in a company-wide sexual harassment scandal. Jason Mojica, Tyrangiel’s predecessor as head of Vice News, appeared at the annual World Economic Forum Conference in Davos, Switzerland, in the winter of 2016. He had cleaned up nicely. Wearing a crisp suit, a tie, and black horn-rims, and with his short graying hair, the 42-year-old Vice executive looked like a young banker, a full-fledged member of the global financial elite who swarmed Davos. He was there moderating a panel on government secrecy that included Congressman Darrell Issa, a conservative Republican from California and one of Hillary Clinton’s chief detractors, as well as government officials from Belgium and Asia.

But other stars, like: “Simon Ostrovsky Moves to CNN,” Cision, February 9, 2017, https://www.cision.com/us/2017/02/simon-ostrovsky-moves-to-cnn/. Vice, in turn, had hired: Kaj Larsen, interviewed by Jill Abramson and John Stillman at Vice Los Angeles, March 16, 2016. Wearing a crisp suit: Vice News, “VICE News Presents: Privacy and Secrecy in the Digital Age—Davos Open Forum 2016,” Vice, January 23, 2016, https://news.vice.com/article/vice-news-presents-privacy-and-secrecy-in-the-digital-age-live-from-the-davos-open-forum-2016. As a student at George Washington University: Fritz Hahn, “Socializing with a Hint of Sophistication,” Washington Post, July 20, 2007, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071900764.html.

“This is good news for the Times for a change,” she told me. At the end of September, Sulzberger would celebrate his 60th birthday. The party was also the official coming-out of his relationship with Claudia Gonzalez, a Mexican woman with whom he had fallen in love after they met at a conference in Davos. She was in Switzerland with her two children and working for the World Health Organization, but planned to move into Sulzberger’s apartment on the West Side. Sulzberger had already equipped the apartment with a playroom for her kids. I had heard that his family did not approve, and Robinson complained that he was always traveling abroad to see Gonzalez and absent from the Times.


pages: 419 words: 109,241

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond by Daniel Susskind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, blue-collar work, Boston Dynamics, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computer age, computer vision, computerized trading, creative destruction, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Google Glasses, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacques de Vaucanson, James Hargreaves, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, low skilled workers, lump of labour, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, precariat, purchasing power parity, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social intelligence, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, tacit knowledge, technological solutionism, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, wealth creators, working poor, working-age population, Y Combinator

There is a popular line of thinking that says we ought to ask businesses to develop new technologies that complement rather than substitute for human beings, that help rather than harm workers. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, has called this “the grand challenge.”65 But simply asking companies to do this, if it is not in their financial interest, is akin to asking them for charity—an idealistic, unrealistic basis for large-scale institutional reform. At the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, the New York Times reports, business leaders talked a good game in public about how to contain “the negative consequences that artificial intelligence and automation could have for workers,” but in private these executives had “a different story: they are racing to automate their own work forces to stay ahead of the competition.”66 In trying to shape how institutions act, we must do so on the basis of how people actually behave.

Here, “average wages” refers to “real median compensation.” 32.  Chi Dao et al., “Drivers of Declining Labor Share of Income.” 33.  It is chapter 3 of OECD, OECD Employment Outlook 2012 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2012), titled “Labour Losing to Capital: What Explains the Declining Labour Share?” that is quoted in part 1 of World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2017. The reality is subtler than the WEF’s reading, though—technology, according to OECD Employment Outlook 2012, explains 80 percent of the “within-industry changes” in the labor share, and within-industry changes explain “an overwhelming proportion” of the aggregate fall in the labor share (rather than between-industry changes). 34.  

Freeman, 1976. ________. “ELIZA—A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine.” Communications of the ACM 9, no. 1 (1966): 36–45. Wood, Gaby. Living Dolls. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. World Bank. World Development Report: Digital Dividends. 2016. World Economic Forum. Global Risks Report 2017. 2017. Wu, Zhe, Bharat Singh, Larry S. Davis, and V. S. Subrahmanian. “Deception Detection in Videos.” https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.04415, 12 September 2017. Zucman, Gabriel. “Taxing Across Borders: Tracking Personal Wealth and Corporate Profits.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28, no. 4 (2014): 121–48.


pages: 700 words: 160,604

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anne Wojcicki, Apollo 13, Apple II, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Bernie Sanders, Colonization of Mars, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, discovery of DNA, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Edward Jenner, Gregor Mendel, Hacker News, Henri Poincaré, iterative process, Joan Didion, linear model of innovation, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, mouse model, Nick Bostrom, public intellectual, Recombinant DNA, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, wikimedia commons

She wrote the mother back and promised that she and other researchers were working diligently to find therapies and preventions for such genetic conditions. “But I also had to tell her that it would be years before something like gene editing would be potentially useful for her,” she says. “I didn’t want to mislead her in any way.” After appearing at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, where she shared her ethical qualms about gene editing, Doudna was pulled aside by another woman on the panel, who described how her sister had been born with a degenerative disease. It affected not only her but the lives and finances of her whole family. “She said if we could have done gene editing to avoid that, everyone in her family would be absolutely in favor of it,” Doudna recalls.

., 231 contact tracing, 257 Conti, Elena, 84–85 continuum conundrum, 337–38 Copenhagen (Frayn), 224 Coppola, Francis Ford, 352 coronaviruses, 47, 90, 270, 339, 365, 451 CRISPR systems to detect, 118 name of, 404 PAC-MAN and, 454–57, 460 RNA of, 65, 403–4 RNA interference and, 66–67 SARS, 65, 403, 441 SARS-CoV-2, 403–4 see also COVID-19 pandemic coronary heart disease, 251 Costolo, Dick, 219 Council of Europe, 278 Count Me In, 177 COVID-19 pandemic, xiii, xv, xvii, 251, 257, 262, 335, 373, 399–475, 477 Berkeley and, xiii–xv Innovative Genomics Institute, 401–5, 413–18, 419 China origin of, 263, 403, 452 Cold Spring Harbor conference and, 459–62 CRISPR cures and, xviii, 449–57 PAC-MAN, 454–57, 460 deaths in, 404, 449 legacies of, 473–75 SARS-CoV-2 in, 403–4 testing and, xiv–xv, 405, 406, 407–11, 413–18, 427–33 antigen tests, 430–31 Broad Institute and, 410–11, 429 CDC and, 407–10 CRISPR and, 413, 417, 421–25, 427–33, 453 Fauci and, 410 FDA and, 407–10 first person in U.S. to test positive, 407 Mammoth Biosciences and, 423–25, 429–32 PCR tests, 408, 413, 416, 421, 425, 428, 430 Sherlock Biosciences and, 428, 430 Trump administration and, 411 University of Washington and, 409–10, 415 Zhang and, 421, 427–32 vaccines and, 434, 435–47, 449 clinical trials of, 435–36, 440–41, 445–46, 461 Fauci and, 442 FDA and, 446 Isaacson in trial of, 435–36, 440–41, 445–46 cowpox, 436 Crichton, Michael, 271 Crick, Francis, 20–28, 47, 166, 389, 475 at Asilomar, 269 on central dogma of biology, 44 in DNA double-helix structure discovery, xviii, 7, 11, 26–28, 29–31, 46, 51, 58, 159, 423, 470 with DNA model, 16 Franklin’s work and, 25, 26 Nobel Prize awarded to, 28, 470 Watson’s meeting of, 20 CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), 69–149, 449–50, 477, 480 anti-CRISPRs, 260–61 as bacterial immune system, xiv, xviii, xix, 67, 86, 87 Banfield’s enlistment of Doudna to work on, xviii, 77, 79–80, 81, 93, 471 Barrangou and Horvath’s work on, 90–93, 143–44, 177, 178, 220, 223, 470 diagram of mechanism of, 133 discovery of, 71–77 DNA targeting in, xiv, xviii, 67, 76–77, 86, 87, 93–94, 106, 111, 131, 132, 133, 146, 217 Doudna’s creation of team for studying, 103–11 enzymes in, see CRISPR-associated enzymes in vitro vs. in vivo studies of, 80, 94–95, 183, 191, 202 Koonin’s study of, 76–77, 80, 92 and linear model of innovation, 90 Mojica’s study of, 71–76, 80, 91, 92, 220, 223, 224, 470, 479 naming of, 73 RNA in, 79, 108, 133 Cas13 targeting of RNA, 423–25, 429, 451, 452, 454–57 CRISPR RNA (crRNA), 86, 106, 124–26, 131–35, 137–39, 143, 146, 147, 180, 184, 186, 217 RNA interference, 77, 79, 93 single-guide RNA (sgRNA), 134–35, 139, 186, 190, 191, 195, 198 trans-activating CRISPR RNA (tracrRNA), 124–27, 131, 134, 135, 139, 146–47, 179–80, 182, 184–86, 217–18, 225 viruses’ disabling of, 260–61 yogurt starter cultures and, xviii, 90–92, 133, 143 CRISPR applications, 243–63 affordability of, 247–48 biohacking, 253–57, 263, 285, 288, 443–44 coronavirus testing, 413, 417 cures for viral infections, 449–57 CARVER, 452–53, 455–57 PAC-MAN, 454–57, 460 defense against terrorists, 259–63 diagnostic tests for cancers, 250 diagnostic tests for viruses, 115, 118, 421–25, 431–32, 451 at-home tests, 430–32, 460 coronavirus, 413, 417, 421–25, 427–33, 453 HPV, 422–23 ex vivo and in vivo, 246, 250 germline (inheritable) editing, see human germline editing somatic editing, 246, 276–77, 288, 329, 336, 338, 341 therapies, 233, 245–51 blindness, xviii, 250 cancer, xviii, 249–51 safe viruses as delivery method in, 456 sickle cell, xviii, 245–49, 329, 340 CRISPR-associated (Cas) enzymes, 73, 76, 84, 86, 92 Cas1, 86–87, 106, 128 Cas6, 106–7, 113, 128 as diagnostic tool, 115, 118 Cas9, 86, 92, 119, 124–25, 127, 128, 129–36, 133, 422–24, 440 purchasing of, 380 see also CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing Cas12, 86, 422–24, 429 Cas13, 86, 379, 423–25, 429, 451, 452, 454–57 CASCADE array of, 111 fluorescence microscopy and, 107–8 Zhang’s work with multiple proteins, 181 CRISPR babies, 245–47, 297–332, 325–32, 335, 337 birth of, 311–13, 315, 318 He Jiankui’s conviction and sentencing for his work, 332 He Jiankui’s removal of HIV receptor in, xv–xvi, 251, 303–13, 316–24, 369, 404 CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, xiii, xiv, xvii–xix, 60, 90, 94, 97–98, 132–36, 151–241, 272 applications of, see CRISPR applications codons and, 190, 191–92, 194 companies formed to commercialize applications of, 203–13, 430 CRISPR Therapeutics, 207, 213, 245, 465 Editas Medicine, 209–13, 250, 454 Intellia Therapeutics, 213 competition to prove human application of, xv, 64, 143–49, 155–56, 157–60, 201–2, 374 Church in, 64, 160, 173–74, 192–95, 197–99, 201, 202 Doudna in, xv, 64, 160, 173–74, 179, 187–90, 197–202 Lander in, 64, 160 Zhang in, xv, 64, 159–60, 174, 175–86, 191–95, 197, 199–202, 227 Doudna and Charpentier’s 2012 paper on, 126, 137–41, 144–46, 148, 149, 156, 172–73, 179, 180, 182–86, 191, 192, 194–95, 202, 227, 233, 237–38, 374–75 in eukaryotic cells, 148–49, 184, 237–38 as inevitable, 202 in vitro vs. in vivo, 184, 382 Isaacson’s learning of, xiv, 378, 379–83 licensing of, 208, 211 moral questions concerning, see moral questions patents for, 92, 94, 115, 135–36, 144, 156, 232–41 of Doudna, Charpentier, and Berkeley, 207–8, 210, 219, 224, 233–40 Doudna’s battle with Zhang over, 184, 194, 208, 224, 234–40, 425, 470 pool idea for, 207–8 of Zhang and the Broad Institute, 192, 207–8, 210–11, 219, 224–27, 233–40 regulation of, 255, 361 Šikšnys’s paper and, 144 transposons and, 374, 375 virus infections and, xv, xix CRISPR conferences, 93, 129 in Berkeley (2012), 140, 141, 145–49 at Cold Spring Harbor, 302, 304, 385, 391, 393, 397, 415, 458, 459–67 in Quebec (2019), 373–77 CRISPR Journal, 85, 309, 319 CRISPR Therapeutics, 207, 213, 245, 465 crowdsourcing, 256–57, 285, 464 cryocooling, 57, 63 crystallography, 84, 187 Cas1 and, 86–87 DNA and, 19–23, 51 “photograph 51,” 25, 25, 395 phase problem in, 57 RNA and, 53, 55–57, 66, 171, 181 Cumberbatch, Benedict, 219 Cure Sickle Cell Initiative, 248 Curie, Marie, 8, 470 curiosity, 478–79 of Doudna, xix, 4, 5, 8, 31, 46, 51, 479 science driven by, xix, 89, 90, 457, 473, 479 Current Contents, 72 cystic fibrosis, 248 cytosine, 26, 27 Daley, George, 282, 316, 324, 369 Danisco, 90–92, 143, 148, 177, 220 Dantseva, Dariia, 434, 443–45 DARPA, 259–62, 351, 452, 454 Safe Genes project of, 260, 262, 380 Darwin, Charles, 10, 11–14, 28, 159, 292, 302, 364, 475 Davenport, Charles, 37 Davies, Kevin, 85, 309, 320 Davis, Miles, 345 Davos, World Economic Forum in, 368 deafness, 346–48 Decoding Watson (PBS documentary), 384, 386, 389–90, 392, 393 Deem, Michael, 298, 300, 301, 307–9 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 259–62, 351, 452, 454 Safe Genes project of, 260, 262, 380 Defense Department, U.S., 4, 259, 262 Defoe, Daniel, 414 Deisseroth, Karl, 167 Delbrück, Max, 37 Deltcheva, Elitza, 125–26 Dengue virus, 424 depression, 166, 352–53 bipolar disorder, 177, 327, 352–53 Derain, André, 395 designer babies, 355–56 see also CRISPR babies Desmond-Hellmann, Sue, 100 DETECTR (DNA endonuclease targeted CRISPR trans reporter), 422–23, 429, 460 Dhanda, Rahul, 428 diabetes, 99 Diana, Princess, 100 Diaz, Cameron, 219 Dicer enzyme, 66, 79 Didion, Joan, 7 digital technology, xvii, 28, 114 disabilities, 345–48 diversity, 362, 376, 480 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), xvii, xviii, 17–28, 43–47 bases in, 26, 27, 37, 71, 382, 480 in central dogma of biology, 44, 47, 270 cloning, 34–35, 98, 153, 280, 313, 415–16 CRISPR sequences of, see CRISPR crystallography and, 19–23, 51 discovery of double-helix structure of, xviii, 7, 11, 26–28, 29–31, 46, 51, 58, 159, 386, 390, 395, 397, 423, 470 editing of, see gene editing Franklin’s work on, xviii, 7, 22–26, 28, 31, 46, 51, 53, 227, 389, 459, 470 “photograph 51,” 25, 25, 395 Human Genome Project and, 37–41, 43, 45, 74, 172, 175, 280, 330, 352, 388, 390, 391 “junk,” 416 model of, 16, 27 mutations in, 41, 302 Pauling’s work on structure of, 21–25, 51, 159, 391 “photograph 51” of, 25, 25, 395 race to discover structure of, 21–28, 159, 390, 391 reverse transcription and, 270, 408 sequencing of, 71–72, 74, 79, 80, 83, 172 vaccines, 439–41, 444–45, 456 in viruses, 65 in yeast, 35, 45 Dolly the sheep, 280, 313, 415–16 Double Helix, The (Watson), xix, 6–8, 9, 20, 21, 27, 29–31, 50, 157, 328, 391, 397, 398, 414, 459, 477–78 Doudna, Dorothy (mother), 2, 4, 5, 32, 98, 472–73 Doudna, Ellen (sister), 2, 472–73 Doudna, Jennifer, 2, 62, 130, 138, 158, 188, 204, 214, 282, 298 as bench scientist, 103 at Berkeley, xiii–xv, xvii, 64–65, 83, 98, 101, 107 Berkeley lab of, 103–11, 104, 117 Isaacson learns to edit at, xiv, 378, 379–83 birth of, 4 business school considered by, 98 Caribou Biosciences, 113–18, 203, 207–8, 213 Intellia Therapeutics, 213 chemistry studied by, 31–34, 478 childhood of, xix, 2, 3–8, 31, 123 Charpentier’s rift with, 215–21, 464, 466 Church’s email to, 173, 197 coauthors on papers of, 48 at conferences, 287–90, 292, 303, 332, 367, 373, 375, 385, 459–61 at congressional hearing, 325, 328–29 CRISPR work of Banfield calls and invites her to collaborate, xviii, 77, 79–80, 81, 93, 471 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences awarded for, 219–21 Church’s paper and, 197, 234 collaboration with Charpentier, 135, 140, 160, 183, 199–200, 206, 215–21, 464–67, 475 company formations and, 203–13 competition to adapt CRISPR into tool for gene editing in humans, xv, 64, 160, 173–74, 179, 187–90, 197–202 creation of lab team, 103–11 defense applications and, 259–61 diagnostic tests and, 422–23 Editas Medicine and, 209–13 ethical considerations of, 367–70 Kavli Prize awarded for, 221 Lander’s “Heroes of CRISPR” and, 223–29, 388 medical applications and, 247–49, 251 meeting Charpentier, 119, 122, 127–28, 200 Nobel Prize awarded for, xix, 468, 469–73 paper for eLife, 198–201, 215, 225, 237 paper written with Charpentier (2012), 126, 137–41, 144–46, 148, 149, 156, 172–73, 179, 180, 182–86, 191, 192, 194–95, 202, 227, 233, 237–38, 374–75 patent for, 207–8, 210, 219, 224, 233–40 patent battle with Zhang, 184, 194, 208, 224, 234–40, 425, 470 possible partnership with Zhang, 207–8 publicity for, 216–17, 220, 223 review article written with Charpentier (2014), 215 Zhang’s emails and, 200–201, 207 see also CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing curiosity of, xix, 4, 5, 8, 31, 46, 51, 479 The Double Helix read by, xix, 6–8, 29–31, 157, 328, 391, 397, 398, 414, 459, 477 first marriage of, 54–56, 63 Genentech and, 97–102, 103, 105, 107, 113, 114 on gene therapy, 279 germline editing views of, 331–32, 367–70 at Harvard, 34–35, 40, 64, 208 He Jiankui and, 298, 302–4, 315–17, 319, 321–24, 328, 332 in high school, 31 Hitler nightmare of, 283, 286 at Hong Kong summit (International Summit on Human Gene Editing, 2015), 282, 292–93, 366 husband of, see Cate, Jamie Innovative Genomics Institute, 248, 261, 380–82, 401–3 COVID and, 401–5, 413–18, 419 Mammoth Biosciences and, xv, 249–50, 423 medical school considered by, 98 midlife crisis of, 97, 101 Napa Valley conference organized by, 287–90, 292, 303, 332, 367 in National Academy video, 355 at Pomona College, 30, 31–34 Qi and, 453–56 at Quebec conference, 373, 375 RNA work of, xviii, 45–49, 51–61, 63, 65–67, 134, 181, 220, 435–36, 446 son of, see Cate, Andrew Watson and, xviii, 8, 29, 48–50, 396 Watson visited by, 395–98 at Yale, 52, 57, 60–61, 63 Doudna, Martin (father), 2, 3–8, 32, 34, 58–60, 397–98, 472–73 cancer of, 58–59 death of, 59–60 Watson’s The Double Helix given to Jennifer by, xix, 6–8, 477 Doudna, Sarah (sister), 2, 3, 472–73 Down’s syndrome, 337 Doxzen, Kevin, 255 dragonflies, 170 Dr.

., 281 Wilson, Ross, 109–10, 402, 440, 456 Wired, 454 wisdom, 354, 365 Wojcicki, Anne, 219 women in science, xix, 8, 22, 31, 227, 459–61, 470, 471 Lander’s “Heroes of CRISPR” and, 227 self-promotion and, 110–11 Women in Science group, 381 Woods, Tiger, 351 woolly mammoth, 160, 169, 172 World Economic Forum in Davos, 368 World Health Organization (WHO), 329, 331, 409 World’s Fair (1964), 171 World War II, 20, 114 atom bomb in, xvii, 89, 117, 224, 265, 338 Worldwide Threat Assessment, 259 Wozniak, Steve, 256 Wu, Ting, 220, 221 X-ray crystallography, see crystallography Yale University, 52, 57, 60–61, 63 yeast, 35, 45, 148–49, 232 Yellowstone National Park, 81–84 Yersin, Alexandre, 159 yogurt, xviii, 90–92, 133, 143, 478 Young, Mark, 83 Zayner, Josiah, 252, 253–57, 262–63, 325–28, 348, 481 COVID vaccine and, 443–45 CRISPR babies as viewed by, 235–26 coronavirus vaccine and, 434 zebrafish, 202 Zhang, Feng, 158, 161–67, 162, 259, 292, 302, 330, 376, 382, 385, 416, 420, 426, 454, 459, 460, 472, 473, 477 at Broad Institute, xv, 159, 161, 177, 179, 184–86, 189, 374, 421, 423, 424, 450–51, 454 Cas13 and, 423–25, 454 childhood of, 161–64, 432 Church and, 167, 174, 175, 178, 192–94 company formations and, 205, 206, 208–10 Editas, 210–13, 250, 454 in competition to adapt CRISPR into tool for gene editing in humans, xv, 64, 159–60, 174, 175–86, 191–95, 197, 199–202, 227 Cong and, 177–78, 184, 192–94 and CRISPR as detection tool for coronavirus, 421, 427–32 home testing kits, 432–33, 460 SHERLOCK, 424–25, 428–31, 451, 453 Sherlock Biosciences, 425, 428, 430 STOP, 431, 460 as CRISPR-Cas9 inventor, 210–11 CRISPR-Cas9 paper of (2013), 192, 195, 197, 199, 201, 202, 225, 233–34 emails to Doudna, 200–201, 207 gene-editing research with TALENs, 167, 177–79 grant application of, 179–80 at Harvard, 166, 167, 175 in high school, 165–66 on in vitro vs. in vivo gene editing, 183, 382 Lander and, 182–83, 220 Lander’s “Heroes of CRISPR” and, 182, 223–29 Levy and, 165–66 Lin and, 184, 192 Liu and, 461–62 Marraffini and, 180–82, 186, 192, 200, 213, 234–35, 240 patent of, with Broad Institute, 192, 207–8, 210–11, 219, 224–27, 233–40 in patent battle with Doudna, 184, 194, 208, 224, 234–40, 425, 470 possible partnership with Doudna, 207–8 at Quebec conference, 373, 375 Sabeti and, 450–51 at Stanford, 167 transposons paper of, 374–76 Zhou, Kaihong, 104 Zika virus, 424 zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), 155, 178, 179 Zoom, xiv, xv, 404–5, 414, 418, 426, 440, 459, 463, 464, 465, 472 Zuckerberg, Mark, 166, 219, 472 IMAGE CREDITS By page number Front and back endpaper: Carlos Chavarria/Redux iv: Brittany Hosea-Small/UC Berkeley xi (left and right): David Jacobs xii: Jeff Gilbert/Alamy 2 :(clockwise): Courtesy of Jennifer Doudna; Leah Wyzykowski; courtesy of Jennifer Doudna 10: (left to right): George Richmond/Wikimedia/Public Domain; Wikimedia/Public Domain 16: A.


pages: 265 words: 74,941

The Great Reset: How the Post-Crash Economy Will Change the Way We Live and Work by Richard Florida

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, big-box store, bike sharing, blue-collar work, business cycle, car-free, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, congestion charging, congestion pricing, creative destruction, deskilling, edge city, Edward Glaeser, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford paid five dollars a day, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, indoor plumbing, interchangeable parts, invention of the telephone, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, McMansion, megaproject, Menlo Park, Nate Silver, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, reserve currency, Richard Florida, Robert Shiller, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, total factor productivity, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, white flight, young professional, Zipcar

“Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors?” asked Fareed Zakaria after visiting Toronto for an economic roundtable with the country’s leading young professionals and financial leaders. “Yup, Canada.”5 Zakaria notes that in 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system as the most stable in the world, while the United States stood at fortieth. Tighter government regulations (including legal requirements that preclude buyers from walking away from underwater homes) and higher capital requirements helped Canadian banks stay profitable during the crisis.

That said, it will be a long, long time before China—or more specifically one of its or any of Asia’s other financial centers for that matter—eclipses New York or London. Shanghai, China’s industrial and financial center, ranks thirty-sixth on the GFCI—roughly equivalent to the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas. As fast-growing as it is, China as a whole remains an emerging economy in every sense of that phrase: it ranks thirtieth on the Davos Competitiveness index, eighty-first on the U.N. Human Development Index, and thirty-sixth on my own Global Creativity Index—a measure of global innovation, openness, and competitiveness. It will be some time until it can compete with the more established economic powers of the world, never mind the United States.

See resets Byrne, David, 161 California, housing bubble in, 94 Campus Philly, 86 Canada, high-speed rail service and, 166, 167 capitalism, prone to panics and crises, 4 Capitals of Capital (Cassis), 50 Carnegie, Andrew, 11, 20 Carnegie Mellon University, 78 Cary, North Carolina, 99 Cascadia megaregion, 143, 149, 150, 166 Casesa, John, 136–137 Case-Shiller Home Price Index, 53 Case Western Reserve University, 17 Cassis, Youssef, 50, 58 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 99 Char-lanta megaregion, 143, 149, 166 Charlotte, North Carolina financial sector and, 52, 63–65, 92, 99 high-speed rail service and, 166 Chicago, Illinois commuting in, 161 as destination of recent college graduates, 147, 149 as financial center, 61, 62 high-speed rail service and, 166, 167, 168 immigrants in, 20 job market in, 149 population before 1900, 18 rented housing in, 175 China global financial leadership and, 56–57 high-speed rail service and, 164–165 Chi-Pitts megaregion, 142, 166 cities community-versus government-led programs to revitalize, 76–86 Current Reset principles, 185 decline of manufacturing sector and, 71–78 First Reset and changes in lifestyles and consumption, 22–25 First Reset and population shifts, 18–22 happiness attributes and, 86 Citigroup, 90 Cleveland, Ohio high-speed rail service and, 166 movement of industry in, 21 population before 1900, 17, 18 Second Reset and demographic changes, 36 Cohen, Jon, 27 college graduates changing employment interests, 112–113 settling in megaregions, 147–149 college towns, economic health of, 68–70, 99 Columbus, Ohio, 52 communications and information technology, First Reset and growth of, 15 congestion pricing, for automobile use, 162–163 consumption, 129–140 Current Reset and decreases in, 131–137 Current Reset principles, 185–186 debt and roots of current economic crisis, 41–46, 129–130 First Reset and changes in, 22–25 lack of, as new normal, 139–140 Second Reset and changes in, 130, 133 status and, 137–140 Container Store, 121 Cox, Wendell, 145–146 Craftsman, The (Sennett), 71 Craig, John, 81 Cranbrook Academy, 79 Crawford, Matthew, 71, 126–127 creative destruction, 4, 12 currency, global economic leadership and, 57 Current Reset effect on New York City, 49, 51–52 government not solution to, 180–182 guiding principles for transformation, 182–187 home ownership, debt, and consumption as roots of, 41–46, 129–130 job shifts away from manufacturing sector, 116–117 likely transformations of, 6–9 need for financial investment in innovation and building, not trading, 107–115 service jobs potential, 116–128 sources of employment in, 117–120 values and, 105–107 See also spatial fix, of Current Reset Currid, Elizabeth, 52–53 Daimler, Gottlieb, 11 Dal-Austin megaregion, 143 Dallas, Texas as destination of recent college graduates, 149 economic health of, 69, 99 high-speed rail service and, 166 job market in, 150 Second Reset and population growth, 36 Davos Competitiveness Index, 56 debt ratio to disposable income, 1980–2007, 43–44 roots of current economic crisis and, 41–46, 129–130 Defense Highways Act (1956), 34 Den-Bo megaregion, 143, 149 Denver, Colorado, 147 Des Moines, Iowa, 52 Detroit, Michigan decline of, 73–78 effect of suburbanization on, 35 high-speed rail service and, 166 housing price declines and, 53, 73 immigrants in, 20 population changes in, 17, 18, 73, 75 possible recovery of, 78–81 unemployment in, 69 Dewey, John, 17 Dubai, 58 Economy of Cities, The (Jacobs), 59, 146 Edison, Thomas, 12, 13–14, 15 education Current Reset principles, 183 in Detroit, 79 First Reset and increased access to, 16–17 Philadelphia and, 85–86 Pittsburgh and, 78 Second Reset and infrastructure expansion, 28–29 electricity distribution of, 14–15 innovative applications for, 12–14 electronics, increased spending on, 133 Emanuel, Rahm, 5 employment.


pages: 477 words: 75,408

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism by Calum Chace

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, bread and circuses, call centre, Chris Urmson, congestion charging, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flynn Effect, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, gender pay gap, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, lifelogging, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Milgram experiment, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

Along with the uncertainty about the start date of the information revolution, there is disagreement about how distinct it is from the industrial revolution. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a phenomenon of the information revolution which we will look at in more detail in chapter 3.7. Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum which hosts the annual meeting of the global elite in Davos, calls the IoT the fourth industrial revolution.[x] This seems to me to under-state the importance of the IoT, and also to separate it from all the other digital revolutions which comprise the information revolution, including, of course, artificial intelligence. 2.3 – The Automation story so far The mechanisation of agriculture The particular aspect of the industrial and information revolutions which concerns us in this book is automation.

They are not the only ones, and more are being produced every month – sometimes every week. There is no clear consensus about the likely impact on joblessness of machine intelligence in the coming years and decades. Nevertheless, the theme has an increasingly high profile in the media – it was a focus of the annual gathering of the super-rich and powerful in the ski resort of Davos in January 2016. In the next section we will see that some people are firmly convinced it is a myth. 3.3 – Crying wolf In this section we meet a selection of writers who are sceptical about the prospect of technological unemployment. They argue that it is all just a revival of the Luddite Fallacy.


pages: 232 words: 76,830

Dreams of Leaving and Remaining by James Meek

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, bank run, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, centre right, Corn Laws, corporate governance, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Etonian, full employment, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Leo Hollis, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, Neil Kinnock, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, working-age population

Whether you call it ACS, whether you call it a partnership … it doesn’t really matter.’ It was unclear how accountable care would play out in the British context. Many communitarians didn’t trust Stevens, who was Blair’s health adviser. They saw the STPs as the realisation of a 2012 report for the World Economic Forum, aka Davos, prepared by the consultancy firm McKinsey with Stevens, then working for the US conglomerate UnitedHealth, leading the expert input. Indeed, the report called for ‘home-based, patient-driven models’ of care and ‘capacity reductions in higher-cost channels’ – i.e. fewer people going through hospitals.

By extension, robot fear – what will all the workers do when the robots come? – is misplaced: the answer is heal, nurse, teach and make art. I see Baumol’s point, but I also see, in the globalised economy in general and in Britain in particular, a massive set of cultural and institutional barriers to transferring the economic gains of automation to ordinary people. The Davos report Stevens contributed to presented the general expansion of healthcare’s share of GDP while other sectors of the economy automated as a looming catastrophe. The response of modern British manufacturers to efficiency gains is seldom to increase wages, because they can always find cheaper workers abroad: the reward of efficiency isn’t a wage hike but the fact that you get to keep your job.


pages: 651 words: 180,162

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Air France Flight 447, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-fragile, banking crisis, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discrete time, double entry bookkeeping, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, fail fast, financial engineering, financial independence, Flash crash, flying shuttle, Gary Taubes, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, Helicobacter pylori, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, high net worth, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jim Simons, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Andreessen, Mark Spitznagel, meta-analysis, microbiome, money market fund, moral hazard, mouse model, Myron Scholes, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, principal–agent problem, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, selection bias, Silicon Valley, six sigma, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, stochastic volatility, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Yogi Berra, Zipf's Law

Further, I am not doubting Stiglitz’s sincerity, or some weak form of sincerity: I believe he genuinely thinks he predicted the financial crisis, so let me rephrase the problem: the problem with people who do not incur harm is that they can cherry-pick from statements they’ve made in the past, many of them contradictory, and end up convincing themselves of their intellectual lucidity on the way to the World Economic Forum at Davos. There is the iatrogenics of the medical charlatan and snake oil salesperson causing harm, but he sort of knows it and lies low after he is caught. And there is a far more vicious form of iatrogenics by experts who use their more acceptable status to claim later that they warned of harm.

While in the past people of rank or status were those and only those who took risks, who had the downside for their actions, and heroes were those who did so for the sake of others, today the exact reverse is taking place. We are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes, that is, bureaucrats, bankers, Davos-attending members of the I.A.N.D. (International Association of Name Droppers), and academics with too much power and no real downside and/or accountability. They game the system while citizens pay the price. At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control.

Aron was about as colorless as they come: in spite of his prophetic insights he looked, wrote, and lived like a tax accountant while his enemy, say, Jean-Paul Sartre, who led a flamboyant lifestyle, got just about everything wrong and even put up with the occupying Germans in an extremely cowardly manner. Sartre the coward looked radiant, impressive, and, alas, his books survived (please stop calling him a Voltaire; he was no Voltaire). I got nauseous in Davos making eye contact with the fragilista journalist Thomas Friedman who, thanks to his influential newspaper op-eds, helped cause the Iraq war. He paid no price for the mistake. The real reason for my malaise was perhaps not just that I saw someone I consider vile and harmful. I just get disturbed when I see wrong and do nothing about it; it is biological.


pages: 327 words: 103,336

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer by Duncan J. Watts

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Swan, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, clockwork universe, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, discovery of DNA, East Village, easy for humans, difficult for computers, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, framing effect, Future Shock, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Santayana, happiness index / gross national happiness, Herman Kahn, high batting average, hindsight bias, illegal immigration, industrial cluster, interest rate swap, invention of the printing press, invention of the telescope, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, lake wobegon effect, Laplace demon, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, oil shock, packet switching, pattern recognition, performance metric, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, prediction markets, pre–internet, RAND corporation, random walk, RFID, school choice, Silicon Valley, social contagion, social intelligence, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, urban planning, Vincenzo Peruggia: Mona Lisa, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, X Prize

But as a number of management scholars have shown in recent years, corporate plans—whether strategic bets, mergers and acquisitions, or marketing campaigns—also fail frequently, and for much the same reasons that government plans do.22 In all these cases, that is, a small number of people sitting in conference rooms are using their own commonsense intuition to predict, manage, or manipulate the behavior of thousands or millions of distant and diverse people whose motivations and circumstances are very different from their own.23 The irony of all this is that even as we observe the mistakes of politicians, planners, and others, our reaction is not to criticize common sense, but instead to demand more of it. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in early 2009, for example, in the darkest depths of global financial crisis, one indignant audience member announced to the audience, “What we need now is a return to common sense!” It’s an appealing notion, and drew loud applause at the time, but I couldn’t help wondering what it was that he meant by it. After all, two years earlier at the 2007 Davos meeting, much the same mix of businesspeople, politicians, and economists were congratulating one another on having generated astonishing levels of wealth and unprecedented stability of the financial sector.

Many users are regular people whose followers are mostly friends interested in hearing from them. But many of the most followed users on Twitter are public figures, including bloggers, journalists, celebrities (Ashton Kutcher, Shaquille O’Neal, Oprah), media organizations such as CNN, and even government agencies and nonprofits (the Obama administration, No. 10 Downing Street, the World Economic Forum). This diversity is helpful because it allowed us to compare the influence of all manner of would-be influencers—ordinary people all the way up to Oprah and Ashton—in a consistent way. Finally, although many tweets are mundane updates (“Having coffee at Starbucks on Broadway! It’s a beautiful day!!”)


pages: 389 words: 119,487

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charlie Hebdo massacre, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, deglobalization, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Freestyle chess, gig economy, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job automation, knowledge economy, liberation theology, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, obamacare, pattern recognition, post-truth, post-work, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, TED Talk, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

Revolutionary knowledge rarely makes it to the centre, because the centre is built on existing knowledge. The guardians of the old order usually determine who gets to reach the centres of power, and they tend to filter out the carriers of disturbing unconventional ideas. Of course they filter out an incredible amount of rubbish too. Not being invited to the Davos World Economic Forum is hardly a guarantee of wisdom. That’s why you need to waste so much time on the periphery – they may contain some brilliant revolutionary insights, but they are mostly full of uninformed guesses, debunked models, superstitious dogmas and ridiculous conspiracy theories. Leaders are thus trapped in a double bind.

Abbasid caliphs 94 Abraham, prophet 182–3, 186, 187, 274 advertising 36, 50, 53, 54, 77–8, 87, 97, 113, 114, 267 Afghanistan 101, 112, 153, 159, 172, 210 Africa 8, 13, 20, 58, 76, 79, 100, 103–4, 107, 139, 147, 150–1, 152, 168, 182, 184, 223, 226, 229, 239 see also under individual nation name African Americans 67, 150, 152, 227 agriculture 171, 185; animals and 71, 118–19, 224; automation of jobs in 19–20, 29; climate change and modern industrial 116, 117; hierarchical societies and birth of 73–4, 185, 266–7; religion and 128–30 Aisne, third Battle of the (1918) 160 Akhenaten, Pharaoh 191 Al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem 15 al-Baghdadi, Abu Bakr 98 Algeria 144, 145 algorithms see artificial intelligence (AI) Ali, Husayn ibn 288 Alibaba (online retailer) 50 Allah 104, 128, 130, 204, 271–2, 289 AlphaZero 31, 123 al-Qaeda 162, 168 Amazon (online retailer) 39, 40, 50, 52, 91, 267–8 Amazon rainforest 116 Amos, prophet 188 Amritsar massacre (1919) 10 Andéol, Emilie 102 animals xi, 73, 86, 98–9, 182, 190, 218, 245; distinct social behaviours 94–5; ecological collapse and 71, 116, 118–19, 224; farm animals, subjugation of 71, 118–19, 224; morality and 187–8, 200; religious sacrifice of 190 anti-Semitism 142, 143, 194, 195, 235–6 see also Jews Apple (technology company) 91, 178 Arab Spring xi, 91 Arjuna (hero of Bhagavadgita) 269–70, 271, 299 art, AI and 25–8, 55–6, 182 artificial intelligence (AI) xiii, xiv; art and 25–8, 55–6, 182; authority shift from humans to 43, 44–72, 78, 268; biochemical algorithms and 20, 21, 25–8, 47–8, 56, 59, 251, 299; cars and see cars; centaurs (human-AI teams) 29, 30–1; communism and 35, 38; consciousness and 68–72, 122, 245–6; creativity and 25–8, 32; data ownership and 77–81; dating and 263; decision-making and 36–7, 50–61; democracy and see democracy; digital dictatorships and xii, 43, 61–8, 71, 79–80, 121; discrimination and 59–60, 67–8, 75–6; education and 32, 34, 35, 38 39, 40–1, 259–68; emotional detection/manipulation 25–8, 51–2, 53, 70, 79–80, 265, 267; equality and xi, 8, 9, 13, 41, 71–2, 73–81, 246; ethics and 56–61; free will and 46–9; games and 29, 31–2, 123; globalisation and threat of 38–40; government and xii, 6, 7–9, 34–5, 37–43, 48, 53, 61–8, 71, 77–81, 87, 90, 121, 267, 268; healthcare and 22–3, 24–5, 28, 48–9, 50; intuition and 20–1, 47; liberty and 44–72; manipulation of human beings 7, 25–8, 46, 48, 50–6, 68–72, 78, 79–80, 86, 96, 245–55, 265, 267, 268; nationalism and 120–6; regulation of 6, 22, 34–5, 61, 77–81, 123; science fiction and 245–55, 268; surveillance systems and 63–5; unique non-human abilities of 21–2; war and 61–8, 123–4 see also war; weapons and see weapons; work and 8, 18, 19–43 see also work Ashoka, Emperor of India 191–2, 286 Ashura 288, 289 Asia 16, 39, 100, 103, 275 see also under individual nation name Assyrian Empire 171 Athenian democracy, ancient 95–6 attention, technology and human 71, 77–8, 87, 88–91 Australia 13, 54, 116, 145, 150, 183, 187, 232–3 Aztecs 182, 289 Babri Mosque, Ayodhya 291 Babylonian Empire 188, 189 Baidu (technology company) 23, 40, 48, 77, 267–8 Bangladesh 38–9, 273 bank loans, AI and 67 behavioural economics 20, 147, 217 Belgium 103, 165, 172 Bellaigue, Christopher de 94 Berko, Anat 233 bestiality, secular ethics and 205–6 bewilderment, age of xiii, 17, 215, 257 Bhagavadgita 269–70, 271, 299 Bhardwaj, Maharishi 181 Bible 127, 131–2, 133, 186–90, 198, 199, 200, 206, 233, 234–5, 240, 241, 272, 298 Big Data xii, 18, 25, 47, 48, 49, 53, 63, 64, 68, 71–2, 268 biometric sensors 23, 49, 50, 52, 64, 79, 92 biotechnology xii, xiv, 1, 6, 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 21, 33–4, 41, 48, 66, 75, 80, 83, 88, 109, 121, 122, 176, 211, 251–2, 267 see also under individual area of biotechnology bioterrorism 167, 169 Bismarck, Otto von 98–9 bitcoin 6 Black Death 164 Blair, Tony 168 blockchain 6, 8 blood libel 235–6 body, human: bioengineered 41, 259, 265; body farms 34; technology and distraction from 88–92 Bolshevik Revolution (1917) 15, 248 Bonaparte, Napoleon 96, 178, 231, 284 Book of Mormon 198, 235, 240 Book of the Dead, Egyptian 235 Bouazizi, Mohamed xi brain: biochemical algorithms of 20, 21, 47, 48; brain-computer interfaces 92, 260; brainwashing 242–4, 255, 267, 295; decision-making and 50, 52; equality and 75, 79; flexibility and age of 264–5; free will and 250–2, 255; hominid 122; marketing and 267; meditation and 311, 313–14, 316, 317 Brazil 4, 7, 12, 76, 101, 103, 118, 130 Brexit referendum (2016) 5, 9, 11, 15, 45–6, 93, 99, 115 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 283–4, 302–3 Britain 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 44–5, 94, 99, 108, 115, 139, 143, 150, 165, 172, 178, 182, 232–3, 243 Brussels bombings (March, 2016) 160 Buddha/Buddhism 58, 102, 136, 183, 184, 186, 190, 196, 278, 291, 302–6, 315 Bulgaria 169, 195, 227 Burma 304–5 Bush, George W. 4, 168, 176, 178 Caesar, Julius 96, 179 California, U.S. 8, 39, 85, 88, 148, 172, 177, 178, 200, 266 Cambridge Analytica 80, 86 Cambridge University 12, 45, 194 Cameron, David 45, 46 Canaan 189, 190, 289, 291 Canada 13, 38, 74, 107 capitalism xii, 11, 16, 35, 38, 55, 68, 76, 77, 96, 105–6, 108, 113, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 148, 210, 217, 245, 273, 292, 309 carbon dioxide 117 care industry 24–5 Caro, Rabbi Joseph 195 cars 133, 135; accidents and 23–4, 54, 56–7, 114, 159, 160; choosing 78; GPS/navigation and 54; self-driving 22, 23–4, 33, 41, 56–7, 58–9, 60–1, 63, 168 Catalan Independence 124, 125 Catholics 108, 132, 133, 137, 213, 292, 299 centaurs (human-AI teams) 29, 30 Chad 103, 119 Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales 235–6 Chemosh 191 chess 29, 31–2, 123, 180 Chigaku, Tanaka 305 child labour 33, 224 chimpanzees 94–5, 98, 122, 187–8, 200, 242 China xi, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 64, 76, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 135, 145, 150, 151, 159, 168, 169, 171, 172–3, 175, 176, 177–8, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 193, 201, 227–8, 232, 251, 259–60, 262, 274, 284–5 Chinese Communist Party 5 Christianity 13, 55, 58, 96, 98, 126, 128–30, 131, 132, 133, 134–5, 137, 142, 143, 148, 183, 184–6, 187, 188, 189–90, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 199, 200, 203, 204, 208, 212–13, 233, 234–5, 236, 253, 282, 283, 288, 289, 291, 294, 296, 308; Orthodox 13, 15, 137, 138, 183, 237, 282, 308 Churchill, Winston 53, 108, 243 civilisation, single world xi, 5, 92, 95–109, 110, 138; ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis and 93–8; economics and 105–6; European civilisation and 95–6, 108–9; human tribes and 98–100; science and 107–8 ‘clash of civilisations’ 93–4 climate change x, xi, 15, 75–6, 78, 108, 109, 116–20, 121, 122–3, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 138, 168, 195, 219, 223, 228, 244, 265 Clinton, Bill 4, 168, 176 Clinton, Hillary 8, 97, 236 Cnut the Great, King of the Danes 105 Coca-Cola 50, 238, 267 Coldia (fictional nation) 148–50, 152–4 Cold War (1947–91) 99, 100, 113, 114, 131, 176, 180 communism xii, 3, 5, 10, 11, 14, 33, 35, 38, 74, 87, 95, 131, 132, 134, 176–7, 209–10, 251, 262, 273, 277, 279 Communities Summit (2017) 85 community 11, 37, 42, 43, 85–92, 109, 110, 135, 143–4, 201, 230, 241; breakdown of 85–7; Facebook and building of global xiii, 81, 85–91 compassion 62, 63, 71, 186; Buddhism and 305–6; religion and 186, 200, 201–2, 204, 208–9, 234, 305–6; secular commitment to 200, 201–2, 204–6, 208–9, 210 Confucius 15, 136, 181, 190, 260, 284–5 consciousness ix; AI and 36, 68–72, 122; intelligence and 68–70, 245–6; meditation and 315, 316; religion and 197 Conservative Party 45 conservatives: conservation and 219–20; embrace liberal world view 44–5 conspiracy theories 222, 229 Constantine the Great, Roman Emperor 192 Constantius II, Roman Emperor 192 cooperation 12, 29, 134; fictions and mass 134, 137, 233–42, 245; human-AI 29, 31; morality and 47, 187; nationalism and 134, 137, 236–8; religion and 134, 137, 233–6 corruption 12, 13, 15, 188–9 Council of Religion and the Homosexual (CRH) 200 creativity 25–8, 31, 32, 75, 182, 234, 262, 299 Crimea 174–5, 177, 179, 231, 238 Croats 282 Crusades 96, 165, 184, 199, 212, 213, 296 cryptocurrency 6 Cuba 9–10, 11, 114, 176 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) 114 cultures, differences between 147–55 culturism 150–4 cyberwarfare 127, 176, 178, 179 cyborgs 8, 76–7, 212, 278 Czech Republic 200 Daisy advertisement: US presidential election (1964) and 113, 114 Darwin, Charles 194; On the Origin of Species 98–9 Darwinism 213 data: Big Data xii, 18, 25, 47, 48, 49, 53, 63, 64, 68, 71–2, 268; liberty and 44–72; ownership regulation 77–81, 86 see also artificial intelligence (AI) Davos World Economic Forum 222 Dawkins, Richard 45 Deep Blue (IBM’s chess program) 29, 31 democracies: ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis and 93–8; data processing and 65; equality and 74; individual, trust in and 217, 220; liberal democracy see liberal democracy; liberty and 44–6, 53, 55, 64, 65, 66, 67; media manipulation and 12–13; secular ethics and 204, 210 Denmark 4, 94, 105, 144, 153, 200, 210 dharma 270, 271, 286, 299, 309 Di Tzeitung 97 dictatorships 3, 5, 33, 74, 210, 305; digital xii, 43, 61–8, 71, 79–80, 121 discrimination: AI and 59–60, 67–8, 75–6; brain and structural bias 226–8; religion and 135, 191, 200, 208; racism/culturism, immigration and 147–55 disease 16, 22, 28, 49, 88, 107, 218, 289 disorientation, sense of 5, 6 DNA 49, 66, 67, 79, 98, 150, 182 doctors 22–3, 24, 28, 48–9, 106–7, 128–9, 280 dogmas, faith in 229–30 dollar, American 106 Donbas 238 Donetsk People’s Republic 232 drones 29, 30, 35, 64, 76 East Africa 239 ecological crisis, xi, xiv, 7, 109, 195, 219, 244, 265; climate change x, xi, 15, 75–6, 78, 108, 109, 116–20, 121, 122–3, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 138, 168, 195, 219, 223, 228, 244, 265; equality and 75–6; global solution to 115–26, 138, 155; ignorance and 219–20; justice and 223, 228, 244, 265; liberalism and 16; nationalism and 15, 115–26; religion and 127, 128, 130, 133, 138; technological breakthroughs and 118–19, 121, 122–4 economics xii, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 16, 68, 99, 222, 224, 225, 240, 262, 309; AI and 6, 7, 8, 9, 19–43; capitalist see capitalism; communism and see communism; data processing and 65–6; economic models 37, 105–6; equality and 9, 71, 73–7 see also equality; liberalism and 3–5, 16, 44–5; nationalism and 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 124; religion and 130–3; war and 171–5, 177–8, 179–80; work and 19–43 education 11, 16, 66, 74, 75, 111, 112, 113, 184, 194, 259–68; AI and 32, 34, 35, 38 39, 40–1, 259–68; basic level of 40–1; future of 259–68; liberal 217, 219, 261; secular 207, 209 Egypt 63, 74, 128–9, 172, 181, 188–9, 235, 284, 291, 296 Einstein, Albert 45, 181, 193, 194, 195 El Salvador 4, 150 ‘End of History’ 11 Engels, Friedrich: The Communist Manifesto 262, 273 England 105, 139, 235–6 equality xi, 13, 41, 71–2, 73–81, 92, 95, 144, 204, 223; AI and 75–81; history of 73– 4; secularism and 206–7, 208–9 ethics: AI and 56–61, 63, 121; complex nature of modern world and 223–30; nationalism and 121–2; religion and 186–93, 199–202; secular 199–202, 203–14 Europe xi, xii, 5, 10, 11, 16, 40, 47, 79, 93–100, 103–4, 105, 106, 107, 108–9, 113, 114, 115, 124–5, 128, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 143–4, 145, 147, 150, 153, 154–5, 159, 160, 164, 169, 171–2, 175, 176, 186, 187, 193, 201, 207, 228, 236, 252, 294, 307 see also under individual nation name European Union xii, 47, 93, 94, 95, 99, 108, 115, 124, 169; Constitution 95, 124; crisis in 138; immigration and 138, 139, 143–4, 154–5; Russia and 177; size and wealth of 176; terrorism and 159 Evangelical Christians 133 evolution 47, 98–9, 110–11, 127, 187, 194, 205, 206, 217, 218, 223, 274, 276, 277 Ex Machina (film) 246 Facebook xiii, 27, 77, 178, 230, 301, 302, 306; community-building and xiii, 85–91, 93; equality and 77, 80; liberty and 55, 64, 65, 67, 80, 86; ownership of personal data 80, 86; post-truth and 233, 235, 238; US presidential election (2016) and 80, 86 failed states 101, 112, 210 fair game rules 187 fake news xi, 231–42 famine 16, 33, 208, 212, 238, 251, 271 farming, modern industrial 29, 116, 118, 127, 128, 129, 224, 260, 262 see also agriculture fascism xii, 3, 9, 10, 11, 33, 142, 148, 154, 237, 251, 292–5, 297, 305 feminism 87, 143, 208, 217, 246, 280 Ferdinand, Archduke Franz 9, 11, 171 Fernbach, Philip 218 financial crisis, global (2008) 4, 171 financial system, computers and complexity of 6 Finland 38, 74 First World War (1914–18) 9, 10, 11, 30, 33, 99–100, 112, 123, 124, 160, 170, 171, 172, 265 Flag Code of India 285–6 flags, national 103, 285–6 fMRI scanner 21, 240 football, power of fictions and 241 France 10, 13, 51, 63, 66, 76, 94, 96, 99, 102, 103, 104, 115, 122, 139, 144, 145, 164, 165, 172, 182, 184, 194, 204, 285, 295–6 Francis, Pope 133 Freddy (chimpanzee) 188 free-market capitalism xii, 3, 4, 11, 16, 44, 55, 217, 245 free will 20, 44, 45–6, 47–8, 250–1, 299–301 French Revolution (1789) 63, 184, 207 Freud, Sigmund 135, 185, 193, 194–5, 286 Friedman, Milton 130 Front National 13 Galilei, Galileo 193, 207 gay marriage 44, 198, 205–6 Gaza 173 genetically modified (GM) crops 219 Georgia 176, 177 Germany 13, 66, 68, 95, 96, 98–9, 108, 118, 139, 147, 148, 155, 169, 171–2, 173, 179, 182, 194, 195, 239, 251, 277; Nazi 10, 66, 96, 134, 136, 212, 213, 226, 237, 251, 279, 294, 295 Gandhi, Mahatma 132 globalisation 8, 9, 113, 139; AI/automation and 38–9; history of 99; inequality and 73, 74, 76; nationalism and 109; reversing process of xiii, 5; spread of 4, 99 global stories, disappearance of 5, 14 global warming see climate change God xi, xiii, 46, 106, 197–202; 245, 252, 254, 269, 281, 285, 287, 303, 304; Bible and see Bible; ethics and 199–202, 205, 206, 208, 209; existence of 197–9; Jewish and Christian ideas of 184–5, 189, 190; justice and 225; mass cooperation and 245; monotheism and 190–3; post-truth and 234–6, 239; sacrifice and 287, 289; state identity and 138 gods xii, 277, 281, 291; agriculture and 128, 129; humans becoming ix, 79, 86; justice and 188, 189; sacrifice and 287–9; state identity and 136, 137 Goebbels, Joseph 237 Goenka, S.

Hughes, ‘A Strategic Opening for a Basic Income Guarantee in the Global Crisis Being Created by AI, Robots, Desktop Manufacturing and BioMedicine’, Journal of Evolution and Technology 24 (2014), 45–61; Alan Cottey, ‘Technologies, Culture, Work, Basic Income and Maximum Income’, AI and Society 29 (2014), 249–57. 24 Jon Henley, ‘Finland Trials Basic Income for Unemployed’, Guardian, 3 January 2017. 25 ‘Swiss Voters Reject Proposal to Give Basic Income to Every Adult and Child’, Guardian, 5 June 2017. 26 Isabel Hunter, ‘Crammed into squalid factories to produce clothes for the West on just 20p a day, the children forced to work in horrific unregulated workshops of Bangladesh’, Daily Mail, 1 December 2015; Chris Walker and Morgan Hartley, ‘The Culture Shock of India’s Call Centers’, Forbes, 16 December 2012. 27 Klaus Schwab and Nicholas Savis, Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution (World Economic Forum, 2018), 54. On long-term development strategies, see Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (London: Anthem Press, 2003). 28 Lauren Gambini, ‘Trump Pans Immigration Proposal as Bringing People from “Shithole Countries”’, Guardian, 12 January 2018. 29 For the idea that an absolute improvement in conditions might be coupled with a rise in relative inequality, see in particular Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). 30 ‘2017 Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (2017), https://en.idi.org.il/articles/20439; Melanie Lidman, ‘As ultra-Orthodox women bring home the bacon, don’t say the F-word’, Times of Israel, 1 January 2016. 31 Lidman, ‘As ultra-Orthodox women bring home the bacon’, op. cit; ‘Statistical Report on Ultra-Orthodox Society in Israel’, Israel Democracy Institute and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 18 (2016).


pages: 460 words: 122,556

The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, break the buck, Brownian motion, Carmen Reinhart, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, geopolitical risk, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Rogoff, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, the payments system, too big to fail, tulip mania, Y2K

Denis’s letter to Waxman, October 4, 2008. 15 October 7 hearings on AIG, p. 7; see also Liam Pleven and Amir Efrati, “Documents Show AIG Knew of Problems with Valuations,” Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2008. 16 Pleven and Efrati, “Documents Show AIG Knew,” and Carrick Mollenkamp, Serena Ng, Liam Pleven, and Randall Smith, “Behind AIG’s Fall, Risk Models Failed to Pass Real-World Test,” Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2008. 17 Delinquencies: Mortgage Bankers Association; home prices: Case-Shiller. 18 Fed bulletin, “Understanding the Recent Changes to Federal Reserve Liquidity Provision,” May 2008, 3. 19 JPMorgan Chase 2007 Annual Report, 12. 20 Ibid., 10, 15, 16. 21 Pappas v. Countrywide, ¶ 253. 22 Robert L. Rodriguez, “Credit Crisis,” FPA commentary, January 22, 2008. 23 Thomas A. Russo, “Credit Crunch: Where Do We Stand,” presented at World Economic Forum, January 2008, pp. 5, 6, 15. 24 Lehman Brothers filings and Blaine Frantz, interview with the author. The figures are for February 2008 (end of Lehman’s first quarter). The $49 billion in commercial real estate assets was down from $52 billion at the end of 2007. Leonard, “How Lehman Brothers Got Its Real Estate Fix,” cites a smaller figure.

In a perceptive article, which he presented at the annual gathering of financial heavyweights in Davos, Switzerland, Thomas A. Russo, vice-chairman, chief legal officer, and intellectual eminence of Lehman Brothers, observed that “bank balance sheets are backing up with assets,” a trend, he added, that “significantly reduces banks’ capital ratios.”23 Russo, who had a formidable knowledge of Wall Street, forecast two million home foreclosures over the next two years and the worst drop in home prices since the Great Depression. Russo, whose boss, Richard Fuld, was a celebrity at Davos for having weathered the storm so well, did not mention that one very backed-up balance sheet belonged to his own firm.

The U.S. will be challenged to avoid a similar fate. (The dollar plunged 12 percent during Obama’s first nine months in office.) The failure of America’s model stirred a geopolitical realignment. Europe no longer slobbered to imitate the U.S.; Asian economies were ascendant. Americans at the 2009 economic summit in Davos, accustomed to preaching the wonders of the market, were subjected to lectures by the potentates of command economies. Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, gloated over the virtual death of investment banking. Premier Wen Jiabao of China aptly faulted “excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit.”


pages: 283 words: 87,166

Reaching for Utopia: Making Sense of an Age of Upheaval by Jason Cowley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, coherent worldview, Corn Laws, corporate governance, crony capitalism, David Brooks, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, illegal immigration, Jeremy Corbyn, liberal world order, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, post-war consensus, public intellectual, Right to Buy, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, technological determinism, University of East Anglia

‘The key thing about her is her belief in the efficacy and, so to speak, compensatory function of the state, the important positive functions – you might even say the moral functions of the state,’ said the philosopher John Gray. * * * When I visited Theresa May one morning in her office in Downing Street, we discussed her trip to Davos, Switzerland, in January 2017. In an address to the World Economic Forum, she told the citizens of the world gathered high in the snowy Alps that ‘those on modest-to-low incomes living in relatively rich countries around the West’ feel that the forces of globalisation are not working for them, hence the ‘quiet resolve’ protest vote for Brexit.

Her approach to Trump’s White House should surely be the same as her approach to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, on which she said she ‘wants sanctions to remain’: engage but beware. Since she was mocked on the cover of the Economist as ‘Theresa Maybe’, Britain’s ‘indecisive premier’, May has delivered three significant speeches in 2017 – at Lancaster House in London, in Davos and in Philadelphia – which, read together, offer a coherent exposition of what could be an emerging May Doctrine. The May Doctrine has three pillars: a new realism in foreign policy; the return of the state in domestic affairs; and social and economic reform leading to a renewed commitment to social cohesion and the common good.


The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy by Bruce Katz, Jennifer Bradley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, benefit corporation, British Empire, business climate, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, company town, congestion pricing, data science, deindustrialization, demographic transition, desegregation, Donald Shoup, double entry bookkeeping, edge city, Edward Glaeser, financial engineering, global supply chain, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial cluster, intermodal, Jane Jacobs, jitney, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Masdar, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, place-making, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, Quicken Loans, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, The Spirit Level, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, transit-oriented development, urban planning, white flight, Yochai Benkler

And it could be a market-shaping tool, to identify financing and other barriers to trade and challenge market actors to compete to invent and apply new investment and lending vehicles. An expansive network of trading cities would be a welcome departure from the current global circuit: the showy, exclusive globalism of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos or the political, conflict-oriented theater of the G20 or world trade summits. This network of metros could be formal or informal, enabled by innovative technologies, supported by still-to-be-invented modes of communication. Advanced universities in the United States and elsewhere are now experimenting with teaching tens of thousands of students at a time through the Internet.

See Research Triangle Park Urban, Lennar, 127 Urbanization: challenges of, 155–56; and global trade, 145–46, 147–48; and innovation districts, 114–15, 116, 121 Urban noise, 29 Urban policy, 184 Van Kempen, Ronald, 160 Vest, Charles, 27, 31 Villaraigosa, Antonio, 144, 185, 186, 196 Voices and Choices initiative, 71–72 Vulcan Real Estate, 127 Wagner, Julie, 128, 138–39 Walkable urbanism, 115 Wallis, John Joseph, 176 Washington, D.C., metropolitan area: foreign equity investments in, 155; immigrant populations in, 48 Wayne State University, 134–35 Weiss, Mitch, 125 Whitehead, Brad, 71, 85 Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown (Safford), 68 Wilson, Jill, 99 World Bank urban initiative, 148 World Economic Forum at Davos, 169 Wylde, Kathryn, 21, 27, 39 Youngstown (Ohio), economic decline of, 64–66, 68. See also Cleveland (Ohio) metropolitan area Zoning regulations, 129–30 5/20/13 7:04 PM “The Metropolitan Revolution upends conventional wisdom and makes the case for how our cities and metros are leading American change and progress: they are transforming our national economy, political conversation, and collective destiny from the bottom up like never before.


pages: 408 words: 108,985

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, deindustrialization, discovery of DNA, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, mini-job, moral hazard, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paris climate accords, patent troll, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, zero-sum game

Norton, 2018), from which this passage and others in the section draw heavily. 2. For a popular account, see Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (New York: Crown Business, 2013). 3. See President Xi’s speech in Davos. Xi Jingping, “President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full” (speech, Jan. 17, 2017), available at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum. 4. See, for instance, The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis, with Members of the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System appointed by the president of the United Nations General Assembly (New York: The New Press, 2010). 5.

What they did in pursuit of their private interests had undermined the efficiency, stability, and growth of the economy. The Mantra and Myth of Self-Regulation The zeitgeist of the 1990s and early 2000s conveyed that Europeans were living in the Age of Finance, which seemed to be a good thing. European events such as the World Economic Forum heralded bank CEOs as the titans of a globalized economy. And Britain’s highly financialized economy arguably turned London into the global capital of finance. The mantra of the age was self-regulation, the idea that these leaders of finance knew better how to manage risk than any government official.


pages: 379 words: 109,223

Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business by Ken Auletta

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alvin Toffler, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Build a better mousetrap, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, cloud computing, commoditize, connected car, content marketing, corporate raider, crossover SUV, data science, digital rights, disintermediation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Future Shock, Google Glasses, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, NetJets, Network effects, pattern recognition, pets.com, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, three-martini lunch, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, éminence grise

After receiving an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, she worked for Shell and for the UN’s International Labor Organization. She eventually joined the World Economic Forum as a senior manager (and later, director) of the media and entertainment industries group, which coordinated with executives from these sectors who attended the World Economic Forum in Davos and elsewhere. When Sorrell laid eyes on the tall, slim, vivacious blonde with an Italian accent and a feisty I-don’t-bow-to-anyone personality, he was smitten. “For four years,” she says, “he invited me to join him for a drink in Davos and I did not go. He tried to convince me he was the right partner for me.” She had a Swiss boyfriend, and she declined.


pages: 516 words: 116,875

Greater: Britain After the Storm by Penny Mordaunt, Chris Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, accelerated depreciation, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, failed state, fake news, Firefox, fixed income, full employment, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, impact investing, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lateral thinking, Live Aid, lockdown, loss aversion, low skilled workers, microaggression, mittelstand, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Ocado, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, quantitative easing, remote working, road to serfdom, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, transaction costs, transcontinental railway

Some say Britain is an ordinary and mediocre nation because it can’t do these big visions, but the world is moving away from just quantity as a measure. Quality matters, too. Of all the countries in the world that migrants want to move to, Britain remains in the top five.4 British democracy may have its challenges, but it remains a strong pull factor for those who were not born here. According to the World Economic Forum, 35 million people would like to move permanently to Britain.5 They may be escaping from conflict, famine, disaster or high unemployment. It’s not difficult to understand. Prior to the pandemic, the country had almost full employment. It’s the sixth largest economy in the world and the largest investor into America.

The World Bank was born in 1944, the World Health Organization in 1948, and contestants at Miss World (1951 on) wanted an end to world poverty and a start to world peace (whatever the hell that was). The Guinness Book of Records was established in 1955, the World Wildlife Fund in 1961, the World Trade Center in 1970, Disney World and the World Economic Forum in 1971, UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1972, the World Tourism Organization in 1974, the World Wide Web in 1989, Wayne’s World in 1992 and finally the World Trade Organization in 1995. It was in advertising with Probably the best lager in the world (Carlsberg 1973) and I’d like to buy the world a Coke (itself a cover of the New Seekers’ ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’) in 1971.

1 third sector role 1 Thornberry, Emily 1 Times, The 1, 2 Todd, Richard 1 Tomorrow’s World 1 Trace, Christopher 1 tribalism in politics 1 Trimble, Lord 1 Trump, Donald 1, 2, 3 trust in institutions 1 trustworthiness of Britain 1, 2, 3 of China 1, 2 establishing 1 of EU 1 as magnet for risk 1 of Parliament 1 Turner, Anthea 1 ‘UK Theme’ 1 underdogs 1, 2, 3, 4 Union flag 1 United Nations 1 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 1 United States caricatures of 1 challenge to dominance 1 comparison with China 1 debt in 1 democracy in 1 drinking in 1 equality in 1 freedom of speech 1 relationship with Britain 1 similarities to Britain 1, 2 universities in 1 universities 1, 2 volunteering 1, 2, 3 voter turnout 1 Walden, Brian 1 Wales 1, 2 Walker, Peter 1 Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour (Fox) 1 wealth 1 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney 1 Weekend World 1 well-being 1 Westminster Hall 1 Whicker’s World 1 White, Douglas 1 Wilson, Harold 1, 2 Windrush scandal 1 Wisdom, Norman 1, 2 wokery 1 Wombles, The 1 World at War, The 1 World Bank 1 World Benchmarking Alliance 1 World Economic Forum 1 World in Action 1 World Justice Project 1 World of Sport 1 Worsley, Giles 1 Wright, Nicholas 1 Xi Jinping 1, 2 Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Biteback Publishing Ltd, London Copyright © Penny Mordaunt and Chris Lewis 2021 Penny Mordaunt and Chris Lewis have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.


pages: 419 words: 130,627

Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase by Duff McDonald

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, bank run, Bear Stearns, Blythe Masters, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, business logic, centralized clearinghouse, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Exxon Valdez, financial innovation, fixed income, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, housing crisis, interest rate swap, Jeff Bezos, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market bubble, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, profit motive, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, risk/return, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Saturday Night Live, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Chicago School, too big to fail, Vanguard fund, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

(Although his argument is persuasive to some degree, it strains belief that Dimon does not focus on both what the company does and where its stock price is trading. Not only is his net worth tied to the level of the company’s stock, but on Wall Street, stock price is the way the score is kept.) The second milestone was a little more personal. Dimon cochaired the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. Wall Street had long known of Jamie Dimon, but the wider world had known him less. News reports also confirmed that Dimon had hired the former British prime minister Tony Blair as an adviser to the company. (Blair was being paid either $5 million or $1 million a year, depending on whom you believe.

Doomsaying commentators, including an economics professor at New York University, Nouriel Roubini, were imploring investors not to underestimate the obvious signs of weakness in subprime and how it could easily spill over into other areas. But Wall Street still found reasons not to take their concerns seriously. In January 2007, Michael Lewis wrote a column for Bloomberg News titled “Davos Is for Wimps, Ninnies, Pointless Skeptics,” lampooning Roubini, the private investor Steven Rattner, and Morgan Stanley’s economist Stephen Roach for daring to introduce pessimism at the annual global economic retreat in Switzerland. In bull markets, bears always get picked on. While Jamie Dimon and his colleagues were having doubts about the housing market, most investors were chuckling right alongside Lewis, happy to see their portfolios gaining.

“Credit is the air that financial markets breathe, and when the air is poisoned, there’s no place to hide,” writes Charles Morris in The Trillion Dollar Meltdown. The start of the credit problems prompted CNBC’s talking head Jim Cramer to unleash his now infamous rant beseeching the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Like Michael Lewis’s sarcastic column about Davos, it seems naive in retrospect. The market’s problems were far too complex to be solved by a mere rate cut. Morris was soon forced to change the title of his book to The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown. (It may well have to be revised further.) Although they were not desperate for capital, executives at Bear Stearns concluded that a vote of confidence from a prominent outside investor might quiet the critics.


pages: 442 words: 130,526

The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age by James Crabtree

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, business climate, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, crony capitalism, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global supply chain, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, informal economy, Joseph Schumpeter, land bank, liberal capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, McMansion, megacity, Meghnad Desai, middle-income trap, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, open economy, Parag Khanna, Pearl River Delta, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Rubik’s Cube, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, special economic zone, spectrum auction, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism, young professional

Drèze and Sen, An Uncertain Glory, ch. 1. 42. Amartya Sen, “Quality of Life: India vs. China,” New York Review of Books, May 12, 2011. 43. Branko Milanovic, “The Question of India’s Inequality,” globalinequality blog, May 7, 2016. 44. Nisha Agrawal, “Inequality in India: What’s the Real Story?” World Economic Forum, October 3, 2016. 45. Jain-Chandra et al., “Sharing the Growth Dividend.” 46. Global Wealth Report 2016. 47. Chakravarty and Dehejia, “India’s Income Divergence.” 48. The ADB paper concluded: “Had inequality not increased, India’s poverty headcount would have been reduced from 32.7% to 29.5% in 2008.”

Once a year, as the shareholder meeting droned on, Modi would appear quietly at the side of the hall to brief journalists, before leaving just as quickly. By this time Ambani had led Reliance for more than ten years, and had taken steps to soften his murky public image. He made donations to good causes, schmoozed at Davos and sat on the board of an American bank. His Reliance Foundation set up a hospital in southern Mumbai and founded the Dhirubhai Ambani International School, to which the city’s well-to-do clamored to send their children. Unable to control entirely what the press said about him, he instead bought a television station and began fashioning himself as a media magnate.

In 2006, steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, at the time the world’s third richest man, announced an unprecedented $34 billion plan to buy Arcelor of Luxembourg, creating one of the world’s biggest steelmakers.37 Tata, the biggest Indian company of all, began snapping up British household names like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea. Newly flushed with confidence, big-name Indian industrialists began turning out at Davos, the annual Swiss alpine forum favored by the global elite. In 2006 the nearby mountainsides were blanketed with adverts paid for by India’s government, promoting what they called the world’s “fastest-growing free market democracy.” Mukesh Ambani was named the event’s cochair and an array of fellow tycoons, including Mallya, turned up to cheer him on.


pages: 191 words: 51,242

Unsustainable Inequalities: Social Justice and the Environment by Lucas Chancel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Anthropocene, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, energy security, energy transition, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, green new deal, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, urban planning, very high income, Washington Consensus

In 2013, Barack Obama called the rise in income inequality the “defining challenge of our time.”2 Institutions that had not previously been known for their egalitarian sympathies began to warn against the levels of inequality reached in both developed and developing countries. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and even the World Economic Forum, an assembly of powerful interests convening every year in Davos, Switzerland, have frankly recognized that these inequalities constitute one of the gravest challenges to capitalism today.3 We will see in what follows that there is no consensus about the causes of this phenomenon and, as a consequence, no agreement about appropriate remedies.

See also economic inequality; wealth water: access to potable, 71–73, 116; contamination of, 86–87; public utilities networks for, 111, 115–117; shortages of, 73, 161n12. See also drought wealth: distribution of, 39–48, 111–113, 114; planetary destruction and, 95–97; political power of, 56–57. See also economic inequality welfare state, as term, 159n24 World Bank, 11, 21, 88, 118, 144 World Economic Forum, 11 World Health Organization (WHO), 17, 72, 83 World Inequality Database (WID.world), 38, 39, 103 World Top Incomes Database (WTID), 39 World Trade Organization (WTO), 12, 50–51, 146


pages: 124 words: 36,360

Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent by Douglas Coupland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, British Empire, cable laying ship, Claude Shannon: information theory, cosmic microwave background, Downton Abbey, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Hibernia Atlantic: Project Express, hiring and firing, industrial research laboratory, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Marshall McLuhan, messenger bag, military-industrial complex, Neal Stephenson, oil shale / tar sands, pre–internet, quantum entanglement, Richard Feynman, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, tech worker, technological determinism, TED Talk, Turing machine, undersea cable, upwardly mobile, urban planning, UUNET, Wall-E

He organized a youth parliament at Utrecht University and followed up by starting the General Organization of Dutch Soldiers during his mandatory military service. Since then, he has been a creature of the European telecom elite, working with ITT Corporation, Dutch telecom’s PTT, and England’s BT. He is a regular attendee of the Davos World Economic Forum and has been made a Dutch Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau, an honorary Knight of the British Empire (KBE), and a French Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. Verwaayen is, in fact, annoyingly worthy. The two of us fall into a light discussion of politics’ changing tone in the Internet era.


pages: 247 words: 60,543

The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony by David G. W. Birch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, bank run, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, cashless society, central bank independence, COVID-19, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, Diane Coyle, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global village, Hyman Minsky, information security, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market design, Marshall McLuhan, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, one-China policy, Overton Window, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Pingit, QR code, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, railway mania, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subscription business, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vitalik Buterin, Washington Consensus

Given that a centralized system has the lowest cost, all signs seem to point towards something like M-Pesa, but a version run by the government, rather than something built using federated databases or decentralized shared ledgers. The World Economic Forum notes that one of the arguments against such an account-based system, and it is a valid concern, is that a system like this presents more of a challenge to existing commercial banks’ business models, whereas the kind of token-based alternatives I envisage are more of a cash replacement (World Economic Forum 2020). Either way, the shift towards digital fiat will restructure the financial system, and therefore it needs careful planning. If people start using digital fiat instead of banknotes and move money from their (to a certain extent risk-free) bank accounts to their central bank digital fiat balances, then this could set in motion a disintermediation of the banking sector as a whole.

Knowledge@Wharton, 20 June (retrieved 24 June). URL: https://whr.tn/2WHBqZY. Wildau, G. 2016. China banks starved of big data as mobile payments rise. Financial Times, 29 August. Wilson, F. 2019. What happened in the 2010s. AVC, 31 December. URL: http://bit.ly/37urX9K. World Economic Forum. 2020. Central bank digital currency policy-maker toolkit. White Paper, World Economic Forum, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, January. You, Y., and K. Rogoff. 2019. Redeemable platform currencies. Working Paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, November. Zhao, L. 2019. When China and other big countries launch cryptocurrencies, it will kick off a global revolution.

There are far more insidious scenarios in which currencies are used as weapons – and not in a metaphorical sense – to cause economic harm to others. These attacks involve not only states and central banks, but also terrorists, criminals and investment banks using sovereign wealth funds, cyberattacks, sabotage and covert actions of a kind not discussed around the Davos dinner tables. States, of course, play a key role. Former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff has said that the competition to (at the very least) reduce the influence of the dollar as Prime currency will come from state-sponsored assets. I think that, at the global scale, he must be correct. I do, however, see a role for private currencies at both Patrician and Plebeian levels, and I believe they will have an impact on Permeated currencies also.


pages: 422 words: 113,830

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency peg, diversification, Doha Development Round, energy security, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mobile money, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

Does the financialization of the United States, culminating in the recent excesses and implosions, therefore reiterate the sorry pattern of finance as a luxuriation and sunset phenomenon? Almost certainly—and with far more greed and institutionalized speculation-cum-gambling on display than the British example a century ago. One acid portrait came in the mockery by Continental Europeans of the tunnel vision and smugness of the Wall Street leaders who attended the Davos-based World Economic Forum between 2003 and 2007, ignoring the financial warnings in favor of parties, client meetings, and “total psychological denial.”1 In more serious terms, international disdain for Wall Street and Anglo-American capitalism is mounting. Major burdens on the future economic performance of the United States in terms of huge federal budget deficits and future inflation seem assured.

Varadarajan, Siddharth Venezuela Vietnam Vietnam War Voice of America News Volcker, Paul Wachovia Wachter, Susan Wall Street Journal Warren, Elizabeth Warren, Rick Washington, George Washington Mutual Washington Post Wasik, John Wasserstein Perella Wealth and Democracy (Phillips) Weary Titan, The (Friedberg) Weber, Axel Weber, Max Weber, Tim Weeden, Charles Weill, Sanford Wells Fargo Whalen, Christopher whaling industry Whitehead, John Wilkinson, Bruce William of Orange Williams, John Wilson, Woodrow Wolf, Martin Wolf, Robert Woman in Charge, A (Bernstein) WorldCom World Economic Forums World Energy Outlook (IEA) worldpublicopinion.org World Trade Organization (WTO) World War I World War II Wu Xiaoling Yemen yen, Japanese Yucaipa Companies Zhuhai Zhenrong Trading FOR MORE FROM BE STS E LLING AUTHOR KEVIN PHILLIPS , LOOK FOR THE American Theocracy The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century From ancient Rome to the British Empire to twenty-first century America, global overreach, militant religion, energy dependency, and ballooning debt have been Achilles’ heels of leading world economic powers.

Dialynas and Marshall Auerbeck, “Renegade Economics: The Bretton Woods II Fiction,” Pimco Viewpoints, September 2007. 40 “America’s Vulnerable Economy,” Economist, November 15, 2007. 41 “Dollar’s Last Lap as the Only Anchor Currency,” Financial Times, November 25, 2007. 42 John Authers, “The Short View: Weak Dollar,” Financial Times, September 10, 2007. 43 “Why Banking Is an Accident Waiting to Happen,” Financial Times, November 27, 2007. 44 Martin Wolf, “Why the Credit Squeeze Is a Turning Point for the World,” Financial Times, December 11, 2007. 45 “Mortgage Crisis Perplexes Even Shrewd Investor Warren Buffett,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 12, 2007. 46 “European Bosses Warming to Foreign Funds,” Financial Times, December 11, 2007. 47 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan (New York: Random House, 2007). 48 “Does Not Compute: How Misfiring Quant Funds Are Distorting the Markets,” Financial Times, December 9, 2007. 49 Richard Bookstaber, A Demon of Our Own Design (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), pp. 5, 259-60. 50 Mike Muehleck, “Exit U.S.,” www.agorafinancial.com//afrude/. AFTERWORD: SPECULATIVE CAPITALISM ENDANGERED 1 “Out of Control Wall Street Chikefs Spurned Warnings at Davos,” Bloomberg News, October 24, 2008. 2 “U.S. Clout Down, Risks Up by 2025—Intel Outlook,” Reuters, November 20, 2008. 3 Andrew Hacker, The End of the American Era (New York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 3. Few other skeptics were so blunt. 4 Henry Brandon, The Retreat of American Power (New York: Doubleday, 1973), p. 3. 5 Allen J.


System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

What’s the governance structure here?” The response was quick: “Democracy? No. To optimize for science, we need a beneficent technocrat in charge. Democracy is too slow, and it holds science back.” Chapter 2 The Problematic Marriage of Hackers and Venture Capitalists In 1996, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, John Perry Barlow—a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, onetime cattle rancher, and a cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation—penned “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” Reacting to the passage in the United States Telecommunications Act of 1996, Barlow channeled the techno-libertarian spirit, writing “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind.

., xi, 187–88, 215 Tuskegee experiment, xxxi Twitter as digital civic square, 21 leaders surprised by ways the platform could do harm, 254 Trump’s access denied after January 6, 2021, xi–xii, 187–88 See also big tech platforms ultimatum game, 91 unicorns, 37–38, 39, 43 United Kingdom, 165, 218, 254, 260–62 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 173 United States Postal Service, 3–4 universal basic income (UBI), 182–84, 185 University College London Jeremy Bentham display, 120–21, 124 unsupervised data, 85 US Air Force Academy, 103 US Capitol assault (Jan. 6, 2021), xi-xii, xxvi, 115, 187, 209, 215, 223 US Census Bureau, 41 US Department of Justice (DOJ), 257 US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, 180 US security forces and message encryption, 128–29 USA PATRIOT Act, 116 user engagement in online platforms, 40 user-centric privacy, 149–50 utilitarianism, 9, 121, 168, 245 Vacca, James, 104–5 values overview, xvii, xxix balancing the competing values created by innovation, 240–43, 258 expressing ourselves in support of each other, 178 free expression, democracy, individual dignity at risk online, 190–91 freedom as, 172–73 goals assessment for evaluating efficiency vs. values, 15–16 replacing governance by big tech with process of deciding, xxix resolving trade-offs between rival values, xxxi–xxxiii, 45 at risk from new, unregulated innovations, 56 of tech leaders as expert rulers, 67–68 See also dignity, fairness, free speech, privacy, safety, security Varian, Hal, 174 venture capital, inequality in distribution of, 41 venture capitalists (VCs), 25–49 ecosystem of, 31–33 funding Soylent, 8 funds as investment vehicles for their LPs, 38–39 hackers and, 28, 52, 68 high value exits, 40–41 increasing numbers of, 39 narrow view of success as white, male, nerd, 41 optimizing from multiple starting points, 43–45 and scalability of businesses, xxviii and Silicon Valley, 17, 26–28 at Stanford showcasing their new companies, 42–45 unicorns, search for, 37–38, 39, 43 Vestager, Margrethe, 252–53, 255 virtual reality, the experience machine, 167–69 Waal, Frans de, 92 Wales, Jimmy, 195 Walker, Darren, 180 Wall Street Journal, 42–43 Warren, Elizabeth, 181, 256 washing machines and laundry, 157–58 watch time metric, 34 Watchdog.net, xxiii Weapons of Math Destruction (O’Neil), 98 Weinberg, Gabriel, 135–36 Weinstein, Jeremy, xv–xvi, 72 Weld, William, 130 Western Union, 57 Westin, Alan, 137–38 WhatsApp, 127–28 Wheeler, Tom, 63, 76 Whitt, Richard, 149 “Why Software Is Eating the World” (Wall Street Journal), 42–43 Wikipedia, 195–96 Wikipedia conference, xxiii–xxiv Wilde, Oscar, 63 winner-take-all, disruption vs. democracy, 51–76 overview, 51–53 democracy and regulation of technology, 68–73 democracy as a guardrail, 73–76 government’s complicity in absence of regulation, 59–63 innovation vs. regulation, 53–59 and Plato’s philosopher kings, 63–68 Wisconsin’s COMPAS system, 88, 98 Wong, Nicole, 40, 254 worker cooperatives, 180 workers’ compensation benefit, 55 workplace safety, 53–54, 55 World Economic Forum 1996, Davos, Switzerland, 25 World Health Organization, 154 World Wide Web, 29, 30. See also free speech and the internet Wu, Tim, 57, 219 Y Combinator (YC), xxii, 43–45 Yang, Andrew, 182 You Are Not a Gadget (Lanier), 169, 238 YouTube, xii, xxvii, 8, 21, 33–34, 40, 188, 192, 193, 194, 197, 199, 201, 209. 210, 212–13, 221, 227 Zero to One (Thiel and Masters), 38 Zhang, Cathy, 243 Zoom’s automated language translation channel, 163 Zuboff, Shoshana, 115 Zuckerberg, Mark, 47, 51, 53, 64–65, 193–94, 254.


pages: 239 words: 70,206

Data-Ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else by Steve Lohr

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bioinformatics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Carl Icahn, classic study, cloud computing, computer age, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Danny Hillis, data is the new oil, data science, David Brooks, driverless car, East Village, Edward Snowden, Emanuel Derman, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Future Shock, Google Glasses, Ida Tarbell, impulse control, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, lifelogging, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, meta-analysis, money market fund, natural language processing, obamacare, pattern recognition, payday loans, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, pre–internet, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Salesforce, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, skunkworks, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tony Fadell, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, yottabyte

At the time, he was helping guide the recently revamped Sunday Review section, and Gerry observed that I had written a number of articles about the field that was being called big data, and that the subject was getting more attention all the time, including being prominently on the agenda of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos that month. We talked for a while, and he asked if there was a long overview piece to be done that explained the phenomenon for a general audience. I replied that I thought there was. The result was a lead article for Sunday Review that ran in early February 2012 under the headline “The Age of Big Data.”

One camp—think of it as the enlightened business community—contends that the focus of privacy rules should be on the use of data rather than the collection of data. Data, in this view, is an asset, the currency of the information economy. So, like money, the greatest value will be created if it flows freely. That case was forcefully made by the World Economic Forum, in a report issued in 2013, Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage. The report grew out of a series of workshops on privacy, attended by government officials and privacy activists, as well as business executives. The corporate members, more than others, shaped the final document.

in the spring of 2014, Zhou presented a paper: The paper was titled, “KnowMe and ShareMe: Understanding Automatically Discovered Personality Traits from Social Media and User Sharing Preferences,” by Liang Gou, Michelle Zhou and Huahai Yang, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 955–64. The conference was in Toronto, April 26–May 1, 2014. That case was forcefully made: The World Economic Forum report, titled Unlocking the Value of Personal Data: From Collection to Usage, was published in February 2013. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_IT_UnlockingValuePersonalData_CollectionUsage_Report_2013.pdf. “There’s no bad data”: An interview on Feb. 26, 2013, with Craig Mundie. “I don’t buy the argument”: An interview on March 15, 2013, with David Vladeck.


pages: 323 words: 95,492

The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost Its Way by Steve Richards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, David Brooks, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, driverless car, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, falling living standards, full employment, gentrification, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Neil Kinnock, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon

Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, London and New York, 2016 3 Barack Obama, final press conference, 18 January 2017 4 Politico, 10 May 2016 5 The New York Times, 13 November 2016 6 Ibid. 7 David Axelrod interview with Barack Obama, ‘The Axe Files’, University of Chicago Institute of Politics & CNN, podcast, 26 December 2016 8 Theresa May, speech to the World Economic Forum, Davos, 19 January 2017 9 Theresa May, ‘Plan for Britain’, 17 January 2017 CHAPTER SEVEN: Trust 1 Lexington column, The Economist, 20 December 2016 2 Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, 9 November 2016 3 Angela Merkel, speaking in China after the G20 Summit, 5 September 2016 4 William Waldegrave, A Different Kind of Weather, London, 2015 5 Time magazine, 24 May 2016 6 John Humphrys’ interview of Andrew Gilligan, Today programme, BBC Radio 4, 29 May 2003 7 The Mail on Sunday, 1 June 2003 CHAPTER EIGHT: Powerlessness and the Media 1 The Guardian, 6 January 2017 2 John Birt and Peter Jay, The Times, 28 February 1975 3 reuters.com, 13 June 2007 4 The Washington Post, 16 June 2015 5 Joe Walsh quoted in the Illinois Review, 28 December 2016 6 Cover story, National Review, 6 September 1993 7 The Washington Post, 23 December 2015 8 Gabe Hobbs, quoted in a Washington Post article, 23 December 2015 9 The Washington Post, 23 December 2015 10 Steve Richards, ‘Soundbite Politics’, Reuters Foundation Paper, July 1994 11 The Guardian, 8 November 2010 12 Agnès Poirier, interview with the author, 3 March 2017 13 Thomas Kielinger, interview with the author, 3 March 2017 14 The New York Times, 13 November 2016 15 NBC News, 25 August 2016 16 The Guardian, 14 November 2016 17 The New Yorker website, November 2016 18 Toronto Star, November 2016 19 Jay Rosen, The Guardian, 22 November 2016 CONCLUSION 1 The New York Times, 24 March 2017 2 Roy Jenkins, Evening Standard, 14 June 2001 3 Interview by the author with James Callaghan, New Statesman, December 1996 4 Theresa May, speech at the Conservative Party conference, 5 October 2016 5 Lisa Nandy, speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research, 7 March 2017 6 Chuka Umunna, New Statesman, 6 March 2017 ______ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thanks to Mike Harpley at Atlantic, who had this idea long before Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

The UK’s current Conservative prime minister is more wary of globalization than Blair was when he made his conference speech in 2005 – the address in which he argued that for a government to intervene would be as fruitless as seeking to prevent summer moving on to autumn. Theresa May’s address to the financial elite in Davos in January 2017 suggested that she is to the left of Blair in her argument. She is the break with the past, the Tory modernizer, addressing – in words at least – the fragilities brought about by globalization. The qualification about words, rather than actions, is important. It was Blair who intervened in the labour market by introducing a minimum wage.


pages: 288 words: 90,349

The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon-based life, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, deliberate practice, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, sustainable-tourism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, urban planning, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus

Elected leaders, senior diplomats, economists, and celebrities have helped to place the issues of Africa's dehumanizing poverty, HIV/AIDS crisis, food security, and debt relief on the international community's agenda. DEALING WITH MALARIA AND DEPENDENCY In January 2005, I attended the World Economic Forum, a gathering of heads of state, entrepreneurs, economists, and public figures that is held every year in Davos, Switzerland. In one session, I listened as then Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa addressed the theme “Funding the War on Poverty” on a panel that included President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil; Domenico Siniscalco, Italy's then minister of economy and finance; Gordon Brown, then the UK's chancellor of the exchequer; American economist Jeffrey Sachs; and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.1 President Mkapa made a passionate appeal for the global North (the wealthy, industrialized countries, which are mainly located in the northern hemisphere) to cancel the debts that his country owed, which, he said, severely hampered his government's ability to make investments in public health, including, for example, providing bed nets to protect Tanzanian children from malaria-infected mosquitoes.

At the same time, development agencies need to present a vision of the Africa they wish to see rather than using images that undercut the very mission they are trying to accomplish. It should be possible for potential donors to respond to images of a functioning Africa that deserves support and not only give in response to those images that inspire pity and condescension. That morning in Davos, as I listened to Sharon Stone urging other individuals to join her in raising money for bed nets, I couldn't help but notice the rather strained smile on President Mkapa's face. He was in an awkward situation. No doubt on one level he was grateful that someone cared enough about the toll of malaria on his country's children to help raise funds for bed nets there and then.


pages: 334 words: 91,722

Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (And Why They Were Never Going To) by Chris Grey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, game design, global pandemic, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, lockdown, non-tariff barriers, open borders, post-truth, reserve currency, Robert Mercer

In press conferences Michel Barnier repeatedly called for clarity from the UK as to what it wanted, and Laura Kuenssberg, the political editor of the BBC, reported that within the British negotiating team there was frustration at the failure of politicians, up to and including the Prime Minister, to take the ‘big decisions’ that would allow the talks to make progress.64 This refusal to face decisions seemed obvious at the time, if only because of the continuing suggestion that ‘frictionless trade’ could be achieved despite hard Brexit, but a few months later it was confirmed in an extraordinary story that emerged from the January 2018 World Economic Forum at Davos. There, during a semi-private event, Angela Merkel summarised the series of conversations she had had with Theresa May, going back to 2016: Mrs Merkel said that when she asks Mrs May what she wants the shape of the UK’s relationship with the EU to be, Mrs May says ‘make me an offer’.

Hence there was much talk of ‘shared responsibility’ and of an ‘imaginative and creative’ approach. Indeed, the backdrop slogans of ‘Shared History, Shared Challenges, Shared Future’ all seemed to point to this as the central message. What these coded – as with the UK position papers, and as Merkel’s later Davos comments revealed – was again the idea that the EU should come up with solutions to the hundreds of vexed issues and, moreover, to do so in a way that respected the UK’s red lines. Since these red lines derived entirely from the need to appease the Brexit Ultras in May’s party and outside it, once again the EU was being asked to accommodate the problems of UK domestic politics, as had occurred so often throughout Britain’s membership.


pages: 515 words: 132,295

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Big Tech, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, centralized clearinghouse, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, David Graeber, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, electricity market, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, High speed trading, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", John Bogle, John Markoff, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, TED Talk, The Chicago School, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tobin tax, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, zero-sum game

While there was a hope after the 2008 meltdown that business schools might lead the charge toward a new and more sustainable kind of capitalism, academic leaders in the field have been largely silent, their efforts focused mostly on more marginal issues like promoting more corporate social responsibility or diversity within boardrooms. A few years ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I interviewed Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria, who was at that point hoping to orchestrate a major post-financial-crisis shift in the MBA curriculum at Harvard. It’s been a slow process; the school is only just beginning to develop a curriculum that moves beyond efficiency theory and into more behavioral approaches to business.

Thankfully, tax reform is not only a huge issue in the 2016 US presidential election, but also a growing policy drumbeat in all developed countries. The silver lining of large government debts and shrinking public budgets is that all rich nations will be looking more closely at corporate tax avoidance. A few years back, British prime minister David Cameron remarked at the World Economic Forum at Davos that multinational tax avoiders should “wake up and smell the coffee.” It was a pointed reference to Starbucks, which had recently volunteered to pay more tax in the United Kingdom in response to public outrage and threats of a boycott. In 2012, the company ran into PR trouble in Britain from revelations that it had paid only minimal corporate taxes on many hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Turner, John D. Banking in Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Banking Stability, 1800 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. USB, “The New Global Context: Could Economic Transformations Threaten Stability?” USB White Paper for the World Economic Forum. January, 2015. Warren, Elizabeth. A Fighting Chance. New York: Picador, 2015. Weill, Sandy, and Judah S. Kraushaar. The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy. New York: Warner Business Books, 2006. Whitney, Meredith. Fate of the States: The New Geography of American Prosperity.


pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, book scanning, Broken windows theory, California gold rush, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, connected car, context collapse, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, fake news, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Ian Bogost, impulse control, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, linked data, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, precision agriculture, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, smart cities, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, union organizing, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

PART II THE ADVANCE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM CHAPTER SEVEN THE REALITY BUSINESS Falling in love with Truth before he knew Her, He rode into imaginary lands, By solitude and fasting hoped to woo Her, And mocked at those who served Her with their hands. —W. H. AUDEN SONNETS FROM CHINA, VI I. The Prediction Imperative There could not have been a more fitting setting for Eric Schmidt to share his opinion on the future of the web than the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In 2015, during a session at the winter playground for neoliberals—and increasingly surveillance capitalists—Schmidt was asked for his thoughts about the future of the internet. Sitting alongside his former Google colleagues Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer, he did not hesitate to share his belief that “The internet will disappear.

Pentland, 190. 75. Alex Pentland, “Reality Mining of Mobile Communications: Toward a New Deal on Data,” in Global Information Technology Report, World Economic Forum & INSEAD (World Economic Forum, 2009), 75–80. 76. Harvard Business Review Staff, “With Big Data Comes Big Responsibility,” Harvard Business Review, November 1, 2014, https://hbr.org/2014/11/with-big-data-comes-big-responsibility. 77. “Who Should We Trust to Manage Our Data?” World Economic Forum, accessed August 9, 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/10/who-should-we-trust-manage-our-data/. 78. Primavera De Filippi and Benjamin Loveluck, “The Invisible Politics of Bitcoin: Governance Crisis of a Decentralized Infrastructure,” Internet Policy Review 5, no. 3 (September 30, 2016). 79.

My aim is to infer the theory behind the practice, as surveillance capitalists integrate “society” as a “first class object” for rendition, computation, modification, monetization, and control. Pentland is a prolific author or coauthor of hundreds of articles and research studies in the field of data science and is a prominent institutional actor who advises a roster of organizations, including the World Economic Forum, the Data-Pop Alliance, Google, Nissan, Telefonica, and the Office of the United Nations Secretary General. Pentland’s research lab is funded by a who’s who of global corporations, consultancies, and governments: Google, Cisco, IBM, Deloitte, Twitter, Verizon, the EU Commission, the US government, the Chinese government, “and various entities who are all concerned with why we don’t know what’s going on in the world.…”1 Although Pentland is not alone in this field, he is something of a high priest among an exclusive group of priests.


pages: 232 words: 63,803

Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food by Chase Purdy

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Big Tech, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, Donald Trump, gig economy, global supply chain, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs

Chapter Twelve: Promise Abroad Climate Central: “Report: Flooded Future: Global Vulnerability to Sea Level Rise Worse than Previously Understood,” Climate Central, October 29, 2019. www.climatecentral.org/news/report-flooded-future-global-vulnerability-to-sea-level-rise-worse-than-previously-understood. World Economic Forum: Xi Hu, Environmental Change Institute, and University of Oxford, “Where Will Climate Change Impact China Most?” World Economic Forum, April 5, 2016. www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/where-will-climate-change-impact-china-most/. development of cell therapy: Catherine Lamb, “Singapore to Invest $535 Million in R&D, Including Cultured Meat and Robots,” The Spoon, March 29, 2019. https://thespoon.tech/singapore-to-invest-535-million-in-rd-including-cultured-meat-and-robots/.

In November 2019, researchers at Climate Central estimated that by 2050, the land on which more than 10 percent of citizens live is expected to be submerged. That could wind up affecting some 150 million people, including many who live in the metropolis of Bangkok, reshuffling how food is distributed. In China, the World Economic Forum has said it expects increased flooding to threaten important spots for infrastructure, energy, and agriculture. China already has very little arable land relative to its population of 1.38 billion, so the ability to grow meat could one day be a major boon for the Chinese. Executives of cell-cultured start-ups in Silicon Valley, including JUST, who’ve worked with the Hong Kong–based investor firm Horizons Ventures say its top leadership, billionaires Li Ka-shing and Solina Chau, have an innate sense of duty anchored to the places in which they grew up and made their vast fortunes.

See also Just Egg; Just Mayo veganism, 72, 75, 210–11 Vein, Jon, 24–25, 48 venture capital, xvi, 82–84, 102–6, 119, 146–49 Villanueva, Héctor, 71 Vining Sparks, 146 Volvos, 140–41 von Bismarck, Otto, 158 Vu, Sonny, 150–51 Wall Street Journal, 29, 146, 161 Walmart, 80, 91 Washington Post, 142 Waters, Alice, 197–98, 199, 215 wearable technology business, 150 West, Kanye, 59 West Virginia University, 75 Whole Foods Market, 92, 215, 228 Wiesel, Elie, 10 Wild Earth, 12 Wisconsin Dairymen’s Association, 159 Wisconsin Historical Society, 158 Working Families for Walmart, 91 World Economic Forum, 183 World War II, 20–22 Wyss, Lorenz, 123 “You Can Save the Planet” (op-ed), 78, 80 yuck factor, 222–23, 224–25, 228–29 Zaandam, 53–55 Zaan River, 60–61 Zimmern, Andrew, 88–89 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chase Purdy is a journalist exploring the business, politics, and technologies that are changing the landscape of food and how people interact with it.


pages: 554 words: 168,114

Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, bonus culture, California energy crisis, corporate governance, credit crunch, energy security, Exxon Valdez, falling living standards, fear of failure, financial engineering, forensic accounting, Global Witness, index fund, interest rate swap, John Deuss, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, kremlinology, land bank, LNG terminal, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, megaproject, Meghnad Desai, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Oscar Wyatt, passive investing, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, price stability, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, transaction costs, transfer pricing, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Browne, the Reputation Team knew, expected to be at the center of the campaign, symbolizing BP’s “humanization, personalization and identification.” Thousands of opinion formers across the USA were targeted to attend the “engagement opportunities” at which BP’s ambassadors would deliver the message. Invitations were also sought for Browne to attend important international meetings including the Aspen Institute and the World Economic Forum at Davos, and flattering profiles were arranged to appear in America’s most prestigious newspapers and magazines, especially Fortune. BP logos and flags were attached to newly planted trees and balloons, and were brandished at a back-to-school parade by 200 BP employees and their families in Chicago.

(AP/Press Association Images) Lee Raymond and Lou Noto. (AP/Press Association Images) Lee Raymond. (AP/Press Association Images) Rex Tillerson. (AP/Press Association Images) Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets leading US oilmen in Moscow. (AP/Press Association Images) Raymond and Khodorkovsky at the World Economic Forum in Moscow in October 2003. (Tass/Press Association Images) Nymex traders. (AP/Press Association Images) Andy Hall. (Nicholas Richer/PatrickMcMullan.com) Tom O’Malley. (Roberto Arcari/contrasto/eyevine) Putin and Phil Watts. (AFP/Getty Images) Walter van de Vijver. (epa/Robert Vos) Oleg Mitvol.

Putin did not know that ever since Standard Oil was dismantled by the US government in 1911, American oilmen had been indoctrinated not to confide unnecessarily in government officials, including the president. Inevitably, the rule was broken whenever Exxon needed Washington’s help. After all, despite the corporation’s culture of distrusting governments, America was at the center of its universe. Five days later, Raymond arrived in Moscow to participate in a meeting of the World Economic Forum starting on October 2. He was to share a platform with Khodorkovsky. Putin and Roman Abramovich, the oligarch and co-owner of Sibneft, would be in the audience. Before Raymond left Dallas, Khodorkovsky’s demand for $50 billion for his shares had been considered. Raymond, the master of the hard bargain, declared that he would offer $45 billion.


pages: 777 words: 186,993

Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Airbus A320, BRICs, British Empire, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, colonial rule, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, distributed generation, electricity market, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, flag carrier, full employment, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, knowledge economy, land reform, light touch regulation, LNG terminal, load shedding, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, market fragmentation, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, open economy, Parag Khanna, pension reform, Potemkin village, price mechanism, public intellectual, race to the bottom, rent control, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, smart grid, special economic zone, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, unemployed young men, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

This new assertiveness is not coming from a demand for reparations for past injustices, but rather from a sense that India is expanding its economic role and its influence around the world, and the global order should reflect this. A while ago, I directly experienced the shift in the world’s perception toward India. The night of January 28, 2006, was the occasion of the grand soirée at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos. This was the finale of the “India Everywhere” campaign, a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and India Brand Equity Fund (IBEF) initiative to put Brand India on the world map. I had conceived the idea and orchestrated its rollout, with the enthusiastic support of India’s biggest entrepreneurs.

vocational education Voltaire Vora, Pravir vouchers Wal-Mart Wardha committee (1938) Washington, George water resources Watkins, Kevin Weiner, Myron welfare West Bengal wheat “white revolution,” Williamson, Jeffrey Williamson, John Willingdon Wilson, Chris wind energy Wipro Wittet, George women wood fuel working class World Bank World Bank/FT award World Economic Forum (2006) World Health Organization (WHO) World Is Flat,The (Friedman) World Trade Organization (WTO) World War World War II Xavier Labor Relations Institute (XLRI) Yadav, Bharti Yadav. P. Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Vikas Yadav, Vishal Yadav, Yogendra Yergin, Daniel Zakaria, Fareed zamindars Zanjeer Zedillo, Ernesto Zhu Rong Ji a This attitude caught on after the 1857 army rebellions.

As Tom Friedman notes, these days rather than tell his children to finish their dinner because people are going hungry, “I tell my daughters to finish their homework because people in China and India are starving for their jobs.”j For a better idea of what has happened to our attitudes toward population, I spoke to the Harvard demographer David Bloom.k I met David for the first time at Davos in 2006, a decade after his paper titled “Demographic Transitions and Economic Miracles in Emerging Asia” made him famous much beyond academic circles—he is now one of those enviable scientists who can have a cocktail party audience hang onto his every word. David tells me that the key problem with early population theories was that “they were obsessed with overall population growth as an indicator, while ignoring the trends that lurked inside those figures.”


pages: 416 words: 100,130

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans, Henry Timms

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, battle of ideas, benefit corporation, Benjamin Mako Hill, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, British Empire, Chris Wanstrath, Columbine, Corn Laws, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, game design, gig economy, hiring and firing, holacracy, hustle culture, IKEA effect, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Jony Ive, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Snapchat, social web, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, the scientific method, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Had TED remained a purely closed shop, it is hard to imagine it would have retained its relevance. At a time when the world is looking skeptically at the hidden dealings of global elites, its annual gathering would have appeared increasingly anachronistic. (Note that the World Economic Forum, whose cloistered convening takes place annually in the ski resort of Davos, Switzerland, is facing a similar challenge, and has responded by building communities and events beyond its annual meeting.) But Chris Anderson’s digital play delivered TED a global audience and a nascent community. In effect, TED offset its old power with new.

A rare disease that was too small and marginal to attract institutional funding finds resources from the generosity of tens of thousands of small contributors, each now invested in Eliza’s story. What’s not to celebrate? However, while individual stories of success lift our hearts, the aggregate picture that emerges from the many cases of new power funding is more complicated. At Davos in 2016 an installation full of innovation buzzwords offered what at first glance seemed to be a new and exciting possibility: “What if public infrastructure was funded by the crowd?” Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain took a photo of the installation and added the caption, “Or as some would call it, ‘taxes.’ ” In an old power world, he reminded us, many of the things that are now being disaggregated and crowd-funded were centralized—we paid our taxes and asked governments to make rational decisions balancing society’s different needs and priorities.


pages: 331 words: 96,989

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam L. Alter

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bluma Zeigarnik, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Sedaris, death from overwork, drug harm reduction, easy for humans, difficult for computers, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Ian Bogost, IKEA effect, Inbox Zero, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kickstarter, language acquisition, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Oculus Rift, Richard Thaler, Robert Durst, side project, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, telemarketer, three-martini lunch

Sleep deprivation is behavioral addiction’s partner—the consequence of persistent overengagement. It’s a global problem that has recently attracted plenty of attention, including from entrepreneur and author Arianna Huffington. At the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Huffington discussed her forthcoming book on sleep, titled The Sleep Revolution: I got an email two hours ago from the official Davos establishment, which was a sleep survey of the world. It shows that people spend more time on their digital devices than sleeping . . . I think it’s really interesting to look at the relationship between technology and taking care of ourselves.


pages: 265 words: 75,202

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, big-box store, Blue Ocean Strategy, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Brooks, do well by doing good, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), fear of failure, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, lockdown, long term incentive plan, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, old-boy network, pension reform, performance metric, popular capitalism, pre–internet, race to the bottom, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, risk/return, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, young professional, zero-sum game

Multiple surveys have made it clear that social inequality and the environmental crisis are feeding disenchantment with capitalism, especially among younger generations.1 Of course, capitalism has led to an unprecedented period of economic development, driving extraordinary innovation and taking billions of people out of poverty. But we are undeniably facing a crisis.2 In fact, in January 2020, Marc Benioff, the outspoken CEO of Salesforce, declared at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where discussions largely focused on how to address climate change and inequality: “Capitalism as we have known it is dead.” We need to rethink how our economic system works. One of the first things I learned in business school, back in 1978, was that the purpose of business was to maximize shareholder value, and I believed it.

“Climate change,” he wrote, “has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects […] Our investment conviction is that sustainability- and climate-integrated portfolios can provide better adjusted-risk returns to investors.”8 Business leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and academics surveyed by the World Economic Forum in its 2020 Global Risks Report ranked the failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change as the top threat facing the world over the next 10 years.9 Shareholders’ expectations are shifting because investors themselves are not soulless entities unable to lift their gaze past the next quarterly results.

For Investors, Analysts, Regulators, and Rating Agencies Ask yourself what else you can do to better align evaluation and investment decisions with principles of purposeful and human leadership. Work has been done toward the development of new standards, norms, and tools that help evaluate how well a company is looking after all its stakeholders. The World Economic Forum and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, for example, have been advancing initiatives to incorporate sustainability measures into corporate performance assessment. Further work is needed, however. For example, proxy advisory firms still focus exclusively on shareholder return when evaluating executive compensation.


pages: 496 words: 154,363

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, book scanning, Build a better mousetrap, Burning Man, business intelligence, call centre, commoditize, crowdsourcing, don't be evil, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, fault tolerance, Googley, gravity well, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, John Markoff, Kickstarter, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, microcredit, music of the spheres, Network effects, PageRank, PalmPilot, performance metric, pets.com, Ralph Nader, risk tolerance, second-price auction, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, stem cell, Superbowl ad, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, The Turner Diaries, Y2K

Marissa rejected any such compromise. She was adamant that no explicit Google connection be revealed on the orkut site itself. Sergey stepped in to resolve our standoff shortly before he, Larry, and Eric headed off to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Let's make it an experiment," he said. "We'll launch without Google affiliation and neither confirm nor deny a relationship. If it gets out of control, then contact me in Davos and we'll come up with a new plan. Any problems with that approach?" Oh yeah. Cindy had a big problem with that approach, and she let Sergey know it. This experiment, she pointed out, could destroy our brand reputation as well as her professional credibility.

That didn't worry me as much as users thinking, as with Froogle, that a half-baked orkut was Google's flagship product in an entirely new online sector. I kept working on language for orkut's interface pages, user notifications, and community descriptions, so I was ready when, a day after Jonathan's reassuring news, Sergey sent word from Davos that we would, in fact, launch orkut that afternoon. Sergey had made a commitment to support a rapid implementation and he was standing by it. We would compromise by putting on orkut.com a small tag saying, "In affiliation with Google." An hour before launch I sent Orkut text for his homepage: "orkut is an online community that connects people through a network of trusted friends.


pages: 529 words: 150,263

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris by Mark Honigsbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, biofilm, Black Swan, Boeing 747, clean water, coronavirus, disinformation, Donald Trump, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, indoor plumbing, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, moral panic, Pearl River Delta, Ronald Reagan, Skype, the built environment, the long tail, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Peter Piot, director and professor of global health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a veteran of the original 1976 Yambuku outbreak, was similarly humbled by the experience. “Together with the Swiss Franc this was probably the Black Swan event of the last 12 months,” Piot informed global health policy makers gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, 2015, two weeks after Switzerland’s surprise announcement that it was abandoning the cap on the franc to allow the Swiss currency to float against the Euro. “It was totally unanticipated and we could not have predicted what would happen based on the experience of the previous thirty-seven years.”

“Retracing the Steps of the Dallas Ebola Patient,” New York Times, October 1, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/01/us/retracing-the-steps-of-the-dallas-ebola-patient.html. 312 “hands-on deployment”: MSF, “Ebola,” 9. 312 early months of the crisis: WHO, “Report of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel—July 2015,” WHO, Geneva, accessed August 6, 2015, http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/ebola/ebola-panel-report/en/. 313 “in previous areas”: Pierre Rollin, interview with author, October 26, 2015. 313 “what we have now”: Kevin Belluck et al., “How Ebola Roared Back,” New York Times, December 29, 2014, accessed October 1, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/health/how-ebola-roared-back.html. 313 “thirty-seven years”: Wellcome. “Discussing Global Health at Davos,” Wellcome Trust Blog, accessed June 11, 2015, http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2015/01/21/discussing-global-health-at-davos/. Black Swan is the title of a 2010 best-selling book by the Lebanese-American essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and refers to an event for which past experience has not prepared us and which, until it occurs, is widely considered to be an impossibility—the paradigm example being that before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white because no one had seen a black one before.


pages: 506 words: 151,753

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze by Laura Shin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Airbnb, altcoin, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, cloud computing, complexity theory, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, DevOps, digital nomad, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial independence, Firefox, general-purpose programming language, gravity well, hacker house, Hacker News, holacracy, independent contractor, initial coin offering, Internet of things, invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, litecoin, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, off-the-grid, performance metric, Potemkin village, prediction markets, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social distancing, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Turing complete, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks

He and his brother had always wanted to start their own game company. In March 2018, they began building a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, which improved his mental state. He stopped following what was going on with Ethereum. That winter, ConsenSys had its first official presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos, spending $1 million that year and the year after; it did not bring in a single client from either event. In February 2018, it also held its company retreat in Portugal. In typical anarchic fashion, some employees published and distributed a zine about how ConsenSys had started for the right reasons but was now working for corporations and governments and asking what the soul of the company was and what its mission was, especially with ETH around its all-time high.

One former employee described it thus: “The whole situation at ConsenSys was weird honestly, it was ‘executives’ who seemed more interested in partying and hiring their unqualified friends than building a real company. It seemed they all saw the potential of ethereum and blockchain however had no concept of the work it actually takes to become a real, profitable company.” An executive at another firm who had attended ConsenSys’s Davos events told this former staffer that ConsenSys seemed like a “smoke-and-mirrors company” that talked about decentralization but couldn’t point to anything concrete it was doing. (Joe called these statements “generally wrong” and, though he didn’t know the source of these comments, said they must be from people who were unsuccessful at ConsenSys or didn’t understand it from their distance.)

In addition to seeming not to care whether ConsenSys was profitable, Joe was blasé about professional norms. For instance, he began dating a decades-younger user experience (UX) designer at ConsenSys named Yunyun Chen.32 (She had been one of the select few at the private ayahuasca ceremony after the Bali retreat that Joe and Sam deny happened.) At Davos, he brought her to a number of meetings. He did the same on business trips to India and France for meetings with high-level ministers and government officials. Employees felt he seemed oblivious that it was inappropriate for him to date an employee, that he should keep it private, and that bringing her to meetings might be awkward for the staff.


pages: 210 words: 56,667

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs by Alexa Clay, Kyra Maya Phillips

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Burning Man, collaborative consumption, conceptual framework, cotton gin, creative destruction, different worldview, digital rights, disruptive innovation, double helix, fear of failure, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Hacker Ethic, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, intentional community, invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, megacity, Neil Armstrong, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer rental, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, supply-chain management, union organizing, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, work culture , Zipcar

The consulting practice built with Accenture resources and staff would focus on working with NGOs and donor organizations at “not for loss” rates: In other words it would create a nonprofit business within a for-profit business. Armed with a misfit idea, Bulloch needed to find a way to grab his superiors’ attention. His faux article was just the hook. He wrote it as if it were issued by Accenture’s chairman (bestowed with a fictitious knighthood in the text) at a future World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. To quote the fake press release, which was boldly titled “Management Consultancy Giant Makes Far-Reaching Decree on the Role of Business in Society,” the new consulting practice would aim to “maximize the global scale and business capabilities of the consulting giant, but focus on the greatest social need.”

., 148 We-Think (Leadbeater), 89 What’s Mine Is Yours (Botsman and Rogers), 65 Where Good Ideas Come From (Johnson), 98 Whitby, England, 107 “white hat” hacking, 108–9 Whole Earth Catalog, 141 Whole Earth Review, 141–42 Whole Foods, 9 Wilkins, Maurice, 86 Wilmington, Ohio, 67–70 Wimdu, 83 Wired, 83, 84 Wisdom Hackers, 220 Woodroof, Ron, 8 Woolf, Arthur, 89–90 World Bank, 17 World Economic Forum, 163 World Health Organization (WHO), 129, 136 World Trade Organization (WTO), 95, 154–55 World War II, 145 WPP, 158 Wright, Helena, 21, 143 Yes Lab, 155 Yes Men, 153–55, 214 York, University of, 108 YouGov, 66 Youthstream Media Networks, 104 YouTube, 83, 152 ZICO, 184 Zimbabwe, 188 Zipcar, 65, 124 Zuckerberg, Mark, 104, 122–23 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2015 by Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.


pages: 829 words: 229,566

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, Blockadia, Boeing 747, British Empire, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, equal pay for equal work, extractivism, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, financial deregulation, food miles, Food sovereignty, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, green transition, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, ice-free Arctic, immigration reform, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jones Act, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, light touch regulation, man camp, managed futures, market fundamentalism, Medieval Warm Period, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-oil, precautionary principle, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, remunicipalization, renewable energy transition, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, scientific management, smart grid, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wages for housework, walkable city, Washington Consensus, Wayback Machine, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

Just as tobacco companies have been obliged to pay the costs of helping people to quit smoking, and BP has had to pay for much of the cleanup of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is high time for the industry to at least split the bill for the climate crisis. And there is mounting evidence that the financial world understands that this is coming. In its 2013 annual report on “Global Risks,” the World Economic Forum (host of the annual superelite gathering in Davos), stated plainly, “Although the Alaskan village of Kivalina—which faces being ‘wiped out’ by the changing climate—was unsuccessful in its attempts to file a US$ 400 million lawsuit against oil and coal companies, future plaintiffs may be more successful. Five decades ago, the U.S. tobacco industry would not have suspected that in 1997 it would agree to pay $368 billion in health-related damages.”

Brett Martel, “Jury Finds Big Tobacco Must Pay $590 Million for Stop-Smoking Programs,” Associated Press, May 21, 2004; Bruce Alpert, “U.S. Supreme Court Keeps Louisiana’s $240 Million Smoking Cessation Program Intact,” Times-Picayune, June 27, 2011; Sheila McNulty and Ed Crooks, “BP Oil Spill Pay-outs Hit $5bn Mark,” Financial Times, August 23, 2011; Lee Howell, “Global Risks 2013,” World Economic Forum, 2013, p. 19. 45. Marc Lee, “Building a Fair and Effective Carbon Tax to Meet BC’s Greenhouse Gas Targets,” Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, August 2012. 46. U.S. Department of Defense emissions were calculated using the federal Greenhouse Gas Inventory for fiscal year 2011 (total Scope 1 emissions, excluding biogenic).

., 343, 344, 395, 396 Gilman, Nils, 189 Gindin, Sam, 122–23 Gingrich, Newt, 35 glacier melt, 14, 15, 175 global feed-in tariff, 413–14 Global Frackdown, 304 globalization, 22, 64 corporate, 19 dawning of, 18–19 of markets, 39, 85, 171, 412 successes of, 19 Global North, 49, 314 see also developed world; postindustrialized nations Global Risks report, World Economic Forum, 112 Global South, 53, 77, 181, 309, 314, 412 Blockadia movements in, 412 environmentalism in, 202 see also developing world global warming, see climate change Globe and Mail, 325, 333 God’s Last Offer (Ayres), 280 God Species, The (Lynas), 279 gold, mining of, 296 Goldenberg, Suzanne, 312 Golden, KC, 304, 320 Goldman Sachs, 51, 208n, 352 goods, lasting vs. disposable, 85, 90 Gore, Al, 41, 67, 85, 150, 155, 211, 212, 218, 230, 233, 241, 242, 244, 385 government intervention, 42, 43, 178, 201–3 necessity for, 54–55 government regulation: corruption in, 333–34 laxity of, 330–31, 333 governments, collusion between extractive industries and, 297–99, 303, 306–7, 308, 360, 361–66, 378–80 Grandin, Greg, 455 Grantham, Jeremy, 233 Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., 233 Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, 233n Great Barrier Reef, 147–48, 301 Great Depression, 89, 115, 454 Great Transition, 89, 115 Greece, 466 austerity programs in, 9, 108, 131–32, 154 economic problems of, 297 government repression of anti-mining movement in, 297–98, 303 oil and gas exploration in, 22, 181–82 Skouries forest mining project in, 293–94, 296–98, 303, 314, 342, 347, 445 WTO challenges brought against, 65 Green for All, 92 Green Alliance, U.K., 90 green consumerism, 211–13 “green deserts,” 180 green energy entrepreneurs, free market and, 69–70 Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 66–69 green energy programs, trade law challenges to, 64–65, 68–69 green fascism, 54 Greenhouse Development Rights framework, 417–18 greenhouse effect, 74, 213 greenhouse gas emissions, 6, 64–65, 90, 198, 219, 259 computer models of, 270 cost of, 112 countries’ responsibility for internal, 79 cumulative effect of, 21, 40, 56, 175, 409–10, 416 decreased work hours as offset to, 94 deregulation and, 210 distorted global picture of, 79, 411–12 fracking and, 129, 143–44, 214, 217, 304 free trade and, 80–83 global gas boom and, 143–44 globalized agriculture and, 77–78 increase in, 20, 452 low wages and high, 81–82 reduction of, see emission reduction from shipping, 76, 79 standards for, 25 WTO regulations and, 71 see also carbon emissions Greenland: extraction industry in, 385 melting ice sheet in, 12, 148, 385 green NGOs, geoengineering and, 264, 280 Green Party (New Brunswick), 374 Greenpeace, 84, 156, 197, 199, 201, 205, 233n, 264, 356 anti-drilling protests of, 300 EDF spying on, 362 Greenpeace U.K., 376 green technology, 85, 87, 89–90 for developing world, 76, 85 investment in, 89, 156, 400–407, 451 green towns, 406–7 Greenwich, University of, 101 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 92 Grunwald, Michael, 124 Guarani, 221 Guardian, 149, 312, 346, 363–64, 383 Guay, Justin, 352 Gulf Restoration Network, 425 Gupta, Sanjay, 430 Guujaaw, 368–69, 383 Haida Gwaii, 369 Haida Nation, land claims of, 368–69 Haimen, China, 350 Hair, Jay, 84, 191 Haiti, 457 Haiyan, Typhoon, 107, 175, 406 Halkidiki, Greece, 294, 342, 445 Halliburton, 330 Halliburton Loophole, 328 Hällström, Niclas, 413–14 Halstead Property, 51 Hamburg, Germany, 96–97 Hamilton, Clive, 89, 175, 264 Hansen, James, 22, 41, 73, 140 Hansen, Wiebke, 97 Harper administration (Canada), 302–3, 362 environmental protections weakened by, 381–82 “war on science” of, 326–28 Harter, John, 313 Harvard Medical School, 105 Harvard University, 81, 354–55 Hauper, Debbi, 373 Have You Ever Seen a Moose?


pages: 498 words: 145,708

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin R. Barber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, addicted to oil, AltaVista, American ideology, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Berlin Wall, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bread and circuses, business cycle, Celebration, Florida, collective bargaining, creative destruction, David Brooks, delayed gratification, digital divide, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Dr. Strangelove, G4S, game design, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, informal economy, invisible hand, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, McJob, microcredit, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, presumed consent, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, retail therapy, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, SimCity, spice trade, Steve Jobs, telemarketer, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the market place, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize

A company that ranks brands, Interbrand Corporation, has Coca-Cola at the top of its list, and placed its brand worth “upward of $67 billion.” Not for its factories and bottling plants and recipes but “for the words ‘Coca-Cola’ and ‘Coke’ if the Atlanta firm lost its mind and decided to sell what may be the most recognized brand name in the history of commerce.”56 At the 2004 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a press release was issued under the title “Corporate Brand Reputation Outranks Financial Performance as Most Important Measure of Success” in which it was claimed that “Corporate reputation is a more important measure of success than stock market performance, profitability and return on investment, according to a survey of some of the world’s leading CEOs and organization leaders.

Tomlinson turned aside criticism that President Bush was running a national propaganda machine obsessed with image rather than policy by asserting, “We should not be ashamed of public advocacy on behalf of freedom and democracy and the United States of America.”100 The bipartisan character of this brand approach to politics is evident in the branding work being done by liberal Democrats such as Keith Reinhard, who as CEO of advertising goliath DDB was responsible for, among other successes, McDonald’s “You deserve a break today” campaign. Reinhard has developed a program called Business for Diplomatic Action in which he acknowledges that (as rock-star philanthropist Bono also said to the World Economic Forum) Brand USA is in trouble, which is clearly a problem for business. In a reversal of the traditional strategy by which business attaches itself to the luster of Brand America, Business for Diplomatic Action wants to help rebrand America by associating it with the luster of business. Because American brands “continue to exert a fascination among young people from Damascus to Jidda,” says John M.

See Alan Finder, “To Woo Students, Colleges Choose Names That Sell,” New York Times, August 11, 2005. 56. Griff Witte, “Branded for Life: What if a Familiar Name Becomes a Different Animal?” Washington Post, January 23, 2005. 57. “Corporate Brand Reputation Outranks Financial Performance as Most Important Measure of Success,” press release by World Economic Forum, January 22, 2004, available at www.weforum.org. 58. Caroline E. Mayer, “Nurturing Brand Loyalty: With Preschool Supplies, Firms Woo Future Customers—and Current Parents,” Washington Post, October 12, 2003. 59. Ellen Tien, “Living in the Lap of Labels,” New York Times, February 15, 2004.


pages: 339 words: 57,031

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, Bill Atkinson, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, book value, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Californian Ideology, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, distributed generation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Dynabook, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Gilder, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, new economy, Norbert Wiener, peer-to-peer, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Richard Stallman, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Yom Kippur War

Again and again, Brand, and later Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, John Perry Barlow, and others, gave voice to the techno-social visions that emerged in these discussions. As they did, they were welcomed into the halls of Congress, the boardrooms of major corporations, and the hotels of Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Economic Forum. By the mid-1990s, throughout much of the mainstream press and in business and government as well, the networked entrepreneurship of the Whole Earth group and its self-evident financial and social success had become evidence for the transformative power of what many had begun to call the “New Economy.”

Thirty years later, the same aspects of computing that threatened to dehumanize the students of the Free Speech Movement promised to liberate the users of the Internet. On February 8, 1996, John Perry Barlow, an information technology journalist and pundit, and a former lyricist for the house band of the San Francisco LSD scene, the Grateful Dead, found himself at his laptop computer in Davos, Switzerland. While attending the World Economic Forum, an international summit of politicians and corporate executives, he had watched the American Congress pass the Telecommunications Act, and with it a rider called the Communications Decency Act, which aimed to restrict pornography on the Internet. Incensed by what he perceived to be the rider’s threat to free speech, Barlow drafted the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and posted it to the Internet.

51 Whyte, William, 42 Wiener, Norbert, 5; anti-aircraft predictor, 107, 178; Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 22, 52, 83; fear of automation, 23; fear of the ways science could be used to undermine human goals, 265n41; “first generation” of cyberneticians, 122; The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, 22, 53, 191; I Am a Mathematician, 20 –21; influence on Whole Earth community, 4, 43, 49; interdisciplinary entrepreneurial work, 24 –25; on mass media, 179; systems theories, 243; view of information systems as sources of moral good, 23 –24, 228; vision of the world as an information system seeking homeostasis, 225, 234; war-related research, 20 –22 Wiese, Elizabeth Reba, 152 –53 Wiesner, Jerome, 177 Wilkinson, Lawrence, 184, 212 Wired, 3, 6, 7, 91; Barlow’s work in, 167; on Brockman, 129; and Dyson, 222; editorial process, 216; features on Electronic Frontier Foundation, 218; features on Global Business Network, 218, 221; features on Media Lab, 218, 221; financial status, 288n61; founding of, 209 –12; and Gilder, 222; and Gingrich, 222; interview between [ 327 ] Dyson and Gingrich, 231; March 1993 inaugural issue, 207; profiles of the Global Business Network, the Media Lab, and the WELL, 221; public offering, 235 –36; relationship with Dyson, 222; target audience, 218; vision of the digital future carried with it a version of the countercultural past, 208 –9; and Whole Earth network, the computer industry, and the Republican right, 223; and Whole Earth world, 212 –22 Wired Women, 152 Wolfe, Tom, 63, 65, 66; The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 62, 220 Wolff, Michael, 211 Women on the WELL, 152 –53 Women’s Liberation Movement, 98 Woodhead, Robert, 136 World Economic Forum, 7, 13 WorldView Meetings, 188 World War II, triggered a transformation in American science, 17 World Wide Web, 213, 214, 247 “worm,” 167 Wozniak, Steve, 133, 136, 138, 172 Wurman, Richard Saul, 177, 211 Xerox, 106, 193 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), 106, 111; Brand and, 246 – 47; Catalog as a conceptual resource book, 111, 112 –13; ethos of information sharing, 116, 117; and Kelly, 176; minicomputers, 129; personal computing, 117; researchers saw themselves as explorers on the edge of a technological frontier, 113; and “Spacewar” article, 118 Yom Kippur War, 119 “young game hackers,” 134 youth movement of 1960s, 28, 33.


pages: 1,373 words: 300,577

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, book value, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, California energy crisis, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, clean tech, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial innovation, flex fuel, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global village, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, index fund, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, John Deuss, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Malacca Straits, market design, means of production, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, new economy, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, North Sea oil, nuclear winter, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Piper Alpha, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, technology bubble, the built environment, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, trade route, transaction costs, unemployed young men, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

Claiming several thousand men under arms, MEND warned that it would unleash further attacks that would “set Nigeria back 15 years and cause incalculable losses,” and said it aimed “to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.” 10 A few days after the January 2006 attacks, in the snow-covered Swiss Alpine village of Davos, at the World Economic Forum, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s president, was meeting in a seminar room to discuss his country’s economic prospects. Two of the participants, a venture capitalist from Silicon Valley and a world-famous entrepreneur from Britain, urged Obasanjo to get off oil and emulate Brazil and launch large-scale cultivation of sugarcane to make ethanol.

Crane, David crime Cromwell, Oliver Cuba Cuban Missile Crisis Cugnot, Nicolas Joseph Cultural Revolution, Chinese currency: in Asian financial crisis demand shock and see also specific currencies Curzon, Lord Cushing, Okla. cyberattack Cyber Command cybercriminals Daimler Daimler, Gottlieb Daimler-Benz Dales, John Damon Bankston dams Daqing Daschle, Tom Daura Refinery Davis, David Davis, Gray Davos, World Economic Forum in (2006) debt Decree Deepwater Horizon Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Department, U.S. (DOD) cyberattack and DARPA in 9/11 and Rumsfeld’s views on defense spending deforestation de Gaulle, Charles DeGolyer, Everette Lee Dehlsen, James Delay, Tom demand shock automobiles and belief system and breakpoint and BRICs and China and engineering and financialization and Jeddah vs.

Pricing will affect the time and amount of money that building owners and operators will put into improving the energy operations of existing structures. These investments involve rate of return and trade-offs with other investments. “The question of choice and trade-offs in efficiency investments compared with other allocations of capital is often overlooked,” observes a report from the World Economic Forum. “The investment grade test is important for sustainable investment in energy efficiency.” Like any other investment, efficiency has to compete with other choices.12 Nonfinancial barriers also stand in the way of efficiency. One is the disconnect between the interests of the builder and the eventual buyer.


pages: 470 words: 130,269

The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas by Janek Wasserman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Wald, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, Donald Trump, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, Internet Archive, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, New Journalism, New Urbanism, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Past members have included a president of the US Federal Reserve, presidents of Italy and the Czech Republic, a chancellor of the German Federal Republic, a prime minister of Sri Lanka, and eight Nobel Prize winners. The MPS remains a significant forum for the dissemination of liberalism and for discussions on the contemporary importance of concepts like the rule of law, defense of property rights, free markets, and globalization. Alongside the Davos World Economic Forum, the MPS is perhaps the best-known and best-articulated elite network connecting economic liberals around the globe.2 Despite Hayek’s stated preference for an apolitical society of intellectuals and his advocacy of the “open society,” the MPS was a closed collective. It intentionally excluded social democrats and progressives, who Hayek believed harbored collectivist beliefs.

On RAND and Cold War rationality, see Erickson, World; Amadae, Rationalizing, part 1. 56. See Boxes 91–94, OMP. On the rise of defense intellectuals, see Bessner, Democracy. 57. Morgenstern, Diaries, June 8, 1944, Box 14, OMP. 58. See Spaulding, Quiet Invaders. 6. Austrian Schools 1. Mont Pèlerin Society, “Statement of Aims.” 2. On the MPS and the World Economic Forum, see Carroll and Sapinski, “Neoliberalism.” 3. On the MPS, see Walpen, Die offenen Feinde; Mirowski and Plehwe, Mont Pèlerin; Burgin, Great Persuasion. The official history of MPS is also helpful: Hartwell, History. For a list of the first participants, see Walpen, Die offenen Feinde, 391–92.

The stress on extracurricular activities—walks, tours, and meals—evoked the spontaneity of Alpine hikes and late-night Kaffeeklatsch of Viennese cafés.12 The early MPS programs reveal the significance of sociability to the thought collective. One can almost picture the first MPS meetings as scenes out of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, whose iconic sanatorium was set in Davos, Switzerland. The 1947 meeting scattered its nine panel discussions across ten days. Several hours separated panels at 9:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m., and 8:30 p.m., permitting long repasts and relaxing intermezzi. Like Viennese seminars, there was the expectation that conversation would continue into the night.


pages: 459 words: 138,689

Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives by Danny Dorling, Kirsten McClure

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, clean water, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Greta Thunberg, Henri Poincaré, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, John Harrison: Longitude, Kickstarter, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Overton Window, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, rent control, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, School Strike for Climate, Scramble for Africa, sexual politics, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, Tim Cook: Apple, time dilation, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, very high income, wealth creators, wikimedia commons, working poor

Islam, the most recently founded of the three main Abrahamic religions, tends to be the most strict concerning the amassing of wealth through the interest paid on debt. 17. Tim Di Muzio and Richard H. Robbins, Debt as Power (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 20. CHAPTER 4. Data Epigraph: Justin Trudeau, “Justin Trudeau’s Davos Address in Full,” World Economic Forum, 23 January 2018, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/pm-keynote-remarks-for-world-economic-forum-2018/. 1. Elizabeth Palermo, “Who Invented the Printing Press?” Live Science Blog, 25 February 2014, https://www.livescience.com/43639-who-invented-the-printing-press.html. 2. Mathew Wall, “Big Data: Are You Ready for Blast-off?”

We should not be surprised if, in future, they are remembered with ridicule. It all depends on how the unrepayable debts of the young are unraveled. 4 data the deluge of less and less that is new Think about it: The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again. —Justin Trudeau, Davos Address, 23 January 2018 Ridiculous generalizations are repeatedly made concerning the pace of change. We are creating more data than ever, we are told: more information, more knowledge, all swelling in volume at unfathomable rates. Of course there is some truth in this claim, but nevertheless we have not, in the past few decades, actually discovered significantly more information than over the course of all the rest of human history.


pages: 504 words: 129,087

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America by Charlotte Alter

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbine, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, ending welfare as we know it, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Hangouts, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job-hopping, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microaggression, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pre–internet, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, TaskRabbit, tech bro, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, We are the 99%, white picket fence, working poor, Works Progress Administration

they supported democratic socialism: Harvard Fall 2018 National Youth Poll, iop.harvard.edu/spring-2018-national-youth-poll. had dropped twenty-three points: Frank Newport, “Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism,” Gallup, August 13, 2018, news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx. In one 2019 poll: Axios/SurveyMonkey Poll, 2019 World Economic Forum, January 16–18, 2019, surveymonkey.com/curiosity/axios-davos-2019/. issues, she replied curtly: CNN, “Nancy Pelosi Town Hall,” February 3, 2017, YouTube video, youtube.com/watch?v=BBrk2Vz2ASk. she told 60 Minutes: Ashley Turner, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Says Socialism Is ‘Not the View’ of the Democratic Party,” CNBC, April 15, 2019, cnbc.com/2019/04/15/nancy-pelosi-says-socialism-is-not-the-view-of-the-democratic-party.html.

among Republicans under twenty-five: Axios/SurveyMonkey Poll, “Younger Republicans Want an Alternative to Trump,” January 2018, axios.com/younger-republicans-want-an-alternative-to-trump-4538b9bf-edf7-4144-b2de-f3644be381fc.html. millennial Republicans did: Axios/SurveyMonkey Poll, 2019 World Economic Forum, January 16–18, 2019, surveymonkey.com/curiosity/axios-davos-2019/. conservative thinker Ben Shapiro wrote: Ben Shapiro, “How Conservatives Can Win Back Young Americans,” The Weekly Standard, May 9, 2018, weeklystandard.com/shapiro-win-back-young-americans. “Trump on his values.”: Shapiro, “How Conservatives Can Win Back Young Americans.”


pages: 276 words: 59,165

Impact: Reshaping Capitalism to Drive Real Change by Ronald Cohen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, asset allocation, benefit corporation, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, decarbonisation, diversification, driverless car, Elon Musk, family office, financial independence, financial innovation, full employment, high net worth, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, invisible hand, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, minimum viable product, moral hazard, performance metric, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, tech worker, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, zero-sum game

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), founded in 2011, focuses on serving the needs of investors – SASB standards measure the impact of businesses across a range of issues relating to sustainability. The Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Standards, first launched in 2000, focus on sustainability, transparency and corporate disclosure, rather than on impact measurement. Other measurement initiatives include those of the World Benchmarking Alliance and the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council, which both seek to assess companies’ performance in contributing towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But these efforts are still early steps in our journey to a standardized, comprehensive system of impact measurement. If investors and the companies in which they invest are to make decisions that take impact into account properly, they will require accounts that express both the profits and the impact that a company makes through its products, employment and operations, preferably within the familiar framework of regular financial accounts.

McConnell Family Foundation 144 Karboul, Dr Amel 137 Kassoy, Andrew 108 KETOS 53–4 Keynes, John Maynard 114, 185 Kickstarter 57 Kind 90 Kirklees Council 127 KKR 81 Kleissner, Charly 145–6 Kleissner, Lisa 145–6 KL Felicitas Foundation 145–6 Klop, Piet 73 KLP (pension fund) 74 Knorr 91 Kogiso, Mari 144 Komolafe, Tolulope 47, 49–50 Kopp, Wendy 59–60 Korea Inclusive Finance Agency 176 Korea Small and Medium Business Corporation (SBC) 176 Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency (KoSEA) 176 Kresge Foundation 127, 144, 153 Kubzansky, Mike 148 Kuper, Andy 83 Labour Party 19, 160, 179 laissez-faire economics 185 Large Outcome Funds 138 LeapFrog Investments 83 Learn Capital 49 leather waste 54–5 LED lightbulbs 106 Lego 90 Le Houérou, Philippe 69 Liberian Educational Advancement Program (LEAP), The 137 Liedtke, Eric 103 Life Chances Fund (LCF) 26, 165 life insurance 71 Lipton 91 Livelihoods Fund for Family Farming 95 Livox 42 Lloyds Bank 169 local government 26, 125–6 London Stock Exchange 19 Lööf, Torbjörn 104 Loop 102–3 MacArthur Foundation 151, 153 Machado, Antonio 180 Macron, Emmanuel 88 Maersk 76 malaria 37 Maltzahn, Geoffrey von 45–6 Mars 90, 95 MaRS Center for Impact Investing 171 Martin, Roger 138 Massachusetts Pathways to Economic Advancement SIB 127–8 Maude, Francis 160, 169 Maurer, Peter 133 Maycomb Capital 127 MAZE Mustard Seed Social Entrepreneurship Fund 144 Mazzucato, Mariana: The Entrepreneurial State 158 McGrath, Sir Harvey 170 McKinsey 65, 71 Mercedes 112 Merck & Co 150 Merrill Lynch 81 MESIS 159 microbiology 45 microfinance 43–4, 80, 94, 145, 163 migration 1, 2, 16, 98–9, 127–8, 144, 163 millennials 65, 81, 92, 188 Miller, Clara 139, 145 Minett, Helen 127 Ministry of Justice 21, 26–7 mission-related investment (MRI) 142–3, 202 Mizuno, Hiro 78 MN (pension fund) 73 Mobileye 40 Morgan Stanley 81–2 MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN) 78–9 MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders Index 78–9 Musk, Elon 55–6 mutual funds 95 MyEye 2 40 Nadosy, Peter 142 Nassara, Ibrahim 52–3 Nathan Cummings Foundation 145 National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) 74–5 National Health Service (NHS) 126 NaturALL Bottle Alliance 91 Nazid Impact Food 50, 53 neoliberalism 152, 185 Nestlé 90, 91 Neudorfer, Yaron 163 Newborough, Philip 18 Nike 90 Ninomiya Sontoku 78 non-financial information statement (NFIS) 159 Non-Profit Finance Fund 120 non-profit sector 25 NovESS 159, 175–6 Novogratz, Jacqueline 84 O’Donohoe, Nick 169, 170 Office for Civil Society 160 Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, US 141 Omidyar Network 48, 49, 136, 146–8, 151, 153 Omidyar, Pamela 146 Omidyar, Pierre 146–8 100 per cent Impact Network 146 One Service 123–4 OPIC (US DFI) 167 OrCam 39–41, 42 organic food 51, 96–7 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 3, 70, 178 Origin Materials 91 Osberg, Sally 138 outcome-based contract 9, 22, 31, 126–7, 134, 137, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 180, 188, 189, 202–5 see also individual contract type outcome payers 22, 27, 123, 129, 133, 152, 163–4, 204–5 Outcome Fund 26–7, 130, 134–8, 148, 153, 156–7, 165–6, 167, 184, 187, 188, 203 Pacte Law, France 177 Page, Larry 55 Palandjian, Tracy 25 Palestine 163–4 Palestine Investment Fund 163–4 Palestine Telecommunications Company 163 Palestinian Authority 163 Palestinian Ministry of Finance 163 Palihapitiya, Chamath 83–4 Pardo, Ivan 89–90 Parley for the Oceans 102, 103 Partners Group 81 Passeport Avenir 163 Patagonia 36, 57 pay-for-outcomes model 128–9, 134, 152, 156–7, 167, 180, 192, 203 PayPal 44–5 Pension Danmark 74 pension funds/savings 62, 65, 70, 71, 72–9, 157–8, 170, 172, 173–5, 187, 202 PepsiCo 110–11 Pereira, Carlos Edmar 41–2 PET bottles 106 Peterborough SIB 8, 20–2, 23–4, 25, 26–7, 30, 123–4 PFS (Pay for Success) (SIB in US) 22, 204 Pfund, Nancy 83 PGGM (pension fund) 73 philanthropy, impact 9, 70, 118–53, 187–8 DIBs (Development Impact Bonds) and 130–5 endowment and 138–46, 173 future of impact investment and 152–3 impact measurement and 118–21 measuring impact in 120–1 new crop of foundations 146–52 Outcome Funds and 134–8, 203 SIBs (Social Impact Bonds) and 121–30, 205 Phillips, Andi 127 Pioneers French Impact 175–6 PlantBottle 91 plastic 90, 91, 92, 97, 101–3, 104 PME (Dutch pension fund) 73–4 pollution 5, 28, 66, 138, 154, 155 Polman, Paul 88, 90 Porter, Professor Michael 26, 92–3 portfolio diversification 13, 67 Portland Trust, The 163, 235 Portugal 7, 31, 144, 153, 158, 160–2, 171, 173 Portugal Inovação Social (PIS) 171 poverty 16, 69–70, 84, 95, 140, 156, 167–8, 171, 182, 205 PPL Therapeutics 15 Principles of Responsible Investment (PRIs) 32, 203 Prior, Cliff 170 Pripp-Kovac, Lena 105 prisoner reoffending rates/recidivism 8, 20–2, 23–4, 25, 30, 80, 123–4, 161, 166 private equity 1, 3, 13, 53, 67, 71, 80, 171, 191, 235 PROESUS 176 profit-with-purpose model 35–6, 148 program-related investments (PRIs) 142–3, 148, 203–4 Prudential Financial 127 public-private partnerships 137, 204 QuantumScape 149 Rajasthan, India 131–2 Ratan Tata 153 Rausing, Sigrid 19 Reclaim Fund 169 recycling 90, 91, 97, 101–3, 104, 105, 106, 113 Red Cross 133 Refugees United 147 regulation boosting supply of impact capital through changes in 172–5, 187 risk of future 65–6, 92, 159–60 repurposing items 54 Responsible Investment (RI) 63 retail investors 204 Revolution Foods 50, 51–2, 57 Revolution Growth fund 52 Riboud, Franck 94 Richmond, Kristin Groos 51, 52 Rikers Island, New York City 80 Rinaudo, Keller 37–9 Rise Fund 79 risk defined 13 lower level of in impact investing 65–6, 92 measuring 7, 13, 67–8 risk and return, model of 6, 13, 67, 84, 93, 114 risk-return-impact, triple helix of 6, 9, 12–14, 27, 31, 33, 35, 60, 65, 66, 68, 72, 79, 84, 85, 93, 109, 115, 154, 155, 157, 178, 180, 183, 186, 190, 192 robotics 37–8 Rockefeller Foundation 11, 23, 151, 153 Root Capital 84 Rothschild, Lord (Jacob) 153 Rottenberg, Linda 59 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract 184 Royal Bank of Scotland 169 Royal Dutch Shell 76, 111 Rubin, Jerry 128, 129 Ryan, Paul 179 Saildrone 149 Sankaran, Meena 53–4 Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) 144 Sass, Christina 47–8, 49 SBB (Social Benefit Bond) 22, 204 school meals 50–3 Schroders 64, 80 Second Bounce of the Ball, The (Cohen) 7 Securities Exchange Commission, US 117 Serafeim, George 29, 109, 114 shareholder activism 66 Shashua, Professor Amnon 40 Siroya, Shivani 42–5 Skoll Foundation 148–9 Skoll World Forum (2019), Oxford 152 Small Business Administration, US 171 smart water grid management 54 Smiley, Scotty 39–40 Smith, Adam: The Theory of Moral Sentiment 10, 185 The Wealth of Nations 10, 184–5 Social Capital 83–4 social entrepreneurship 58, 82, 144, 175–7 Social Finance v, 19–20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 235 Social Finance Israel 163 Social Finance US 26, 127, 148 Social Impact Accelerator (SIA), EU 176–7 Social Impact Bond (SIB) 6, 8, 20–8, 67, 78, 80, 179, 198, 204–5 global spread of 25–8, 124–30 government and 122–4, 125, 126, 127, 130, 133, 157, 162–4, 165, 173 origins of 8, 20–5, 123–4 outlined 22–5 philanthropy and 121–30, 133–4, 135, 137, 138, 153, 187–8 Social Impact Contract 22, 162–3, 204 Social Impact Measurement Initiative (SIMI) 159 Social Impact Partnerships to Pay for Results Act (SIPPRA) (2018), US 165–6 social investment 7, 11–12, 141, 143, 160, 172–3, 179 social investment bank v, 19, 72, 76, 160, 169–70, 171–2, 175, 201 Social Investment Task Force (SITF) v, 6, 18, 19, 169, 235 Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) 172–3 social pension funds 76 social prescribing 126 social service providers 22, 125, 130 Social Value Act (2012) 164 Social Value UK 162 solidarity funds, 90/10 75–6, 173–4, 187, 204, 205 Solomon, Sir Harry 163 South Korea 158, 160–1, 171, 176 sovereign wealth funds 70 Spark Capital 49 Starr, Megan 81 State of the Non-Profit Sector Survey 119–20 Straw, Jack 20–1 Subramanian, Savita 115 subscription services 105 Summers, Larry 6, 26 Sure 90 Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), The 108 Swensen, David 65–6 Tala 43–5 Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) 107 Tata Trusts 153 taxation 31, 36, 65, 66, 92, 141, 143, 154, 157, 158, 168, 172–5, 177, 185 Teach For America 58–9 Tech revolution 5, 7, 9, 13, 14–17, 35, 61, 138, 156, 178, 182, 189 Tesla 55–6, 83, 149 thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) 102–3 Thompson, Mark 75 Tobey, Kirsten Saenz 51, 52 TOMS shoes 36, 54 Toniic 146 TPG 79, 80–1 trans fat 113 Treasury Department, US 6, 25–6, 141, 166 Treasury, UK 6 Triodos Investment Management 83 Troubled Families program 164 UBS 44, 79–80, 81 Optimus Fund/Optimus Foundation 80, 132, 137 UK government 6, 19, 26, 27, 30–1, 136, 158, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 170, 172, 175, 179 Ulukaya, Hamdi 99–101 unclaimed assets v, 19, 157, 168–72, 198, 201, 205 unemployment vii, 2, 30, 52, 100, 123, 124, 156, 164, 170 unicorn 35, 188–9 Unilever 89, 90–1 Unit Cost Database 1, 161 United Nations 32 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 69–72, 73, 74, 78, 79, 85, 97, 104, 108, 131, 166, 174, 190–2, 205 United States 113 benefit corporation and 57 government 157, 158, 165–6, 167, 171, 177, 178, 179 pension funds in 76 PFS (pay for success) in 22, 80, 124, 204 philanthropy in 118, 119–20, 127, 129, 140–1, 143, 148, 149, 152 Social Finance US 26, 127, 148 US Agency for International Development (USAID) 167, 168 US Trust 65 venture capital 1, 2, 5, 7, 13, 14–16, 18, 20, 32, 35, 39, 49, 67, 71, 83, 138, 148, 157–8, 172, 175, 176, 178, 191, 205, 235 Village Enterprise DIB 167–8 Vir Biotechnology 150 Walker, Darren 140, 141, 142, 143 Wall Street Crash (1929) 116–17, 158–9 Warby Parker 36, 57 water usage 53, 54, 69, 73, 84, 90–1, 100, 106, 110–11, 112, 116, 205 Wesling, Kresse 55 WhiteWave 96–7 wholesalers, impact capital 168–72, 184, 201 World Bank 64, 68–9, 78, 163 World Benchmarking Alliance 108 World Economic Forum: International Business Council 108 Yad Hanadiv 153 Yale University 65–6 Yates, Shannon 44 Young, Todd 179 Yunus, Muhammad 94 Zipline 37–9, 42 Zuckerberg, Mark 48–9, 55, 151 THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING Find us online and join the conversation Follow us on Twitter twitter.com/penguinukbooks Like us on Facebook facebook.com/penguinbooks Share the love on Instagram instagram.com/penguinukbooks Watch our authors on YouTube youtube.com/penguinbooks Pin Penguin books to your Pinterest pinterest.com/penguinukbooks Listen to audiobook clips at soundcloud.com/penguin-books Find out more about the author and discover your next read at penguin.co.uk This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law.

v=PhuEtyH6SK4 65 https://www.fastcompany.com/3068681/how-chobani-founder-hamdi-ulukaya-is-winning-americas-culture-war 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 https://www.ted.com/talks/hamdi_ulukaya_the_anti_ceo_playbook/transcript?language=en 71 Ibid. 72 https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/news/refugees-business-davos-opinion/index.html 73 https://www.fastcompany.com/3068681/how-chobani-founder-hamdi-ulukaya-is-winning-americas-culture-war 74 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/business/hamdi-ulukaya-chobani-corner-office.html 75 https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/media/17adco.html 76 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/business/hamdi-ulukaya-chobani-corner-office.html 77 Ibid. 78 https://assets.ctfassets.net/3s6ohrza3ily/5Bry9RmMqnd4dF0Yxr8Vy/bbc8cc7867a831c569b355169325354e/COMP_2019_Sustainability_Project_v17.pdf 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. 81 https://www.evesun.com/progress_folder/2019/pdf/progress9.pdf 82 Ibid. 83 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/business/a-windfall-for-chobani-employees-stakes-in-the-company.html 84 https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmainwaring/2018/08/27/how-chobani-builds-a-purposeful-culture-around-social-impact/#19e09b6e20f7 85 https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio/chobani-founder-hamdi-ulukaya-founders-project.html 86 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/07/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/ 87 Ibid. 88 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf 89 https://www.adidas-group.com/media/filer_public/8e/f1/8ef142c7-ac01-4cb3-b375-875106168555/2019_adidas_x_ parley_qa_en.pdf 90 https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/adidas-sold-1-million-shoes-made-out-of-ocean-plastic-in-2017.html 91 https://www.racked.com/2018/3/15/17124138/adidas-recycled-plastic-parley 92 https://qz.com/quartzy/1598089/adidass-futurecraft-loop-is-a-zero-waste-sustainable-sneaker 93 https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/17/adidas-futurecraft-loop-recycled-running-shoes-sustainability-speedfactory/ 94 https://www.fastcompany.com/90335038/exclusive-adidass-radical-new-shoe-could-change-how-the-world-buys-sneakers 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/17/adidas-futurecraft-loop-recycled-running-shoes-sustainability-speedfactory/ 100 http://highlights.ikea.com/2018/facts-and-figures/home/index.html 101 https://www.ikea.com/us/en/about_ikea/newsitem/022615_pr_making-solid-wood 102 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ikea-sustainability/ikea-to-use-only-renewable-and-recycled-materials-by-2030-idUSKCN1J31CD 103 https://www.youtube.com/watch?


pages: 334 words: 104,382

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Burning Man, California gold rush, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, company town, data science, David Brooks, deal flow, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, game design, gender pay gap, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hacker News, high net worth, Hyperloop, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microservices, Parker Conrad, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, pull request, reality distortion field, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Zenefits

When I met her for the first time, at a speaking engagement in 2015, and marveled at her ability to run YouTube while raising five kids, she frankly volunteered that she had plenty of help at home. One job she hasn’t delegated is breast-feeding, and she’s even open about that. When she attended the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016, she stored two containers of her breast milk on the snowy ledge outside her hotel window and tweeted a photo of the setup with the comment “One advantage of the cold weather at #Davos2016 is it’s easy to store breast milk. No freezer required.” The Davos tweet is one example of Wojcicki’s overall approach to work and family: she doesn’t seem to separate her mom and executive mom personas. She has talked openly about being the “mom of Google,” nurturing company projects and taking pride in how the company grew and matured.


pages: 357 words: 107,984

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster by Nick Timiraos

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, break the buck, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, fear index, financial innovation, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, moral hazard, non-fungible token, oil shock, Phillips curve, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Rishi Sunak, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Skype, social distancing, subprime mortgage crisis, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, unorthodox policies, Y2K, yield curve

That same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported the first confirmed US case from a man in Washington State who fell ill four days after returning from Wuhan. The virus had arrived. Chapter Seven INTO THE EMERGENCY ROOM Every January, heads of state mingle with the titans of finance and industry in the Swiss alpine ski resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum’s series of highfalutin, invitation-only seminars, meetings, and parties. As it has swelled in influence, the event has grown to attract celebrities and activists as well. In 2020, for example, central players such as European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde and financier George Soros were joined by climate activist Greta Thunberg and Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, an ambassador for mental health.

Earlier that day Beijing had announced that it had banned movement in and out of Wuhan, the epicenter of a spiraling public-health crisis. Mnuchin told the dinner guests that he was anxious about what the hit to China’s economy would mean for global growth—though he didn’t think the virus would be a serious threat to the US economy or spread around the globe.1 If President Donald Trump, another star Davos attendee, shared any of these worries, he kept them well hidden. The president expected a historically strong economy to carry him to a reelection victory in ten months, and he was quick to downplay any and all threats to his prospects, including the novel coronavirus. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.


pages: 325 words: 90,659

Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, barriers to entry, bitcoin, business process, call centre, carbon credits, collateralized debt obligation, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, failed state, financial innovation, illegal immigration, Mark Zuckerberg, microcredit, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Skype, TED Talk, vertical integration

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, by contrast, have dramatically higher rates of violence.12 FIGURE 5.1Cartel Competitiveness Report NOTE: Belize, with a population of just 300,000, is excluded, as the World Economic Forum does not collect data from there. SOURCES: Data from World Economic Forum 2015; UNODC 2012. ••• Putting a brake on drug cartels’ offshore activity is hard, and subverting the World Economic Forum’s figures may be slightly frivolous. But there is a serious point to it. Indices such as the World Bank’s “Doing Business” report have made a huge difference in the way that countries are run, by providing a simple, cheap, and achievable road map and rewarding those countries that follow it.

Governments love to crow about how their country has jumped ahead of its regional rivals: if you visit Mexico on a business trip, someone is quite likely to tell you before you even leave the airport that the country has a higher ranking than Brazil. The report has spawned many imitators: the World Economic Forum (WEF), for instance, publishes its own “Global Competitiveness Report,” an even more detailed ranking that works in a similar way. These indices are minutely studied by multinationals trying to decide where in the world they should strike out next. Consider the American underwear magnate, poised to open his next great workshop.

The relative ease of doing business in Honduras, according to some measures at least, helps to explain why the jungle around San Pedro Sula is fast being nibbled away by new foreign-owned factories. Drug cartels’ priorities are sometimes different, of course—they don’t worry much about how long it takes to file taxes, for instance. But curiously, indices such as those produced by the World Bank and World Economic Forum provide some useful clues as to where they are likely to set up shop next. You just have to read them backward. Take the “Global Competitiveness Report.” The first section on its scorecard is devoted to assessing the strength of public institutions. For ordinary firms, strong state institutions—courts of law, police forces, parliaments, and so on—are a desirable thing in a host country.


pages: 162 words: 51,473

The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches From the Dismal Science by Paul Krugman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, business cycle, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate raider, declining real wages, floating exchange rates, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, indoor plumbing, informal economy, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, life extension, new economy, Nick Leeson, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, price stability, rent control, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, trade route, very high income, working poor, zero-sum game

Nor have many Americans started buying their home appliances at Mexican stores or smoking French cigarettes. I cannot fly Cathay Pacific from Boston to New York. What explains this propensity to overstate the importance of global markets? In part, it sounds sophisticated. Pontificating about globalization is an easy way to get attention at events like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and Renaissance Weekends in Hilton Head, S.C. But there is also a deeper cause—an odd sort of tacit agreement between the Left and the Right to pretend that exotic global forces are at work even when the real action is prosaically domestic. Many on the Left dislike the global marketplace because it epitomizes what they dislike about markets in general: the fact that nobody is in charge.


China's Superbank by Henry Sanderson, Michael Forsythe

"World Economic Forum" Davos, addicted to oil, Asian financial crisis, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Carmen Reinhart, Credit Default Swap, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Dutch auction, failed state, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, invisible hand, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, megacity, new economy, New Urbanism, price mechanism, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, too big to fail, urban renewal, urban sprawl, work culture

The loan had perfectly combined CDB’s strategic priorities of seeking resources, building infrastructure in the host country, and helping Chinese firms to go global. Now it’s up to Ghana to decide how to best use the projects. Fresh Capital James Mwangi, the chief executive of Equity Bank Ltd., one of Kenya’s biggest lenders, was in a buoyant mood at the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” meeting at a cavernous conference center the size of a small city on the outskirts of Tianjin in 2010. His bank had signed a 4 billion shilling loan agreement with CDB in May. The loan allowed Equity Bank to lend to small and medium-sized companies for half the normal interest rate in the country, he said.

William Rhodes is a Spanish-speaking former top executive at Citibank who spent years in the country at offices in Maracaibo and Caracas, married a Venezuelan, and helped negotiate the Brady Plan, named after then–US Treasury secretary Nicholas Brady, to restructure Latin American debt in the late 1980s. “They’ve been careful in the case of Venezuela,” Rhodes said of CDB’s strategy at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Dalian, a coastal city in northeastern China. “They’ve been very hard-nosed in a number of cases and I think correctly so.”20 Loans for Oil A program that wins the praise of such seasoned bankers deserves more explanation. CDB’s loans to Venezuela, as well as to Ecuador (a country with a credit rating even lower than Venezuela’s), Russia, and Brazil, are guaranteed by commitments by state oil producers to sell a set amount of oil to Chinese oil companies.

Chinese customs figures oil revenue harnessed to help the poor through free housing and food oil shipments to China may not match its commitments oil shipments to China were modified (2011) PDVSA borrowed on global bond markets to meet its social funding goals PDVSA oil-backed loan ($1.5 billion) from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China for housing to be built by CITIC Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) (state oil company) PVDSA funding ($53 billion) to import food, construct housing, and build health-care clinics, among other projects sovereign credit rating five notches below investment grade Venezuela Railway Authority Vogel, Ezra (Harvard professor) W Wang Cheng’an (former deputy director of Department of Aid to Foreign Countries of Ministry of Commerce) Wang Qishan (Chinese Vice Premier) Wang Yi (CDB vice president) Wang Yongsheng (CDB’s vice president) Wang Zhongbing (retired factory worker) Wen, Winston (Wen Jiabao’s son) Wen Jiabao (Premier) Wesizwe Platinum (South Africa) White & Case (US lawyers) win-win solution Wolfensohn, James (World Bank) World Bank Africa missed out on the global manufacturing boom Africa needs to invest in infrastructure ($93 billion) every year assets and total loans (2011) CDB soft loans to Chongqing China’s demand for oil pushed oil prices up 27.1 percent (2000 and 2007) Ethiopia, loans to Ghana debt relief ($3.7 billion) growth that loans produce, does not consider handbook on development banks, wrote the investment ($2.9 billion) in power and infrastructure (1948 to 1969) James Wolfensohn focused on poverty reduction not infrastructure recommended that Asian countries open their banking system to competition and close sick banks Robert McNamara and focus on poverty reduction structural adjustment and stabilization programs World Economic Forum World Trade Organization (WTO) Wuhan Urban Construction Wuhu (city) Wuhu Construction Investment Co. Wuhu Model Operating Method Wu Keming (Wuhu’s deputy mayor) Wu Liangguo (head of Yichun City Bureau of Land and Resources) Wu Xiaoli (interviewer) X XCMG Construction Machinery Co.


pages: 605 words: 169,366

The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations by Sebastian Mallaby

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, capital controls, clean water, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, export processing zone, failed state, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentleman farmer, guns versus butter model, Hernando de Soto, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, lateral thinking, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, microcredit, oil shock, Oklahoma City bombing, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, the new new thing, trade liberalization, traveling salesman, War on Poverty, Westphalian system, Yom Kippur War

The Bank would begin by helping Bosnia, then Bosnia would accept the old Yugoslav debts and become a Bank member—but its membership would be backdated, rendering the early reconstruction assistance legal in retrospect. The only problem with this plan was that the Bosnians might reject it. In the first week of February 1996, Kemal Dervis and Christine Wallich booked a restaurant in a Swiss resort called Bad Ragaz, an hour’s drive away from the World Economic Forum in Davos. Their guests were four Bosnians—two Bosniaks and two Croats—and their dinner was to stretch from seven that evening to three o’clock the next morning. The Bosnian group was led by the new prime minister, Hasan Muratovic, a charmer with a lopsided smile that faintly recalled Robert de Niro.

Some of the government officials were starting to appear nervous. They kept looking over toward the documents—This was a signing ceremony! So why wasn’t he signing?—and Wolfensohn kept on chatting as though the whole debt business barely mattered to him. Who could now remember the eight-hour dinner outside Davos, when the Bank had nailed Yugoslavia’s debt to Bosnia? The Bank in this moment was Jim Wolfensohn: charming, friendly, and insouciant. The signing finally took place, and Wolfensohn emerged from the presidency building and set off on a tour of Sarajevo, accompanied by Prime Minister Muratovic.

Several other European states were following, and Mexico’s former president, Ernesto Zedillo, had recently headed a blue-ribbon commission that echoed Wolfensohn’s call for a big jump in aid funding.28 The veterans of the debt-relief campaign were on the move, most notably Bono, the Irish rock star who had branched out from performing songs like “Bullet the Blue Sky” and “I Threw a Brick Through a Window” to become an articulate development advocate. In January 2002, the annual Davos shmoozathon convened in New York, its traditional Swiss hosts having bowed out for fear of antiglobalization protests, and Wolfensohn’s team lined up a series of big hitters to call for extra aid. Bono spoke out, and Bill Gates spoke out, and Senator Patrick Leahy joined in, and so did the superstar ex–treasury secretary Bob Rubin.


The Techno-Human Condition by Braden R. Allenby, Daniel R. Sarewitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, airport security, Anthropocene, augmented reality, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, coherent worldview, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, different worldview, Edward Jenner, facts on the ground, friendly fire, Hans Moravec, industrial cluster, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, land tenure, Lewis Mumford, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, mutually assured destruction, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, precautionary principle, prediction markets, radical life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Silicon Valley, smart grid, source of truth, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

The specific mix of these interventions depends on local factors, such as the type of mosquito and malaria parasite, climate, cost, and available resources." 18 Very promising preliminary results of IVM in several countries have created a sense of optimism about the prospects for making real progress in combating malaria. A report by McKinsey & Company (commissioned by Roll Back Malaria and released to the public at the 2008 Davos World Economic Forum) suggested the following: [A]n investment [in IVM] of approximately $2.2 billion a year for five years ... can achieve full coverage of prevention and treatment measures in the 30 hardest-hit malaria endemic African countries, which together account for an estimated 90 percent of global malaria deaths and 90 percent of malaria cases in Africa ....

., 66 War, laws of, 152 War Made New, 130 "War on drugs," 125 "War porn," 155 Watches, 34 Webber, M., 109 Webster, D., 74 Whitman, W, 74, 77 Whole Earth Catalog, 10 Wilson, E. 0., 122 Winner, L., 44, 45 Wired for War, 141 Wolfpack sensor system, 143 Woodhouse, N., 56 World Charter for Nature, 181 World Economic Forum, 49 World Health Organization, 48 World Trade Organization, 135 World Transhumanist Association, 5 World War I, 76,127,151 World War II, 127, 131 Xe,141


pages: 235 words: 62,862

Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek by Rutger Bregman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Bartolomé de las Casas, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Branko Milanovic, cognitive dissonance, computer age, conceptual framework, credit crunch, David Graeber, Diane Coyle, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, George Gilder, George Santayana, happiness index / gross national happiness, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, income inequality, invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, low skilled workers, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, microcredit, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, precariat, public intellectual, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, stem cell, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wage slave, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey

Branko Milanovic, “Global income inequality: the past two centuries and implications for 21st century” (Fall 2011) http://www.cnpds.it/documenti/milanovic.pdf 30. “62 people own same as half world,” Oxfam (January 20, 2014). http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-says-oxfam-inequality-report-davos-world-economic-forum 31. Nicholas Hobbes, Essential Militaria: Facts, Legends, and Curiosities About Warfare Through the Ages (2004). 32. Branko Milanovic, “Global Income Inequality by the Numbers.” 33. In 2015 the poverty threshold for a single-person household in the U.S. was about $980 a month. The poverty line as applied by the World Bank is just over $57 a month, putting the U.S. threshold almost 17 times above extreme poverty. 34.

Economists call this phenomenon the “winner-take-all society.”11 From small accountancy firms that are undercut by tax software to corner bookshops struggling to hold their own against online megastores – in one sector after another the giants have grown even as the world has shrunk. By now, inequality is ballooning in almost every developed country. In the U.S., the gap between rich and poor is already wider than it was in ancient Rome – an economy founded on slave labor.12 In Europe, too, there’s a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots.13 Even the World Economic Forum, a clique of entrepreneurs, politicos, and pop stars, has described this escalating inequality as the biggest threat facing our global economy. Granted, it all happened very fast. Whereas in 1964 each of the four largest American companies still had an average workforce of about 430,000 people, by 2011 they employed only a quarter that number, despite being worth twice as much.14 Or take the tragic fate of Kodak, inventor of the digital camera and a company that in the late 1980s had 145,000 people on its payroll.


pages: 247 words: 68,918

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, household responsibility system, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, tulip mania, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

As the leadership broadened its experiments with capitalism and ever larger numbers of Chinese logged on to the Internet for the first time, plenty more voices warned that the regime was doomed. Twenty years later, China has become the symbol of state capitalism’s power, and it is China that will determine how long this trend survives. At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Premier Wen Jiabao blamed a “failure of financial supervision” in the United States for triggering the global recession. His implication, of course, was that Chinese-style state capitalism is the better system. To make his case, he could point to China’s thirty years of double-digit growth or its $2.3 trillion in foreign-currency reserves, a sum that allows it to invest where others cannot.

Trotsky, Leon Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) Troubled Asset Relief Program troubled assets Tuleyev, Aman Tunisia Turkey Twitter Tymoshenko, Yulia Ukraine Ukraine International Airlines Union Carbide United Arab Emirates United Malays National Organization (UMNO) United Nations United Nations Human Development Report United States Chinese trade with in financial crisis military of in oil embargo oil production in trade by Uzbekistan Vale Venezuela Vietnam von Mises, Ludwig Walmart Warsaw Pact Washington Mutual Wealth of Nations, The (Smith) Webb, Jim Welch, Jack Wen Jiabao Westinghouse Will, George World Bank World Economic Forum World Trade Organization (WTO) World War I World War II Yanukovych, Viktor Yeltsin, Boris Yom Kippur War yuan Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang Yugoslavia Yukos Oil Company Yushchenko, Viktor Zakaria, Fareed Zhao Ziyang Zhu Rongji Zhu Xinli Zimbabwe Zubkov, Viktor Zuma, Jacob Zyuzin, Igor a The Washington Consensus comprises three major ideas: fiscal and budgetary discipline; a market economy, including property rights, competitive exchange rates, privatization, and deregulation; and openness to the global economy through liberalization of trade and foreign direct investment.


pages: 308 words: 85,880

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Ada Lovelace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Andrew Keen, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, death from overwork, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gig economy, global village, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, OpenAI, Parag Khanna, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-truth, postindustrial economy, precariat, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech baron, tech billionaire, tech worker, technological determinism, technoutopianism, The Future of Employment, the High Line, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Yogi Berra, Zipcar

As Steve Jobs used to say, teasing his audience before unveiling one of Apple’s magical new products, there’s “one more thing” to talk about here. And it’s the biggest thing of all in our contemporary world. It is the digital revolution, the global hyperconnectivity powered by the internet, that lies behind much of the disruption. In 2016, I participated in a two-day World Economic Forum (WEF) workshop in New York City about the “digital transformation” of the world. The event’s focus was on what it called the “combinatorial effects” of all these new internet-based technologies—including mobile, cloud, artificial intelligence, sensors, and big data analytics. “Just as the steam engine and electrification revolutionized entire sectors of the economy from the eighteenth century onward,” the seminar concluded, “modern technologies are beginning to dramatically alter today’s industries.”1 The economic stakes in this great transformation are dizzying.

A few days before the “Encrypted and Decentralized” event at the Alte Teppichfabrik, for example, I participated in a lunch discussion in Berlin that was unappetizingly called “Toward a Human-Centered Data Revolution.” The month before, I’d spoken at Oxford about “The True Human,” in Vienna about “Reclaiming Our Humanity,” and in London about why “The Future of Work Is Human.” Klaus Schwab, the Swiss founder of the World Economic Forum, exemplifies this preoccupation with a new humanism. It “all comes down to people and values,” he explains about the impact of digital technology on jobs,22 which is why we need what he calls “a human narrative” to fix its problems.23 To write a human narrative in today’s age of smart machines requires a definition of what it means to be human.

He has helped with the digitalization of Estonian public records and books so that, in case of another Russian occupation (not inconceivable given that relations with a revanchist Moscow are increasingly tense), this data will remain safe. One of his most cherished accomplishments is the e-residency program, which offers non-Estonians digital citizenship. And through his high-profile work with such international organizations as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum, the colorful Ilves has certainly made sure that little Estonia appears to the outside world as a country without boundaries. Ilves’s major legacy lies, however, in his pioneering work with what he calls “digital identity and trust.” “The role of the sovereign in a digital society,” he explains to me, “is to guarantee identity.”


pages: 335 words: 89,924

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Bartolomé de las Casas, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, company town, complexity theory, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, energy transition, European colonialism, feminist movement, financial engineering, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Haber-Bosch Process, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microcredit, Naomi Klein, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, peak oil, precariat, scientific management, Scientific racism, seminal paper, sexual politics, sharing economy, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, spinning jenny, strikebreaker, surplus humans, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, wages for housework, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War

Working Group on the “Anthropocene.” 2016. “What Is the ‘Anthropocene’?—Current Definition and Status.” Last modified January 4. http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/. World Economic Forum. 2012. Energy for Economic Growth: Energy Vision Update 2012. Geneva: World Economic Forum. http://reports.weforum.org/energy-for-economic-growth-energy-vision-update-2012/. ———. 2016. The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics. Geneva: World Economic Forum. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf. Worm, Boris, Edward B. Barbier, Nicola Beaumont, J. Emmett Duffy, Carl Folke, Benjamin S.

It launched an initiative on hunger, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, to bring the work of the long Green Revolution to Africa. Recall that the Green Revolution began in the twentieth century as an intervention in class politics, a way to manage the political concerns of hungry and angry urban insurgents. The New Alliance was built on foundations suggested at the World Economic Forum—a group of business interests that the Financial Times once called the “masters of the universe”78—to address concerns of urban unrest while developing markets for agriculture and food industries. This helps explain why the New Alliance’s largest donor is Yara, the Norwegian fertilizer giant.

Goodfriend, Cameron, and Cook 1994. 71. Capitalism has often viewed the work of nature as a “free gift”—a term that appears in Engels’s editing of Marx (1967a, 745). The reality is that the work of nature—including human nature—is neither “free” nor “gifted” to capital. 72. J. Jackson 1997. 73. Worm et al. 2006; World Economic Forum 2016. 74. Moore 2014. 75. Abulafia 2008. 76. Wallerstein 1974, 347; Abu-Lughod 1989; McMichael 2000. 77. Wallerstein 1974, 44. See also Moore 2003a. 78. See, e.g., Fine (2001) skewer the nonsense of “social capital” theory. 79. Marx 1973b, 33. 80. Marx 1976, 376. 81. Arrighi and Moore 2001. 82.


pages: 346 words: 97,330

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apollo 13, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, blue-collar work, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, deskilling, digital divide, do well by doing good, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial independence, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, hiring and firing, ImageNet competition, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, machine translation, market friction, Mars Rover, natural language processing, new economy, operational security, passive income, pattern recognition, post-materialism, post-work, power law, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, scientific management, search costs, Second Machine Age, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, software as a service, speech recognition, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two-sided market, union organizing, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce, work culture , Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, State of Broadband 2017: Broadband Catalyzing Sustainable Development (Geneva, Switzerland: Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, 2017); World Economic Forum, Special Program of the Broadband Commission and the World Economic Forum, Meeting Report (Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum, 2018). [back] 38. Special Program of the Broadband Commission and the World Economic Forum Meeting Report, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 2018. [back] 39. Labor economists would say that requesters use contingent labor to find the worker who’ll do the job for the lowest pay. More liberal economists argue that people’s being able to use their marketable skills and bargain for higher wages makes flexibility a good thing for workers.

Accessed October 21, 2018. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26587. Wood, Alex. “Why the Digital Gig Economy Needs Co-Ops and Unions.” openDemocracy, September 15, 2016. https://www.opendemocracy.net/alex-wood/why-digital-gig-economy-needs-co-ops-and-unions. World Economic Forum. Special Program of the Broadband Commission and the World Economic Forum, Meeting Report. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum, 2018. Yin, Ming, Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri, and Jennifer Wortman Vaughan. “The Communication Network Within the Crowd.” In WWW ’16: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web, 1293–1303. Geneva, Switzerland: International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1145/2872427.2883036.

In CSCW ’15 Companion: Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, 117–21. New York: ACM, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1145/2685553.2699339. Leopold, Till Alexander, Saadia Zahidi, and Vesselina Ratcheva. The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum, 2016. Levy, Frank, and Richard Murnane. The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Li, Fei-Fei. “ImageNet: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?” ACM Learning Webinar, 2017. https://learning.acm.org/. Lichtenstein, Nelson.


pages: 422 words: 113,525

Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, back-to-the-land, biofilm, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, business process, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dark matter, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, digital divide, Easter island, Elon Musk, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, glass ceiling, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, informal economy, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Kibera, land tenure, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, megaproject, microbiome, military-industrial complex, New Urbanism, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, out of africa, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, rewilding, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart grid, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, We are as Gods, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, William Langewiesche, working-age population, Y2K

Farms in the tropics have many more crops than temperate farms. Each region in the tropics should have its own research infrastructure.” • No thanks to decades of European interference, Africa is making up its own mind about the uses of biotech for its unique agricultural situation. At the 2001 World Economic Forum meeting at Davos, Switzerland, physicist-essayist Freeman Dyson watched a panel debating GE crops. His report:It was a debate between Europe and Africa. The Europeans oppose GM food with religious zeal. They say it is destroying the balance of nature, with unacceptable risks to human health and natural ecology.

The geneticists inquired: Did that mean no seedless fruits and no male-sterile hybrids, both common in agriculture? • I think the main element that distinguishes Europe from America and other parts of the world in regard to GE crops is the seriousness with which Europeans take what is called the precautionary principle. It was invoked in the Davos debate; it was invoked in the Zambia debacle; and it has had regulatory force in the European Union since 1992 and in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, governing international movement of GE organisms, since 2000. As Robert Paarlberg points out, “Europe’s precautionary principle had honorable origins.


pages: 356 words: 112,271

Brexit and Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities, and the Inside Story of the Irish Response by Tony Connelly

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, centre right, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, electricity market, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Thompson, knowledge economy, land bank, LNG terminal, low skilled workers, non-tariff barriers, open borders, personalized medicine, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, tech worker, éminence grise

Being completely out of the customs union would guarantee a hard border; being partly in left some hope that a ‘creative’ solution might be found to avoid those checks. The next day, Theresa May travelled to the Swiss alpine resort of Davos. In her speech to the World Economic Forum, she said Britain was coming out of its EU shell to take on the world. She referred to a ‘global’ British destiny no fewer than 13 times. There was no reference to Ireland, but she and Enda Kenny, who was also in Davos, did meet by chance the night before in Altes Schäfli, a cosy, log-cabin restaurant on Mattastrasse with a popular line in traditional fondue. The pair spoke for 10 minutes before returning to their separate tables.


The Art of Profitability by Adrian Slywotzky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, business cycle, business process, commoditize, Indoor air pollution, Isaac Newton, pattern recognition, rolodex, Salesforce, shareholder value

Business Week magazine named the latter one of its Top 10 Business Books of 1998. In addition, Mr. Slywotzky is the author of Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition (Harvard Business School Press, 1996). As a frequent speaker on the changing face of business strategy and business design, he has been featured at The World Economic Forum at Davos and at numerous other major conferences. Mr. Slywotzky holds degrees from Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School. 157 THE ART OF PROFITABILITY About Mercer Management Consulting As one of the world’s premier corporate strategy firms, Mercer Management Consulting helps leading enterprises achieve sustained shareholder value growth through the development and implementation of innovative business designs.


The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Metropolitan Elite by Michael Lind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, anti-communist, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, cotton gin, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, disinformation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, export processing zone, fake news, future of work, gentrification, global supply chain, guest worker program, Haight Ashbury, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal world order, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Michael Milken, moral panic, Nate Silver, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, trade liberalization, union organizing, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Wolfgang Streeck, working poor

Erik Ruark, “Misuse of Barbara Jordan’s Legacy on Immigration is Wrong, No Matter Who Does It,” NumbersUSA, January 17, 2019. 10. Vernon M. Briggs Jr. Immigration and American Unionism (ILR Press, 2001). 11. Phillip Connor and Jens Manuel Krogstad, “Immigration Might Be Out of Favour but ‘Outmigration’ Is Even More Unpopular,” World Economic Forum, December 12, 2018. 12. Monthly Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll June 2018, cited in Jeff Faux, “Trump Is Laying a Trap for Democrats on Immigration,” The Nation, April 2, 2019. 13. Lee Jones, “Labour’s Brexit Capitulation Is the End of Corbynism,” Brexit Blog, London School of Economics, July 17, 2019. 14.

If banana republicanism is to be avoided as the fate of the Western democracies, reformers in America and Europe will have to do far more than buy off the population with a subsidy here or an antitrust lawsuit there. Indeed, if a package of minor, ameliorative reforms is handed down from the mountaintops of Davos or Aspen by a claque of benevolent billionaires and the technocrats and the politicians and intellectuals whom the billionaires subsidize, with little or no public participation or debate, the lack of voice and agency of most citizens will be made apparent in the most humiliating way. What the racially and religiously diverse working-class majorities in the Western nations need is what they once possessed and no longer have: countervailing power.


pages: 549 words: 147,112

The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual-The Biggest Bank Failure in American History by Kirsten Grind

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, big-box store, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, financial engineering, fixed income, fulfillment center, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, junk bonds, low interest rates, Maui Hawaii, money market fund, mortgage debt, naked short selling, NetJets, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Shoshana Zuboff, Skype, too big to fail, Y2K

They took full advantage of the company’s corporate jet timeshare, increasing their trips to visit family and friends around the country. Killinger counted Dick Fuld, the chief executive of Lehman, among his acquaintances, and the couple sometimes flew to Fuld’s Idaho hideaway for the weekend. “He would just wax poetic about getting invited to things like Davos,” said one WaMu executive, referring to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, which Killinger had twice attended. “It was really cool for him to talk about a meeting with Bernanke and Greenspan.” In three years, the Killingers spent about $200,000 traveling on the corporate jet, a cost that was charged to the bank. At the end of 2007, the board of directors forced him to reimburse WaMu for his personal use of the plane.

(book), 131 Wholesale Division, WaMu, 129–30, 170 Wigand, Jim, 284, 289–90, 290n, 291 Williams, Robert, 175, 178, 244, 245, 265 Wilson, Liane acquisitions of WaMu and, 44 hiring of, 17–18, 19 Killinger–five emissaries meeting and, 203–6 Killinger’s marital problems and, 80–81 Long Beach Mortgage acquisition and, 60 mergers and acquisitions and, 49, 50–51 NYSE bell ringing and, 54 personality of, 50 resignation of, 95–96, 108 responsibilities of, 49, 95–96 software programs at WaMu and, 99 structure and organization of WaMu and, 96 at WaMu reunion, 307 Wisdorf, Doug, 206, 308, 309, 310, 319 women: Pepper’s hiring of, 19–20 World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland), 174 World Savings Bank, 119 Worldcom, 91 Y2K technology conversion, 96 We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook. Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Simon & Schuster.


pages: 501 words: 145,943

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Benjamin R. Barber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, classic study, clean water, congestion pricing, corporate governance, Crossrail, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, digital divide, digital Maoism, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, gentrification, George Gilder, ghettoisation, global pandemic, global village, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, informal economy, information retrieval, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Lewis Mumford, London Interbank Offered Rate, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, megacity, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, Tony Hsieh, trade route, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, unpaid internship, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, zero-sum game

A global democratic system rooted in norms, social movements, NGOs, and law can only help ground and render effective an intercity governance system with a global mayors parliament capstone. 23. Khagram et al., Restructuring World Politics, p. 301. 24. Joseph Nye, “Globalisation’s Democratic Deficit: How to Make International Institutions More Accountable,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 4, July–August, 2001. 25. Kofi Annan’s address to the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 1999, cited by the BBC World Service, “What Is Civil Society?” http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/highlights/010705_civil.shtml. 26. Global Citizen portrays itself on its website (http://www.globalcitizen.org/) as “a tool to amplify and unite a generation’s call for justice.

., 32 Williams, Raymond, 31, 39, 41, 191 Wilson, Robert, 272, 288 Wilson, William Julius, 221 Women: as mayors, 238–240; and microfinance, 230 Women in Cities International (WICI), 122–123 WOMEX (World Music Expo), 290 Workplaces, 63–64 World Conference of Mayors for Peace through Inner-city Solidarity, 122–123 World Economic Forum (Davos), 118–119 World Mayors Summit on Climate (Mexico City 2010), 6 World Music Expo (WOMEX), 290 World Wide Web. See Internet Wylie, David, 22, 121, 336 Xilai, Bo, 94 Yunus, Muhammad, 229–230, 385–386n32 Zakayev, Akhmed, 126 Zero-tolerance, 203 Zoon politikon (political animal), 14, 61 Zuccotti Park (New York City), 47, 117 Zuckerberg, Mark, 249, 258 Zukin, Sharon, 71, 274


pages: 579 words: 160,351

Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now by Alan Rusbridger

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Andy Carvin, banking crisis, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, country house hotel, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, David Brooks, death of newspapers, Donald Trump, Doomsday Book, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, folksonomy, forensic accounting, Frank Gehry, future of journalism, G4S, high net worth, information security, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Large Hadron Collider, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, natural language processing, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, post-truth, pre–internet, ransomware, recommendation engine, Ruby on Rails, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Indeed, the market in sensationalist, conspiratorial and alarmist junk seemed to thrive in inverse proportion to the fortunes of the old media houses trying to plod the path of traditional reporting. The new automated distribution channels of social media turbo-charged the power of junk. Even before the election the World Economic Forum had identified the rapid spread of misinformation as one of the top ten perils to society – alongside cybercrime and climate change. By 2017 social media had existed for barely a decade – a blink of the eye in the sweep of human communication, but long enough for a generation to grow up knowing no other world.

Sullivan case (1964) ref1 New Yorker (magazine) ref1, ref2, ref3 Newland, Martin ref1 Newmark, Craig ref1 Newmarket Road (Cambridge) ref1, ref2, ref3 News Corporation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n News Digital Media ref1 News Group Newspapers (NGN) ref1, ref2, ref3 News International (NI) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10n News Network ref1 Newsday.com ref1 Newseum (US) ref1 Newsnight (TV) ref1 Newspaper Money (Hirsch/Gordon) ref1 Newsworks’ Shift conference ref1n NHS ref1 Nielsen NetRatings ref1 1984 (Orwell) ref1 Nixon, President Richard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 North Africa ref1, ref2 North Briton (newspaper) ref1 North Korea ref1 Northcliffe, Lord ref1 Northcliffe Media ref1 ‘Not Invented Here’ (NIH) resentment ref1 Nottingham Evening Post (newspaper) ref1 Nougayrède, Natalie ref1 Obama, President Barack ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Ofcom ref1, ref2, ref3 Official Secrets Act (OSA) ref1, ref2 Official Secrets (Hooper) ref1 O’Hagan, Andrew ref1 oil companies ref1, ref2, ref3 O’Kane, Maggie ref1 Old Bailey ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Oliver, Craig ref1, ref2 Omidyar, Pierre ref1 On Demand ref1 ‘On Journalism’ (Scott essay) ref1, ref2n, ref3n Open Democracy ref1, ref2, ref3 Open Weekend (2012) ref1, ref2 Operation Weeting ref1 O’Reilly, Tony ref1 ‘original sin’ ref1 Orphan ref1 Orwell, George ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Osborne, Peter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Oscars ref1 ownership model ref1 Oxford University ref1 Pacino, Al ref1 page views ref1 Panopticon ref1, ref2, ref3n Panorama (TV) ref1 Paris climate talks ref1, ref2 Parker, Andrew ref1 Paton, John ref1 Patriot Act (2001) ref1, ref2 PayPal ref1 paywalls ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11n ‘hard’ ref1, ref2 metred ref1, ref2 Peake, Maxine ref1 Pearson & Co ref1, ref2 Pemsel, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n, ref6n, ref7n Pentagon ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 People Like Us (Luyendijk) ref1 Perch, Keith ref1n Perettu, Jonah ref1 Periscope ref1 perjury ref1 Permira Advisers Ltd ref1 Peterloo Massacre ref1, ref2, ref3 Petraeus, General David ref1 Pfauth, Ernst-Jan ref1 PFE (Proudly Found Elsewhere) ref1 philanthropy ref1 Philby, Kim ref1 Piano, Renzo ref1 Pilhofer, Aron ref1, ref2n Plastic Logic ref1 Plender, John ref1 podcasts ref1, ref2n Podemos ref1 Podesta emails ref1, ref2 Poitras, Laura ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 police ref1, ref2, ref3 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6n, ref7n, ref8n political subsidy ref1 Politico ref1 Politics.co.uk ref1 Popbitch ref1 Popplewell, Sir Oliver ref1, ref2 Porter, Henry ref1 Post Office Act (US 1792) ref1 Pound, Ezra ref1 power ref1 Prescott, John (MP) ref1 Press Acquisitions Ltd ref1 Press Association ref1, ref2 Press Complaints Commission (PCC) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n Press Holdings Ltd ref1 Preston, Peter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 price war ref1, ref2 Price Waterhouse Cooper ref1 Pride and Perjury (Aitken) ref1 The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Eisenstein) ref1 printing presses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 prisons ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 privacy ref1 Private Eye (magazine) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8n private investigators ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 private sector ref1 Proctor & Gamble ref1 Prodigy Internet Service ref1 Product Development Unit (PDU) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Professional Footballers’ Association ref1 proportionality ref1 ProPublica ref1, ref2 Proudler, Gerald ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 public goods ref1, ref2 public interest ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1, ref2 passim, ref1 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n, ref6n Public Library of Science (PLoS) ref1 public service ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3 public space ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 ‘publicness’ ref1 ‘purchase driver’ ref1 Putnam, Robert ref1 pyjama injunction ref1 Qantas ref1 Qatar ref1, ref2, ref3 Quatremer, Jean ref1 Qur’an ref1 R2 ref1 Raines, Howell ref1 Randall, Mike ref1 rape ref1, ref2, ref3n Rath, Matthias ref1 Ray Street offices ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 ‘reach before revenue’ model ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 readers ref1 American ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 knowledge ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 letters ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 readers’ editor ref1, ref2, ref3n response ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 talkboards ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n see also circulation Reading Football Club ref1 Real Networks ref1 Reckless, Mark (MP) ref1 Reddit ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Redford, Robert ref1, ref2 Reds (film) ref1 Rees, Jonathan ref1, ref2, ref3 referendum (UK 2016) ref1, ref2 regulation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Regulatory Funding Council ref1 Reid, Harry ref1 religious stories ref1 rendition, Gibson report on ref1 Reuters ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Richard (reporter) ref1 Rinehart, Gina ref1 riots ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n Ritz hotel (London) ref1, ref2, ref3 Ritz hotel (Paris) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 rivalry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n Robards, Jason ref1 Roberts, Brian ref1 Roberts, Justine ref1 Robinson, Geoffrey (MP) ref1 Robinson, Stephen ref1 Rockefeller Foundation ref1 Rohm, Wendy Goldman ref1 Rolling Stones ref1 Rosen, Jay ref1, ref2, ref3 Rosenstiel, Tom ref1 Rossetto, Louis ref1 Rothermere, Lord ref1n, ref2n Rowlands, Tiny ref1 Royal Air Force (RAF) ref1 Royal Courts of Justice ref1, ref2, ref3 Rusbridger, Alan ref1, ref2n, ref3n, ref4n, ref5n Russian intelligence service ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Ryanair ref1 Saatchi, Maurice ref1 Sachs, Jeffrey ref1 Saffron Walden (Essex) ref1 Said Business School (Oxford) ref1 St Paul’s Cathedral ref1 Salon ref1 samizdat methods ref1 Sampson, Anthony ref1 San Jose Mercury (newspaper) ref1 Sanandaji, Tino ref1 Sandel, Michael ref1 Sanders, Bernie ref1, ref2 Sandy Hook ref1 Sandys, Duncan (MP) ref1 Sardar, Ziauddin ref1 Sark ref1, ref2 Sark Newspaper ref1 SAS ref1 Saudi Arabia ref1, ref2, ref3 Savoy Hotel (London) ref1, ref2, ref3 Savoy Taylors Guild ref1 Sawers, Sir John ref1 Schirrmacher, Franz ref1 Schmidt, Eric ref1, ref2 Schneier, Bruce ref1 Schudson, Michael ref1n science ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8n scoop ref1 Scoop (Waugh) ref1 Scotland Yard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Scotsman (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3 Scott, C.P. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9n, ref10n Scott, David ref1 Scott, Edward ref1 Scott, Henry E. ref1 Scott, John ref1 Scott, Richard ref1 Scott Trust ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15n Sellers, Frances Stead ref1 Selvey, Mike ref1 Senate Church committee (US) ref1 Senate Intelligence committee (US) ref1 Sensenbrenner, Jim ref1 September 11 (2001) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Serious Fraud Office (SFO) ref1 Shadid, Anthony ref1 Shainin, Jonathan ref1 Shaw, Fiona ref1 Sheehan, Neil ref1 Sheen, Michael ref1 Shenker, Jack ref1 Sherwood, Charles ref1 Shirky, Clay ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Siegal, Allan M. ref1 Silicon Valley ref1, ref2, ref3 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 comes to Oxford (SVCO) ref1 Simon, David ref1 Simonds, Gavin ref1 Simpson, O.J. ref1 Singer, Marc ref1 Skype ref1 Slate Group ref1 smartphones ref1, ref2 Smith, Ben ref1 Smith, Brad ref1 Smith, Julian (MP) ref1 Smith, Shane ref1 Smith, Tim (MP) ref1 Snapchat ref1 Snowden, Edward ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1 passim, ref1 passim, ref1, ref2n, ref3n Snowden (film) ref1 Soho offices ref1 Sony ref1 Soros ref1 Sorrell, Martin ref1 sources ref1 South Africa ref1, ref2, ref3 South, Christopher ref1 Sparrow, Andrew ref1 Spectator (magazine) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Spielberg, Steven ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6n sponsorship ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 sport ref1 Spotify ref1, ref2 Springer, Axel ref1 The Square and the Tower (Ferguson) ref1 Stalin ref1, ref2 Standage, Tom ref1 Starr, Paul ref1, ref2 ‘Start Me Up’ (song) ref1 Start the Week (radio) ref1 State of the Union speech (Clinton) ref1 Steele, Christopher ref1 Steele, Jonathan ref1 Stephenson, Sir Paul ref1, ref2, ref3 Stewart, Mr Justice ref1 Stone, Biz ref1 Stone, Oliver ref1, ref2, ref3n Strathairn, David ref1 Streep, Meryl ref1 subscription ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14n ‘subsidariat’ ref1, ref2n Suez ref1 Sullivan, Andrew ref1, ref2n Sulston, John ref1 Sulzberger, A.G. ref1, ref2, ref3n Sulzberger, Arthur ref1n super-injunctions ref1 Supreme Court (UK) ref1 Supreme Court (US) ref1, ref2 Sweden ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n Sweeney, John ref1 Swift, Jonathan ref1 Switzerland ref1, ref2, ref3 Sydney Morning Herald (newspaper) ref1, ref2 Sykes, Richard ref1 Syria ref1, ref2 tabloids ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9n, ref10n Tahrir Square (Cairo) ref1 Taliban ref1, ref2, ref3 talkboards ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n Tapscott, Don ref1 Task Force 373 ref1 tax ref1 avoidance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n havens ref1, ref2, ref3 Taylor, Gordon ref1, ref2, ref3 Taylor, John Edward ref1, ref2 Taylor, Matthew ref1 Technorati ref1 Terrorism Act (2000) (UK) ref1, ref2 terrorists ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 counter-terrorism ref1, ref2, ref3 Terry, Quinlan ref1 Tesco ref1, ref2, ref3n, ref4n Thailand ref1, ref2, ref3n Thalidomide ref1, ref2n Thatcher, Prime Minister Margaret ref1 Thatcher, Carol ref1 Thatcher, Mark ref1 The Onion Router (TOR) ref1 Thewlis, David ref1 Thirty Club ref1 Thompson, Bill ref1 Thompson, E.P. ref1, ref2 Thompson, Robert ref1 threads ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 ‘threat reports’ ref1 Three Little Pigs boiling the Big Bad Wolf (film) ref1 Thurlbeck, Neville ref1 Time (magazine) ref1 Times Educational Supplement (magazine) ref1 Tomasky, Michael ref1 Tomlinson, Ian ref1, ref2 Topix.net ref1 torture ref1 Tow Center for Digital Journalism ref1, ref2 toxic waste ref1 Trafigura ref1, ref2, ref3n training ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 travel writing ref1, ref2n Travis, Alan ref1 Treanor, Jill ref1 Tribune Co (US) ref1 Trinity Mirror ref1, ref2, ref3 TripAdvisor ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n trolls ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Trump, President Donald ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15 Trump Bump ref1, ref2, ref3n, ref4n trust ref1, ref2 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 passim, ref1n Trust ownership ref1 truth ref1 passim, xxiv, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 reverse burden of ref1, ref2n Tucker Carlson Tonight (TV) ref1 Tugendhat, Mr Justice ref1 Turkey ref1 Tweetdeck ref1 Twitter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n Tyas, John ref1 typesetting ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n UHNWI (ultra-high net-worth individuals) ref1 UKIP ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n, ref5n Ukraine ref1 unions ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Unique Selling Point ref1 unique users ref1 United Nations (UN) ref1, ref2 University of California (Berkeley) ref1 Upworthy ref1 USA Today (magazine) ref1, ref2 Usenet ref1 Utley, T.E. ref1, ref2n van Beurden, Ben ref1 The Vanishing Newspaper (Meyer) ref1, ref2 Vanity Fair (magazine) ref1, ref2 Vaz, Keith (MP) ref1 Verizon ref1 ‘verticals’ ref1 Vice (magazine) ref1, ref2 Vickers, Paul ref1 video ref1, ref2, ref3 Vietnam War ref1 ‘viewspaper–newspaper’ ref1, ref2, ref3 Vignette ref1 Viner, Kath ref1, ref2, ref3 Vodafone ref1 Volkswagen ref1 Vyshinsky, Andrey ref1 Wadsworth, A.P. ref1 Wagner, Adam ref1 Waldman, Simon ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n, ref5n Wales, Jimmy ref1 Walker, Christopher ref1 Wall Street ref1 Wall Street Journal (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Wallis, Neil ref1 Walter, Justin ref1 WAN-IFRA ref1 WannaCry ref1n Wapping ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 War Office ref1 Watergate ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Watson, Tom (MP) ref1 Waugh, Evelyn ref1 We the Media (Gillmor) ref1, ref2 Weatherup, James ref1 Web 1.0 ref1, ref2 Web 2.0 ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 ‘web monkeys’ ref1 Webster, Phil ref1 Weinstein, Harvey ref1 Weisberg, Jacob ref1 Wellcome Trust ref1, ref2, ref3 Wells, Holly ref1 West Africa ref1 West Coast giants see Silicon valley Westminster ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics (Lloyd) ref1 whistleblowers ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 White House (US) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 White, Michael ref1 Whitehall ref1, ref2, ref3 Whittam Smith, Andreas ref1 Whittow, Hugh ref1 ‘Why I Write’ (Orwell essay) ref1 WikiLeaks ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Wikinomics (Tapscott) ref1 Wikipedia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Wilby, Peter ref1 Wilkes, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6n Williams, Francis ref1 Wilton’s (restaurant) ref1 Windows 95 ref1 The Wire (TV) ref1 Wired (Anderson) ref1 Wired (magazine) ref1 Witherow, John ref1, ref2 witnesses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Witty, Andrew ref1 Wolf, Armin ref1 women ref1, ref2 Wood, Graeme ref1 Woodward, Bob ref1, ref2 Workthing ref1, ref2 World Cup (football) ref1 World Economic Forum ref1 A World Without Bees (Benjamin) ref1 Worsthorne, Peregrine ref1 WPP plc ref1 Wu, Tim ref1 Yahoo ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Yates, John ref1, ref2, ref3 The Year the Future Began (Campbell) ref1 Yemen ref1 Yo! Sushi Guardian ref1, ref2 Yodel ref1 Young Guardian ref1n Young, Hugo ref1 YouTube ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Zell, Sam ref1, ref2 Zuckerberg, Mark ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Also by Alan Rusbridger Play It Again: An Amateur Against the Impossible ‘Unnerving yet ultimately magnificent’ Sunday Times

The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.’1 A few months after Facebook moved up a gear I found myself on a platform with Mark Zuckerberg2 in Davos, with the biggest cheeses from venerable old-world media companies. All the chatter was about Murdoch, who was also there, and his purchase for $580 million of MySpace.3 Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters, talked about Murdoch’s acquisition as the tipping point when the business world finally woke up and took notice.


pages: 574 words: 148,233

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, anti-communist, anti-globalists, Asperger Syndrome, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, Columbine, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, dark triade / dark tetrad, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, estate planning, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, fulfillment center, illegal immigration, index card, Internet Archive, Jon Ronson, Jones Act, Kevin Roose, Mark Zuckerberg, medical malpractice, messenger bag, multilevel marketing, obamacare, Oklahoma City bombing, Parler "social media", post-truth, QAnon, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, source of truth, Steve Bannon, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, TikTok, Timothy McVeigh, traveling salesman, Twitter Arab Spring, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks, work culture , Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism

The Kremlin was happy too, keen to air his paranoia about the United States—denying citizens their rights, spying on them, and using the police to hunt them down. Liz Wahl did some of those interviews. An American former RT anchor, Wahl resigned on air in 2014 in protest of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Wahl thought Jones seemed harmless at first, an excitable character darkly speculating about the cabal of billionaires at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. But his theories grew more fantastical and darker. “He didn’t believe in U.S. democracy as we follow it,” Wahl told me. “He thought it was all just a cover for some kind of global elite takeover.” Even RT’s producers started pushing back. “They were like, ‘We can’t put this guy on.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2 Jim Rutenberg, “In Trump’s Volleys, Echoes of Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Theories,” New York Times, February 20, 2017, Business, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/media/alex-jones-conspiracy-theories-donald-trump.html. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3 YouTube Help, “Community Guidelines Strike Basics,” n.d., Google.com, accessed August 2, 2021, https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802032?hl=en. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 World Economic Forum, “Davos 2016—Press Conference: The Refugee and Migration Crisis,” YouTube, 6:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dApJnaaNwQY. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5 James Kirchick, “The Disgusting Breitbart Smear Campaign Against the Immigrant Owner of Chobani,” Daily Beast, September 2, 2016, https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-disgusting-breitbart-smear-campaign-against-the-immigrant-owner-of-chobani.


pages: 307 words: 82,680

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-fragile, bank run, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, British Empire, carbon tax, centre right, collective bargaining, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, declining real wages, degrowth, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, labour market flexibility, land value tax, libertarian paternalism, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, open economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, precariat, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rent control, rent-seeking, Salesforce, Sam Altman, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, The Future of Employment, universal basic income, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, working poor, Y Combinator, Zipcar

The opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence’, remarks by the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at AI Now: The Social and Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in the Near Term, New York University, 7 July. 13. Remarks by Christopher Pissarides at the 2016 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, January 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnNs2MYVQoE. 14. Standing, A Precariat Charter. 15. M. L. King (1967), Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press. 16. N. Gabler (2016), ‘The secret shame of middle-class Americans’, The Atlantic, May. 17. G.

Whether jobs are going to dry up or not, the march of the robots is undoubtedly accentuating insecurity and inequality. A basic income or social dividend system would provide at least a partial antidote to that, as more commentators now recognize.6 For example, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution, has described basic income as a ‘plausible’ response to labour market disruption.7 President Barack Obama said in an interview shortly before the end of his presidency that universal basic income would be ‘a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years’, noting: ‘What is indisputable … is that as AI [Artificial Intelligence] gets further incorporated, and the society potentially gets wealthier, the link between production and distribution, how much you work and how much you make, gets further and further attenuated.’8 The ethical and philosophical justifications for basic income – social justice, freedom and economic security – have been well established.

Gregory and U. Zierahn (2016), ‘The risk of automation for jobs in OECD countries: A comparative analysis’. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 189. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 19. K. Schwab (2016), The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum. 20. The Economist (2016), ‘Basically flawed’ and ‘Sighing for paradise to come’, The Economist, 4 June, pp. 12, 21–24. 21. Cited in Lee, ‘How will you survive?’ 22. C. Weller (2016), ‘The inside story of one man’s mission to give Americans unconditional free money’, Business Insider UK, 27 June. 23.


pages: 403 words: 125,659

It's Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, clean water, colonial rule, disinformation, Doha Development Round, Easter island, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, foreign exchange controls, Kibera, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, out of africa, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, structural adjustment programs, upwardly mobile, young professional, zero-sum game, éminence grise

He seemed buffeted, a man no longer in control of his destiny. ‘I've just moved into a larger flat in London, John, with a separate guest room. If you ever need a base’ – the phrase ‘bolt hole’ was on the tip of my tongue – ‘somewhere to rest up, just give me a call.’ The response came a few months later. A call from Davos, where John was attending the World Economic Forum. ‘I was wondering if I could take you up on that offer of a room?’ He gave no hint of how long he planned to stay or why he needed a place for the night when presumably, as a government VIP, he enjoyed the pick of London hotels. When he called again, this time from Oslo, where he was attending a conference, I asked whether his visit was something I could mention to journalist friends in London, always keen to see him.

But Mugo twigged immediately when he drove round to see John and came upon him burning documents. ‘That's when I knew he was off.’ Having long fretted over John's government liaison, his younger brother was quietly delighted. Thank God he was pulling out before becoming any more tarnished. John's trip would take him first to the Swiss resort of Davos, then to Oslo and London, where he and Justice Aaron Ringera were supposed to be tracking Kroll's progress on Goldenberg. In the flurry, no one noticed that this experienced traveller, the kind of man one would normally expect to see pulling a single roll-on case – seemed to be carrying an unusually large amount of luggage.


pages: 252 words: 79,452

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O'Connell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Picking Challenge, artificial general intelligence, Bletchley Park, Boston Dynamics, brain emulation, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, computer age, cosmological principle, dark matter, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, double helix, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Extropian, friendly AI, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, impulse control, income inequality, invention of the wheel, Jacques de Vaucanson, John von Neumann, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, life extension, lifelogging, Lyft, Mars Rover, means of production, military-industrial complex, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, profit motive, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Singularitarianism, Skype, SoftBank, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, superintelligent machines, tech billionaire, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, uber lyft, Vernor Vinge

When I asked him how far he felt we might be from a human-level artificial intelligence, Stuart was, in the customary manner of his profession, reluctant to offer predictions. The last time he’d made the mistake of alluding publicly to any sort of timeline had been the previous January at the World Economic Forum at Davos, where he sits on something called the Global Agenda Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and where he’d made a remark about AI exceeding human intelligence within the lifetime of his own children—the upshot of which, he said, had been a headline in the Daily Telegraph declaring that “ ‘Sociopathic’ Robots Could Overrun the Human Race Within a Generation.”

The slaves and peasants who hauled the stones for the pyramids, pulling in rhythm to the crack of the whip, the slaves working in the Roman galley, each man chained to his seat and unable to perform any other motion than the limited mechanical one, the order and march and system of attack of the Macedonian phalanx—these were all machine phenomena. Whatever limits the actions of human beings to their bare mechanical elements belongs to the physiology, if not the mechanics, of the machine age. Recently, on the website of the World Economic Forum, I had seen a list of the “20 Jobs That Robots Are Most Likely to Take Over.” Jobs with a 95 percent or higher chance of their practitioners being made obsolete by machines within twenty years included postal workers, jewelers, chefs, corporate bookkeepers, legal secretaries, credit analysts, loan officers, bank tellers, tax accountants, and drivers.


pages: 269 words: 70,543

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global by Rebecca Fannin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, cloud computing, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, fake news, family office, fear of failure, fulfillment center, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, megacity, Menlo Park, money market fund, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, QR code, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse automation, WeWork, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, young professional

Alibaba’s high-profile Ma—never one to be shy—made headlines as one of the first global business executives to visit Donald Trump post-election at Trump Tower, promising to help create American jobs by helping small businesses sell to China on Alibaba e-commerce sites. I listened as he promoted Alibaba from the stage of a packed Waldorf Astoria ballroom before members of the elite Economic Club of New York. He’s rubbed shoulders with who’s who at the World Economic Forum at Davos—and hosted Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and basketball star Kobe Bryant at previous AliFests where I’ve been one of thousands in the audience. With his gift for gab—in perfect English—Ma is now universally recognized by taxi drivers, teachers, brokers, and shop owners. This would have been hard to imagine when I first interviewed the stick-thin Ma in Hangzhou in 2006.

Innovators File Record Number of International Patent Applications, with Asia Now Leading. WIPO, March 19, 2019. https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2019/article_0004.html. 23. “World Intellectual Property Indicators,” WIPO, December 3, 2018; wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2018/article_0012.html. 24. World Economic Forum, “The Human Capital Report 2016”; weforum.org/docs/HCR2016_Main_Report.pdf. 25. National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators 2018, “The Rise of China in Science and Engineering”; nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/report. 26. Ibid. 27. Internet World Stats, March 31, 2019; https://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm Top 50 Countries/Markets by Smartphone Users and Penetration, 2018 figures from Global Mobile Market Report, Newzoo, Accessed April 18, 2019; https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-50-countries-by-smartphone-penetration-and-users/. 28.


pages: 268 words: 76,702

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, cryptocurrency, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, financial engineering, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, Leonard Kleinrock, lock screen, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, packet switching, patent troll, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Crocker, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, The Chicago School, the long tail, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, yield management, zero day

And it was the EFF who represented Jackson in the case. Barlow, ever the poet, became the one most keen to advocate a utopian and liberal vision for the internet, one on which he did not want the world’s established powers to encroach, as he eventually said in a now famous declaration of independence, delivered in Davos, Switzerland – the home of the elite’s World Economic Forum – in 1996. Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

., here routers, here, here Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), here, here Rubenstein, Michael, here Rusbridger, Alan, here Russia, here, here, here, here Sainsbury’s/Asda merger, here Schneidermann, Eric, here secure operations centres (SOCs), here sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs), here Shaw, Mona, here Silicon Valley, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Sinclair Broadcast Group, here Skype, here, here, here, here Snapchat, here, here Snowden, Edward, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here ‘social credit’, here Soundcloud, here South Korea, here sovereign immunity, here Spotify, here Stanford Research Institute (SRI), here, here, here, here, here, here, here Stripe, here Sun, The, here Sun Microsystems, here surveillance, here, here, here, here resistance to, here Symantec, here, here, here Syria, here, here Taboola, here, here TCP/IP, here, here Telefonica, here Telegram, here telephone networks, here, here, here Tempora, here, here TenCent, here, here terror plots, foiled, here Texas A&M, here Thatcher, Margaret, here Thiel, Peter, here, here Tibet, here Time Warner, here, here Times, The, here Tishgart, Barry, here Topolski, Robb, here traceroute, here, here tracking, see cookies trade unions, here, here, here trademark law, here transatlantic cables, here Tribune newspaper group, here Trump, Donald, here, here, here, here Tuchman, Barbara, here Tumblr, here, here Turkey, bans Wikipedia, here Tweetdeck, here Twitter, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Uber, here Ukraine, here Union Square Ventures (USV), here Universal Declaration of Human Rights, here Universal Studios, here University College, London, here University of California, Los Angeles UCLA, here, here, here, here University of Maryland Law School, here US Congress, here US Constitution, here, here US culture, and internet regulation, here US Department of Commerce, here, here US Department of Defense, here, here, here, here, here, here, here US Department of Energy, here US internet infrastructure, here, here US Supreme Court, here venture capital, here, here, here, here funding phases, here funding series, here, here Verizon, here, here Wales, Jimmy, here WannaCry attack, here Washington Post, here, here, here, here, here web addresses (URLs), here, here, here top-level domains (TLDs), here and WannaCry attack, here WeChat, here Wenger, Albert, here, here, here, here, here WhatsApp, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Wheeler, Tom, here, here, here WikiLeaks, here, here, here Wikipedia, here, here Williams, Evan, here Windows, vulnerability in, here wired.com, here wireless internet, here, here wiretapping, here Woodward, Bob, here World Economic Forum, here World Wide Web, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Wu, Tim, here Yahoo, here, here, here YouTube, here, here, here, here, here, here Zittrain, Jonathan, here Zuckerberg, Mark, here, here, here, here, here, here Zynga, here BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1b 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 This electronic edition published 2020 Copyright © James Ball, 2020 James Ball has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work All rights reserved.


pages: 215 words: 55,212

The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing by Lisa Gansky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, bike sharing, business logic, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, cloud computing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, diversification, Firefox, fixed income, Google Earth, impact investing, industrial cluster, Internet of things, Joi Ito, Kickstarter, late fees, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, planned obsolescence, recommendation engine, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart grid, social web, software as a service, TaskRabbit, the built environment, the long tail, vertical integration, walkable city, yield management, young professional, Zipcar

The political and commercial will has to be in place to spur the creation of an entirely new infrastructure to support the vehicles. Despite these obstacles, there are signs that the parts of the puzzle may finally be coming together, led in part by a Palo Alto- based company called Better Place. The CEO, Shai Agassi, says he named the company in response to the simple question posed at a World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland: “How can we make the world a better place?” Better Place has managed to attract several partners for different pieces of the electric vehicle puzzle, or as I like to think of it, the EV “ecosystem.” Better Place’s primary role is to create and run a network of battery-switching stations.


pages: 215 words: 59,188

Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside Down by Tom Standage

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, blood diamond, business logic, corporate governance, CRISPR, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, failed state, financial independence, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, index fund, industrial robot, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job-hopping, Julian Assange, life extension, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mega-rich, megacity, Minecraft, mobile money, natural language processing, Nelson Mandela, plutocrats, post-truth, price mechanism, private spaceflight, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, ransomware, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, South China Sea, speech recognition, stem cell, supply-chain management, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, undersea cable, US Airways Flight 1549, WikiLeaks, zoonotic diseases

The project is the clearest expression so far of Mr Xi’s determination to break with Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide our capabilities and bide our time; never try to take the lead”. The Belt and Road Forum (with its unfortunate acronym, BARF) was the second set-piece event in 2017 at which Mr Xi laid out China’s claim to global leadership. (The first was a speech against protectionism made at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.) In 2014, Wang Yi, the foreign minister, said the initiative was the most important component of Mr Xi’s foreign policy. Its ultimate aim is to make Eurasia (dominated by China) an economic and trading area to rival the transatlantic one (dominated by America). Behind this broad strategic imperative lies a plethora of secondary motivations – the number and variety of which prompt Western scepticism about the coherence and practicality of the project.


pages: 374 words: 111,284

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age by Roger Bootle

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, anti-work, antiwork, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, blockchain, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Chris Urmson, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, facts on the ground, fake news, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, low interest rates, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mega-rich, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Ocado, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, positional goods, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Simon Kuznets, Skype, social intelligence, spinning jenny, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, synthetic biology, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra

., Prices of High-Tech Products, Mismeasurements, and Pace of Innovation, Cambridge, MA, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017. 32 See Diamond, J. (1997) Guns, Germs and Steel, London: Jonathan Cape. 33 Romer, P. (2008) Economic Growth (Library of Economics and Liberty) http:/​/​www.​econlib.​org/​library/​Enc/​Economicgrowth.​html. Chapter 2 1 Prime Minister of Canada at the World Economic Forum in Davos. 2 Rod Brooks gave four dollars per hour as the approximate cost of Baxter in response to a question at the Techonomy 2012 Conference in Tucson, Arizona, on November 12, 2012, during a panel discussion with Andrew McAfee. 3 Templeton, J. (1993) 16 Rules for Investment Success, California: Franklin Templeton Distributors, Inc. 4 Rifkin, J. (1995) The End of Work, New York: Putnam Publishing Group. 5 Susskind, R. and Susskind, D. (2017) The Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 175. 6 Quoted in Kelly, K. (2016, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces that Will Shape our Future, New York: Penguin, p. 49. 7 This is known as Amara’s law after the scientist Roy Amara.

Chapter 5 1 Gunkel, D. (2018) Robot Rights, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, p. ix. 2 Quoted in Chace, C. (2016) The Economic Singularity, London: Three Cs Publishing. 3 Ross, A. (2016) The Industries of the future, London: Simon & Schuster, p. 130. 4 Ibid., p. 12. 5 Chace (2016), op. cit., pp. 117–18. 6 The World Economic Forum (2018) Reshaping Urban Mobility with Autonomous Vehicles, Geneva: World Economic Forum. 7 Quoted in R. Dingess (2017) Effective Road Markings are Key to an Automated Future, Top Marks (The Magazine of Road Safety Markings and Association), Edition 19. 8 Speaking at the Royal Society in London, reported in The Daily Telegraph, May 14, 2018. 9 Schoettle, B. and Sivak, M.

Joint Forces Command Rapid Assessment Process Report, prepared by Project Alpha, 2003, p. 6. 18 Singer, P. (2000) Robots at War: The New Battlefield, The Wilson Quarterly, adapted from Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the twenty-first Century, London: Penguin Press, 2009, available at https:/​/​wilsonquarterly.​com/​quarterly/​winter-2009-robots-at-war/​robots-at-war-the-new-battlefield/​ 19 This information comes from Cowen (2013). 20 Pinker, S. (1994) The Language Instinct, London: Penguin, pp. 190–1. 21 Reported in The Daily Telegraph, December 31, 2018. 22 Reported in The Daily Telegraph, January 22, 2018. 23 Harford, T. (2017) Fifty Things that made the Modern Economy, London: Little Brown. 24 Reported in the Financial Times, June 25, 2018. 25 Chace (2016), op. cit., pp. 252–3. 26 Ford, M. (2015) The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment, Great Britain: Oneworld publications, pp. 123–4. 27 World Economic Forum, in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group (2018) Toward a Reskilling Revolution A Future of Jobs for All, Geneva: World Economic Forum. 28 Ford (2015), op. cit., p. 162. 29 See the report in The Daily Telegraph, February 26, 2018. 30 Referred to in Ross (2016), op. cit., p. 33. 31 Quoted in Chace (2016), op. cit., p. 146. 32 Referred to in Susskind, R. and Susskind, D. (2017) The Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 45–7. 33 Adams 2009. 34 Chace (2016), op. cit., p. 165. 35 Keynes, J.


pages: 388 words: 99,023

The Emperor's New Road: How China's New Silk Road Is Remaking the World by Jonathan Hillman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, British Empire, cable laying ship, capital controls, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, drone strike, energy security, facts on the ground, high-speed rail, intermodal, joint-stock company, Just-in-time delivery, land reform, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Malacca Straits, megaproject, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, rent-seeking, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, special economic zone, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, supply-chain management, trade route, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, union organizing, Washington Consensus

Marlene Laruelle, “The China-Russia Relationship in Central Asia and Afghanistan” (testimony prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Washington, DC, March 21, 2019), https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Laruelle_Testimony.pdf. 33. Xi Jinping, “President Xi’s Speech to Davos in Full,” World Economic Forum, January 17, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum. 34. Kremlin: President of Russia, “Belt and Road International Forum.” 35. See memos by Hilary Appel and Elizabeth Wishnick, prepared for PONARS Policy Conference 2019, Washington, DC, http://www.ponarseurasia.org. 36. “Matchmakers See Chinese-Russian Intermarriages as More Links on Belt and Road,” Sputnik, March 4, 2018, https://sputniknews.com/society/201803041062200297-china-russian-marriage-booming-business/. 37.

Xi has been happy to play along, because Putin’s rhetoric softens suspicions that the BRI is a tool for extending Chinese influence into Central Asia. Both leaders are critics of the Western-led economic order, and talk of “linking” the BRI and EAEU helps position them as leaders of an alternative approach. Xi made headlines at the 2017 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, when he warned against protectionism and sounded like a bigger proponent of free trade and liberalization than some of his Western counterparts.33 Putin has made similar comments, including at the first Belt and Road Forum, when he pointed to “the crisis the globalization model finds itself in.”34 Neither has offered a coherent alternative, but their criticism of the status quo resonates with many developing countries.

Navy, (i) U.S. policy toward China: Cold War view that China served as bulwark against Soviets, (i); deteriorating relations of present time, (i); and Russian-Chinese partnership, (i) Uzbekistan, (i), (ii), (iii) Vatican, (i), (ii) Vestager, Margrethe, (i) Vietnam, (i), (ii), (iii) Vuchic, Vukan, (i) Wall Street Journal on Najib’s corruption, (i) Wang Yi, (i) Warsaw-Berlin highway, (i) Washington, George, (i) Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), (i) Wei Fenghe, (i) Wen Jiabao, (i) West Africa, Chinese investment in, (i) White, Richard: Railroaded, (i) Wickramasinghe, Shiranthi, (i) Wickramasuriya, Prasanna, (i) Wickremasinghe, Ranil, (i), (ii), (iii) Wickrematunge, Lasantha, (i) Wolf Warrior 2 (Chinese film), (i), (ii) Woosung railway, (i), (ii), (iii) World Bank: agreement with China for BRI development, (i); AIIB compared to, (i); benefits of pooled resources of, (i); blacklisting of China Communications Construction Company, (i); Central Asian connectivity plans and, (i)n16; China out-lending in Central Asia, (i); Chinese picking up abandoned projects of, (i); on CPEC potential, (i); on energy-tariff reforms, (i); Ethiopia and, (i), (ii); on Eurasian transportation projects funded by BRI, (i); on Kenya’s railway financed and built by China, (i); lending standards, (i), (ii); in Malaysia, (i); in Pakistan, (i); on railway construction, (i); Sri Lankan debt to, (i) World Economic Forum (2017), (i) World Health Organization, (i) World Trade Organization (WTO), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)n46 World War I, (i), (ii), (iii) World War II, (i), (ii) Wysocki, Bernard, Jr., (i) Xerxes (Persian king), (i), (ii), (iii) Xi Jinping: at Belt and Road Forum (2017), (i), (ii), (iii); at Belt and Road Forum (2019), (i), (ii), (iii); BRI announced by (2013), (i), (ii); BRI considered as signature vision of, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v); at BRI fifth anniversary (2018), (i); CPEC and, (i); Czech visit (2016), (i); Jokowi meeting (2015), (i); Kazakhstan visit (2013), (i), (ii); Kazakhstan world’s fair visit (2017), (i); “Made in China 2025” policy, (i); Malaysian rail development and, (i); Najib’s praise for, (i); Pakistan visit (2015), (i), (ii); at Piraeus Port, Greece (2019), (i); Putin and, (i), (ii), (iii); rejecting comparison of BRI initiative to colonialism, (i); Rome visit (2019), (i); Western criticisms of, (i); at World Economic Forum (2017), (i) Xinhua (Chinese news agency), (i), (ii) Xinjiang province (China): riots (2009), (i); security measures in, (i) Xu Lirong, (i) Yamamura, Kozo, (i), (ii) Yang Jiechi, (i) Yermegiyaev, Talgat, (i) Zeman, Miloš, (i) Zhang Yanmeng, (i) Zheng He, (i) Zhou Enlai, (i) Zhu Rongji, (i) Zia ul-Haq, Muhammad, (i) ZTE, (i), (ii)


pages: 254 words: 61,387

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World by Yancey Strickler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, accelerated depreciation, Adam Curtis, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, business logic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dutch auction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, financial independence, gender pay gap, gentrification, global supply chain, Hacker News, housing crisis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Nash: game theory, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, Mr. Money Mustache, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, offshore financial centre, Parker Conrad, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Solyndra, stem cell, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, white flight, Zenefits

He's been profiled in Wired, Financial Times, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Forbes, and Vox and has given keynotes at SXSW, the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, Atlantic Ideas Festival, Techcrunch Disrupt, Web Summit, the Walker Art Center, 92nd Street Y, and more. He was one of Fortune's 40 Under 40, on Vanity Fair's New Establishment list, and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. The London Spectator called him "one of the least obnoxious tech evangelists ever." What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now.

The paper describing the experiment is called “Effects of Externally Mediated Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,” and it was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1971. our potential will grow: There’s a passage from Drive that I’ve thought about ever since reading it. Daniel Pink profiles psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the book Flow. He writes: Several years ago—he can’t recall exactly when—Csikszentmihalyi was invited to Davos, Switzerland, by Klaus Schwab, who runs an annual conclave of the global power elite in that city. Joining him on the trip were three other University of Chicago faculty members—Gary Becker, George Stigler, and Milton Friedman—all of them economists, all of them winners of the Nobel Prize. The five men gathered for dinner one night and at the end of the meal, Schwab asked the academics what they considered the most important issue in modern economics.


pages: 460 words: 130,820

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Burning Man, business logic, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Didi Chuxing, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Elon Musk, financial engineering, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greensill Capital, hockey-stick growth, housing crisis, index fund, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Larry Ellison, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Maui Hawaii, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plant based meat, post-oil, railway mania, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, supply chain finance, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, Zenefits, Zipcar

Posnett became the co-head of the bank’s global investment banking services unit—the first woman to lead the business. Ludwig went on to lead the bank’s global capital markets business. Goldman’s CEO, David Solomon, meanwhile, didn’t offer much of a mea culpa on WeWork. In January 2020, he told a crowd at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that “the process worked” with WeWork. Investor feedback “ground it in reality.” The bank became a lender to SoftBank-controlled WeWork. At JPMorgan, Noah Wintroub had walked away from WeWork after a fight with Neumann in the days after the IPO was called off. Five months later, he was given a promotion, named one of eighteen “global chairmen” tasked with bringing new clients to the bank.

While a handful of CEOs who took SoftBank Vision Fund money publicly condemned the incident, the vast majority stayed quiet, despite pressure from their staff to speak out. Neumann didn’t grasp the political gravity of the situation. The Saudi government had planned a giant conference in Riyadh—hosted by Prince Mohammed and dubbed Davos in the Desert—which had attracted top CEOs, bankers, and money managers the previous year. Following the news of Khashoggi’s death, attendees were swiftly dropping out of the conference, yet Neumann wanted to go. Numerous aides pleaded with him to stay home, and WeWork’s public affairs team even had him talk to Stephen Hadley, national security adviser under George W.


pages: 318 words: 91,957

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy by David Gelles

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boeing 737 MAX, call centre, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, disinformation, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fulfillment center, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, income inequality, inventory management, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, Neil Armstrong, new economy, operational security, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QAnon, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, remote working, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Ballmer, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, technoutopianism, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, WeWork, women in the workforce

“Where the fiduciary duty is starting to move” Stakeholder capitalism is, in many ways, a nod to the Golden Age of Capitalism, a return to the collectivist spirit that prevailed before Welch arrived. And it is hardly a new invention. Indeed, even as Welchism was ascendent, a few lonely voices in the business world continued to call for a more holistic approach. Klaus Schwab, a German academic and the founder of the World Economic Forum, which for fifty years has gathered politicians and executives for an invitation-only retreat in Davos, Switzerland, has been advocating for the approach for decades. In 1971, as Schwab began his annual gatherings, he sought a way to articulate his theory of business and society. Picking up on the work of Adolf A. Berle Jr. and Gardiner C.

., 36, 37, 151–52, 203–20, 231 Welchism and, 8–9, see also Welchism Sharer, Kevin, 106 Sheffer, Gary, 39–40 Siegel, Marty, 54–55 60 Minutes (CBS TV program), 42, 131 Six Sigma, 101, 112–13, 127 Skilling, Jeffrey, 124 Sloan, Alfred, 25 Smith, Greg, 190 Smith, Kyle, 89 Sonnenfeld, Jeffrey, 164 Sorscher, Stan, 89 Southwest Airlines, 190 S&P Dow Jones Indices, 165 Spencer Stuart, 78 Spitzer, Eliot, 109–10, 125–26 Sprint, 169 SPX, 77, 105 stack ranking: Amazon and, 171–74 at Ford, 171 at Microsoft, 171 by 3G Capital, 179 at 3M, 112, 171 Vitality Curve at GE, 4, 44–45, 96–97, 152, 171, 172, 174 at WeWork, 171 stagflation, 18, 25, 33 stakeholder capitalism, 203–20, 231 activism and, 149–52 B Corp movement / public benefit corporations in, 212–13 at BlackRock, 213–14 Business Roundtable and, 26, 214, 222–24 at Chrysler, 216 at Delta Air Lines, 215 employee board representation, 216–17 employee compensation, 207–11, 215–16, 220 executive compensation in, 217–18, 219–20 GE as once-model corporate citizen, 4, 16, 20, 21–26, 42–43, 74, 165 long-term view in, 217–18 minimum wage and, 93, 183, 209, 215, 218, 223 nature of, 12–13 need for, 12–13 at PayPal, 207–11, 215, 220 at REI, 215–16 shareholder capitalism vs., 36, 37, 151–52, 203–20, 231 strengthening antitrust policies, 219 sustainability and good governance in, 205–7 taxation in, 23, 218–19 at Unilever, 203–7, 211, 217, 220 upskilling workers, 216 World Economic Forum and, 211–12 see also Golden Age of Capitalism Stanley, Frederick T., 80 Stanley Works, 77, 83–84, 110 Starbucks, 170 Stephanopoulos, George, 157 Stephenson, Randall, 175 Stiglitz, Joseph, 132 stock buybacks, see financialization (generally); financialization at GE stock market performance, see shareholder capitalism Stone, Roger, 196 Stonecipher, Harry, 87–90, 127, 128–29, 187, 191, 194 Stumo, Michael, 194 Stumo, Samya, 194 subprime mortgage crisis, 8, 137–38, 141–45, 148–49, 150, 165, 225 Success magazine, 91, 132 Summers, Larry, 93–94 Sunbeam Products, 71–72 Sundstrand, 87 Swope, Gerard, 22–23, 43 Symantec, 77, 105–6 Taco Bell, 170 TaskRabbit, 170 taxation: “active financing” exception, 62–63 corporate headquarters in Bermuda, 81–82 decline in U.S. corporate taxes, 63 in GE dealmaking, 51, 61, 62–63 in stakeholder capitalism, 23, 218–19 tax breaks for corporate expansion / relocations, 88–89, 173, 219 tax reduction efforts, 10, 63, 81–82, 88–89, 162, 185, 200–201 Trump and, 200–201 terrorist attacks (September 11, 2001), 7, 82, 113–15, 117, 136–37, 138, 228 Tester, Jon, 190 30 Rock (NBC TV program), 139–40 Thomson, 52, 82–84 3G Capital, 177–82, 206–7 3M, 9, 77, 107, 111–13, 127, 171 Tichy, Noel, 77 Tiller, Tom, 84–85, 107, 116 Time Warner, 175–76 Tim Hortons, 179 TiVo, 60, 62, 77 Today (NBC TV program), 117, 135, 195 Todd, Chuck, 160 “total war,” 34 Trani, John, 83–84, 110 Trump, Donald: The Apprentice (NBC TV program), 121, 134–35, 195 business advisory councils, 199–200 Charlottesville, Virginia white nationalist violence (2017), 199–200 conspiracy theories, 158, 160 JW and, 12, 59, 90–91, 121, 134–35, 158, 194–201, 221 presidency, 12, 166, 169, 188, 197–200, 214 Trump International Hotel and Tower, 7, 59, 119, 121, 195 Tungsram, 83 Tyco International, 124–25 Uber, 170, 226 Under Armour, 182 Unilever, 139–40, 203–7, 211, 217, 220 unions: at Boeing, 88, 89, 128–30 at Chrysler, 216 decline of, 46–47, 49–50 employee compensation and, 46–47, 49 JW opposition to, 11, 46–47, 132 United Auto Workers, 216 United Financial Corporation of California, 66–67 U.S.

., 69–70 wealth concentration, 10–12, 183–85 Welch, Jack (JW): books and audiobooks, 117, 131–32, 135, 195, 205–6 as chairman and CEO of GE, 2–3, 4–8, 10, 16–17, 32, 41–50, 75, see also chief executive officers (CEOs) at GE; General Electric (GE) as chairman of the NYC Leadership Academy, 132–33, 134 compensation / personal wealth, 7, 11, 91–92, 118–20, 197–98 death (2020), 11, 192, 193, 220–22 denunciation of shareholder capitalism, 151–52 divorce and remarriage, 117–20, 174 education, 18, 28 as embodiment of shareholder capitalism, 2–3, 4–8, see also shareholder capitalism family background, 16, 27 on the Fiat board, 83 financial crisis of 2008 and, 195–96 GE acolytes / protégés, 9, 77–85, 87–90, 99–113, 127–30, 135, 136–45, 153–54, 160–66, 176, 189–94, 200 in the GE appliances business, 30–31 in the GE plastics division, 28–30 Jack Welch Management Institute (online MBA program), 11, 134–35, 195 legacy of, 8–13, 146–49, 160–66, 220–31 as “Manager of the Century” (Fortune Magazine), 7, 91–97, 114–15, 117, 118–19, 120, 146, 152, 159, 163, 198, 230 as “Neutron Jack” (Newsweek), see “Neutron Jack” partisan politics and misinformation, 53, 156–60, 196–97, 198–99 personality / management style, 17–18, 27–32, 42, 48–49, 72, 76, 107–8 Pierre Hotel speech to analysts (1981), 33–35, 52 post-retirement transformation, 11, 96–97, 116–21, 130–35, 151–52 retirement (2001), 96, 126, 176 as role model, 72–73, 78–80, 81, 88, 111, 123–26, 175, 177–82, 191–94, 229–31 search for successor, 99–104 Six Sigma and, 101 stakeholder capitalism commentary, 151–52 as “Toughest Boss in America” (Fortune), 49 Donald Trump and, 12, 59, 90–91, 121, 134–35, 158, 194–201, 221 Twitter feeds, 157–58, 159–60, 174 virtues of, 84–85 Welch, Suzy Wetlaufer, 117–18, 131–32, 221 Welchism: at Allied Signal, 78–80, 220–21 at Amazon, 134, 171–74, 203 at Boeing, 86–90, 113, 127–30, 153–56, 186–94, 203 chief executive officer role and, 8–9, see also chief executive officers (CEOs) at GE Covid-19 pandemic and, 221–26 critiques of, 70, 72–73, 84–85, 92–97, 104–7, 115–16, 136–39, 147–49, 160–66 Crotonville Management Development Institute / GE University and, 9, 74–77, 133, 191, 192 Darwinian attitude in, 9, 28–29, 33–35, 83, 108 dealmaking in, see dealmaking (generally); dealmaking at GE downsizing in, see downsizing (generally); downsizing at GE end of, at GE, 166 at Fiat SpA, 82–84 financialization in, see financialization (generally); financialization at GE Friedman doctrine as basis of, 3–4, 6–7, 35–40, 93–94, 229 Friedrich Hayek in groundwork for, 35–36, 73, 230 impact in corporate America, 8–13, 175–85, 229 Jack Welch Management Institute (online MBA program) and, 11, 134–35, 195 of JW acolytes / protégés, 9, 77–85, 87–90, 99–113, 127–30, 135, 136–45, 153–54, 160–66, 176, 189–94, 200 JW denunciation of, 151–52 in JW post-retirement transformation, 130–35 at Kraft Heinz, 177, 181, 203, 206–7 legacy of, 8–13, 146–49, 160–66, 220–31 moving beyond, 12–13, 203–31, see also stakeholder capitalism nature of, 8–9 negative externalities in, 168–85 NYC Leadership Academy and, 132–33, 134 Six Sigma in, 101, 112–13, 127 at Stanley Works, 83–84, 110 at 3G Capital, 177–82, 206–7 Trump and, 198–201 see also shareholder capitalism Wells Fargo, 149 Wendt, Gary, 60, 62, 106, 111 West, Allen, 158 Western Asset Mortgage Capital (WMC), 137, 142–43, 165, 225 Westinghouse, 18, 66 Wetlaufer, Suzy, 117–18, 131–32, 221 WeWork, 134, 171 Whitehead, John C., 39 Willis, Earl, 23 Winning (Welch and Welch), 131, 195 Winning: The Answers (Welch and Welch), 131 worker compensation, see employee compensation WorldCom, 125 World Economic Forum, 211–12 World War I, 204 World War II, 18, 22, 86, 183–84 Wriston, Walter, 119–20 Xerox, 18 Yokogawa Medical Systems (Japan), 18–19 Young, Owen D., 23 Zaslav, David, 176, 221 zero-based budgeting (ZBB), 179 Zuckerberg, Mark, 134, 184 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2022 by David Gelles All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.


Uncontrolled Spread by Scott Gottlieb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Atul Gawande, Bernie Sanders, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, fear of failure, global pandemic, global supply chain, Kevin Roose, lab leak, Larry Ellison, lockdown, medical residency, Nate Silver, randomized controlled trial, social distancing, stem cell, sugar pill, synthetic biology, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

On January 21, the White House started to actively plan the legal, policy, and logistical requirements for implementing an airport screening program to detain travelers from China and subject them to temperature checks and extra surveillance for symptoms.15 The next day, President Trump got his first question on the virus during an interview on CNBC from Davos, where he was attending the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum. Asked by Squawk Box anchor Joe Kernen if he was worried about the outbreak, Trump replied, “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. . . . It’s going to be just fine.”16 Whatever reassurance policymakers held that the virus could be contained, it would be shaken a day later, on Thursday, January 23, when China imposed a cordon around Wuhan, a city of 11 million people—a full lockdown restricting movement into and out of the city that would last two months.

See Testing Viral genome sequencing, 60–62, 67–68, 95, 245, 384–86, 388, 466–67n Virological.org, 35–36 Vision Medicals, 27, 29 Vought, Russ, 214 Vulnerability, 12, 14 Wadsworth Center, 116–17, 130 Wajngarten, Fabio, 204 Wall Street Journal, 24, 57–58, 85–86, 122, 225–26, 312, 362 Walmart, 202 Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 253, 306 Wanbei Coal-Electricity Group, 343–44 Washington, State of Bedford’s analysis, 60–62 first cases, 56–57, 60–61 stay-at-home orders, 150 superspreader events, 221–22 Washington Post, 23, 38–39, 205, 247, 251, 358 Washington State Health Department, 56, 67 WeChat, 30–31, 32, 370 Weibo, 31, 42 Wei Guixian, 26–27 Wellcome Trust, 283 West Nile virus, 104, 270 West Philadelphia Medical Association, 191–92 White House Coronavirus Task Force community spread, 89–90 hospital data, 239 masks, 249–51 meeting of January 21, 78 pandemic preparedness, 200 snow day restrictions, 199 surveillance, 74, 75–76, 78, 79, 82, 90–91 testing, 137–38, 152 White House outbreak, 303–5, 384–86, 387 White House testing protocol, 308–9, 381–84 WHO (World Health Organization) case definition, 131–32 Chinese government interactions, 31–34, 36–39, 43 China lockdown, 20–21, 44–45 genetic sequencing, 36–37 H5N1 bird flu outbreak, 179 initial reporting, 15 International Health Regulations, 32–33, 37–38, 51, 182, 344, 350–51, 352, 393 lab leak theory, 357, 362–63 MERS outbreak, 257, 281, 344 Public Health Emergency of International Concern, 32–33, 42–44, 100, 344 reporting requirements, 32–34, 37–38, 42–44, 51, 182 SARS outbreak, 53, 182, 281 social distancing, 214 testing, 95–96, 107, 109, 113–14 Trump’s withdrawal from, 51–52 watch list of priority diseases, 283, 284, 344 Zika virus, 100 Wired (magazine), 248–49 Woodcock, Janet, 286–87 Woodward, Bob, 205 World Economic Forum, 19 World Health Organization. See WHO World Trade Center, 7 Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 359 Wuhan Central Hospital, 26, 27, 30–31, 42 Wuhan Eleventh Hospital, 26–27 Wuhan Health Commission, 32, 34 Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), 35, 401–2n lab leak theory, 354–65, 379, 461n Wuhan outbreak, 14–15, 17–22, 26–27, 29–36, 41–43, 47–50, 56, 58, 87–88, 174, 370–71, 375 Ai Fen and, 30, 31, 41 case numbers, 15, 19, 39 CDC’s lack of access, 47–50 Chinese government interactions, 31–34 death of Li Wenliang, 30–31, 42 first cases, 26–27, 39–40 initial reporting, 14–15, 18 lockdown, 20–21, 42, 44–45, 51 Zhang Yongzhen’s release of sequence, 35–36 Wuhan Public Security Bureau, 31 “Wuhan SARS,” 31–32 Xi Jinping, 43, 44, 51 Xinhua News Agency, 42–43 Yap, 100 Yellow fever, 100, 101 Yeungnam University Medical Center, 259–60 Yip, Ray, 49 Zhang Yongzhen, 35–36 Zhong Nanshan, 18 Zika virus epidemic, 23, 24, 99–106, 169, 273, 278–79, 447n sexual transmission, 101 tests, 23, 100–106, 108 Zoom, 197–97 About the Author DR.

15.World Health Organization, “Prioritizing Diseases for Research and Development in Emergency Contexts,” https://www.who.int/activities/prioritizing-diseases-for-research-and-development-in-emergency-contexts. 16.The UK and EU were added to its roster of international sponsors. Clive Cookson and Tim Bradshaw, “Davos Launch for Coalition to Prevent Epidemics of Emerging Viruses,” Financial Times, January 18, 2017. 17.Jason Beaubien, “Ebola Never Went Away. But Now There’s a Drug to Treat It,” National Public Radio, October 20, 2020. 18.World Health Organization, “Prioritizing Diseases for Research and Development in Emergency Contexts,” https://www.who.int/activities/prioritizing-diseases-for-research-and-development-in-emergency-contexts. 19.Steve Usdin, “DARPA’s Gambles Might Have Created the Best Hopes for Stopping COVID-19,” BioCentury, March 19, 2020. 20.Meg Tirrell (@megtirrell), “Dr.


pages: 458 words: 116,832

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry, Ulises A. Mejias

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, behavioural economics, Big Tech, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, colonial rule, computer vision, corporate governance, dark matter, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, different worldview, digital capitalism, digital divide, discovery of the americas, disinformation, diversification, driverless car, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, extractivism, fake news, Gabriella Coleman, gamification, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Chrome, Google Earth, hiring and firing, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Kevin Kelly, late capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, PageRank, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, profit maximization, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, scientific management, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, Snapchat, social graph, social intelligence, software studies, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, techlash, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, Thomas Davenport, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, trade route, undersea cable, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, work culture , workplace surveillance

Scholz, Uberworked and Underpaid; Scholz and Schneider, Ours to Hack and to Own; and Scholz, Digital Labor. 9. See Schiller, Digital Depression, 246; Thatcher, O’Sullivan, and Mahmoudi, “Data Colonialism”; Sassen, Expulsions; Zuboff, “Big Other,” 75–89; and Cohen, “Biopolitical Public Domain.” 10. Moore, Web of Life. 11. World Economic Forum, Personal Data. 12. Haupt, “A Ludicrous Proposition.” 13. World Economic Forum, Personal Data. 14. Palmer, “Data Is the New Oil.” 15. Cohen, “Biopolitical Public Domain.” 16. OECD, “Data-Driven,” 195–97. 17. Klein, This Changes Everything, 103. 18. Acosta, “Extractivismo y Neoextractivismo.” 19. In Klein, “Dancing the World.” 20.

Exterminating natives and chopping down trees is accomplished “cheaply” only when a certain ideological, legal, cultural, and even religious system of beliefs is put in place. Today, what we have is a different version of the same fundamental move: the collection of cheap social data, an abundant “natural” resource. We can see this rationalization operating in the metaphors used to describe data extraction. A World Economic Forum report stated that “personal data will be the new ‘oil’—a valuable resource of the 21st century. It will emerge as a new asset class touching all aspects of society.”11 The allusion to petroleum seemed to be particularly evocative in the early 2010s, as evidenced by the number of times it was employed by CEOs and analysts.

This claim might shock those who see in “datafication . . . an essential enrichment in human comprehension” or “a great infrastructural project that rivals” the Enlightenment’s Encyclopédie.134 But let’s get beyond the hype and look at what is actually going on in the social sciences today. A good example is the work of celebrated data scientist Alex Pentland at the MIT Media Lab. Pentland contributed to the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Reports in 2008, 2009, and 2014;135 his research team won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) prize to commemorate the internet’s fortieth anniversary.136 In his book Social Physics, Pentland reaches back to the origins of sociology. But far from reworking classic ideas of the social sciences, Pentland’s goal is to replace existing models in sociology and social psychology with the search for “statistical regularities within human movement and communication” that can generate “a computational theory of behaviour.”137 As he put it in the MIT Technology Review, “We’re not where economics is yet.


pages: 237 words: 72,716

The Inequality Puzzle: European and US Leaders Discuss Rising Income Inequality by Roland Berger, David Grusky, Tobias Raffel, Geoffrey Samuels, Chris Wimer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Bear Stearns, Branko Milanovic, business cycle, Caribbean Basin Initiative, Celtic Tiger, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, double entry bookkeeping, equal pay for equal work, fear of failure, financial innovation, full employment, Gini coefficient, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, offshore financial centre, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, rent-seeking, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, time value of money, very high income

He is a member of the Supervisory Board of Siemens (Second Deputy Chairman), a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of Royal Dutch Shell, and a member of the Board of Directors of Zurich Financial Services (Vice Chairman). He also plays an active role, among various other activities, in the Initiative Finanzstandort Deutschland (member of the Initiators’ Group), the Institute of International Finance (Chairman), the World Economic Forum (Co-Chairman of the Foundation Board), the St. Gallen Foundation for International Studies (Chairman), and the Metropolitan Opera New York (Advisory Director). Ackermann was recently appointed Visiting Professor in Finance at the London School of Economics, and Honorary Professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt. ______________________________ R.

Lévy helped turn Publicis into a global powerhouse through a series of important mergers and acquisitions, notably the 2000 acquisition of the British superstar advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi, the 2007 acquisition of Digitas, and the 2009 purchase of Microsoft’s Razorfish. The Anti-Defamation League recently recognized Lévy for his commitment to promote diversity and tolerance in the workplace. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum Foundation Board, and (since June 2006) the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank. In 2010, he was elected President of the French association AFEP (French Association of Private Companies) that represents top French listed companies. He has also served on the Advisory Committee of the Banque de France and the French Government’s Commission to R.

I was interested and surprised, with a certain amount of irony, when I heard and saw Larry Summers at the centennial celebration of Harvard Business School denouncing with almost a revolutionary tone that 1% of the richer American was getting 25% of the national income, which was about the rate in the 1920s and two-and-a-half times what it was in the seventies. So while the richest 1% was getting 10% in the seventies, it had now moved to 25%, which was about the same amount as in the twenties. The same Larry Summers, I remember clearly in discussion a few years earlier at Davos, was absolutely not uncomfortable about most aspects of our economic system. When I was trying to question some of its aspects, he was defending it. So this is a new phenomenon. The other new thing, of course, is that this inequality debate has focused on executive compensation, which is a part of inequality which is easier to see and probably that people find easier to handle.


pages: 411 words: 80,925

What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live by Rachel Botsman, Roo Rogers

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Buckminster Fuller, business logic, buy and hold, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commoditize, Community Supported Agriculture, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, dematerialisation, disintermediation, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, global village, hedonic treadmill, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, information retrieval, intentional community, iterative process, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, late fees, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Menlo Park, Network effects, new economy, new new economy, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer rental, planned obsolescence, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, public intellectual, recommendation engine, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Simon Kuznets, Skype, slashdot, smart grid, South of Market, San Francisco, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, TED Talk, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thorstein Veblen, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, traveling salesman, ultimatum game, Victor Gruen, web of trust, women in the workforce, work culture , Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

In his book What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis observed, “Everything’s the same; nothing’s unique; and that takes the fun out of making, buying and owning. But the small-is-the-new-big world could bring variety back. The craftsman lives again on Etsy.”20 In 2009, Kalin traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to talk to world leaders about Etsy’s vision to “create millions of local living economies that will create a sense of community in the economy again.” In a prepared video message made for the Forum, sitting on an old sofa covered in a pink and red quilt, and surrounded by patchwork cushions, a brightly colored oversize toy octopus, and two teddy bears (obviously all made by Etsy sellers), Kalin explained that “these millions of local living economies around the world are more sustainable for the planet than a small number of huge conglomerate companies.”

of Interface Swap Shop swap trading see also bartering; specific companies SwapTree Tai, Kendra Mae Tapscott, Don Tarbell, Jared Target taxi2 technoeconomic paradigm shifts TechShop Thackara, John Theory of Human Motivation, A (Maslow) Threadless thredUP Through the Looking-Glass (Carroll) throwaway living Timberland time banks TimeBanks USA Time UK Factory tipping point Tomasello, Michael Tonkinwise, Cameron tool sharing schemes Torvalds, Linus Townson, David toy libraries Toynbee, Arnold Trade School Tragedy of the Commons, The (Hardin) transaction costs, collapse of travel, peer-to-peer see also specific companies trust: in collaborative lifestyles fairness and reputation and between strangers and value of currency Turner, Fred Twitter U-exchange Uhlhaas, Christoph unconsumption Urm, Tiina usage PSS UsedCardboardBoxes user communities see also brand communities Vacanti, Vincius values of leisure time redefined by collaborative consumption Vanderbilt, Tom Veblen, Thorstein Vélib VEN Vineberg, Scott viral marketing Viral Spiral (Bollier) Virgin Atlantic Walker, Rob Wal-Mart waste, waste production: from consumerism created by idling capacity post-industrial boom in Waste and Resources Action Programme Waste Makers, The (Packard) Wealth of Nations, The (Smith) WeCommune.com we generation, vs. me generation We Love Etsy WeThink (Leadbeater) What Would Google Do (Jarvis) When Corporations Rule the World (Korten) Whipcar Whiting, Josh Why We Cooperate (Tomasello) Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams) Wikipedia Williams, Anthony D. Williams, Russ Williamson, Oliver E. Wilson, Fred Wired Wisdom of Crowds, The (Surowiecki) Woolard, Caroline World Economic Forum Xerox YouTube Zalles, Jeffrey Zeckhauser, Richard Zilok Zinman, Jonathan Zipcar Zittrain, Jonathan Zopa Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerman, Dustin Acknowledgments First and foremost we would like to thank Gillian Blake. We are enormously indebted to her for the dedication and extraordinary editorial talent that pervade every aspect of this book.


pages: 280 words: 83,299

Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, gender pay gap, gentrification, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Kibera, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, off grid, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Potemkin village, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, urban planning, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

Religion News Service, 6 September 2016. http://religionnews.com/2016/09/06/why-is-christianity-declining 93 Patricia Miller, “Women Are Leaving the Church, and the Reason Seems Clear,” Religion Dispatches, 25 May 2016. http://religiondispatches.org/women-are-leaving-church-and-the-reason-seems-clear 94 Oliver Smith, “Mapped: The World’s Most (and Least) Religious Countries,” Telegraph, 16 April 2017. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/most-religious-countries-in-the-world/ 95 Linda L. Malenab-Hornilla, “Overview of Urbanization in the Philippines,” Overview of the Philippines Action Plan, 14 December 2015. http://www.urbangateway.org/icnup/sites/default/files/ICNUP%20Philippines.pdf 96 “Rankings,” 2016 Gender Gap Report (Davos: World Economic Forum, 2016). http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/rankings/ 97 Joes Torres, “Church Attendance in Philippines Declines,” UCA News, 25 April 2017. http://www.ucanews.com/news/church-attendance-in-philippines -declines/78988 98 Danielle Erika Hill and Scott Douglas Jacobsen, “Women’s Rights in the Philippines: An Overview,” Humanist Voices, 11 May 2017. https://medium.com/humanist-voices/womens-rights-in-the-philippines-an-overview-55ab86df42a 99 “Highlights of the 2010 Census-Based Population Projections” (Quezon City: Philippines Statistics Authority, 9 August 2016). https://www.psa.gov.ph/statistics/census/projected-population 100 “Total Fertility Rate, 1960–2014,”Statistics Explained (Luxembourg: Eurostat, 14 March 2016). http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Total_fertility_rate,_1960–2014_(live_births_per_woman)_YB16.png 101 Nikos Konstandaras, “Greece’s Dismal Demographics,” New York Times, 9 December 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/opinion/greeces-dismal-demographics.html 102 “Italy Is a ‘Dying Country’ Says Minister as Birth Rate Plummets,” Guardian, 13 February 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/13/italy-is-a-dying-country-says-minister-as-birth-rate-plummets 103 Zosia Wasik, “Poland’s Shrinking Population Heralds Labour Shortage,” Financial Times, 4 September 2015. https://www.ft.com/content/3001e356-2fba-11e5-91ac-a5e17d9b4cff 104 Ibid. 105 Valentina Romei, “Eastern Europe Has the Largest Population Loss in Modern History,” Financial Times, 27 May 2016. http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2016/05/27/eastern-europe-has-the-largest-population-loss-in-modern-history 106 Evan Hadingham, “Ancient Chinese Explorers,” Nova, 16 January 2001. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ancient-chinese-explorers.html 107 Neil Cummins, “Marital Fertility and Wealth During the Fertility Transition: Rural France 1750–1850,” Economic History Review, Vol. 66, No. 2 (2013), pp. 449–76. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2012.00666.x/epdf?

Today the population is evenly split between rural and urban, and by 2030 the Philippines is projected to be 65 percent urban.95 As the Philippines urbanizes, the rights of women in Filipino society grow stronger. In 2010 the government passed what it called “the Magna Carta for Women,” a comprehensive series of laws banning discrimination of any kind against women and affording them increased legal protection from violence. Today, the Philippines ranks seventh (Iceland comes in first) in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report.96 In 1965, the Filipino fertility rate was seven. Today it’s three, and falling at a rate of about half a baby every five years. Half a baby every five years! The Philippines offers further proof that, while fertility rates declined in the developed world over more than a century, they are collapsing in the developing world in the space of a few decades.


pages: 302 words: 85,877

Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World by Joseph Menn

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Andy Rubin, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, commoditize, corporate governance, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Gabriella Coleman, Google Chrome, Haight Ashbury, independent contractor, information security, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Naomi Klein, NSO Group, Peter Thiel, pirate software, pre–internet, Ralph Nader, ransomware, Richard Stallman, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, tech worker, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, zero day

Laird was becoming the new wise elder, the role Chris Tucker had played. Like Chris Tucker, Laird wasn’t coming from nowhere. He was building on the politicization that had been expressed most dramatically earlier in 1996 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s John Perry Barlow, a libertarian Republican. While a party had raged on around him during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Barlow had read that an over-the-top attempt to ban web porn had just been signed into law in America as part of telecom legislation. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” was Barlow’s over-the-top response. A deliberate echo of Thomas Jefferson, it began with a hint of Karl Marx: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind.

See MacMillan, Dan white nationalism, in tech world, 6, 144, 193–196 Whole Earth Catalog (magazine), 22 WikiLeaks, 3, 142–151, 155–156, 158–159, 163, 166, 169–170, 192 Windows, 56, 63, 95, 111, 163, 167 Windows 7, 124 Windows 95, 38, 50, 61, 64, 82 Windows 98, 77, 82 Windows NT, 68–69, 77–78, 82 Windows XP Service Pack 2, 111 See also Back Orifice; Microsoft Wired (magazine), 30, 44, 46, 66, 73–74, 93–94, 99, 178 Wired News (online magazine), 94–95 Wiretapper’s Ball, 163 wiretapping, 143, 145, 163, 198 women, in tech world, 16, 46, 49–50, 141, 149, 154–155, 158 Wong, Blondie, 93–100 Works, the (bulletin board), 38, 41, 45–48, 59 World Economic Forum, 89 World Trade Center. See 9/11 attacks Wysopal, Chris (Weld Pond), 44–45, 55–56, 62–63, 72–73, 76–77, 108–110 Veracode, 121, 183, 185 Xerobank (xB), 129–130, 139, 195 XmasCon. See HoHoCon Yahoo, 4, 5, 107, 124, 198 Yes Men, 61 Yippies (Youth International Party), 19, 43 York, Byron (Lou Cipher), 54–55 Youth International Party Line (newsletter), 19, 43 YouTube, 149, 201, 211 Zatko, David, 53–54 Zatko, Peiter (Mudge), 67–68, 73, 75–77, 79–81, 91, 142, 188 history and joining hacking groups, 51, 53–59 professional career, 3, 99, 104, 120–121, 182–183 working with government officials, 4, 108–110, 113–116, 138, 172, 175–181, 206 Zatko, Sarah, 182 Zedong, Mao, 94 Zimmerman, Phil, 100 Zovi, Dino Dai, 177 Zuckerberg, Mark, 142, 191, 200–201 PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997.


pages: 234 words: 63,844

Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal That Undid Him, and All the Justice That Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein by James Patterson, John Connolly, Tim Malloy

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, corporate raider, Donald Trump, East Village, Elon Musk, Isaac Newton, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Murray Gell-Mann, Ponzi scheme, Stephen Hawking, WikiLeaks

On January 2, 2015, Virginia Roberts’s allegations about her relationship with the prince—and the photo of him with his arm around Roberts’s waist—appeared in the press. Prince Andrew was forced to cut short a skiing holiday to confer with his mother, the queen, and to issue a statement denying Roberts’s allegations—a step that was widely seen as being without precedent for a member of the royal family. That same month, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the prince was again forced to “reiterate and to reaffirm” the repeated denials made by Buckingham Palace that he had any sort of sexual relationship with Roberts, who had announced in papers filed at the start of the year that Prince Andrew has a “sexual interest in feet.”


pages: 756 words: 120,818

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization by Michael O’sullivan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, classic study, cloud computing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, credit crunch, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, knowledge economy, liberal world order, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, performance metric, Phillips curve, private military company, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Sinatra Doctrine, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, Suez canal 1869, supply-chain management, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, tulip mania, Valery Gerasimov, Washington Consensus

Blockchain is perhaps the most fashionable, and it is expected to result in cost reductions for financial services companies, for example. Following closely behind is the “rent economy” described very well in Klaus Schwab’s The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the host of what is more commonly known as Davos, and he highlights such facts as that Uber, the world’s biggest taxi company, doesn’t own any cars and that Airbnb, the world’s largest “hotel” chain, doesn’t own any hotels. In the Airbnb- and Uber-led economy, capital investment is low, incumbent businesses suffer reduced profitability, and cost optimization is pushed to individual producers and consumers.

For instance, French author Nicolas Santolaria has written a book, Comment j’ai sous-traité ma vie (How I outsourced my life), in which he describes his attempt to outsource as many chores and lifestyle tasks as possible to apps, including dating apps that let him pay to have someone “pre–chat up,” if that’s the right phrase, partners he is interested in dating. My rejoinder is that technology, when gushingly described by flashy futurologists, seems breathtaking, but for the majority of ordinary people it can prove confusing, intimidating, and vexing. For example, at the 2018 World Economic Forum, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said, “The pace of change has never been this fast, and yet it will never be this slow again.”2 This will have delighted “Davosians,” but it is also the kind of statement that strikes fear into most ordinary people. My feeling—supported by the way people vote and by the rise, for instance, of new mental-health disorders such as video game addiction and acute attention deficit disorder—is that the majority of people are experiencing more change than they are comfortable with and would rather slow down than accelerate the pace of change.

In some respects, the world is now so well connected in its financial and information flows that globalization is everywhere, so much so that we have become much less conscious of it. Globalization has few defenders, as it is now unfashionable and politically unprofitable to show support for it. It has no outright owner, though some international research bodies and thought leaders like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) are closely associated with it. Similarly, many economic, political, and social stresses, such as inequality, poverty, and the decline of agriculture, are ascribed to the evils of globalization, regardless of the true origins of those stresses (in fact, during globalization the world poverty level has collapsed from 35 percent of the world population in 1990 to 11 percent in 2013).4 In addition, the public understanding of globalization is not strong.


pages: 443 words: 98,113

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, first-past-the-post, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, information retrieval, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, investor state dispute settlement, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, megaproject, mini-job, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Kinnock, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, openstreetmap, patent troll, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, remote working, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, structural adjustment programs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Members or former members of the commission, set up by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1973 to ‘foster cooperation’ between Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region, have taken top positions in government, industry and finance, at national and international levels, including successive heads of the World Bank. Other circuits of the rich and powerful include the World Economic Forum in Davos and its offshoots, and a number of multinational corporations that link the elite around the world. These include BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, whose tentacles stretch across the globe; it has a stake in almost every listed company in the world and controls $4.5 trillion in assets, including corporate bonds, sovereign debt and commodities as well as shares.

Elliott, ‘Robots threaten 15m UK jobs, says Bank of England’s chief economist’, The Guardian, 12 November 2015. 21 J. Bessen, ‘The automation paradox’, The Atlantic, 19 January 2016. 22 The growing merger of physical, digital and biological technologies has been dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution. K. Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016). 23 L. Karabarbounis and B. Neiman, ‘The global decline of the labor share’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129 (1), 2014: 61–103. 24 R. Dobbs, T. Koller, S. Ramaswamy, J. Woetzel, J. Manyika, R. Krishnan and N. Andreula, Playing to Win: The New Global Competition for Corporate Profits (New York: McKinsey Global Institute, September 2015). 25 One US study suggests that the whole of the decline in the labour share is due to a rise in the capital share of intellectual property, in which the intellectual property owners have captured all the resulting productivity gains.

W. 1 Phillips curve 1 ‘pig cycle’ effects 1 Piketty, Thomas 1, 2 Pinochet, Augusto 1, 2, 3 platform debt 1 Plato 1 plutocracy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Polanyi, Karl 1 policing 1 political consultancy 1 Politico magazine 1 Ponzi schemes 1 Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) 1 POPS (privately owned public spaces) 1 Portfolio Recovery Associates 1 ‘postcapitalism’ 1 poverty traps 1, 2, 3 precariat and commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and debt 1, 2 and democracy 1, 2 emergence of 1 growth of 1, 2 and rentier platforms 1, 2, 3 revolt of see revolt of precariat predatory creditors 1 ‘primitive rebel’ phase 1 Private Landlords Survey (2010) 1 privatisation and commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and debt 1, 2 and democracy 1 and neo-liberalism 1 and rentier platforms 1 and revolt of precariat 1 and shaping of rentier capitalism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 professionalism 1 ‘profit shifting’ 1 Property Law Act (1925) 1 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 1 Public and Commercial Services Union 1 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 1, 2, 3. 4, 5, 6 QE (quantitative easing) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Quayle, Dan 1 QuickQuid 1 Reagan, Ronald 1, 2 reCAPTCHA security system 1 ‘recognition’ phase 1 ‘redistribution’ phase 1 Regeneron Pharmaceuticals 1 rentier platforms and automation 1 and cloud labour 1 and commodification 1 and ‘concierge’ economy 1 ecological and safety costs 1 and occupational dismantling 1 and on-call employees 1 and precariat 1, 2, 3 and revolt of precariat 1, 2 and ‘sharing economy’ 1, 2, 3, 4 and underpaid labour 1 and venture capital 1 rentiers ascendency of 1, 2 and British Disease 1 classical images of 1 and commons see commons and debt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and democracy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 digital/tasking platforms see rentier platforms ‘euthanasia’ of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 lies of rentier capitalism 1, 2, 3 revolt of precariat see revolt of precariat shaping of see shaping of rentier capitalism subsidies for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ‘representation’ phase 1 ‘repression effect’ 1 Research of Gartner 1 revolt of precariat and basic income systems 1 and commons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ‘euthanasia’ of rentiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 inequality of rentier capitalism 1, 2, 3 and intellectual property 1, 2, 3 and neo-liberalism 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 organisational forms 1 potential growth of movement 1 progressive political reengagement 1, 2 and rentier platforms 1, 2 rights as demands 1 sovereign wealth funds 1 wage and labour regulation 1, 2 ‘right to buy’ schemes 1, 2, 3, 4 Robbins, Lionel 1 Rockefeller, David 1 Rockefeller, John D. 1 Rolling Stone 1 Romney, Mitt 1 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 1 Ross, Andrew 1 Ross, Michael 1 Rothermere, Viscount 1, 2 Royal Bank of Scotland 1, 2 Royal Mail 1 Royal Parks 1 Rubin, Robert 1, 2 Rudd, Amber 1 Ruralec 1 Ryan, Conor 1 Sainsbury, Lord 1 Samsung 1, 2, 3 Sanders, Bernie 1, 2, 3 Sassen, Saskia 1 school–business partnerships 1 Schröder, Gerhard 1 Schwab Holdings 1 Schwarz, Dieter 1 Scottish Water 1 Second Gilded Age 1, 2, 3 Securitas 1 securitisation 1, 2, 3 selective tax rates 1 Selma 1 shaping of rentier capitalism branding 1 Bretton Woods system 1, 2, 3 and copyright 1 and ‘crony capitalism’ 1, 2, 3 dispute settlement systems 1, 2, 3 global architecture of rentier capitalism 1 lies of rentier capitalism 1 and neo-liberalism 1, 2 patents 1 and privatisation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and ‘shock therapy’ 1, 2 trade and investment treaties 1 ‘sharing economy’ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Shelter 1 ‘shock therapy’ 1, 2, 3, 4 Shore Capital 1 Sierakowski, Slawomir 1, 2, 3, 4 silicon revolution 1 Simon, Herbert 1 Sirius Minerals 1 Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship 1 Sky UK 1, 2 SLABS (student loan asset-backed securities) 1, 2 Slim, Carlos 1, 2 Smith, Adam 1 Snow, John 1 Social Care Act (2012) 1 social commons 1, 2, 3 social dividend systems 1, 2 social housing 1 ‘social income’ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 social strike 1 SoFi (Social Finance) 1 Solidarność (Solidarity) movement 1 South West Water 1 sovereign wealth funds 1 spatial commons 1, 2 Speenhamland system 1, 2, 3 Spielberg, Steven 1 Springer 1 ‘squeezed state’ 1 Statute of Anne (1710) 1 Statute of Monopolies (1624) 1 StepChange 1 Stevens, Simon 1 ‘strategic’ debt 1 strike action/demonstrations 1, 2, 3 student debt 1, 2 subsidies 1 and austerity 1, 2 and bank ‘bailouts’ 1 and charities 1 and ‘competitiveness’ 1 direct subsidies 1 and moral hazards 1 and ‘non-dom’ status 1 and quantitative easing 1, 2 for rentiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 selective tax rates 1 and sovereign wealth funds 1 subsidised landlordism 1 tax avoidance and evasion 1 tax breaks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tax credits 1 Summers, Larry 1, 2 Sun, The 1, 2 Sunday Telegraph 1 Sunday Times 1 Sutton Trust 1 ‘sweetheart deals’ 1 tasking platforms see rentier platforms TaskRabbit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Tatler magazine 1 tax avoidance/evasion 1 tax breaks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 tax credits 1, 2, 3 Tax Justice Network 1 Tax Research UK 1 Taylor & Francis 1 Tennessee Valley Authority 1 ‘tertiary time’ regime 1 Tesco 1 Texas Permanent School Fund 1 Textor, Mark 1 Thames Water 1 Thatcher, Margaret 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 The Bonfire of the Vanities 1 The Constitution of Liberty 1 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money 1 The Innovator’s Dilemma 1 think tanks 1 ‘thinner’ democracy 1 ‘Third-Way’ thinking 1, 2, 3 Times, The 1 TISA (Trade in Services Agreement) 1 Tottenham Court Road underground station 1 TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) 1, 2, 3 Trades Union Congress 1, 2 ‘tragedy of the commons’ 1 ‘tranching’ of loans 1 Treaty of Detroit (1950) 1, 2 Treuhand 1 TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) 1, 2, 3, 4 trolling (of patents) 1 Trump, Donald 1, 2 TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) 1, 2, 3, 4 Turnbull, Malcolm 1 Turner, Adair 1 Twain, Mark 1 Uber 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ‘ultra-loose’ monetary policy 1 underpaid labour 1 UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 1 UNHCR (UN refugee agency) 1 Unison 1 Unite 1 UnitedHealth Group 1 universal credit scheme 1 universal justice 1 UpCounsel 1 Upwork 1, 2 Uruguay Round 1, 2, 3 USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) 1 Vattenfall 1 Veblen, Thorstein 1 venture capital 1 Veolia 1 Vero Group 1 Victoria, Queen 1 Villeroy de Galhau, François 1 Vlieghe, Gertjan 1 Warner Chappell Music 1 Watt, James 1 welfare abuse/fraud 1 Wilde, Oscar 1 Wilson, Fergus 1 Wilson, Judith 1 WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Wolf, Martin 1, 2 Wolfe, Tom 1 Wonga 1, 2 Work Capability Assessment 1 Work Programme 1 World Bank 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 World Economic Forum 1 world heritage sites 1 Wriglesworth Consultancy 1 WTO (World Trade Organization) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Y Combinator 1 Yanukovych, Viktor 1 Yukos 1 de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice 1 van Zeeland, Marcel 1 Zell, Sam 1 zero-hours contracts 1, 2, 3 Zipcar 1 Copyright First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Biteback Publishing Ltd Westminster Tower 3 Albert Embankment London SE1 7SP Copyright © Guy Standing 2016 Guy Standing has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.


pages: 346 words: 101,763

Confessions of a Microfinance Heretic by Hugh Sinclair

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Bernie Madoff, colonial exploitation, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, high net worth, illegal immigration, impact investing, inventory management, low interest rates, microcredit, Northern Rock, peer-to-peer lending, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, profit motive, Vision Fund

Because Kiva was comfortable with LAPO, I am personally uncomfortable with Kiva. In May 2010, after the New York Times article was published and after the various funds had withdrawn from LAPO, another curious announcement appeared. The Schwab Foundation, the charity arm of the well-known World Economic Forum group that sponsors the Davos conferences, issued its social entrepreneur awards for Africa. I read with utter incredulity that LAPO had won,37 and I then contacted Schwab. It transpired that the foundation had never actually visited LAPO, nor had its due diligence extended to reading the front page of the New York Times.

When the flotation finally took place in March 2010, it was thirteen times oversubscribed and managed to beat the alluring valuation of even Compartamos in Mexico. A new standard had been set. Muhammad Yunus was none too pleased about this and likened SKS to the loan sharks that microfinance was supposed to replace. It is worth noting that Grameen Foundation USA was not an investor in SKS, but the World Economic Forum did hand Vikram Akula the Young Global Leaders Award in 2008. The interest rates SKS charged to the poor were actually comparatively reasonable (20 to 30 percent), a bargain compared to loans from LAPO. The share price rose about 50 percent, until scandal reared its ugly head, and has plummeted ever since.

., 175 von Stauffenberg, Damian, 165, 216 W Walmart, 30, 175 Wall Street Journal, 203, 204 Ward, Terence background, 148 investigates Kiva, 177 SEC complaint against Calvert, 159, 160, 161–64 Waterfield, Chuck, 181 Wellen, Lukas, 71, 108, 110 Weng Liew, 84–86, 99 women, 10 empowerment of, 5, 10, 26, 73 exploitation of, 179 family savings and, 36, 157 forced prostitution of, 205–206 gender-based lending and, 142, 145–46, 155, 234 suicides of, 207 Women’s World Bank, 142, 145 World Economic Forum, 180, 204 World Relief, 29, 32, 33, 37, 56, 63–64, 65 World Relief Mozambique, 52, 60, 63 Y Yunus, Muhammad, 64, 84, 129, 133 criticism of, 208–10 development of microfinance model, 9–10, 19–20 Grameen Bank and, 2, 208–10 Nobel Peace Prize, 2, 10, 19 removal from Grameen Bank, 10, 211 Schwab Foundation and, 180 stance against high interest rates, 168, 192, 211 About the Author Hugh Sinclair is an economist and former investment banker.


pages: 437 words: 113,173

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance by Ian Goldin, Chris Kutarna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Dava Sobel, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Doha Development Round, double helix, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental economics, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, full employment, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global supply chain, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial robot, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, Johannes Kepler, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahbub ul Haq, Malacca Straits, mass immigration, Max Levchin, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Urbanism, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, open economy, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, post-Panamax, profit motive, public intellectual, quantum cryptography, rent-seeking, reshoring, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, Snapchat, special economic zone, spice trade, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, uber lyft, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, working poor, working-age population, zero day

Other cognitive tasks that were once deemed too complicated to automate, but which machines can now do, range from showing empathy to mental health patients, to writing routine news stories, performing surgery, making financial trades, teaching themselves how to play Space Invaders and winning Jeopardy (IBM’s Watson system, which did so in 2011, now has a job diagnosing cancer patients and suggesting treatment plans). Nearly half of all current jobs in the US are at risk of automation within two decades—a wrenching retooling that Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, has christened “the fourth industrial revolution.”67 Productivity will skyrocket. Will automation also create a vast pool of chronically under-employed people with nowhere left to go, or will new jobs emerge to employ them? In the first decade of the twenty-first century, if anything it was the former: in 2010, only 0.5 percent of the US workforce had jobs in new industries that hadn’t existed in 2000.68 What about the profits of automation?

The same connective and developmental forces that boost health, wealth and populations are multiplying the demands upon lagging and aging infrastructure. Public belt-tightening in the wake of the financial crisis only exacerbates this strain, which is most acute in those areas most crucial to sustaining contemporary life: energy, water and food. The World Economic Forum puts overall infrastructure investment needs at $100 trillion globally over the next 20 years.58 It’s a rich-world problem. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives current US infrastructure an overall grade of D+. The country’s rail and bridges are “mediocre”; roads, drinking water and waste management systems are “poor”; levees and waterways score somewhere between “below standard” and “unfit for purpose.”

That protest was smothered—by police armed with pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades and ultimately rubber bullets. But discontent continued to smolder. The Seattle meeting failed to kick off a new trade round. “Anti-globalization” and “fair trade” entered popular discourse. And most subsequent global governance gatherings—WTO, World Bank, IMF, G8, G20, World Economic Forum—were accompanied by mass social protest. Then came the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the 9/11 terrorist attacks: talk of “globalization” abated and these crowds declined. Civil liberties were restricted and dissent became unpatriotic, especially in the United States. People’s attention was drawn elsewhere: the apparent threat of multinational corporations diminished, and states and non-state militaries re-emerged as the principal villains in a colder, darker international system.


pages: 606 words: 87,358

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization by Richard Baldwin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, buy low sell high, call centre, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, commodity super cycle, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, domestication of the camel, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, financial intermediation, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Henri Poincaré, imperial preference, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invention of the telegraph, investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, low skilled workers, market fragmentation, mass immigration, Metcalfe’s law, New Economic Geography, out of africa, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, Pax Mongolica, profit motive, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, Skype, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telerobotics, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus

But offshoring is very much a part of twenty-first-century globalization, so the next piece of the puzzle concerns the spatial dispersion of production stages—especially to low-wage nations. The approach works off the principle that firms seek to put each stage in the lowest-cost location—where all manner of costs are considered. In reality, places differ along many dimensions that matter. The World Economic Forum’s competitiveness index, for example, has 110 different measures. The goal here is to follow Karl Popper’s dictum and focus only on the things that cannot usefully be ignored. A natural focus is on the cost of productive factors with a special emphasis on wages adjusted for things like productivity, quality, availability, and reliability.

See also capital, human; education and training; fractionalization; offshoring; productivity; wages; work skills work skills (skilled and unskilled labor): Britain and, 210; bundling of, 206; development strategies and, 276–277; fractionalization/offshoring and, 205; globalization and, 185; policies and, 228–231, 229f, 230, 231–237, 241, 271, 275; wages and, 186–187, 201–202 World Bank, 243, 272 World Economic Forum competitiveness index, 201 The World Is Flat (Friedman), 142 The World of Odysseus (Finley), 118 “The World through Hitler’s Eyes” (Weinberg), 66 World Trade Organization (WTO), 68, 70, 101, 105, 106t–107t, 279 World Wars I and II, 47, 51, 64–67, 65f, 68, 77, 85, 284 writing, 27, 29, 117 Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty (Dreyer), 3 7

In 2006, the breakthrough came when three eminent Princeton economists argued that globalization had entered a new phase. In March 2006, Princeton economist Alan Blinder published a paper in Foreign Affairs titled “Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution?” His essay stirred a great deal of angst amongst the Davos crowd, but it lacked reflections on what it meant for the traditional conceptualization of globalization. The omission was filled in August 2006 by Princeton professors Gene Grossman and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg with their “new paradigm” framework—known as “trading tasks.” It focused on offshoring and the increased tradability of parts and components.


pages: 323 words: 95,188

The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Michael Meyer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, BRICs, call centre, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, guns versus butter model, haute couture, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Prenzlauer Berg, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, union organizing

By early 2009, that model was widely seen as a sham. As the United States bailed out banks and automakers, the contagion of financial collapse threatened to spread around the world. Like Monarch butterflies fluttering north from Mexico, business and political leaders descended on the little village of Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum. Billed as a gathering of the Earth’s most powerful men and women, it has traditionally served as a celebration of the capitalist way, leavened with talk of corporate responsibility and the greater global good. This year, by contrast, the crisp alpine air was filled with angry shouts and murmurs about the perils of America’s “faith based” economic policies and its destructive “casino capitalism.”

See Berlin Wall fall of Berlin Wall, 5–9, 65–76, 88–94 See also Berlin We the People (Ash), 230 Wiecko, Andrzej, 225 Wiedervereinigung (reunification), attitudes toward, 23–28 Wilde, Oscar, 129 Wilhelm Strasse (Berlin), 16 Wilson, Woodrow, 214, 229 Winter, Ulle, 19–20 Wir sind das Volk, 234 Wolf, Christa, 163 Wolfe, Tom, 53 Wolfowitz, Paul, 61–62 Woodrow Wilson Center, Cold War Archive, 231 Workers’ Guard, 101, 103 World Affairs, 237 World Bank, 21 World Economic Forum, 218 World Trade Center terrorist attacks (2001), 2, 215 World Transformed, A (G. H. W. Bush and Scowcroft), 61, 94, 224–225, 227, 231, 232 World War I Cold War versus, 20 end of, 9–10 World War II Brandenburg Gate and, 3 chief victors in, 211 Cold War versus, 20 end of, 10 Normandy invasion, 28, 69 Poland in, 44–45 symbolism of Berlin Wall and, 1, 5–9, 15–16 Wuensdorf, 210 Wyden, Peter, 27, 223 Yakovlev, Alexander, 63, 227 YouTube, 3 Yugoslavia, 174, 213–214 Zagrodzka, Danuta, 49–50 Zakaria, Fareed, 217, 238 Zelikow, Zelikow, 227, 229, 231, 232, 234 Zhivkov, Todor, 190–191 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Meyer spent more than twenty years as a correspondent and editor for Newsweek.


We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent by Nesrine Malik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, cognitive dissonance, continuation of politics by other means, currency peg, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, feminist movement, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gender pay gap, gentrification, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, mass immigration, moral panic, Nate Silver, obamacare, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, payday loans, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, public intellectual, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sexual politics, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Thomas L Friedman, transatlantic slave trade

NGOs could not use US aid for abortion services before this rule. Trump also stopped an Obama-crafted rule from going into effect that would make companies track payment data based on race and gender. The data was meant to help close the gender pay gap. On a global level, according to the 2017 World Economic Forum report on gender equality, there has been a similar reversal in positive trends. Now in its eleventh year, the Global Gender Gap Report has given WEF an opportunity to identify long-term trends in gender equality, and the picture that is emerging shows that there is a sort of terminal velocity that has been reached.

(Spiked Online, 6 November 2017), https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/11/06/who-will-put-a-brake-on-this-sexual-inquisition/ [accessed on 22 July 2019] 23 ‘… Westminster female reporters’: Rachel Wearmouth, ‘Ex-Guardian Columnist Calls Female Political Journalists “Predators” Who Trick “Poor Old Ugly” MPs’ (Huffington Post, 2 November 2017), https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/guardian-michael-white_uk_59fa015be4b00c6145e353fc [accessed on 22 July 2019] 23 ‘… nuance between rape and other forms of sexual assault’: Bret Stephens, ‘When #MeToo Goes Too Far’ (New York Times, 20 December 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/opinion/metoo-damon-too-far.html [accessed on 22 July 2019] 23 ‘… sexism in the UK is more “in your face”’: ‘UN Special Rapporteur Rashida Manjoo says UK has “sexist culture”’ (BBC News, 15 April 2014), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27034117 [accessed on 22 July 2019] 24 ‘… rapes in London rose by 20 per cent’: Lizzie Dearden, ‘London sees 20% rise in rape reports in a year, but police admit they “don’t understand” reason’ (Independent, 23 February 2018), https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rape-london-reports-met-police-rise-crime-sexual-assault-a8225821.html [accessed on 22 July 2019] 26 ‘… more women than men enrolled in universities’: ‘More women than men in Saudi universities, says ministry’ (Al Arabiya, 28 May 2015), https://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/features/2015/05/28/More-women-than-men-in-Saudi-universities-says-ministry.html [accessed on 22 July 2019] 28 ‘… three women a day are killed’: National Organization for Women, ‘Violence Against Women in the United States: Statistics’, https://now.org/resource/violence-against-women-in-the-united-states-statistic/ [accessed on 23 July 2019] 28 ‘… hovering around 38 per cent’: World Health Organization, ‘Violence Against Women’ (29 November 2017), https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women [accessed on 23 July 2019] 28 ‘In England and Wales’: ‘900 women have been killed by men in England and Wales over the past 6 years’ (Telegraph, 7 December 2016), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/900-women-have-killed-men-england-wales-past-6-years/ [accessed on 23 July 2019] 32 ‘… twenty-seven abortion bans have been enacted’: Elizabeth Nash, ‘Unprecedented Wave of Abortion Bans Is an Urgent Call to Action’ (Guttmacher Institute, 22 May 2018), https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2019/05/unprecedented-wave-abortion-bans-urgent-call-action [accessed on 23 July 2019] 32 ‘… there has been a similar reversal in positive trends’: World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report, 2017, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2017.pdf [accessed on 23 July 2019] 34 ‘In a 1995 PBS episode of Think Tank’: ‘Has Feminism Gone Too Far?’ (Think Tank Transcripts, 1995) https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript132.html [accessed on 23 July 2019] 36 ‘… only 7 per cent of cases resulted in a conviction’: Kathleen Daly and Brigitte Bouhours, ‘Rape and Attrition in the Legal Process: A Comparative Analysis of Five Countries’ (University of Chicago, 2010) https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/143870355.pdf [accessed on 23 July 2019] 39 ‘An internal company memo’: James Damore, ‘Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber’ (July 2017) https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html [accessed on 23 July 2019] 40 ‘… advantage blindness’: Ben Fuchs, Megan Reitz and John Higgins, ‘Do You Have “Advantage Blindness”?’

zd=1&zi=6ioipdib [accessed on 25 July 2019] 171 ‘Americans’ sketchy understanding’: Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Atlantic Books, 2017), 13 172 ‘in order to save the 40 million’: Pankaj Mishra, ‘How colonial violence came home: the ugly truth of the first world war’ (Guardian, 10 November 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/10/how-colonial-violence-came-home-the-ugly-truth-of-the-first-world-war [accessed on 25 July 2019] 174 ‘They were not there on holiday’: Simon Akam, ‘Left Behind’ (The New Republic, 21 May 2011), https://newrepublic.com/article/88797/british-empire-queen-elizabeth-india-ireland-africa-imperial [accessed on 25 July 2019] 176 ‘But the research also found’: Sally Weale, ‘Michael Gove’s claims about history teaching are false, says research’ (Guardian, 13 September 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/13/michael-goves-claims-about-history-teaching-are-false-says-research [accessed on 25 July 2019] 177 ‘an inherent bias in the curriculum that runs the other way’: The Secret Teacher, ‘Secret Teacher: the emphasis on British history is depriving students of balance’ (Guardian, 26 May 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/may/26/secret-teacher-history-bias-school-fear-student-future [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘Anyone who suggests that the United Kingdom cannot be trusted’: Department for Exiting the European Union and The Rt Hon David Davis MP, ‘David Davis’ speech on the future security partnership’ (GOV.UK, 6 June 2018), https://www.gov.uk/government/news/david-davis-speech-on-the-future-security-partnership [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘The first Eurosceptic’: Jonathan Isaby, ‘Jacob Rees-Mogg identifies the three historical heroes from his constituency who will be his political inspiration’ (Conservative Home, 8 June 2010), https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2010/06/jacob-reesmogg-identifies-the-three-historical-heroes-from-his-constituency-who-will-be-his-politica.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 179 ‘we survived our break from Europe’: Giles Fraser, ‘The English Reformation was the first Brexit – we survived our break from Europe then, and we’ll do so again’ (Telegraph, 18 August 2018), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/14/english-reformation-first-brexit-survived-break-europe-do/ 179 ‘showed the world what a free people could achieve’: Michael Gove, ‘EU referendum: Michael Gove explains why Britain should leave the EU’ (Telegraph, 20 February 2016), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12166345/European-referendum-Michael-Gove-explains-why-Britain-should-leave-the-EU.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘it will be like Dunkirk again’: Andrew MacAskill, Anjuli Davies, ‘“Insecurity is fantastic,” says billionaire funder of Brexit campaign’ (Reuters, 11 May 2016), https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-donations-hargreaves/insecurity-is-fantastic-says-billionaire-funder-of-brexit-campaign-idUKKCN0Y22ID [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘Thirty-five years ago this week’: Owen Bennett, ‘“We Will Go To War With Spain Over Gibraltar”’ Warns Ex-Tory Leader Lord Howard (Huffington Post, 2 April 2017), https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/gibraltar-war-falklands-lord-howard_uk_58e0ed0ee4b0c777f788130f [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘unbelievable that within a week’: George Parker, Jim Brunsden, Ian Mount, ‘Gibraltar tensions bubble over into British war talk’ (Financial Times, 2 April 2017), https://www.ft.com/content/391f0114-17a1-11e7-a53d-df09f373be87 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘a colossal military disaster’: ‘Great Speeches of the 19th Century: Winston Churchill, “We shall fight on the beaches” (Guardian, 20 April 2007), https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/apr/20/greatspeeches1 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 180 ‘miracle of deliverance’: ibid. 182 ‘you must take the decision which is fraught with risk’: Harry Yorke, ‘Boris Johnson likens Brexit dilemma to Churchill’s defiance of Hitler’ (Telegraph, 6 December 2018), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/06/boris-johnson-likens-brexit-dilemma-churchills-defiance-hitler/ [accessed on 25 July 2019] 183 ‘make me an offer’: Lucy Pasha-Robinson, ‘Angela Merkel “ridicules Theresa May’s Brexit demands during secret press briefing”’ (Independent, 29 January 2018), https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-theresa-may-brexit-demands-press-briefing-davos-eu-talks-a8183436.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 183 ‘France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States’: ‘An affair to remember’ (Economist, 27 July 2006), https://www.economist.com/node/7218678 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 184 ‘betrayed our relationship’: Boris Johnson, ‘The Aussies are just like us, so let’s stop kicking them out’ (Telegraph, 25 August 2013), https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10265619/The-Aussies-are-just-like-us-so-lets-stop-kicking-them-out.html [accessed on 25 July 2019] 185 ‘While the empire’: David Olusoga, ‘Empire 2.0 is dangerous nostalgia for something that never existed’ (Guardian, 19 March 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/19/empire-20-is-dangerous-nostalgia-for-something-that-never-existed [accessed on 25 July 2019] 185 ‘The twentieth century saw the UK eclipsed’: Simon Akam, ‘Left Behind’ (The New Republic, 21 May 2011), https://newrepublic.com/article/88797/british-empire-queen-elizabeth-india-ireland-africa-imperial [accessed on 25 July 2019] 187 ‘an exercise in British wish-fulfilment’: Nikita Lalwani, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: an exercise in British wish-fulfilment’ (Guardian, 27 February 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/27/best-exotic-marigold-hotel-compliance [accessed on 25 July 2019] 188 ‘a wave of colonial nostalgia’: Stuart Jeffries, ‘The best exotic nostalgia boom: why colonial style is back’ (Guardian, 19 March 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/19/the-best-exotic-nostalgia-boom-why-colonial-style-is-back [accessed on 25 July 2019] 189 ‘reduce the country to the status of “colony”’: Guy Faulconbridge, ‘Boris Johnson says Brexit deal will make Britain an EU colony’ (Reuters, 13 November 2018), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-johnson/boris-johnson-says-brexit-deal-will-make-britain-an-eu-colony-idUSKCN1NI16D [accessed on 25 July 2019] 189 ‘not a vassal state but a slave state’: Nick Clegg, ‘On Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg is right: Britain risks vassal status’ (Financial Times, 27 January 2018), https://www.ft.com/content/be44ff5a-028e-11e8-9e12-af73e8db3c71 [accessed on 25 July 2019] 191 ‘the rags to riches dream of a millionaire’s blank check’: Thomas A.


China's Good War by Rana Mitter

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, colonial rule, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Internet Archive, land reform, liberal capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, sexual politics, South China Sea, Washington Consensus

18 Aug. 1949, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 4, Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_67.htm. 50. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ, 2011). 51. See, in particular, Xi Jinping’s speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos in January 2018. The text can be found at CGTN, https://america.cgtn.com/2017/01/17/full-text-of-xi-jinping-keynote-at-the-world-economic-forum. 52. Sima and Mingbo, “Zaiping ‘Dongfeng yu.’ ” Conclusion: China’s Long Postwar 1. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London, 2005). 2. Felix Wemheuer, A Social History of Maoist China: Conflict and Change, 1949–1976 (Cambridge, 2019). 3.


pages: 345 words: 92,063

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business by Julie Battilana, Tiziana Casciaro

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, benefit corporation, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, different worldview, digital rights, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, feminist movement, fundamental attribution error, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mega-rich, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech worker, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, zero-sum game

By 2016, it had directly helped seventy thousand people.28 Along the way, Vera noticed that she had become more comfortable with power. She wasn’t so concerned about interacting with powerful people, and she realized that she herself had built a strong power base. She was well connected nationally and internationally, a frequent speaker at prestigious conferences like the World Economic Forum at Davos, where she could meet potential new funders. At the same time, she was starting to get some new and unexpected feedback from her staff and family: Colleagues told her that she was always interrupting them and didn’t let them speak their mind enough in meetings; her adult daughter questioned her about why she seemed to care so much about attending award ceremonies and public events.

Senate Judiciary Committee, 157 Vaillant, George, 49 valued resources, 41–64 achievement, 50–51, 58, 194 affiliation, 48–50, 58, 194, 220–21n36 as fulfilling basic human needs, 57 autonomy, 52–54, 58, 73, 161, 194 material possessions, 45–47, 58 morality, 54–57, 58, 164, 192, 194 needs assessment, 61–63 observation of, 58–61, 194 social status, 46–48, 58, 194, 220n32 See also safety, self-esteem veil of ignorance, 193 Versace, Donatella, 65–66, 68, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89 Versace, Gianni, 65, 66, 85 Vietnam War, 14, 15, 16 virtue, 54–57 Voting Rights Act, 14 vTaiwan, 191 Wagner, Richard, x Weber, Max, 261n1 Weinstein, Harvey, 137 West, Cornel, 185 White, Micah, 118–19 Whittaker, Meredith, 154–55, 157 William, Prince (Duke of Cambridge), 30 Wilson, Edward O., 55, 56 withdrawal strategy, 8, 9, 12–13 Women & Power (Beard), 101 women’s rights, 86, 125 worker-owner cooperatives, 180–81 workers’ rights, 11–12, 110–12, 157–58, 160, 177–82, 187–88 World Economic Forum, 29 World War II, 20, 56–57, 109, 114 World Wide Web, 147–48 Wrong, Dennis H., 201, 261n7, 261n15 Wyche, Vanessa E., 172 #YoTambien, 137 Yourcenar, Marguerite, 41 Yousafzai, Malala, 56 YouTube, 152, 153 Zhang, Evelyn, 86 Zuboff, Shoshana, 152 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2021 by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro Charts on pages 71 & 72 republished with permission of John Wiley & Sons, from “Social Networks and the Liability of Newness for Managers” in Trends in Organizational Behavior, David Krackhardt, 1996; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.


pages: 292 words: 87,720

Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green by Henry Sanderson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, animal electricity, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, circular economy, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Exxon Valdez, Fairphone, Ford Model T, gigafactory, global supply chain, Global Witness, income per capita, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, megacity, Menlo Park, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, popular capitalism, purchasing power parity, QR code, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, Tesla Model S, The Chicago School, the new new thing, three-masted sailing ship, Tony Fadell, UNCLOS, WikiLeaks, work culture

‘We do not support ASM [artisanal mining], nor process or purchase any material derived from ASM in the DRC.’24 The allegations of child labour in the Congo created a key competitive advantage for the big industrial mining companies. In late 2017 at a conference in New York the World Economic Forum launched the Global Battery Alliance, which included miners such as Glencore and Kazakhstan’s ERG, which was led by former BCG management consultant Benedikt Sobotka. ERG’s predecessor company had been delisted from the London Stock Exchange amid an investigation by the UK’s anti-fraud agency, but now Sobotka was a regular at WEF meetings and at Davos. The Global Battery Alliance was launched with the aim of creating an ‘ethical and sustainable global supply chain for … lithium-ion batteries’.

Index Adkerson, Richard 178 Agrium 85 Albemarle 59, 66, 77 Allen, Matthew 152 Allende, Salvador 78, 79 Altura 64, 65 aluminium 3, 211 Amnesty International 90, 132–5, 139–40 Amoco 199 Annan, Kofi 102 Anno, Yasuo 219, 220 Apple 112, 123, 131, 133–4, 213 Arctic Circle 224–5 Arfwedson, Johan 49 Argentina 34, 51–2, 68–70 Arnstadt (Germany) 32–3 Asahi Kasei Corporation 21, 30 ASM, see mining: artisanal A&T Battery 30 Atacama Desert (Chile) 3, 57, 73–8 ATL 37–9, 42, 43 Attenborough, David 195 Audi 32, 40 Australia 5, 34, 57, 59–66, 67–8, 84 and coal 97 and copper 179 and nickel 154, 157 AVZ Minerals 68 Bacanora Lithium 48 Bachelet, Michelle 85 baitong (white copper) 155 Bajo people 166 Baros, Vanja 110 Barron, Gerard 188–90, 191, 192, 195–6 batteries 2–3, 7–8, 25–7, 34–5, 36–9, 50–1 and Edison 15–16, 17–18 and electric cars 13–14 and Europe 32–4, 218, 219–22 and Global Alliance 141 and Goodenough 27–8, 29 and history 23–5 and Japan 29–31 and LFP 245–6 and lithium-ion 19–20, 21–2 and Northvolt 222–3 and recycling 209–10, 213–17 and UK 243–4 see also cobalt; lithium; nickel Beijing, see China Belgium 135–6, 137, 184, 202–4; see also Leopold II of Belgium, King Bell Labs 37 ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) 162–3 Berlin, Anton 226 Best, Eric 100 beta-alumina 25 BHP 154–5, 176 BHR Partners 179 Biddle, Neil 61–2, 63 Biden, Hunter 179 Biden, Joe 180 billionaires 3, 34–5, 71, 173, 178, 192, 224–5; see also Gertler, Dan; Glasenberg, Ivan; Jiang Weiping; Musk, Elon; Ponce Lerou, Julio Bitrán, Eduardo 76–7, 78, 81–2, 85, 86, 87 Bitumba, Robert 146, 147–8 BMW 32, 33, 42, 66, 140 Bobenrieth, Eduardo 81 Bolloré 220 Boscawen family 231, 240 Boskalis 199 BP (British Petroleum) 115 Braungart, Michael: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things 211 Brazil 154, 179 Brearley, Harry 155 Bringedal, Bård 153 Brinsden, Ken 62–4, 65, 67–8 Bristow, Mark 117 Brockovich, Erin 165 Brodesser, Bastian 90 Brooks, Tim 172 Broughton, David 172, 185 Brown, Steven 165, 166, 167 Bucher, Alejandro 76, 78 Büchi, Hernán 82 Buffett, Warren 41 Burma 183 Bush, George W. 105 BYD 38, 41, 129, 131, 245 Cade, John 49–50 Caesens, Elisabeth 130, 142 Calaway, James 52 Camba, Alvin 164 Cameron, James 192–3 Canada 68–9, 84 and nickel 154, 156, 157, 173, 182–3 carbon dioxide 27, 66–7, 165, 220 and deep sea 193, 196 and emissions 4, 212, 222, 224 Carlsson, Peter 218–20, 222–3 Carlyle Group 38–9 Carroll, Rory 129 cars 14, 15, 16–17, 18–19, 39–40, 212 and recycling 211, 214–16 see also electric vehicles Carson City (NV) 208–9 Carter, Assheton Stewart 135 Casement, Roger 137 Casson, Louisa 195 Castro, Fidel 78 cathodes 27, 29, 30, 31 CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology) 32–3, 34–5, 42–6, 96, 131 and nickel 159, 164 CDM 122, 130, 132–3 Cerruti, Paolo 219 Challenger, HMS 197 Chamberlain, Matthew 141, 142 Chen, T.H. 37, 38 Chen Jinghe 186 Chen Xuehua 122, 127, 159 Chevrolet 52 ‘Chicago boys’ 72, 79, 81 child labour 90, 92, 93, 129, 139, 140–1 and Huayou 122–3, 124–5, 134–5 and Kasulo project 146, 147, 148 Chile 5, 51, 71–3, 78–81, 162 and copper 172, 175, 176, 180 see also Atacama Desert; SQM (Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile) China 2, 3, 4–5, 105, 128, 185–7 and Amnesty 139 and Argentina 68–9 and Australia 60–1, 62–6, 67–8 and BRI 162–3 and cars 39–40 and CATL 32–9 and Chile 71–2, 75 and cobalt 96, 122 and commodities boom 109, 110 and copper 170, 171, 175–7, 178–9 and deep sea 200 and DRC 143, 144 and electric cars 40–6 and Europe 221–2, 223–4 and Indonesia 154 and Jiang Weiping 83–5 and nickel 155, 158–60 and PNG 150–1, 152, 153 and pollution 244 and supply chain 92 and Tianqi Lithium 85–7 and Tsingshan 160–2, 163–4, 167 and USA 113–14 and Wang Xiaoshen 47–8 and Xinjiang 56–8 and Xinyu 52–6, 58–9 see also Huayou Cobalt China Africa-Development Fund 131 China Molybdenum 117, 178–80 Church of England 119, 120 CIA 198–9 circular economy 213 CITIC Metal 170, 186 Clarion-Clipperton-Zone 189–90, 192, 194, 200, 204 Clean Air Act (1970) 23 Climate Action 100+ 119 climate change 1, 2, 23, 27, 33, 40, 50 coal 4, 5, 11, 67, 109 and China 57, 61, 222 and Glencore 97, 119 and nickel 157, 163–4, 165 cobalt 3, 4–5, 9, 30, 34–5, 124 and deep sea 191 and DRC 92–4, 99–102, 106, 107–8, 115–18, 121–3 and electric cars 138–40 and Glencore 89–90, 95–7, 142–3 and health risks 124–5 and LME 141–2 and PNG 150–3 and prices 143–4 and recycling 209–10, 213 and Volkswagen 88–9, 90–1 see also Huayou Cobalt Cohen, Michael 110 Colby, William 198 Coldelco 74 Communist Party 34, 40, 56, 83, 84 Congo, see Congo Free State; Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM) 122 Congo Free State 135–7 Conrad, Joseph 137 Conservation International 195 consumerism 123–4 Contesse, Patricio 76, 79 copper 3, 5, 9, 97, 173–6, 180–1 and Australia 67 and Bougainville 152 and Chile 73–5, 78–9 and China 176–7, 178–80 and Cornwall 236 and DRC 100–2, 106, 107–9, 169–73, 177–8, 183–5, 186–7 and Japan 157 Corfo 77, 79, 80, 81 Corliss, Jack 193 Cornwall 228–9, 230, 231, 232–6, 238–9 and landowners 239–41 and tin mining 236–7 corruption 72, 76, 80, 98, 142 and DRC 92–3, 104, 107 and Gertler 102–3, 110–12 Covid-19 pandemic 7, 65, 67, 167–8, 218 Crane, Lucy 235, 237, 239 Crawford, Matthew 13 Cronstedt, Axel Fredrik 155 Cultural Revolution 36, 40, 83 Daimler-Benz 23, 33 Dauvergne, Peter 123, 124, 244 deep sea 188–201, 202–6 and tailings 150, 152, 153 DeepGreen 189–90, 196 DEME 202–5 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 3, 4, 34, 68, 115–17, 142–3 and Amnesty 132–5 and BRI 162 and cobalt 89, 92–4, 95–7, 121–3, 124 and copper 169–73, 177, 179–80, 183–5, 186–7 and electric cars 138–40 and Gertler 102–3, 104–5, 110–12 and health risks 124–5 and Huayou Cobalt 125–8 and Katumba Mwanke 106–7 and mining 99–102, 107–9, 117–18, 128–9 see also Congo Free State; Kolwezi Deng Pufang 186 Deng Xiaoping 161, 186 Deripaska, Oleg 227 diamond industry 103–5, 200, 203 diesel 220 Diess, Herbert 223 Dodd-Frank Act (2010) 122 Dongguan (China) 35–9 Dos Santos, Isabel 183 Double, Steve 233 DRC, see Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Dunlop, John 136 Earth Day 22 Edison, Thomas 10, 13, 14–16, 17–19, 21 and copper 174 and nickel 156 electric vehicles (EVs) 1–3, 4–5, 7–9, 11–14, 16–17 and Australia 62 and carbon footprint 66–7 and China 40–6, 54–6, 63, 64, 96 and cobalt 115–16, 126–7 and copper 74, 174–5, 180 and DRC 138–40 and Edison 15–16, 17–18 and Europe 220–1, 223–4 and ExxonMobil 26–7 and Ford 24–5 and Germany 32–4 and history 10 and lithium 52 and nickel 154–5, 158, 164 and outsourcing 92 and recycling 213–17 and Straubel 207–9 and SUVs 244–5 and UK 243–4 and Volkswagen 22, 88–9, 90–1 see also batteries electricity 14–15, 23–4, 174; see also electric vehicles emissions, see carbon dioxide Environmental Protection Agency 23 environmentalism 124, 126, 165–6, 167–8, 244 ERG 141 Europe 33, 218–22, 223–4, 227; see also Belgium; Germany; Sweden; United Kingdom European Battery Alliance 221 EVs, see electric vehicles ExxonMobil 22, 25, 26–7 Fadell, Tony 4 Fairphone 140 Falconbridge Nickel Mines 156 ferrite 39 Figureres, Christiana 246 fishing 151, 166 FMC 51–2, 58, 59 Foote Mineral 51 Force Publique 136 forced labour 136, 137 Ford, Henry 8, 9, 10, 14–15, 18–19, 24–5 and natural resources 210–11 Ford (company) 145 Freeport-McMoRan 176, 178, 179 Friedland, Robert 117, 173, 175, 180–7 Gait, Paul 186–7 Galvani, Luigi 23–4 Galyen, Bob 33, 42, 43, 45 Ganfeng Lithium 47–9, 52–3, 54–6, 58–60, 66 and Argentina 68–70 and Australia 64 Garrett, Nicholas 139 gas 67 Gécamines 106, 107, 108, 113, 114, 115–17 GEM Co. 96, 164, 165 General Electric 216 General Lithium 63 General Motors 8, 19 geopolitics 4, 67, 92 geothermal energy 237–8 Germany 32–4, 35; see also Volkswagen Gertler, Dan 93, 102–5, 107, 108, 110–11 and Glencore 111–12, 118 and sanctions 112–13, 114, 142 Ginting, Pius 166, 168 Glasenberg, Ivan 90, 95–9, 109, 111, 113, 117 and coal 119, 120 Glencore 89–90, 92–3, 95–7, 113–15, 117, 213 and artisanal mining 140 and coal 119–20 and cobalt 142–3 and copper 176–7 and DRC 99, 100–2, 107–9 and Gertler 102–3, 111–12, 113 and nickel 154–5, 156 and Tesla 118–19 Global Battery Alliance 141 global warming, see climate change Glomar Explorer (ship) 198–9 gold 62, 73, 117, 171, 182–3, 186 and recycling 213 and South Africa 169, 230 Goldman, Jack 25 Goldman Sachs 43, 64, 110, 223 Good Shepherd 147 Goodenough, John 21, 22, 23, 27–9, 31 Google 213 Grant, Alex 66–7, 237–8, 239 Great Wall Motor 64 Greenberger, Jim 43–4 Greenbushes (Australia) 57, 59, 64, 84, 86 greenhouse gases, see carbon dioxide Greenpeace 195, 225 Groupe Bazano 107–8 GSR (Global Sea Mineral Resources) 202–6 Guilbert, John 177 Haley, Nikki 112 Hamanaka, Yasuo 157 Hamze, Alex 107–8 Hanrui Cobalt 135 Hanwa 164 Harita Group 165 Hayes, Denis: Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World 23 Hayward, Tony 115, 119 health 49–50, 124–5, 165 Hein, James 192, 196 Heizmann, Jochem 43 Heydon, David 191 Hoekstra, Auke 245 Hong Kong 36, 37 Hoover, Herbert 62 Hu Yaobang 35 Huawei 44, 67 Huayou Cobalt 90, 93, 122–3, 125–8, 129–31, 138 and Amnesty 132–5 and Kasulo project 144–8 and nickel 159, 165 and public opinion 246 Hughes, Howard 198 Hull (UK) 243–4 hydrogen 208, 245 Icahn, Carl 178, 179 India 85, 97, 119, 181, 182 Indonesia 5, 34, 162–4, 176, 237 and nickel 154, 157, 158–60, 164–8 internal combustion engines 14, 18, 32, 33 International Energy Agency (IEA) 9 International Seabed Authority (ISA) 192, 200–2, 204, 205 iPods 4, 19–20, 37, 38 Iran 98 Iraq 11–12 Irish, Stephen 244 iron ore 17, 60–1, 62, 67 Israel 103 Ivanhoe Mines 117, 186 ivory 135, 136, 137 Japan 29–31, 37, 38, 39, 157 Jarvis, Andrew 239–40 Jasanoff, Maya 136 Jevons, William Stanley 212 Jiang Weiping 83–5 Jinchuan 129 Jobs, Steve 117, 181, 182 Johnson, Boris 233 Johnston, Bill 68 Jokowi, President 159, 160, 167 Jones, Dan 195 Kabila, Joseph 93, 102, 105, 106, 107, 112 and China 128, 177 and mining 116, 117–18 Kabila, Laurent 104–5, 106, 128, 183–4 Kama, Geoffrey 153 Kamisa, Yossi 104 Kamoa-Kakula mine (DRC) 169–73, 185, 186–7 Kanellitsas, John 48–9, 69 Kansuki (DRC) 108 kaolin 228–9 Kara, Siddharth 130 Kasulo (DRC) 121, 124, 126, 132, 144–8 Katanga Mining 113, 114 Katumba Mwanke, Augustin 106–7, 110 Kavanagh, Michael 121 Keevil, Norman 173 Kenwright, Mark 100 Kiribati 189 Kobylkin, Dmitry 225 Kolwezi (DRC) 101, 113, 116, 121–3, 129–31, 139 and Amnesty 132 and Kasulo project 144–8 Kuka 34, 55 Kummer, Joseph 24 Kumungu, Vital 130 Lagos, Ricardo 81 Landerretche, Óscar 74 Larmer, Miles 184 laterites 157 Law of the Sea 192, 195, 199, 200–1, 205 LDK Solar 54 lead-acid batteries 15–16, 17, 19, 24–5, 190 Leclanché 220 Lee, Bryce 125–6, 127, 130, 134, 135, 144–5, 146–7 Leibovitz, Chaim 105 Lempers, Monique 140 Lennon, Jim 160, 164, 165 Leopold II of Belgium, King 102, 115, 135, 136, 137 LG Chem 43, 131, 138, 145, 167 Li, Gabriel 39 Li, Steele 117 Li Changdong 159 Li Liangbin 58 Liang Shaokang 37 Liao, Anna 54–5 Lithco 51 lithium 3, 4–5, 8–9, 34, 49–51 and Argentina 68–70 and Australia 61–6, 67, 68 and Chile 71–3, 74, 75–6, 77–8, 81–2 and Cornwall 228, 229, 232, 233–6, 238–9 and geothermal energy 237–8 and iron phosphate (LFP) batteries 245–6 and prices 47–8 and producers 51–2 and recycling 209–10, 213 and Tianqi Lithium 83, 84–7 and Xinjiang 57–8 and Xinyu 52–3, 54–6, 58–9 Lithium Americas 68–9 lithium-ion battery 19–20, 21–2, 26–7, 30–1, 37–9, 42–6 Lockheed Martin 198–9, 200 Lodge, Michael 200–2 London Metal Exchange (LME) 91–2, 112, 141–2 and copper 175–6, 178 and nickel 157–8, 159 Longueira, Pablo 76 Low, Andrew 84 Lowry, Joe 48, 52, 59, 68 Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan 159–60, 167 Lukas, Wolf-Dieter 33–4 Lundin, Adolf 177–8 McCall, Bruce 13 MacDonald, Norman 183 McDonough, William: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things 211 McGregor, Ewan 214 McKibben, Bill 4 Macri, Mauricio 69 Madhavpeddi, Kalidas 179 Maersk 189 magnetics 36, 37, 39, 156 Magnitsky Act (2012) 112–13 malachite, see copper Malaysia 119, 237 Malnic, Julian 190–1 manganese 31, 197, 199, 201 Manthiram, Arumugam 27–8 Mao Zedong 83, 127, 186 Marc Rich & Co. 98–9 marine systems 150–4, 166–7 Mason, Edward 120 Mazzocco, Ilaria 41 Melin, Hans 216–17 mental health 49–50 Mercedes-Benz 32, 34 Mero, John: The Mineral Resources of the Sea 197, 199 Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) 153 Mexico 48, 236 MG 34 Midea 34 military, the 50 Miller, W.A. 234 mining 3–5, 8–9, 84, 90, 182 and artisanal 128–9, 130–1, 139–41 and Australia 60–2, 63–5 and Chile 74–5 and coal 119 and cobalt 91–2, 93–4 and copper 169–73, 176–8, 179–81, 184 and Cornwall 228–9, 230, 231, 232, 233–7, 238–9, 240–1 and deep sea 189–91, 194–7, 199–206 and DRC 99–103, 106–8, 116–18 and environmentalism 245 and Huayou 143–6 and Kolwezi 121–3 and lithium 50 and nickel 165–8 and PNG 150–4 and Xinjiang 56–7 Mistakidis, Aristotelis (Telis) 109, 112, 114 mobile phones 30, 37, 38, 213 Mobutu Sese Seko 95, 104, 106, 177–8 Mojon, Alex 150–3 Mongolia 173, 183 Morel, Edmund 137 Morowali Industrial Park (Indonesia) 162, 163–4, 166 Morrison, Scott 67 Motorola 38 Muller, Liz 134 Musk, Elon 2, 3, 7–9, 64, 118–19 and Indonesia 167 and nickel 154–5 and Russia 225 Mutanda (DRC) 99–102, 107–8, 113 NAATBatt 43 Namibia 200, 203 natural resources 210–13 Nauru 189 Nautilus Minerals 190, 203 Nemery, Benoit 124, 148 New Caledonia 157 Newman, Mark 30–1 nickel 3, 9, 31, 34, 97, 182–3 and deep sea 191 and Edison 17, 18 and history 155–7 and Indonesia 162–8 and PNG 150–4 and prices 157–8 and recycling 209–10 and Russia 224, 226–7 and Tesla 154–5 and Tsingshan 158–60, 161–2, 163–4 Ningbo Lygend 165 Ningde (China) 32, 33, 35, 36, 42 Nio 34 Nissan 52 Nixon, Richard 23 Nobel Prize 21 nodules 189–91, 192, 193–4, 197, 199, 204 Nokia 37, 38, 131 Norilsk Nickel (Russia) 224–7 Northvolt 218–20, 222–3 NTT Docomo 37 nuclear weapons 50, 56 Ocean Minerals Co. 199 Och-Ziff 110–11 oil 3, 4, 9, 11–12, 98 and China 34, 39, 40, 57–8, 67 and pollution 22–3, 224–5 and prices 27 and Saudi Arabia 115–16 and shortages 25 see also petrol Olenga, François 112 oligarchs 226–7 OMI 199 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 123, 140, 143 Outokumpu 159 Pacific Ocean 189–90, 194 Pakenham, Thomas 136 Pakistan 97, 119 paktung 155 Pampa Calichera 80 Papua New Guinea (PNG) 150–4, 191 Pardo, Arvid 199 Patania II (robot) 202–3, 204 Peru 176–7 petrol 1–2, 8, 11–12, 14–15, 16–17, 18–19 Philippines 157, 196 Pilbara Minerals 61–4, 65 Piñera, Sebastián 85–6 Pinochet, Augusto 51, 71, 72, 73, 79, 81, 82 Pinochet, Verónica 72, 78, 79 planned obsolescence 213, 216 Planté, Gaston 16, 24 Poldark (Graham) 229, 241 pollution 22–3, 34, 150–4, 165–6, 224–6 and China 2, 39, 40, 58, 244 polyacetylene 30 Ponce, Eugenio 79, 82 Ponce Lerou, Julio 59, 71–3, 76, 77, 78 and SQM 79–81, 82–3 and Tianqi Lithium 85, 86 potassium chloride 75 Potanin, Vladimir 224, 226–7 Potash Corp 85 Putin, Vladimir 224–5 Quadricycle 14, 15 Quitter, Matthew 214–16 Raby, Geoff 67 Ramu (PNG) 150–3 Randgold 117 Rautenbach, Billy 129–30 RCS Global 145, 146 re-use, see recycling Reagan, Ronald 27 Reagen, Kongolo Mashimango 123 recycling 126–7, 195, 209–10, 213–17 Redwood Materials 209–10 Rees-Mogg, Jacob 233 Rich, Marc 98–9, 120 Rio Tinto 152, 183 robots 34, 55, 202–3, 204–5 Rockwood 59, 84–5 Romney, Mitt 158–9 rubber 135–6, 137 Russia 154, 157, 224–7; see also Soviet Union SAE Magnetic 36 Saft 220 Samsung 43, 131, 133, 142, 213 Sangadji, Arianto 165–6, 167 Santillo, David 195 Schnitzer, Moshe 103 Schulders, Franck 89–90 sea, the 150–4; see also deep sea Seascape 193, 194 Secker, Peter 48 Šefčovič, Maroš 221, 222, 224 Shell Billiton 199 Sicomines 128 SK Innovation 142 slave labour 136, 137 smartphones, see mobile phones Smil, Vaclav 246 Smith, Paul 113 Sobotka, Benedikt 141 software 12, 13 solar power 54, 69, 73, 75, 245 and China 4–5, 45 Sony 30, 31, 38, 51, 131, 219 Sorensen, Charles 9 South Africa 97–8, 109, 157, 169, 201, 230 Soviet Union 56, 198–9 Sovocool, Benjamin 138–9 Sparenberg, Ole 197, 199 SQM (Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile) 51, 57, 58, 59, 75–8, 81–2 and Argentina 68–9 and Ponce Lerou 72–3, 79–81 and Tianqi Lithium 85–7 Srivastava, Anil 220 stainless steel 155–6, 158, 159, 161, 163–4 steam 16–17 steel 3, 4, 67, 245; see also stainless steel Stone, Greg 193 Storebrand 153 Straubel, J.B. 207–10 sulphides 157 Sun, Miles 186 Sweden 218, 219–20, 222–3 Sweeney, William 111 Taiwan 36 Takei, Takeshi 39 Talison Lithium 84–5 tantalum 61 TDK 36, 39 Tenke Fungurume (DRC) 177–8, 179–80 Tesla 1, 5, 11, 12, 48, 208–9 and Australia 62 and Carlsson 219 and China 44, 52–3, 54, 69 and cobalt 89 and Germany 33 and Glencore 112 and Model X 138 and nickel 165 see also Musk, Elon 3i Group 38 Tianqi Lithium 54, 71, 73, 83, 84–7 tin 84, 162, 213, 231, 232, 236–7 titanium 25, 26 Tonga 189 Toshiba 30 Toyota 23, 41, 211 trading, see London Metal Exchange Tregothnan estate (Cornwall) 231, 239–40 Trump, Donald 48, 113–14 Tsingshan 158–62, 163–5, 167, 246 tungsten 213 Ukraine 217 Umpula, Emmanuel 133, 147 United Kingdom (UK) 34, 200, 243–4; see also Cornwall United States of America (USA) 8–9, 14–18, 92, 198–9, 210–13 and copper 179 and corruption investigations 110–11, 112–13, 114–15 and Glencore 113–14 and gold mining 182 and lithium 48, 51–2 and pollution 22–3 and recycling 209–10 Vale 154–5, 167 Van Nijen, Kris 202–6 Van Reybrouck, David 129 Vescovo, Victor 192 Vietnam 119 Volkswagen (VW) 5, 8, 22, 33, 220, 222 and China 43 and cobalt 88–9, 90–1, 92 and DRC 145 and Glencore 112 and Huayou 131, 133 and Northvolt 223 Volta, Alessandro 24 Volvo 145 Wan Gang 40 Wang Xiaoshen 47–9, 55–6, 57, 58–9, 64, 69–70 waste 97, 150–5, 166–7, 209, 211, 213 Weaver, Phil 193 Weber, Neill 24 Wendt, Andreas 140 Wenzhou (China) 161 Whittingham, Stanley 21–2, 25–7, 55 Williams, Neil 234–5 wind power 97, 171, 174, 189, 243, 245 World Economic Forum (WEF) 141 World Trade Organization (WTO) 38, 159 Wrathall, Jeremy 228, 229–35, 236, 237, 238 Wu, Vivian 71, 84 Xi Jinping 35, 126, 162–3 Xi Zhongxun 35 Xiang Guangda 159, 160–2, 164 Xiaomi 213 Xinjiang province (China) 56–7 Xinyu (China) 47, 52–6, 58–9 Xpeng 34 Xstrata 109, 156 Xu Bu 86 Yama, Peter 152–3 Yang, Neill 44 Yantai Cash 142 Yeltsin, Boris 226 Yibin Tianyi Lithium 68 Yoshino, Akira 21, 29–30, 31 Yu Bo 178–9 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang 162, 163 Yuma, Albert 115–17, 143 Zahawi, Nadhim 233 Zaire, see Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Zambia 107, 172, 184–5 Zeng, Robin 32, 34, 35–8, 42, 43, 44, 45–6 and carbon emissions 224 Zhang Jimin 161 Zijin Mining 171, 186 A Oneworld Book First published by Oneworld Publications in 2022 This ebook edition published in 2022 Copyright © Henry Sanderson 2022 The moral right of Henry Sanderson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-86154-375-5 eISBN 978-0-86154-376-2 Typeset by Geethik Technologies Oneworld Publications 10 Bloomsbury Street London WC1B 3SR England


pages: 524 words: 154,652

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, algorithmic management, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Babbage, ChatGPT, collective bargaining, colonial rule, commoditize, company town, computer age, computer vision, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, decarbonisation, deskilling, digital rights, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, gigafactory, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, independent contractor, industrial robot, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Journalism, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, OpenAI, precariat, profit motive, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Bankman-Fried, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, techlash, technological determinism, Ted Kaczynski, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working poor, workplace surveillance

And they were right: Automation is, quite often and quite simply, a matter of the executive classes locating new ways to enrich themselves, not unlike the factory bosses of the Luddite days. Here’s a telling example: In 2019, the New York Times’ Kevin Roose filed a report from Davos detailing how the business leaders and tech CEOs at that year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) were very eager to implement automation. “They’ll never admit it in public,” Roose wrote, “but many of your bosses want machines to replace you as soon as possible.” In public, the elites preferred to discuss the abstract need to prepare for “the fourth industrial revolution” or “the second machine age.”

Since then, these executives and elites have decided to buy and build more robots and software programs that would, ideally, put people out of work. Far from spontaneously swarming to the factory floor, the AI and robot armies that are “coming for your jobs” are much more likely to be deployed on behalf of the kind of elites who go to Davos. Those elites are a major reason we continue to treat automation like a faceless phenomenon, too—the institutes they fund, consultancies they hire, and banks they work with frequently issue and promote reports that treat automation like a technological inevitability. In 2020, the WEF issued a “Future of Jobs” report that stated “Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies driven by AI will… fundamentally change the world.”


pages: 252 words: 74,167

Thinking Machines: The Inside Story of Artificial Intelligence and Our Race to Build the Future by Luke Dormehl

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apple II, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Bletchley Park, book scanning, borderless world, call centre, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, deep learning, DeepMind, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Flash crash, Ford Model T, friendly AI, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, hive mind, industrial robot, information retrieval, Internet of things, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, Loebner Prize, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, out of africa, PageRank, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, remote working, RFID, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, social intelligence, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, strong AI, superintelligent machines, tech billionaire, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, Turing machine, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Short-term, the collaboration made Waze more efficient at helping users to reach their destinations quickly. Long-term, the idea is that Waze data will help the city fine-tune its traffic-light timings and work out how to cut down on congestion. Get Ready for the Internet to Disappear In January 2015, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt caused a stir while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Asked about his predictions for the future of the Web, Schmidt said, ‘I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear.’ There was, of course, nothing simple about this answer. Upon first listen, it was a bit like Apple CEO Tim Cook telling people that they should put down the smartphones and have a face-to-face conversation with friends, or a movie studio boss saying that cinema is stuck in a rut and people ought to spend their time reading books or going for walks.


pages: 230 words: 71,834

Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality by Melissa Bruntlett, Chris Bruntlett

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active transport: walking or cycling, ASML, autonomous vehicles, bike sharing, car-free, crowdsourcing, en.wikipedia.org, fixed-gear, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, intermodal, Jones Act, Loma Prieta earthquake, megacity, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, safety bicycle, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, starchitect, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, the High Line, transit-oriented development, urban planning, urban renewal, wikimedia commons

A 2013 study conducted by UNICEF found that Dutch kids topped the list for overall well-being when compared to children in the world’s 29 wealthiest countries, in part because of their ability to roam freely without parent supervision. Dutch adults, meanwhile, were ranked seventh in a global quality-of-life index presented at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, which considered factors such as affordability, inclusivity, life expectancy, and equality. Canada and the United States, on the other hand, were ranked 13th and 23rd, respectively. The final and perhaps most compelling piece of this puzzle is the fact the Dutch have proven that a place that works for cycling also works better for driving.


pages: 352 words: 80,030

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, cashless society, clean water, cryptocurrency, Deng Xiaoping, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, global supply chain, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, land reform, Londongrad, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Meghnad Desai, Nelson Mandela, Paris climate accords, purchasing power parity, ransomware, Rubik’s Cube, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, trade route, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, urban planning, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

, The Diplomat, 12 July 2017. 116Laura He, ‘HNA sells property and logistics assets to Chinese tycoon Sun Hongbin for US$305 million’, 12 March 2018; Don Weiland, ‘Default reignites questions over China groups’ state backing’, 7 June 2018; Elvira Pollina, ‘Elliott launches action to take control of AC Milan – source’, Reuters, 9 July 2018. 117Zhou Xiaochuan, ‘守住不发生系统性金融风险的底线’, http://www.pbc.gov.cn/goutongjiaoliu/113456/113469/3410388/index.html 118Stefania Palma, ‘Malaysia suspends $22bn China-backed projects’, Financial Times, 5 July 2018; Kuunghee Park, ‘Malaysia finally scraps $ 3billion China-backed pipeline plans’, Bloomberg, 10 September 2018. 119Jeremy Page and Saeed Shah, ‘China’s Global Building Spree Runs Into Trouble in Pakistan’, 22 July 2018. 120Jamil Anderlini, Henny Sender and Farhan Bokhari, ‘Pakistan rethinks its role in Xi’s Belt and Road plan’, Financial Times, 9 September 2018. 121Stephen Dziedzic, ‘Tonga urges Pacific nations to press China to forgive debts as Beijing defends its approach’, ABC, 16 August 2018. 122Jon Emont and Myo Myo, ‘Chinese-funded port gives Myanmar a sinking feeling’, Wall Street Journal, 15 August 2018. 123James Kynge, ‘China’s Belt and Road difficulties are proliferating across the world’, Financial Times, 9 July 2018. 124Sarah Zheng, ‘China embarks on belt and road publicity blitz after Malaysia says no to debt-heavy infrastructure projects’, South China Morning Post, 26 August 2018. 125Xinhua, ‘Xi pledges to bring benefits to people through Belt and Road Initiative’, 27 August 2018. 126Xinhua, ‘Full text of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at opening ceremony of 2018 FOCAC Beijing summit’, 4 September 2018. 127Yonas Abiye, ‘Chinese government to restructure Ethiopia’s debt’, The Reporter, 8 September 2018. 128Christian Shepherd, Ben Blanchard, ‘China’s Xi offers another $60bn to Africa, but says no to “vanity” projects’, Reuters, 3 September 2018. 129Bank of England, ‘From the Middle Kingdom to the United Kingdom: spillovers from China’, Quarterly Bulletin Q2 (2018), op. cit. 130David Lawder and Elias Glenn, ‘Trump says US tariffs could be applied to Chinese goods worth $500 billion’, Reuters, 5 July 2018. 131Bank of England, ‘From the Middle Kingdom to the United Kingdom.’ op. cit. 132BBC News, ‘Boris Johnson’s resignation letter and May’s reply in full’, 9 July 2018. 133Tasnim News Agency, ‘Iran, Kazakhstan plan trade in own currencies’, 12 August 2018. 134Heiko Maas, ‘Wir lassen nicht zu, dass die USA über unsere Köpfe hinweg handeln’, Handelsblatt, 21 August 2018. 135Christina Larsen, ‘China’s massive investment in artificial intelligence has an insidious downside’, Science, 8 February 2018. 136Xinhua, ‘Beijing to build technology park for developing artificial intelligence’, 3 January 2018; The Economist, ‘China talks of building a “digital silk road”’, 31 May 2018. 137CB Insights, Top AI Trends To Watch in 2018 (2018). 138Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, ‘Xi Jinping Urges Breaking New Ground in Major Country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics’, 23 June 2018. 139Stephen Chen, ‘Artificial Intelligene, immune to fear or favour, is helping to make China’s foreign policy’, South China Morning Post, 30 July 2018. 140Jamie Fullerton, ‘China’s new CH-5 Rainbow drone leaves US Reaper “in the dust”’, The Times 18 July 2017. 141Jeremy Page and Paul Sonne, ‘Unable to Buy US Military Drones, Allies Place Orders With China’, Wall Street Journal, 17 July 2017. 142Bill Gertz, ‘China in race to overtake the US in AI warfare’, Asia Times, 30 May 2018. 143George Allison, ‘The speech delivered by the Chief of the Defence Staff at the Air Power Conference’, UK Defence Journal, 13 July 2018. 144Stephen Chen, ‘New Chinese military drone for overseas buyers “to rival” US’s MQ-9 Reaper’, South China Morning Post, 17 July 2017. 145Boris Egorov, ‘Rise of the Machines: A look at Russia’s latest combat robots’, 8 June 2017. 146Robert Mendick, Ben Farmer and Roland Oliphant, ‘UK military intelligence issues warning over Russian supertank threat’, Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2016. 147Anastasia Sviridova, ‘Специалисты обсудили успехи и недостатки в сегменте отечественной робототехники’, Krasnaya Zvezda, 4 June 2018. 148Dave Majumdar, ‘The Air Force’s Worst Nightmare: Russia and China Could Kill Stealth Fighters’, The National Interest, 28 June 2018. 149Zachary Keck, ‘China’s DF-26 “Carrier-Killer” Missile Could Stop the Navy in Its Track (without Firing a Shot)’, The National Interest, 20 April 2018. 150Aanchal Bansal, ‘India’s first manned space mission to send three persons’, Economic Times, 29 August 2018. 151Stephen Clark, ‘China sets new national record for most launches in a year’, Spaceflight Now, 27 August 2018; Ernesto Londoño, ‘China on the march in Latin America with new space station in Argentina’, Financial Review, 2 August 2018. 152White House, ‘Remarks by President Trump at a Meeting with the National Space Council and Signing of Space Policy Directive-3’, 18 June 2018. 153Shawn Donnan, ‘US strikes deal with ZTE to lift ban’, 7 June 2018. 154Charles Clover, ‘China-Russia rocket talks sparks US disquiet over growing links’, Financial Times, 17 January 2018. 155Patti Domm, ‘US could target 10 Chinese industries, including new energy vehicles, biopharma’, CNBC, 22 March 2018. 156John Grady, ‘Pentagon Research Chief Nominee: China, Russia Racing to Develop Next Generation Weapon Technology’, United States Naval Institute, 11 May 2018. 157Shane Harris, ‘The CIA is returning its central focus to nation-state rivals, director says’, Washington Post, 24 September 2018. 158China–Russia Relations, p.5. 159Bandurski, ‘Yan Xuetong on the Bipolar state of our world, op.cit.’ 160Edward Luce, ‘Henry Kissinger: “We are in a very, very grave period” ’, 20 July 2018. 161Xinhua, ‘Reform, opening up break new ground for China: article’, 13 August 2018. 162Clare Foges, ‘Our timid leaders can learn from strongmen’, The Times, 23 July 2018. 163State Council Information Office, ‘Full text: Xi Jinping’s keynote speech at the World Economic Forum’, 6 April 2017. 164Reuters, ‘Trump says tariffs could be applied to Chinese goods’, 5 July 2018. 165Frankopan, Silk Roads, xv. 166Minnie Chan, ‘China’s army infiltrated by “peace disease” after years without a war, says its official newspaper’, South China Morning Post, 3 July 2018. 167US Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018, op. cit. 168Jessica Donati.

The rise of this new world is taking place before us, driven by shifts in power that are so profound that it is hard to see how they can be stopped, slowed down or held back, except by the forces of conflict, disease and climate change that have played such important roles in the past in shaping world history and redirecting and reshaping the present and the future. In a speech delivered at the Davos summit in 2017, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, talked about the need for nations to work with rather than against each other. ‘Our real enemy,’ he said, ‘is not the neighbouring country; it is hunger, poverty, ignorance, superstition and prejudice.’ It could not be right, he said, that ‘the richest 1 per cent of the world’s population own more wealth than the remaining 99 per cent … [while] for many families, to have warm houses, enough food and secure jobs is still a distant dream’.


pages: 247 words: 78,961

The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century by Robert D. Kaplan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, always be closing, California gold rush, collective bargaining, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, kremlinology, load shedding, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, no-fly zone, oil-for-food scandal, one-China policy, Parag Khanna, Pax Mongolica, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, the long tail, trade route, Westphalian system, Yom Kippur War

Empire clearly had its evils, but one cannot deny its historical function—to provide stability and order to vast tracts of land occupied by different peoples. If not empire, what then? In fact, though very few will admit it, a rules-based international system and the raft of supranational and multinational groupings such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, European Union, International Monetary Fund, International Court of Justice, World Economic Forum, and so on are all attempts to replace—to greater and lesser extents—the function of empire. Silently undergirding this process since World War II has been the undeniable fact of American power—military, diplomatic, and economic—protecting the sea-lanes, the maritime choke points, and access to hydrocarbons, and in general providing some measure of security to the world.

Meanwhile, like “the brassiness of marches” and “the heavy stomp of peasant dances” that composer Gustav Mahler employed, as he invaded “the well-ordered house of classical music” in the waning decades of the Habsburg Empire (to quote the late Princeton professor Carl E. Schorske), the twenty-first century will be defined by vulgar, populist anarchy that elites at places like Aspen and Davos will have less and less influence upon, and will less and less be able to comprehend. Imperialism, then, will be viewed as much with nostalgia as with disdain. The sleep of any president, prime minister, or statesman is haunted by what-ifs. What if I had only fired that defense secretary sooner, or replaced that general in Iraq with the other one before it was too late?


pages: 277 words: 80,703

Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Community Supported Agriculture, declining real wages, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, financial independence, fixed income, gentrification, global village, illegal immigration, informal economy, invisible hand, labor-force participation, land tenure, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, neoliberal agenda, new economy, Occupy movement, planetary scale, Scramble for Africa, statistical model, structural adjustment programs, the market place, tontine, trade liberalization, UNCLOS, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

See also The Global Assembly Line (1986), a documentary that examines the internationalization of commodity production and work condition in the Free Trade Zones with reference to Mexico and the Philippines. 6. Linda Lim, “Capitalism, Imperialism and Patriarchy,” in Women, Men and the InternationalDivision of Labor, eds. June Nash and Maria P. Fernandez-Kelley (Albany: SUNY University Press, 1983), 81. 7. See the report prepared by participants in the World Economic Forum on the occasion of their annual meeting held in Davos (Switzerland) in the summer of 1994. In this report, however, the dominant attitude is the fear that the prospected industrialization of the Third World may cause an economic decline in industrialized countries. In criticizing this thesis, which he considers dangerous for the expansion of the “free market,” economist Paul Krugman points out that exports from the “Third World” absorb only 1 percent of the “First World” income and in 1993 the total capital transferred from the “First” to the “Third World” amounted to only $60 billion, “pocket change,” in his view, “in a world economy that invests more than $4 trillion a year” (“Fantasy Economics,” New York Times, September 26, 1994). 8.


pages: 318 words: 77,223

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse by Mohamed A. El-Erian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, currency peg, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, friendly fire, full employment, future of work, geopolitical risk, Hyman Minsky, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, income inequality, inflation targeting, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, oil shale / tar sands, price stability, principal–agent problem, quantitative easing, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, yield curve, zero-sum game

Now it is not as if central bankers were not aware of the problem. They were. Indeed, during periods of market calm, several of them had warned markets about the potential for volatility down the road, including Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who in January 2015 warned during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that “the difference between market and policymakers’ expectations could have a large impact on financial system volatility.”9 And the longer they persisted with their experimental policy approach, the more I worried about the greater danger that they would gradually slip from being part of the solution—indeed the only meaningful and consequential part of the solution—to being part of the problem.


pages: 293 words: 74,709

Bomb Scare by Joseph Cirincione

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dr. Strangelove, dual-use technology, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological determinism, uranium enrichment, Yogi Berra

Mathews, presentation at launch of Universal Compliance, March 3, 2005, available at http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/UC-transcript1.pdf. 27. Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Knopf, 2003), p. 154. 28. Special Address by Tony Blair at the Opening Plenary of the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2005, available at http://www.weforum.org/en/knowledge/KN_SESS_SUMM_13143. 29. “Diplomacy’s Fleeting Moment in Korea,” New York Times, January 3, 2006, p. A18. 8. NUCLEAR SOLUTIONS 1. For an excellent discussion of why nuclear terrorism is unlikely, see Robin M.


pages: 245 words: 75,397

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

“It’s easy to forget that two-thirds of the people you see walking down the street are living paycheck to paycheck.” “Yeah, I guess I’m lucky I got to London,” Elias says. “What do you mean?” Jerry asks. “Not much opportunity out there,” Elias says. “At least I found a good seat.” Jerry interjects. “I was reading about some new social mobility index. It’s put together by the World Economic Forum to measure social mobility. It shows that most people are screwed.” He’s right on this. For most people, their opportunities in life remain bolted to their socio-economic status at birth. The index measures eighty-two countries. It looks at whether you moved up or down compared to your parents, whether or not your kid has a better life than you did.

* It’s a new week, and I’m in the office doing a deep dive on the jobs report with Jerry and the Rabbi. I want to see if we can decipher any new trends. We are in the conference room next to the trading floor, and the door is open. As we’re working, we can hear the television on the trading floor. Davos is the big event of the week. Over 100 billionaires are there with $500 billion of combined net worth. Headlines are coming out of the event. Bob Prince from Bridgewater is on the tape, claiming we’ve seen “the end of the boom/bust cycle.” Even he is drinking the Kool-Aid. Now the big event. It’s time for the Big D’s speech.


pages: 256 words: 73,068

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, digital rights, discovery of DNA, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, flying shuttle, friendly AI, gender pay gap, global village, Grace Hopper, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, housing crisis, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microdosing, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, OpenAI, operation paperclip, packet switching, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Plato's cave, public intellectual, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, spinning jenny, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, TikTok, trade route, Turing test, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

Why does Matt think men want these dolls to talk? In 2021, as was widely reported, the then Tokyo Olympics chief, Yoshiri Mori, had to stand down after saying that women executives talk too much. How would he know? According to the Japanese Business Federation, in 2019, women occupied just over 5% of executive positions – and in the World Economic Forum’s gender-gap rankings of 2020, Japan stood at 121 among 153 countries. Getting 30% of talking females into executive positions is Japan’s ‘ambitious’ 2030 target. * * * In China, DS Doll Robotics has an amusing video on its website where the male creator in the white coat gets annoyed with his yakky female bot and just unplugs her.

At present that is still possible if you leave your phone at home, walk wherever you want to go, pay cash where there is no CCTV (both increasingly difficult moves, I admit), don’t browse the internet for a few days. Soon, though, as smart devices and smart implants become normal, you won’t be logging in. You’re in. You’re on. For life. From sci-fi to Wi-Fi to my-wi. * * * Former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt, sitting next to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at Davos in 2015, put it like this: The internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, there will be so many devices, sensors, things you are wearing, things you are interacting with, that you won’t even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. This raises new ethical questions.


pages: 273 words: 34,920

Free Market Missionaries: The Corporate Manipulation of Community Values by Sharon Beder

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, battle of ideas, business climate, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, invisible hand, junk bonds, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, old-boy network, popular capitalism, Powell Memorandum, price mechanism, profit motive, Ralph Nader, rent control, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, shareholder value, spread of share-ownership, structural adjustment programs, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Torches of Freedom, trade liberalization, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, young professional

Superannuation Board Chair of Roux Int., Aust. Developmt Fund, VicSuper P/L, RBZ Group Director, Vic. Funds Managemt Corp. Director, Deutsche Funds Management; Adviser to the Deutsche Bank Group in Australia; and to the Frank Russell Company Honorary Trustee of CEDA Chairman of the Australian Davos Connection, World Economic Forum Max MooreWilton Dep. Sec. Commonwealth Dept of Primary Industries Head of NSW Roads and Traffic Authority Head, NSW Dept of Transport Head, NSW Maritime Serv. Bd Man. Dir., Aust. National Line Gen. Manager, Aust. Wheat Bd Secretary, Dept PM and Cabinet Formerly a national director and acting head of Australian Stock Exchange CEO, Sydney Airports Corp. 162 FREE MARKET MISSIONARIES Table 10.2 continued Positions Business connections Ken Baxter Dir-Gen, Victorian Cabinet office Director, NSW Premier’s Dept Head, NSW Office of Public Management, Chair, Australian Dairy Corp.

He claims his book is ‘making its way onto both liberal and conservative agendas, as well as the platforms of think tanks, philanthropic foundations, environmental groups, and international banks, among many other organizations’. Gates’ second book, Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street – a Populist Vision for the 21st Century (2000), makes a similar argument, and has been endorsed by people as diverse as Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum, and consumer rights’ advocate Ralph Nader.67 The European Commission is also keen to encourage shareholder democracy, and to this end is seeking to harmonize corporate government codes in Europe to make it easier for lay people to invest. Frits Bolkestein, European commissioner for the internal market, said in 2002: ‘I want to have a European market in shares, a shareholder democracy, one share one vote.’

Grace 69 Wal-Mart 222 Wall Street movie 175 Wall Street Journal 99, 100–101, 174, 176 Walt Disney Educational Media Company 70 War Advertising Council 30 Warner & Swasey 37 Washington Consensus 148–152 Washington University at Seattle 96 Welch, Robert 45 welfare state free market ideology 96 privatization of social security 171–173, 181–184 United Kingdom 48, 150 Western Australian Chamber of Mines 129, 130 Western Mining Corporation (WMC) 127, 128–129, 133, 135 see also Evans, Ray; Morgan, Hugh Westinghouse Electric 15, 31, 50, 54 Westpac 83, 134, 211 Weyrich, Paul 109 White, Clifton 79 Whitlam, Gough 85 Wider Share Ownership Council 178, 195 William Folker Fund 94, 117 Williamson, John 148–149 Woodside Petroleum 180 Woolworths 212 Workers’ Party 127–128 Workingmen Progressive Association 4 World Bank 135, 138, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 152, 154, 159 World Economic Forum 161, 185 World War I 3 World War II 22–23, 30 Yale University 73 Young, James Webb 29–30 Young Achievement Australia 211 Young Enterprise (UK) 211–212, 214


pages: 382 words: 107,150

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages by Annelise Orleck

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, card file, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, export processing zone, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, food desert, Food sovereignty, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, immigration reform, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McJob, means of production, new economy, payday loans, precariat, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, special economic zone, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

Politics, Equality, Nature (London: Verso, 2016); Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Penguin, 2017); Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016). 4. “An Economy for the 1%,” 210 Oxfam Briefing Paper, January 18, 2016. 5. “62 People Own Same as Half World,” Oxfam, press release, January 18, 2016, http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-says-oxfam-inequality-report-davos-world-economic-forum; Social Security Administration, “Wage Statistics for 2014,” https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014. 6. Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States,” University of California, Berkeley, September 3, 2013, http://eml.berkeley.edu//~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf.

Nike insisted it was giving girls in poor countries “control over their future . . . many for the first time.” The Girl Effect became an independent foundation in 2015. Its website opens with this statement: “We exist to create a new normal with and for girls.” Girl Effect has won praise and funding from the World Economic Forum (a global consortium of business and political leaders), USAID (the foreign aid arm of the US government), and the Clinton Global Initiative. The foundation partners with the United Nations and NGOs throughout the world and is seen by many as promoting a successful strategy for women’s economic empowerment.3 Asian garment workers are skeptical.

H&M led accord signatories in sending a joint letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, urging their release and calling on her to create a tripartite wage board through which workers, government officials, and manufacturers could negotiate. The letter embarrassed the Bangladeshi leader. On January 17, she addressed the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, assuring the gathered bankers, heads of state, and corporate leaders that her government was “committed to ensure . . . labor rights, workplace safety, and environmental standards in the [garment] industry.” Perhaps the wheel was finally turning. All of this has taken decades of work.


pages: 1,123 words: 328,357

Post Wall: Rebuilding the World After 1989 by Kristina Spohr

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, central bank independence, colonial exploitation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, G4S, Japanese asset price bubble, Kickstarter, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, open economy, operational security, Prenzlauer Berg, price stability, public intellectual, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, software patent, South China Sea, special economic zone, Thomas L Friedman, Transnistria, uranium enrichment, zero-coupon bond

Indeed, the GDR haemorrhaged a further 58,000 young citizens in January alone without any diminution of the flow in sight; the renamed communist SED-PDS lost some 1.6 million of its 2.3 million party members; and soon the West CDU like all other big West German parties (SPD, FDP and Greens) were funding and therefore shaping the election campaigns of their sister parties or aligned lists. It was Kohl, Brandt and Genscher who became the political icons for many East Germans. When on the margins of the Davos World Economic Forum Modrow begged Kohl yet again for DM 15 billion, this time just to survive until the elections, the chancellor not only said no but boldly stated that the only option going forward was rapid economic union founded on the Deutschmark. Modrow had no choice but to agree.[67] The dramatic turn of events in East Berlin inevitably had an impact in Moscow.

Being anchored into this ‘institutional West’ had served both West Germany and Western Europe well during the Cold War. Now, Kohl believed, it would serve united Germany equally well at a time when Europe was turning east. At root, for both chancellors, Europe constituted a question of war and peace. Kohl told the World Economic Forum in Davos on 3 February 1990 that in Western Europe there was ‘no way back to the power-political rivalries of past times … Human rights and human dignity; free self-determination; a free societal order; private initiative; market economy. These are the building blocks for a future European order of peace, which overcomes the division of Europe and the division of Germany.’[84] So the push for European union was not a ‘hasty’ reaction to ‘French dismay and frustration over developments in Germany’, as has been suggested,[85] but the continuation of a long-running process of rapprochement and partnership.

Jr 367 CSCE see Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe CSCE Council of Ministers 490, 493, 495 CSCE Paris summit (1990) 255–73, 312, 314–18, 357, 358–9, 380, 405, 411, 431, 436, 485, 489 Cuba 20, 64, 195, 196, 302, 331, 543 Czech Republic 456 Czechoslovak Politburo 123 Czechoslovakia 502; 1968 invasion of 211; as associate member of EC 509; Bush’s visit to 312–14; divides into two separate states 456, 486; and flight of East Germans 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 142, 149, 248; free elections in 308; hardliners in 84; and meeting in Paris 256; and membership of EC 263, 322; and membership of NATO 311–12; and opening of border with FRG 142, 149; as part of a ‘Common European Home’ 228; represented at fortieth anniversary of PRC 123; represented at NACC meeting 449; Soviet control over 69; Thatcher’s comment on German-Czech border 177; upheavals in 166, 486; Velvet Revolution in 187–90, 192–3, 456; and Western aid 310, 385, 481; withdrawal of Soviet troops from 214, 424 Davos World Economic Forum 213, 279 Dayton Peace Accords (1995) 589 ‘Declaration on New Relations’ (1992) 464 Delors Committee 265 Delors, Jacques 238, 587; at Houston G7 summit (1990) 306; comments on European political union and GDR 271–2; and consequences of German unification 272; discussions with Mitterrand and Bush on NATO 288–91; and Europe of concentric circles 260; and the EC 95–7; makes a deal with Kohl 247; and EMU 265; proposes extraordinary EC summit 272–4; and Yugoslav conflict 492 Delors Plan 172 Delors Report (1989) 177, 266–7 Dem Rossiya (’Democratic Russia’) movement-cum-party 396 Democratic Alliance (Poland) 103 Demokratie Jetzt 135 Demokratischer Aufbruch 135, 150 Deng Xiaoping: contrast with Gorbachev 583; economic reforms 29–32; and exit from the Cold War 3–4; ideological tensions with Li Peng 571; perceived as enemy of freedom 58; politico-economic reform 558, 574; relationship with: America 25, 26, 28–31, 33, 35, 37–9, 60–3, 586, GDR 122–3, Gorbachev 33–5, 37–9, 546, Jiang Zemin 571-4; and student unrest 55, 57; successors to 558–9, 566, 595; and Tiananmen Square 441, 558 Denmark 497, 500 Der Spiegel 156, 285 Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) 506 Die Republikaner party 158 Die Welt 158 Donetsk 437, 444 Dowd, Maureen 347 Dresden 119, 121, 135, 143, 155, 180, 181–4, 216 Dubček, Alexander 188 Dublin EC Councils I and II (1990) 274–9, 282, 284, 290, 305 Dukakis, Michael 24, 430 Dumas, Roland 209, 246, 493, 500 DVU see Deutsche Volksunion Eagleburger, Lawrence 214, 328, 429–30, 436, 494, 518, 521, 560, 561 EAI see Enterprise for the Americas Initiative East Asia 20, 542, 544 East Berlin 77–8, 109, 112, 114, 124, 133, 135–6, 142, 149, 160, 178, 180, 190, 212, 213; see also Berlin East Germany see German Democratic Republic (GDR) East-West relationship 19, 42, 47, 95, 99, 174, 178, 179, 191–2, 198, 202, 210, 271, 287, 324, 349, 449, 455, 458, 482–3, 502, 590 Eastern Europe 16, 28, 32, 40, 45, 75, 82, 85, 92, 94, 95, 99, 155, 172–3, 177, 178, 214, 216, 245, 251, 259, 263, 295, 311, 405, 406, 424, 433, 438, 439, 446, 448, 457, 466, 481, 533, 566, 569, 588 EBRD see European Bank for Reconstruction and Development EC 12 260, 264, 274, 306, 515 EC 92 97, 544 EC see European Community EC Brussels summit (1991) 509 EC Council of Ministers 274, 276, 277, 497 EC Strasbourg summit (1989) 176–8, 179 ECB see European Central Bank Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) of the EU 96, 175, 260, 265–72, 281–2 EFTA see European Free Trade Area Egypt 333, 334, 337, 338, 364, 446 El Salvador 195, 543 EMU see Economic and Monetary Union Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (EAI) 543 EPU see European Political Union Estonia 7, 75, 106, 107, 391, 395, 404, 412, 417, 420, 437, 449 EU see European Union Europe 584-5: and aid for Russia 302–7, 469; and Balkan conflict 491–505; and building a Community 272–3; Bush’s attitude towards 285–8, 533; conventional armed forces in 314–18; disunity in 511–12; Dublin summits 274–9, 282, 284; and East-West relationship 307–14; and Germany-in-NATO issue 295–8, 299; and Maastricht Treaty 498; and EMU 265–72, 281–2 nationalist movements in 507; Paris CSCE summit (1990) 255–73; and political union 271–2; security issues 218, 221–4, 226–38, 241–4, 288–93, 298–302, 424, 485–6, 512–16, 588; Thatcher’s view of 279–87; visions for new order in 256–65 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) 305, 311, 429, 466 European Central Bank (ECB) 266 European Commission 96, 266, 282, 305, 311 European Community (EC) 6, 26, 81, 83, 95–7, 153–5, 157, 174, 176–8, 207, 235, 251, 256, 259, 260, 305, 406, 410, 419, 424, 436, 466, 491–505, 527, 548, 582 European Confederation idea 256, 258–65, 311 European Council 509 European Free Trade Area (EFTA) 311 European Monetary System (EMS) 96 European Parliament 155, 272, 274, 419, 507 European Political Union (EPU) 266 European Security Council 228 European Union (EU) 7, 8, 97, 204, 207–8, 277, 459, 461, 493, 498, 582, 589, 593 Fahd, King 328, 329–30, 338 Falin, Valentin 230, 245 Fang Lizhi 32, 560, 561 FDP see Free Democrats party Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) 3, 7, 46, 65, 78, 97, 98, 100 and note, 111, 420, 582; and adequate burden-sharing 466; and aid to Russia 481; and aid to the Soviet Union 406–7; and Balkan conflict 493, 494, 495–6, 495–8, 499–501, 502–5, 503–4; Balkan policy 509–10; Bush’s Four Principles on reunification 202–3; and cost and challenges of unification 480, 584; different foreign approaches to 213–24, 226–38; economy of 337; election fears 506–7; and European security issues 513; inter-German unity treaty and formal unification 246, 250–1, 587; international position 509; and Kuwait crisis 374; Kohl-Gorbachev deal on unification 307; Kohl’s blueprint for reunification 151–66; as major donor of aid 212; managing unification of 6, 8, 400; as member of EU 584; nationalist and political movements in 506–7; and NATO membership after unification 218, 221–4, 226–38, 241–4, 264, 295–8, 299, 459, 584; and problem of asylum seekers, migration from the East and unification 506–8; provides aid to Soviet Union 406–7, 433; international reactions to Kohl’s Ten Point Plan for 166–78; as regional superpower in Europe 593; see also German Democratic Republic Federation of Young Democrats 75 financial crash (2008) 8 Finland 444 Fischer, Oskar 78, 114 follow-on to Lance (FOTL) 290–1 Ford, Gerald 25, 25–6, 26, 477 Ford Motor Company 552 Foreign Affairs 593 FOTL see follow-on to Lance Four Powers (US, USSR, France, UK) 161, 169, 179, 209, 210, 228, 246, 249, 293 Fourth of May Movement (China) 32 France 7, 97, 98, 320, 364, 420, 433, 459, 485, 493, 496, 497, 498, 500, 503, 507, 584 Franco-German army corps 511–12 Free Democrats party (FDP) 43, 107, 112, 213, 265 FREEDOM Support Act 471–3, 476–9 FRG see Federal Republic of Germany Fukuyama, Francis 582 G7+1 547, 592 G7 87, 242, 329, 406, 427, 447, 564, 585 G7 Houston summit (1990) 303–7, 561–2 G7 London summit (1991) 429, 431, 432–5, 547 G7 Munich summit (1992) 480–1, 482, 548 G7 Paris summit (1989) 91–9, 192 G8 481, 595 G24 95, 99, 311 Gaidar, Yegor 369, 463, 469, 479 Gallucci, Robert L. 521 Gandhi, Rajiv 63–4 Garton Ash, Timothy 67–8, 72, 150, 188 Gates, Robert 92, 214, 379 GATT see General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper 67, 104 Gdańsk 70–1, 87, 95 GDR see German Democratic Republic GDR Council of Ministers 213 Gelb, Leslie H. 540 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 5, 27, 97, 194, 305–6, 481, 482, 552, 566, 582 Geneva 306, 576 Geneva summit (1985) 16 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich 3, 128, 130–1, 159, 168, 180, 185, 207, 213, 228, 268; and abolition of SNFs 43; ‘all-European’ exit strategy from the Cold war 215–18; attitude towards NATO and the EC 258; and Balkan conflict 495–8, 499–500, 503–4; belief in German re-unification 118–19; birth of 112; comments on French machinations and European security issues 513; Europa-Plan 161, 164; and flight of East Germans 112, 113, 117, 118–19, 120; and food aid to USSR 406; and FOTL 290; and Kuwait crisis 374, 378; meeting: at Camp David 224, 226–8, with Baker 217–18, with Gorbachev 241–4; and NACC 448; and national self-determination 589; NATO and European security issues 231–2; pleased at outcome of Washington aid conference (1992) 466; speeches: in Berlin (1989) 131, in Tutzing (1990) 215–18, in Luxembourg (1990) 227; and Soviet-German treaty 249; and stabilising of post-Wall Europe 6; success and resignation of 508–9; supports Kohl’s Ten Point Plan 169–71, 172–5; vision for all-European security architecture 215-18, 227-8, 256; welcomes EMU idea 265 Georgia 59, 211, 390, 392–3, 404, 408, 444 Gerasimov, Gennady 115, 126 German Democratic Republic (GDR) 20, 64, 394; Baker’s Potsdam visit (1989) 208–9; and the breaching of the Wall 128–35, 145–6, 148; challenges of unification 584; comparison with Hungary and Poland 148–50; flight of East Germans to Hungary and the West 77, 78, 108–22, 213, 582; inter-German unity treaty and formal unification 246, 250–1, 587; Kohl-Gorbachev deal on unification 307; Kohl’s blueprint for reunification 151–66; and membership of EC 271; and membership of NATO after unification 218, 221–4, 226–38, 241–4, 264, 295–8, 299, 459; mounting protests and tensions in 135–44, 150, 212–13; post-unification see Federal Republic of Germany; relationship with PRC 122–3; transition from communism 148–51; see also Federal Republic of Germany German-Polish border treaty (1990) 250, 509 German-Soviet Treaty on Good-Neighbourliness, Partnership and Cooperation (1990) 247, 249, 251, 252 Germany see Federal Republic of Germany; German Democratic Republic Gigot, Paul A. 351 Gilbert, Martin 353 Gingrich, Newt 478 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 507 Glaspie, April 323 Gorbachev Foundation 458 Gorbachev, Mikhail 3–4, 172; and the 500 Day plan 400–4; accused of ‘subversion of socialism’ by PRC 558; agrees with Kohl seizing ‘the great opportunities that had opened up’ 581; agrees to Bush’s nuclear disarmament initiative 536–7; aligns himself with international law and order 525; appears to have run out of steam 412–15; arms reduction talks with Reagan 585; asks for loans from Beijing 569; at Helsinki superpower summit (1990) 341–8; at London G7 summit (1991) 432–5; at Paris CSCE summit (1990) 255, 256, 316–17; attitude towards Japan 546–7; awarded Nobel Peace Prize 245–6; battle of letters with Kohl 179–81; challenges of change 106; comment on breakup of Yugoslavia 489; contrast with Deng Xiaoping 583; and crisis in the Baltic States 410–11, 414–15, 417–21; criticised on his foreign policy 211–12; crumbling of support for 402–3; and deal on German unification 307; dinner with Yeltsin and Nazarbayev (1991) 439–40; domestic problems 251–2, 317–18, 400–5, 412–13, 421–7; encourages ‘socialist renewal’ and reform 29, 71, 84, 106, 149, 586; events leading up to aborted coup 385–97; family background 13–14; and flight of East Germans to Hungary and the West 121; and full German membership of NATO 228–38, 241–4; and German unification 213–14; and German-Soviet Treaty 247, 251; and Gulf war 320, 332, 339–41, 354, 357, 359, 363, 364, 375, 414; as honorary member of G7 585; importance in diffusing Cold War tensions 584–5; and INF Treaty 314; kept informed of Bush-Yeltsin meeting 432; letter on multilateral East-West cooperation 99–100; and Lithuania 369–70; and Malta summit 191–200, 559; meetings with Kohl 78–82, 238–44; meets Thatcher 43–4; Mitterrand’s concerns over 212; NATO and European security issues 232–8; and new Union Treaty 408–9, 440; non-interventionist position 84, 90, 149, 190, 197; and the Paris Charter 315–16; policy towards GDR 116; political reorganisation 403–5, 407–9; and post-Cold War international relations 4–5, 19–20; presents eye-catching disarmament package 83; prevents Baker-Yeltsin meeting 428; proposes complete reorganisation of the government 404–5; prospects for 427–8, 458; protests against 418; reaction to: breaching of the Wall 131–2, 133–4, fence-cutting between Austria and Hungary 77, Kohl’s Ten Point Plan 168–71, 197, NATO London Declaration (1990) 301, Shevardnadze’s resignation (1991)409, Tiananmen Square 59, 63–4; refuses to dismantle Berlin Wall 127; relationship with: Bush 20–3, 39–40, 65, 82–3, 85, 102–3, 133, 190, 293–7, 325, 375, 380, 381, 383–4, 410–12, 420–1, 428–9, 431, 434–40, 443, 450–2, 457, 461, 592, Deng Xiaoping 33–5, 37–9, 47–55, Honecker 124–7, Reagan 16–17, 20, 21, 28, 101, 193, 196, with Seoul 535, Yeltsin 341, 383, 397–9, 400, 402, 425–7, 428–9, 440–52, 457–8; requests Western aid 247, 248–9, 302–5, 409–10, 419–20, 429, 430, 431, 433; rise to power 14–15; shocked at news from Warsaw 68; and Soviet interests in Asia 546; speeches: at the United Nations (1988) 12–13, 16–20, 21, 25, 27–8, 42, 582; in Strasbourg (1989) 83–4; and splintering of Yugoslavia 5–6; and stabilising of post-Wall Europe 6; talks with: Bush at Moscow summit (1991) 435–8, Gandhi (1989) 63–4, Mitterrand (1989) 82–3; and trade agreement with US 293–7; unsuccessful coup against (1991) 381–3; vision of ‘Common European Home’ 82, 83–4, 157, 228, 256–8, 590; visit to UN and Governors Island 11–13, 16–23; visited by Baker and Genscher (Feb. 1990) 219–21 Gorbachev, Raisa Maximovna Titarenko 14–15, 383 Grachev, Andrei 68, 414, 418 Grass, Günter 156 Greece 274, 497 Greens 213, 253 Grenada 355, 543 Gromov, Boris 407–8, 427 Grósz, Károly 73–4, 107 Guangzhou 571 Gulf War (1990-91) 415, 421, 436, 439, 446, 459, 460, 461, 465, 524, 526–7, 538, 588, 593; gathering of forces 334–40, 352–3; Japan’s refusal to send troops to 545; and long-term US commitment to the area 362–3; military campaign into Iraq and Kuwait 371–80; obtaining consensus for 319–21, 323–34; persuading allies of need for action 352–62; Soviet attitude towards 320, 332, 339–42, 362–3, 409, 414; US preparations for 364–7, 369–71; see also Kuwait Haass, Richard 322, 364, 371, 374 Habsburg, Otto von 110 The Hague peace conference (1992) 494 Haiching Zhao 571 Hainan 574 Hamilton, Lee 244 Hamtramck 40–1, 291, 465 Han Xu 35 Hanover EC Council (June 1988) 265 Haughey, Charles 274, 275 Havel, Václav 188, 190, 255, 308, 310, 312–14, 385, 486 Hawaii 532 Helsinki Conference (1975) 6, 83–4, 119, 154, 164, 170, 177, 178, 179, 180, 198–9, 201, 203, 215, 217, 218, 231–2, 234, 235, 241, 256, 259, 297, 316, 420, 501 Helsinki superpower summit (1990) 341–51 Helsinki II CSCE summit (1992) 485–6, 511, 516 Hempstone, Smith Jr 518 Hendrickson, David 460 Herrhausen, Alfred 156, 166 Herzog, Roman 7 Highway of Death (Kuwait City-Basra) 376 Hirohito, Emperor 35, 545 Hitler, Adolf 129, 130, 171, 490 Honda 552 Honecker, Erich; as diehard socialist 80, 108, 112, 149; envisions ‘Chinese solution’ to protests 135, 136–7, 138, 149; fall of 140, 190; and flight of East Germans to Hungary and the West 115, 116, 117–18, 120; health of 139; reaction to Austria-Hungary border opening 77–8; relationship with Gorbachev 124–7; supports PRCs reaction to Tiananmen Square 122 Hong Kong 94, 541, 563, 564 Horn, Gyula 76, 110, 112, 113, 114 Horváth, István 110 Houston 303–7, 561–2 HSWP see Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party Hu Jintao 595 Hu Yaobang 32 Huber, Hermann 119 human rights; American stance on 60, 62, 193, 195, 294, 431, 476, 490, 515, 527; championed by Pope John Paul II 70; in communist states 431; and Eastern Europe 312; enshrined in Helsinki Final Act 119; in Japan 564; and new world order 524; in PRC 32, 38, 58, 59, 361–2, 557, 558, 561, 563, 564, 565–6, 570, 573; in Romania 186; Russian Federation attitude towards 576; Soviet attitude towards 463, 476; UN Declaration 13; in Western Europe 279, 315; Yugoslavia as supporter of 489 Hungarian Democratic Forum 110 Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) 89–90, 107 Hungary 449, 500, 502; as associate member of EC 509; Bush’s visit to 84, 89–91, 101, 192, 533; change and transformation in 27–8, 47, 64, 72–6, 80, 100, 106–7, 108, 148–50, 186, 187, 188, 189, 385; comparison with GDR 148–50, 189; and fence-cutting ceremony with Austria 4, 47, 65, 76–8; financial debt and aid 73, 95–6, 97–9, 284, 309–10, 385, 481; and flight of East Germans to 108–22, 248; free parliamentary elections in 308; Gorbachev and Kohl’s support for 78, 80, 82; Kohl’s visit to 181; and lobby for Warsaw Pact military intervention in 84; as member of EC 263; and mutual cooperation agreement with Poland and Czechoslovakia 424; opposition round table (ORT) 74; as part of Central European security zone 228; PRC’s attitude towards 64; presses for Soviet troop withdrawal 214; Red Army in 312, 423–4; and relationship with EC 263, 264, 311; Revolution in 60, 415; Hurd, Douglas 173, 246, 358, 493 Hurricane Andrew 519 Husák, Gustáv 188 Hussein, King of Jordan 328, 330, 334 Hussein, Saddam 6, 318, 320, 322, 323–4, 329–30, 334–5, 340, 342, 344, 345, 346, 347, 353, 354, 362, 364, 365, 367, 369, 372, 373, 375, 376, 377, 410, 412, 414, 461, 524, 538, 562, 588, 593 Hutchings, Robert 306, 445, 491 Iacocca, Lee 552 IAEA see International Atomic Energy Agency ICBMs see intercontinental ballistic missiles Iceland 415, 418–19, 500, 502 IGC see Intergovernmental Conference IMF see International Monetary Fund Independent newspaper 300, 336 Independent Trade Unions (Hungary) 107 India 495, 522, 559, 562 Indonesia 541, 562 INFs see intermediate(-range) nuclear forces Inner Mongolia 569 Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) 560 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) 266, 267, 269, 273, 274, 275–6 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987) 16, 257, 314 Intermediate(-range) nuclear forces (INFs) 43 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 537, 538, 540 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 86, 141, 305, 309, 409–10, 429, 434, 435, 465, 467, 469, 471, 478, 479, 548 International Red Cross 563 Iran 6, 567 Iraq 318, 322, 323, 325, 334, 340, 345, 354, 355, 361, 362, 369, 371, 375, 410, 457, 524, 525, 527, 538, 562, 593, 595, 596 Iron Curtain 12, 41, 65, 73, 77, 78, 91, 107, 110, 127, 216, 259, 261 Islamic Conference 517 Israel 345, 362–3, 372, 446 Italy 433, 497, 502, 507 Ivashko, Vladimir A. 405 Izvestia 245, 404 Jackson-Vanik amendment 194, 294, 297, 431, 675 Jäger, Harald 145 Jakeš, Miloš 84, 142, 188 Jakobson, Max 405 Japan 5, 20, 26, 35, 54, 94, 97, 305, 329, 331, 337, 459, 466, 469, 480, 531, 533, 538–9, 559, 562, 574, 593 Japanese Liberal Party 545 Japanese-American relationship 541–50, 551–6 Japanese-Chinese relationship 548–9, 564 Japanese-Soviet relationship 545–8 Jaruzelski, Wojciech 129: at Paris G7 summit (1989) 93–4; becomes president of Poland 103; concedes demands for elections 66; and economic, social and political reforms 40, 71, 72, 385; move towards democracy 104; and Solidarity 67, 104; supported by Kohl and Gorbachev 80, 104; talks with Bush 85–6 JCS see Joint Chief of Staff Jiang Zemin 122, 436, 549, 559, 566, 571–2, 573, 574–5, 595 JNA see Yugoslav National Army John Paul II, Pope 70, 85 Johnson, Lyndon B. 350, 367 Johnston, Robert B. 523 Joint Chief of Staff (JCS) 367, 518, 521 Jones, David 367 Jordan 338 Kádár, János 72, 73–4 Kaifu, Toshiki 329, 331, 337–8, 545, 546, 547, 549, 561–2, 564 Kárpáti, Ferenc 77 Kazakhstan 383, 438, 445, 447, 448, 463, 473 Keating, Paul 551 Kennan, George 492 Kennedy, John F. 86, 131, 320 Kennedy, Paul 542 Kennedy School, Harvard 429, 430 Kessler, Heinz 77 Key Largo 289 KGB 14, 121, 183, 245, 363, 382, 402, 404, 407, 408, 428, 440 Khmer Rouge 563 Khrushchev, Nikita 14, 54, 415, 436 Kiev 5, 441 Kim Il-sung 6, 123, 534–5, 537–8, 540, 565 Kirkpatrick, Jeane 460 Kissinger, Henry 26, 61, 367, 471, 542, 557, 586 Kiszczak, Czesław 103 Kohl, Hannelore 161, 224 Kohl, Helmut 3-4: and arms control 45; at dinner with EC heads of government in Paris (1989) 153–5; at Houston G7 summit (1990) 304, 305; at London G7 summit (1991) 432–3; at Paris CSCE summit (1990) 255, 315; and Balkan conflict 493–4, 497–8, 499, 503, 504; and Baltic States crisis 420; battle of letters with Gorbachev 179–81; believes that one must ‘grab the mantle of history’ 581; and bill for unification 480; conveys impression of Gorbachev to Bush 100–1; cordial meeting with Thatcher 284–5; and deal on German unification 307; domestic problems 506–8; and flight of East Germans 112, 113; formal unification and treaty organised 246–51, 587; immediate reaction to breaching of the Wall 130–5; and Kuwait crisis 338, 374, 379; and loans to PRC 562; and Maastricht Treaty 498; maintains consistent perspective on Europe 278–9; meeting at: with Bush at Camp David (1990) 224, 226–8, with Modrow in Dresden (1989) 178–9, 181–4; and EMU 97, 265–71; and EPU 274–6; and national self-determination 589; NATO and European security issues 231–8; offers food aid to USSR 406–7; pleased at Helsinki superpower summit (1990) outcome 348; political problems 508; proposes Eastern European aid package 95–6, 97–8, 151–2; reaction to London Declaration 301–2; international reactions to his Ten Point Plan 166–78; relationship with: Bush 585, Genscher 43, 44, 112, 168–9, 227, with Gorbachev 5, 78–82, 100, 315, 581, Mitterrand 153–5, 212, 260–5, 315, Németh 115, Thatcher 43, 44, 154, 176–7; scepticism concerning Yeltsin 481; signs German-Soviet Treaty 251–2; success in federal elections (1990) 252–4; supports CFE troop-reduction plan 215; Ten Point Plan for unity 106, 151–66, 179–81, 203, 209, 216, 220, 260, 267, 268–9, 311; and US troops in Germany 295–6; visits to: Moscow 238–44, Poland 129–30, 134–5, 151–3, Russia post-collapse of USSR 485 Köhler, Hörst 480 Kondrashev, Stanislav 404 Korean Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, Exchange and Cooperation (1991) 535–6 Korean Joint Declaration for a Non-Nuclear Korean Peninsula (1991) 536 Korean Peninsula 530–1, 534–41, 551, 567, 574 Korean War (1953) 535, 536 Kosovo 487–8, 596 Kozyrev, Andrei 482, 483, 576, 578 Krauthammer, Charles 593 Krenz, Egon: accession to power 139–40, 149; and economic problems of GDR 141–2; flatly rejects reunification 133, 142; Kohl’s scepticism concerning 132; reaction to state election results 108; unsuccessful meeting with Gorbachev 141; visit to PRC 122–3; warns Bush of ‘nationalism’ 167 Kryuchkov, Vladimir 245, 363, 383, 393, 402–3, 426, 440, 441, 546 Kuril Islands (Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashir, Etorofu) 480, 545–6, 547 Kuwait 6, 250, 318, 319–21, 323–34, 335, 341, 345, 347, 352–67, 369–80, 409, 414, 421, 446, 457, 460, 461, 524, 525, 526–7, 538, 562, 588, 593 Kuwait, Emir of 338–9 Kuzmin, Fyodor 415 Kvitsinky, Ambassador 248 Kyrgyzstan 448 Lafontaine, Oskar 156–7, 229, 252 Lake Balaton 108, 109, 111 Lamapton, David 568 Latché 212, 262, 263, 270 Latin America 539, 542–3, 543, 544 Latvia 106, 107, 391, 395, 408, 412, 415, 420, 449 Lauristin, Marju 404 Lautenberg, Frank R. 337 Lazar, Prince of Serbia 488 Le Monde 269 Le Pen, Marine 507 Lebanon 345 Legras, Guy 306 Leipzig 135, 136, 143 Leipzig Monday demonstrations 150, 158–9 Lenin, V.I. 15 Li Jong-ok 123 Li Peng 32, 51, 55, 63, 559, 562, 564, 566, 569–70, 571, 573, 587 Li Ruihuan 123 Libya 334, 560 Ligachev, Yegor 396 Lithuania 106, 107, 213, 229, 293–5, 297, 320, 369–70, 391, 395, 409, 412, 415, 417, 420, 427, 437, 449 Liu Binyan 32 London 20, 155, 429 London Declaration (1990) 237, 300, 301, 311 London NATO summit (1990) 299–302, 448 London G7 summit (1991) 429, 431, 432–5, 547 Los Angeles World Affairs Council 355 Lubbers, Ruud 176 Luhansk 444 Lukin, Vladimir 64 Lukyanov, Anatoly 425 Lunn, Simon 507 Luxembourg 227, 258, 492, 493, 497 Maastricht Treaty (1992) 8, 459, 480, 498–9, 501, 509, 587 McCain, John 335–6 McCurry, Mike 556 Macedonia 509 McGovern, George 366 McNamara, Robert 366 Madrid 445 Madrid EC Council (1989) 96, 97, 266 Madsen, Richard 557 Magdeburg 184 Maizière, Lothar de 298 Major, John 385, 431, 433, 434, 459, 510, 564, 569, 570 Makashov, Albert 396 Malaysia 541 Mallaby, Sir Christopher 281 Malta Summit (1989) 133, 153, 166, 167, 168, 191–200, 211, 254, 256, 260, 320, 436, 461, 485, 559 Mao Zedong 28, 31, 436 Marković, Ante 490 Marshall Plan (1948) 478, 508 Mashakov, Albert 236 Masur, Kurt 136 Matlock, Jack 393, 398, 423, 426 Maull, Hanns 594 Maxim Gorky (passenger liner) 194 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz 104–5, 128, 129, 190, 214, 247, 250, 400 Medellin 542 Medvedev, Vadim 391 Melerowicz, Dieter 407 Mercedes 552 Merkel, Angela 146, 253–4, 502 Meskhetian Turks 395 Mexico 543, 544 MFN see most favoured nation (trade status) MGU see Moscow State University Middle East 324, 333, 336, 343, 345, 348, 356, 367, 415, 436, 453, 490, 524, 539, 560–1, 565, 597, 598 Mielke, Erich 135, 138 Mikroelektronik Erfurt 125 Milošević, Slobodan 487–9, 491, 492–3, 496, 497, 502, 503–4, 509, 589 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) 567 Mitchell, George 321 Mitterrand, François 3, 4, 6, 96, 133, 172, 480, 587; at Houston G7 summit (1990) 304, 305; at Paris CSCE summit (1990) 256; at Strasbourg EC Council meeting (1989) 176–8; at London G7 summit (1991) 434; at Paris G7 summit as host (1989) 92–3; attitude towards unified Germany 273; background 174; and Balkan conflict 493, 494, 500, 510; belief in Franco-German cooperation 276–7; bid for French-led European activism 511–12; comment on Germany 503; debates with Kohl 260–5; discussions with Delors and Bush on NATO 288–91; and EMU 266; encourages Bush to meet Gorbachev 101; and EPU 274–6; and France’s status 83; and Kuwait crisis 328–9, 353–4, 358, 374, 376; and letter from Gorbachev on multilateral East-West cooperation 99–100; and loans to PRC 562; and Maastricht Treaty 498; meetings with: Baker and Scowcroft 209–11, Bush 35, 209–1; and NATO 45, 299, 511–13; reaction to Kohl’s Ten Point Plan 174–5; and referendum on Maastricht Treaty 480; relationship with Kohl 153–4, 212; relationship with Thatcher 280–1; talks with Gorbachev 82–3; vision for ‘European Confederation’ 256, 258–65, 311; visit to GDR 178–9, 185; warns Bush of Russian feelings of betrayal 481 Miyazawa, Kiichi 480, 552, 554, 556, 570 Miyazawa Plan (1988) 543 Mladenov, Petar 187 Mladina 502 Mock, Alois 76, 110 Modrow, Hans 143, 150, 158, 178, 181–2, 183, 184, 208, 209, 213 Mogadishu 516, 517, 518, 523, 529 Moldavia (SSR) 390, 437 Moldova 444 Moltke, Helmuth Graf von 129 Momper, Walter 130 Mongolian People’s Republic 20 Montenegro 511 Morin, Richard 366 Morocco 320, 328, 333, 334 Mosbacher, Robert 554 Moscow State University (MGU) 14–15 Moscow summit (Gorbachev-Reagan, 1988) 16 Moscow summit (Gorbachev-Kohl, 1990) 238–44 Moscow summit (Gorbachev-Bush, 1991) 421, 429, 431, 435–8, 461 Moskovskie Novosti 418 most favoured nation (MFN) trade status 30, 293, 295, 296–7, 360, 437, 568, 574, 585 MTCR see Missile Technology Control Regime Mubarak, Hosni 328, 330 Mulroney, Brian 223, 330 Multilateral Investment Fund 543 Munich G7 summit (1992) 480–2, 548 NACC see North Atlantic Cooperation Council NAFTA see North American Free Trade Area Nagorno-Karabakh 392 Nagy, Imre 73, 75, 107 Namibia 227, 436, 457 National Security Council (NSC) 26, 28, 306, 322, 328, 329, 363, 366, 420, 445, 491, 510, 521, 523, 536 National Security Review (NSR) 28 NATO see North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NATO London Declaration (1990) see London Declaration NATO-Russia Council 595 Nazarbayev, Nursultan 439–40 Nelan, Bruce W. 350 Németh, Miklós 74, 75, 76–7, 89–90, 111, 113–14, 115, 385 Netherlands 497 Neues Deutschland 143 Neues Forum 135, 140, 143, 150, 212 New Transatlantic Agenda (1995) 544 New York 458–9, 569 New York Times 19, 44, 45, 67, 115, 166, 208, 283, 300, 303, 333, 347, 350, 367, 517, 534, 540 Newsweek 351, 541 NHK TV 553 Nicaragua 41, 195, 457, 543 Nixon, Richard 25, 366, 471, 477, 557, 586 Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) 537, 538, 539, 540, 567 Noriega, Manuel 351, 543 North Africa 597, 598 North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) 544 North Atlantic Assembly 507 North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) 448, 449, 461, 511, 513, 582, 588, 590, 595 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 85, 174, 198, 199, 256, 582; Baker’s and Zoellick’s thoughts on 204, 207–8; and Balkan conflict 498, 527; and the Baltic States 444; Bush’s discussions with Mitterrand and Delors 288–91; Bush’s speech at NATO HQ (Dec. 1989) 201–3; changes to 308; and CIS 448; conservation of after ending of Cold War 6; cooperation with Warsaw Pact 258, 448; defence issues 39, 486; Euro-Atlantic tensions over aid 466–7; future identity 527; Genscher’s views on 216–17, 513; and Gorbachev’s disarmament package 83; and intervention in Yugoslavia conflict 491; London NATO summit (1990) 299–302, 311–12; membership of 311–12, 424, 449, 513; no mention in Kohl’s Ten Point Plan 165; as only serious security institution 590; out of area peacekeeping activity 511, 589; reinvention of 7; rift with WEU 494; Shevardnadze’s visit to 185; strength of 41–2, 69, 513; NATO Brussels summit (1989) 39–40, 42–6; and unified German membership 218, 221–4, 226–38, 264, 285–6; urged to take action in Vilnius 415; US-Soviet-German talks on 219–21; ‘Wintex’ war game 1–2 North Korea 6, 64, 80, 123, 531, 534–41, 551, 565, 577, 595, 597 Northern Territories 545–6, 547, 548 Novo-Ogarevo process 425, 438, 441, 547; see 9+1 process NPT see Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty NSC see National Security Council NSC Deputies Committee 521 NSR see National Security Review nuclear war games 1–2 nuclear weapons 6, 16, 83, 446, 537, 538, 539, 540, 560–1, 562, 565, 567, 595–6 Nunn, Sam 366 Nyers, Rezső 107 Obama, Barack 597, 598 Oder-Neisse border 152, 154, 161–2, 214, 285, 307 OECD see Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Office of US Disaster Assistance 517 Oman 334 Operation Desert Shield (Kuwait, 1990–1) 331, 336–41, 353, 363, 364–5, 366, 371, 525 Operation Desert Storm (Kuwait/Iraq, 1991) 371–9, 460, 491, 525, 594 Operation Provide Hope (Russia, 1992) 466 Operation Restore Hope (Somalia, 1992) 456, 522, 523 Orbán, Viktor 75 Order of Malta 111 Organisation of African Unity 517 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 429 Ostpolitik 100 and note, 119, 130, 131, 157, 158, 161, 169, 171, 215, 228, 294, 509 Ottawa ‘Open Skies’ conference (Feb. 1990) 222–3, 264, 287 Ottoman Empire 487, 488 Özal, Turgut 329, 330, 334 Ozawa, Ichiro 545 Pacific Century 5 Pakistan 364, 567 Palestine 345 Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) 334 ‘Pan-European Picnic’ (1989) 110 Panama 195, 196, 352, 355, 543 Paris 82, 91, 93, 100, 102, 108, 153, 155, 173, 174, 179, 218, 243, 246, 290, 354, 584 Paris Charter see Charter of Paris Paris Club 87, 309 and note Paris CSCE summit (1990) 255–73, 312, 314–18, 357, 358–9, 380, 405, 411, 431, 436, 485, 489 Paris Peace Agreement (1991) 563 Partnership for Peace (NATO) 595 Pavlov, Valentin 413, 421, 422, 426, 429, 430, 431, 440, 441 PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Socialismus) 150, 184, 253 Peasant Party (Poland) 103 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 3–4, 27, 28, 349, 495, 531; and America 28–31, 47–55, 379, 557–74; and arms sales 560–1; asked for loans from Gorbachev 569; battle for democracy in 55, 57–8, 583; Bush-Gorbachev talks on 436; Bush’s visits (1982, 1985, 1989) to 28, 30-31, 36-9, 533; celebrates fortieth birthday (1989) 122–4; charm offensive with neighbours 562; comparison with Soviet Russia 574–5, 583; consolidation and prosperity 5; economic reform 29–31, 470, 586–7; and Paris G7 summit (1989) 94–5; as global superpower 594; human rights issue 32, 38, 58, 59, 361–2, 557, 558, 561, 563, 564, 565–6, 567, 570, 573; and Kuwait crisis 331–2, 340–1, 344–5, 356–7, 359–62; joint declaration on Sino-Russian relations 577–8; joins the World Bank 30; mass-killing of protesters in Tiananmen Square 3, 4, 5, 50, 55, 57, 59–60, 62, 63–4, 67, 100, 101, 122, 149, 340, 357, 360, 362, 393; MFN status 568, 574; as nuclear power 538; One Belt, One Road policy 594; political reform in 32; rapprochement with Japan 538–9; relationships with: GDR 122–3, Japan 548–9, 556, Russia 574–9, Soviet Union 33–5, 546, 568–9; revisionist road 595; and Somalia 522; special brand of socialism in 572–3; status in unipolar world 8; student unrest in 31–2, 55, 57–8; territorial claims 574; and UN Serbian sanctions 511; wedded to communism and one-party state 533; and world-power status 595 perestroika 14, 18, 29, 34, 38, 51, 68, 82, 83, 99, 106, 194, 195, 230, 385, 388, 401, 410, 420, 438, 558 Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier 499, 517 Perot, Ross 520 Peters, Joe 12 Petrakov, Nikolai 400, 401, 412, 418 Philippines 446, 533 Pickering, Tom 167, 339 Playboy 599 PLO see Palestine Liberation Organisation Pöhl, Otto 265, 266 Poland 438, 449, 502; and 2+4 framework 222; as associate member of EC 509; Bush’s visit (1989) to 84, 85–7, 89, 90–1, 101, 192, 533; change and transformation in 27–8, 40, 64, 78, 86, 103–6, 107, 108, 112, 122, 148–50, 187, 188; comparison with: GDR 148–50, Hungary 90; exit from communist dictatorship 66–8, 75, 385; fearful of resurgent, unified Germany 214; financial debt and Western aid 86–7, 93–4, 95–6, 97–9, 308–9, 385, 469, 481; Gorbachev and Kohl’s support for 80, 82; Kohl’s visit (1989) to 128, 129–30, 134–5, 151–3, 181; as part of a Central European security zone (Bahr’s idea) 228; post-war borders 152, 154, 161–2, 176, 214, 220, 244, 246, 250–1, 285, 307; PRC’s attitude towards 64; Red Army in 312, 424; refugees from 507; and relationship with EC 263, 311; rise of Solidarity in 64, 74; Round Table talks 40, 71–2, 103–5, 150; signs mutual cooperation agreement with Hungary and Czechoslovakia 424; unrest and strikes in 70–2, 186, 188 Polish Communist Party 66, 106 Polish National Alliance 465 Polozkov, Ivan 403, 467 Poos, Jacques 492 Popov, Gavril 426 Portugal 54, 274 Portugalov, Nikolai 159 Potsdam 208–9, 584 Powell, Charles 280 Powell, Colin 5, 331, 335, 355, 367, 372, 377, 505, 521, 527 Powell Doctrine 375 Pozsgay, Imre 90, 107, 110 Prague 116–17, 119, 131, 161, 188, 189, 216, 310 Prague Spring (1968) 17, 58, 69, 70, 71, 188 Pravda 40–1 PRC see People’s Republic of China Primakov, Yevgeny 340, 346, 354, 375, 410 Privolnoye 13, 14 Pugo, Boris 363, 407, 417, 422, 441 Putin, Vladimir 7, 121, 183, 594, 595, 598 Qian Qichen 356–7, 359, 360, 361–2, 560, 562, 565, 567 Qiao Shi 122 Quadripartite Agreement (1971) 179 Rakowski, Mieczysław 86, 103 Reagan, Ronald 13, 25, 26, 283, 364, 477; arms reduction talks with Gorbachev 585; character and description 16, 102; intervention in Grenada (1983) 355, 543; offers financial aid to Poland 87; and peacekeeping in Lebanon (1983) 518; relationships with: Deng Xiaoping 30–1, Gorbachev 16–17, 28, 101, 193, 196, Thatcher 44, 210–11; supplies Saddam with weapons 335; visit to Japan (1983) 545 Red Army 17, 45, 58, 68, 70, 106, 138, 146, 222, 239, 242, 243, 248, 311, 393, 406, 423–4, 433, 477, 481, 515, 575 Red Cross 111 Republikaner 134 Reykjavik 16, 196, 536 Rice, Condoleezza 363, 420, 591 Riga 415, 420 Robotron Dresden 125 Rocard, Michel 281 Roh Tae-woo 535, 537, 538, 540, 546, 564, 567 Romania 64, 186–7, 389, 437, 449, 481, 507 Romanian Communist Party 187 Rome Council meeting (IGC on EMU, Dec. 1990) 269, 276 Rome NATO summit (Dec. 1991) 448 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 476, 596 Ross, Dennis 25, 446 Russia 5, 8, 54, 395–6, 400, 408, 438, 447, 448, 451, 456, 463, 507, 511, 556, 569 Russian Academy of Sciences, Far East Institute 576 Russian Communist Party (RCP) 396, 399 Russian Council of Ministers 245 Russian Federation 451, 458, 576: becomes full member of IMF and World Bank 479; economic reform and transition 469–71, 479, 484–5; and G 7 479–82; and Helsinki II CSCE summit 485–6; Putin’s vision for 594; reclassification of US Ambassador to 457; and START I and II treaties 473–4; transition from imperial to post-imperial state 481–2; US peace and arms negotiations 472–9; Western aid for 466–7, 469, 471–2, 478, 479–81; Western attempts to integrate into NATO and G8 595; world status and identity 481–3, 485; see also Russia Russian Republic: and breakdown of Soviet Union 450, 459, 461–2, 591; and mutual security pact with Baltic States 417–18; nationalist sentiments 395–6, 419; situation pre-break-up of Soviet Union see Soviet Union; and Union Treaty 426–7, 438; Yeltsin as president of 341 and note, 382, 442; and Yeltsin-Gorbachev power struggle 383, 398–9, 440–52, 457–8 Ruvolo, Jim 377 Ryzhkov, Nikolai 245, 247, 394, 400, 402 Ryzhkov State Commission 400, 401 Sakharov, Andrei 59 Santer, Jacques 492 Sarotte, Mary 108 Saudi Arabia 320, 322, 329, 330–1, 333, 334, 336, 337, 342, 364, 370, 372, 373, 560, 562 Schabowski, Günter 144–5 Schlesinger, James 336 Schleswig-Holstein 506 Schloss Gymnich 113 Schlüter, Poul 420 Schmidt, Helmut 508 Schönhuber, Franz 158 Schreckenberger, Waldemar 2 Schult, Reinhard 109 Schürer, Gerhard 141 Schwarzkopf, Norman 373, 376 Scowcroft, Brent: agrees to deploy troops to Somalia 521; and aid to Russia 469; at Paris G7 summit (1989) 91, 93, 100; at Malta summit (1989) 193-94; background 25–6; and China’s revisionist road 595; comment on changes in Poland 105–6; conversations with Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng (1989) 61–3; and crisis in the Baltic States 420; and Eastern Europe 40; and European security 512; and German membership of NATO 221–2; and Gorbachev-Yeltsin power struggle 443; and Kuwait crisis 321–2, 324, 328, 335-6, 357, 374, 524; in Japan 555; and Kohl’s Ten Point Plan 167; meeting with Mitterrand 209–10; meets Han Xu 35; memo to Bush on Soviet Union 341–2; and Oder-Neisse line 307; relationship with Bush 24–5; scepticism concerning Soviet Union 28, 346; and US leadership in the world 525; use of ‘messy world’ phrase 524; visit to Beijing (Dec. 1989) 559–61; warns of Chinese claim to seat at the G7 table 481 SDP (SozialDemokratische Partei in der DDR) 135 Second World War 20, 26, 68, 161, 459, 480, 499, 548, 549, 582, 584, 594 SED see Socialist Unity Party of Germany SED Politburo 114, 117, 125–6, 138, 140–1, 142, 143 Seoul 534, 540, 576 Serbia 487, 488–9, 494, 497, 503, 511, 513 Service, Robert 409 Sevastopol 444 Shakhnazarov, Georgy 34, 230, 417, 426 Shamir, Itzhak 363 Shanghai 571 Shaposhnikov, Yevgeny 448 Shatalin, Stanislav 401, 402, 418 Shenzen 571 Shevardnadze, Eduard 3, 402, 414; and acceptance of financial aid 168; agrees to support Soviet cooperation with the West 257; alarmed at pause in US-Soviet relations 379–80; blocks Baltic States appearance at Paris CSCE summit (1990) 317; first Soviet foreign minister at NATO HQ (1989) 185; and flight of East Germans 117; and full German NATO membership 230, 241, 243; and German situation 159, 171, 219, 229–30, 233, 236, 245, 287; and German-Soviet ‘good neighbour’ pact 249; and Kuwait crisis 325, 326–7, 332, 339, 340, 346, 354, 357, 358–9; meets Genscher and Baker in Namibia 227; and new Union Treaty 394; and non-interference in GDR 78; and perestroika 230; praised by Bush 457; reaction to fall of Thatcher 317; reinstated as Soviet foreign minister (1991) 449; relationship with Baker 219, 325, 346; and removal of troops from GDR 248; replaced by Bessmertnykh (1991) 374; resignation (1990) 409, 427, 575; sent to Tbilisi (1989) 393; willing to grant free hand to Hungarians 114 short-range nuclear forces (SNFs) 43, 44, 45, 85, 291 Shultz, George 19, 22, 31 SII see Structural Impediments Initiative Singapore 533, 541, 549, 550–1, 562 Single European Act (SEA) (1986) 96 Sino-American relationship 28–33, 37, 60–3, 94–5, 557–74, 586 Sino-Japanese relationship 548–9, 564 Sino-Soviet relationship 33–5, 47–55, 546, 558, 575–8 Sino-Soviet-American tripolarity 4, 594–5 Skubiszewski, Krzysztof 246, 264 Slovakia 456 Slovenia 486, 490–1, 493, 497, 501, 503, 509, 589 Smith, Jacqueline 540 Snetkov, Boris 138 SNFs see short-range nuclear forces Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 161, 213, 252, 253 Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) 136, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 150, 157 Solidarity 64, 67–8, 70–1, 74, 85, 94, 103–4, 105 Somalia 455–6, 516–23, 524, 526, 528, 589–90 Somogyi, Ferenc 114–15 Sosuke Uno 94 South Africa 436 South East Asia 196, 359, 495, 533, 539 South Korea 38, 371, 533, 534–41, 541, 546, 549, 551, 556, 562, 564, 598 Soviet Communist Party see Communist Party of the Soviet Union Soviet Gang of Eight 383, 575 Soviet Politburo 14, 19, 159, 245, 388, 390, 391–4, 397, 398, 403, 409, 425 Soviet Union 3, 5, 7, 27, 33, 349, 449; and 500 Days Plan 401–4, 429; Balkanisation of 5, 5–6, 227, 317, 589; break-up of 450, 459, 461–2, 505, 509, 568, 569, 590–1, 595; Bush’s awareness of situation in 85; comparison with PRC 574–5, 583; cooperation with the West over Kuwait 320, 524–5; coup 381-5, 440-3; and crackdown in the Baltics 414–15, 417–21; economic situation in 385–7, 400–2, 405–6, 421–2, 429; and flight of East Germans to Hungary and the West 115–16; food aid offered to 406–7; and Gorbachev-Yeltsin power struggle 440–52; Gorbachev’s vision for 16–20, 197, 441; internal crisis and unrest in 421–7; and new Union Treaty 390, 394, 404, 408–9, 425, 427, 438, 440, 441; political situation in 6, 387–96, 403–5, 407–9, 422–7; referendum held in 424–5; requests aid from Beijing 569; situation post-breakup see Russian Federation; and State Commission for Economic Reform 400, 401; transformation of 15–16, 27, 28; Western aid for 302–5, 409–10, 419–20, 429, 431, 433, 436–7, 446; Western analysis of 429–30; and world-power status 595 Soviet-American relationship 13, 19, 25, 41–2, 44, 191–2, 344, 354, 364, 395, 412, 458, 463–4, 471–9, 529–30, 538, 592–3 Soviet-Chinese Friendship Society 123 Soviet-Chinese relationship 33–5, 47–55, 546, 558, 575–8 Soviet-German relationship 79–82, 406 Soviet-Japanese relationship 545–8 Soviet-Korean Peninsula relationship 535–41, 546 Sovietskaya Rossiya newspaper 396, 427 Spain 274 SPD see Social Democratic Party of Germany Spector, Stanley 540 Spielman, Richard 593 Spratly archipelago 574 Stahmer, Ingrid 143 Stalin, Joseph 14, 20, 34, 54, 208, 480, 575 Stalowa Wola 71 START see Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Stasi 108, 212–13 Stavropol 13, 14 Stoltenberg, Gerhard 265, 508 Strasbourg 84 Strasbourg EC summit (Dec. 1989) 176–8, 260, 269, 270, 273 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) 18, 21, 28, 195, 214, 296, 410, 411, 430, 431, 435–6, 439, 446, 456, 461, 473–4, 529–30, 537, 593 Strauss, Robert S. 482 Structural Impediments Initiative (SII) 544 Sweden 502 Syria 320, 334, 364, 560, 567, 594 Taiwan 533, 541, 563, 566, 574 Takeshita, Noboru 35 Tallinn 417 Taubman, William 106 Tbilisi 59, 106, 392–3 Teltschik, Horst 129, 157–8, 159–61, 168, 179, 200, 231, 237, 248, 269 Terms of Planned Withdrawal of the Red Army 250 terrorism 166, 350, 592, 596, 598 Texas A&M University 524, 526, 581, 600 Thailand 541 Thatcher, Margaret 290; at Houston G7 summit (1990) 304; at Paris CSCE summit (1990) 255, 317; at Paris G7 summit (1989) 94; attitude towards a new Europe 279–87; background 171–2; concerned about Gorbachev 230; dislike of Kohl 280; and EMU 281–2; fails to support German unification 3, 132, 154, 172, 210; and Kuwait crisis 332, 354, 357–8; and ‘inviolability of borders’ 176–7; meets Bush in Bermuda (1990) 285–7; and NATO 43, 45–6; praises Bush’s Aug. 1990 speech on Kuwait 334; reaction to Kohl’s Ten Point Plan 169, 172–4; refuses to sign European Community Charter of Social Rights 178; relationships with: Gorbachev 43–4, 287, Mitterrand 280–1, Reagan 44, 210–11 Third World 15, 27, 93, 306, 461, 524, 538, 539 Thompson, John A. 596 Tiananmen Square (1989) 3, 4, 5, 50, 55, 57, 59–60, 62, 63–4, 67, 100, 101, 122, 149, 340, 357, 360, 362, 393, 420, 436, 531, 548, 557, 558, 559, 563, 564, 566, 571, 583 Tibet 569, 576 Tierra del Fuego 543 TIME magazine 350, 367, 557 The Times 503 Titarenko, Mikhail 576 Titarenko, Raisa Maximovna see Gorbachev, Raisa Maximovna Titarenko Tito, Josip 487 Tokyo 576 Tokyo Declaration on Japan-US Global Partnership (1992) 552 Transatlantic Declaration (1990) 544 Transatlantic Economic Partnership (1998) 544 Transylvania 438 Treaty on the Conditions of Temporary Presence (1990) 250 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (1990) 257 Treaty on Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (1990) 246 Treaty on Transitional Measures (1990) 250 Truman Doctrine (1947) 478 Truman, Harry S. 208, 324–5, 371 Trump, Donald 8, 12, 303, 599–600 Tucker, Robert 460 Turkey 263, 329, 334, 337, 338, 374, 508 Tutweiler, Margaret D. 515 Tutzing 215, 216, 217, 221 Ukraine 5, 383, 394, 400, 408, 424, 438, 444, 445, 447, 448, 463, 473, 482, 483, 486, 497, 500, 507, 594, 598 UN Charter (1945) 486, 501, 525, 588 UN General Assembly 117 UN Geneva Convention on Refugees (1951) 109 UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 113 UN Human Rights Commission 576 UN New York Summit (1992) 458–9, 569 UN Security Council 325, 340, 342, 344, 345, 349, 355, 356, 358–9, 365, 369, 457, 458–9, 490, 494–5, 500, 510, 511, 517, 525, 535, 545, 549, 562, 570 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights 13 Unified Task Force in Somalia (UNITAF) 522, 523, 524, 526 Union of Democratic Forces 187 Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics 408 UNITAF see Unified Task Force in Somalia United Arab Emirates (UAE) 334 United Nations 348, 378, 465, 500; Gorbachev’s speech (1988) to 12–13, 16–20, 21, 25, 27–8; peacemaking capacity 525–6, 528; role in post-Cold War future 569, 594; in Somalia 517, 518–20, 522, 523, 524, 528; and Kuwait crisis 320, 336, 354–61, 369, 370, 371, 376; Yeltsin’s speech to 462–3 United Nations Protected Areas 509 United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) 509 United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTAC) 563 United States 3, 7; America First and Make America Great Again pledge 599; and Balkan conflict 489–90, 494, 495, 498–9, 500–1, 512, 515–16; and commitment to democracy policy 596–8; counter-terror war 596–7; domestic problems 323, 351–2, 365; and European security issues 512–16; and intervention in Kuwait 319–21, 490; and Latin American drug problem 542–3; and messiness of new world order 524–31; military humanitarian mission in Somalia 516–23, 528; multilateral approach 563–4; power based on alliances and economic interdependence 598–9; presses for truly global US-led free-trading system 5, 27; provides aid to Soviet Union 302–5, 409–10, 433, 466, 471–3, 476–80; reappraisal of foreign policy 505–6; relationship with China 28–31, 37, 60–3, 94–5; and START treaty 473–4; suspicious of French muscle-flexing 511–13; ‘trade not aid’ motto 543; and ‘victory’ after end of Cold War 461–2; and vision of ‘global community of nations’ 8 Uno, Sosuke 544 UNOSOM I 517, 518–20 UNOSOM II 522, 523, 524, 528 UNPROFOR see United Nations Protection Force UNTAC see United Nations Transitional Authority Urban, George 279 Uruguay Round (1986-1993) 97, 195, 306, 542, 543 US Bureau of International Organisation Affairs 518 US Defense Planning Guidance statement (1992) 529 US Foreign Relations Authorisation bill (1990) 561 US Forward Strategy on Freedom (2003) 597 US News and World Report 350 US-Chinese relationship 28–33, 37, 60–3, 94–5, 557–74, 586 US-Japanese relationship 541–50, 551–6 US-Korean Peninsula relationship 535, 536–8, 540 US-Soviet relationship 19, 44, 191–2, 344, 354, 364, 395, 412, 458, 463–4, 471–9, 529–30, 538, 592–3 USSR 5, 16, 54, 83, 85, 106, 108, 115, 180, 263, 342, 385, 395, 444, 445, 456, 463, 483, 500, 562, 569 Uzbekistan 394–5 Van Buren, Martin 23 Vance, Cyrus 495, 499 Varennikov, Valentin 427 Védrine, Hubert 305 Veil, Simone 507 Velvet Revolutions 189, 192–3, 258, 456, 486 Venezuela 543 Vereinigte Linke 135 Versailles Treaty (1919) 32, 308, 316 Vezović, Dobrosav 501 Vienna 584 Vietnam 20, 26, 33, 344, 350, 355, 364, 366, 367, 369, 377, 515, 526, 546, 562, 563, 574 Vilnius 415, 417, 419 Vladivostok 546 Vogel, Ezra 541 Waigel, Theo 246, 248, 406 Wałęsa, Lech 67, 87, 70-2, 86-7, 94, 103–5, 129 Wall Street Journal 351 Walters, Barbara 520 Walters, Vernon 217 war on terror 596, 598 Warsaw 42, 51, 67, 68, 85, 89, 91, 95, 98, 100, 104, 116, 161 Warsaw Ghetto 129, 130 Warsaw Pact 89, 172, 218, 299, 449, 584; Bucharest summit (1989) 139; commitment to disarmament 124–5; and cooperation with NATO 258, 314–15; dissolution 423; East Germany sealed off from 120; and expansion of NATO 216–17, 448; fate of 187, 207, 214, 217, 227, 264, 298, 461, 588; and flight of East Germans 114, 115, 116, 143; GDR membership of 180, 228; Gorbachev’s attitude towards 127, 198, 256; Hungary as member of 90; interventions by 69, 71, 73, 84; joint meeting with NATO in Ottawa (1990) 222; and NATO London Declaration (1990) 300; Moscow meeting (Dec. 1989) 211; and opening of Austro-Hungarian border 77; Poland as member of 68, 90, 104; and right to leave 231; and Thatcher 173; and a unified Germany 219, 233 Washington Conference (1992) 446, 466; see also Coordinating Conference on Assistance to the New Independent States Washington Post 366, 422, 466, 521 Washington summit (1990) 232–5 Waters, Maxine 477 weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 540, 565 Weinberger, Caspar 364 Weizsäcker, Richard von 35, 100, 506–7, 507 West Germany see Federal Republic of Germany Western European Union (WEU) 223, 486, 494, 511, 512, 527 WEU see Western European Union Whitney, Craig 115 Whitten, Jamie L. 478 Wilson, Woodrow 596 Windhoek 230 WMD see weapons of mass destruction Wojtas, Wieslaw 71 Wolf, Christa 143 Wolfowitz, Paul 521 World Bank 30, 86, 87, 410, 429, 434, 435, 465, 471–2, 479, 560, 561 World Economic Forum 279 World Trade Agreement 306 World Trade Center 596 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 5, 582, 594 Wörner, Manfred 39, 222, 223, 238, 290, 291, 292–3, 299, 332, 450, 512 Wright, Sir Oliver 285 WTO see World Trade Organisation Xi Jinping 594, 595 Xinjian 569 Yakovlev, Alexander 412, 419 Yanaev, Gennady 381, 382, 441 Yang Shangkun 37, 50, 61, 567, 577–8 Yanukovych, Viktor 598 Yao Yilin 124, 137, 559 Yavlinsky, Grigory 400, 429, 430, 433 Yazov, Dmitry 245, 363, 383, 393, 415, 417, 441, 546 Yeltsin, Boris 7, 595; and the 500 Day Plan 401–2; anger at Pyongyang’s reluctance to adhere to NPT 538; at UN Summit in New York (1992) 458; background and rise to power 397; and the Baltic States 417–18; Bush’s view of 428–9; character and description 397, 398, 428, 442; commitment to political freedom and cooperation 462–4; and coup 384; and country’s transition to capitalist democracy 5, 591; and dinner with Gorbachev and Nazarbayev (1991) 439–40; and dissolving of USSR 497; and economic reform 422, 470, 479, 484–5, 576; elected president of Russia 426; and improving people’s lives 424–5; at Joint Session of US Congress (1992) 475–6; meetings with Bush (1991, 1992) 432, 463–4; and new Union Treaty 404, 408; plans his political comeback 397–9; prevented from meeting Baker 428; reaction to Tiananmen Square 59; reasserts his position of power 470–1; relationships with: Bush 455, 464, 592, Gorbachev 341, 383, 397–9, 400, 402, 425–7, 440–52, 457–8; Japan 546–7; resigns from CPSU 399; and revival of Russia as great power 530–1, 595; signs joint declaration with PRC 577–8; signs START II treaty (1993) 456, 530, 537, 593; speech to UN in New York (1992) 462–3, 479; status and identity of 481–3, 484; talks with Li Peng (1992) 570; threatened arrest of 382 Yemen 325, 331, 355 Yeutter, Clayton 306 Yongbyon 537, 538 Young Democrats (Hungary) 107 Yugoslav National Army (JNA) 486, 490–1, 495, 497, 510 Yugoslavia 5, 32, 264, 438, 456, 459, 462, 486–505, 507, 509, 513–15, 526, 527, 589; see also Balkan states Zagladin, Vadim 168–9 Zaire 355 Zelikow, Philip 591 Zhang Zheng 575–6 Zhao Ziyang 32, 51, 55, 571 Zhivkov, Todor 187, 190 Zhu Qizhen 573 Zhuhai 571 Zimbabwe 355, 597 Zoellick, Robert 204–5, 429 Zuckerman, Mortimer B. 350 List of Illustrations Here Gorbymania in Manhattan, 7 December 1988 (Richard Drew/AP/Shutterstock) Here George H.


pages: 411 words: 114,717

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles by Ruchir Sharma

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, book value, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, Gini coefficient, global macro, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, informal economy, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, rolling blackouts, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, zero-sum game

South Africa has seen it three times, starting with Mandela. When he was released from jail in 1990, he immediately called for nationalizing the gold and diamond mines, as a way to quickly redistribute wealth to the black majority. The next year, he went to Davos, the annual discussion forum for the global elite, organized by the World Economic Forum, where he had a chance to hobnob with Western business and political leaders. When he returned he told his people that the international community would shun South Africa if they nationalized the mines, so they quietly watered down the idea. Mandela strengthened democracy in South Africa when he stepped down after one term, rather than exploiting his popularity to build a personality cult, as leaders from Putin to Mugabe have done.

In the 1990s, the government “looked the other way as competition melted away,” according to Alan Hirsch, a former top economic adviser to the president and author of the 2005 book Season of Hope: Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki. These private-sector companies are heavily protected yet extremely well run (again much like Mexico), and they are the source of whatever global economic success South Africa enjoys. Though South Africa has the most sophisticated financial market in the emerging nations—the World Economic Forum ranks it the fifth most sophisticated in the world—much of the money is trapped at home, a legacy of capital controls imposed by the apartheid regime to prevent money from fleeing the country. Even though those rules have been gradually relaxed since the 1990s, the pool of domestic financial savings is still huge, with $750 billion in assets under management in the insurance, pension, and mutual-fund industry, which is a sum roughly two times the GDP of South Africa, suggesting there is a lot of accumulated wealth in the economy.

Agency for International Development (USAID), 195, 197, 198 utilities, 75, 164–65, 177, 201, 206–7, 209, 212–13 Uttar Pradesh, 37, 49, 52, 79 vasectomies, 55–56 Velvet Revolution, 103 Venezuela, 89, 190, 214–15 venture capital, 238 Vestel, 120 videos sales, 211 Vienna, 104 Vietnam, 198–204 banking in, 202 China compared with, 30, 199, 200–203, 204 Communist regime of, 199–200, 203 economy of, 30, 198–99 foreign investment in, 198–200, 201, 203–4 growth rate of, 157, 201–2, 204 income levels in, 204 inflation rate in, 202, 248 infrastructure of, 199, 200–201 labor market in, 199, 203–4 oil industry of, 200–201 population of, 199 stock market of, 198–99, 202 Vietnam War, 199, 203 visas, 79, 94, 125 vodka, 90 Vogue, 53 Volkswagen, 103 Volvo, 144 wage levels, 7, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 42, 62, 65, 80, 87–88, 109, 132, 137, 179, 180, 248 Wall Street, viii–ix, 1–2, 8, 86, 89, 227, 243 Wall Street Journal, 21, 237, 238–39 Wang, Haiyan, 237 warranties, 162 Warsaw, 97, 98, 103–4 wealth, vii–viii, 8, 12–13, 25, 31–32, 42, 44–47, 45, 57, 71, 76, 79, 91, 98, 103, 131–38, 142, 148, 169, 173, 175, 176, 177, 178–79, 236, 254 see also billionaires welfare programs, x, 10, 41–42, 61, 63, 72, 87–88, 126–27, 175, 181–83 Wen Jiabao, 17 West Bengal, 37 Western Cape, 175 Western civilization, viii–xix, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 241–47 “whack a mole” game, 68 wheat, 83, 232 white-collar workers, 169 “white Turks,” 125 “Why Software Is Eating the World” (Andreessen), 238–39 Wilkinson, Ben, 203 wireless networks, 10 Woju, 24 women, 21, 24, 31, 106, 145, 169, 220 Worker’s Party, 66 World Bank, 7, 85, 94, 194, 235 World Cup (2010), 177 World Cup (2022), 219 World Economic Forum, 176, 178 World Trade Organization (WTO), 29 World War I, 114, 194 World War II, 97, 169, 252–53 Xie, Andy, 251–52 Xinjiang, 53 Yar’Adua, Umaru, 210 Year of Living Dangerously, The, 129 Yeltsin, Boris, 85, 86, 91, 103 Yemen, 10, 216 yen, 32–33 YouTube, 167 Yugo, 161 Yugoslavia, 161 Zambia, 184 zero earnings, 3 Zille, Helen, 175–76 Zimbabwe, 4, 171, 173, 181 Zulus, 176 Zuma, Jacob, 176 Zynga, 239 More praise for Breakout Nations “A penetrating look at the countries he believes are likely to flourish, or fail, in the years ahead. . . .


pages: 421 words: 128,094

King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone by David Carey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, asset allocation, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, Carl Icahn, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, deal flow, diversification, diversified portfolio, financial engineering, fixed income, Future Shock, Gordon Gekko, independent contractor, junk bonds, low interest rates, margin call, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, new economy, Northern Rock, risk tolerance, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, sealed-bid auction, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Teledyne, The Predators' Ball, éminence grise

Jon Gray’s real estate team was waging an all-out war for Equity Office Properties in January and February, and in Britain, Blackstone, KKR, TPG, and CVC Capital Partners were pursuing a closely watched $22 billion bid for J Sainsbury plc, one of the country’s leading supermarket chains—a deal that, had it come to pass, would have set a new buyout record for Europe. Meanwhile, Schwarzman had gone on the conference circuit and had become something of a quote-meister. That January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the annual conclave of business, financial, and political leaders from around the globe, he expounded on how executives dreaded the headaches of managing a public company. The CEO of an unnamed $125 billion corporation, he told the audience, was tired of the hassles of answering to the public markets and said to him, “Geez, I wish you could buy us, but we’re too big.”

Contrary to what critics say, in the first four years following a buyout, companies owned by private equity firms add new positions at a faster clip than their public-company peers, though the gap then narrows, according to the 2008 study led by Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner and funded by the nonprofit World Economic Forum of Switzerland. The exception is in manufacturing, where the job growth is on a par with other companies. As for quick flips, there are relatively few of those. Investments of less than two years accounted for just 12 percent of private equity–backed companies, while 58 percent of the companies were held five years or more.

There are risks, of course, to leverage, which elevates a company’s fixed costs, potentially endangering the business in a slowdown. In every recession since 1990, scores of companies have given way under their LBO debt loads. Still, the overall casualty rate for private equity–owned companies has been remarkably light. The World Economic Forum study found that on average 1.2 percent of private equity–owned companies defaulted each year from 1970 to 2007—a thirty-seven-year span that included three recessions. That was higher than the overall rate for all U.S. companies, which was 0.6 percent, but still low, and it was well below the 1.6 percent for all companies that had bonds outstanding, which is arguably a more comparable pool than the set of all companies.


pages: 561 words: 163,916

The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality by Blake J. Harris

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, airport security, Anne Wojcicki, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, call centre, Carl Icahn, company town, computer vision, cryptocurrency, data science, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, financial independence, game design, Grace Hopper, hype cycle, illegal immigration, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, QR code, sensor fusion, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, SimCity, skunkworks, Skype, slashdot, Snapchat, Snow Crash, software patent, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, unpaid internship, white picket fence

Part 4 Politics Chapter 37 Twelve Days in 2015 January–December 2015 JANUARY On January 23, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, dozens of the world’s most prominent global leaders gathered to try something few of them had ever tried before: virtual reality. Specifically: an 8-minute, 360-degree documentary film produced by the United Nations that—via a pre-consumer “Innovator Edition” of Samsung’s Gear VR headset—sought to transport viewers to refugee camp in Jordan. And following an overwhelmingly positive reaction in Davos, this film (Clouds Over Sidra) would be but the first of several VR films the UN would produce to screen for policy makers and big donors as part of a new approach to raise awareness and funds for key causes.1 FEBRUARY On February 16, in preparation for an executive retreat at Iribe’s home in Laguna Beach, John Carmack wrote up a lengthy email that discussed the state and direction of Oculus.


pages: 283 words: 85,824

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age by Astra Taylor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Brewster Kahle, business logic, Californian Ideology, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital Maoism, disinformation, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, George Gilder, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Laura Poitras, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, Naomi Klein, Narrative Science, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, oil rush, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, post-work, power law, pre–internet, profit motive, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, slashdot, Slavoj Žižek, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Works Progress Administration, Yochai Benkler, young professional

The fetish for openness can be traced back to the foundational myths of the Internet as a wild, uncontrollable realm. In 1996 John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead lyricist and cattle ranger turned techno-utopian firebrand, released an influential manifesto, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” from Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of the world’s business elite. (“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.… You have no sovereignty where we gather.”)


pages: 305 words: 79,356

Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit by Loren C. Steffy

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, clean water, corporate governance, corporate raider, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shock, peak oil, Piper Alpha, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, tech worker, Timothy McVeigh

1 R Hayward may have been Browne’s protégé, and their career paths may have had some similarities, but Hayward lacked “ A B U R N I N G P L A T F O R M ” Browne’s fondness for the limelight. In some ways, he was determined to be the opposite of Browne, insisting on a low profile. He wanted to focus on BP’s operations, on improving safety across the company. There would be no Vanity Fair accolades, no “Sun King” profiles, no speeches before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the monied elite mingle with celebrities and world leaders. He removed the artwork around the head office that Browne had accumulated. Hayward’s focus, instead, was on making BP a “great operating company,” and that primarily meant improving safety. “We have to have a work environment where people don’t get injured or killed, period,” he said.


pages: 302 words: 86,614

The Alpha Masters: Unlocking the Genius of the World's Top Hedge Funds by Maneet Ahuja, Myron Scholes, Mohamed El-Erian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, Carl Icahn, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, global macro, high net worth, high-speed rail, impact investing, interest rate derivative, Isaac Newton, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, NetJets, oil shock, pattern recognition, Pershing Square Capital Management, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Renaissance Technologies, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, rolodex, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, systematic bias, systematic trading, tail risk, two and twenty, zero-sum game

Noteworthy work includes hedge fund titan David Tepper’s first-ever TV appearance, sparking a two-week “Tepper Rally” in the markets, David Einhorn’s warning call on Lehman Brothers as well as his bid to purchase the Mets, and John Paulson’s letter to investors in response to the SEC investigation into the Goldman Abacus deal. She has covered the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and produces quarterly shows at the Department of Labor with former Federal Reserve Board president Alan Greenspan as well as Competitiveness Summits at Harvard Business School. Prior to joining CNBC in 2008, she was a part of the Wall Street Journal’s Money & Investing team.


pages: 275 words: 84,418

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, cloud computing, commoditize, disintermediation, don't be evil, driverless car, Dynabook, Firefox, General Magic , Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Googley, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Neil Armstrong, Palm Treo, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, software patent, SpaceShipOne, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, tech worker, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, web application, zero-sum game

The immediate reaction: “The Book of Jobs,” Economist, 1/28/2010; “Apple’s Hard-to-Swallow Tablet,” Wall Street Journal, 12/30/2009; Claire Cain Miller, “The iPad’s Name Makes Some Women Cringe” (Bits blog), New York Times, 1/27/2010. The biggest criticism: Schmidt’s comments were made at a press briefing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 1/28/2010; Brent Schendler, “Bill Gates Joins the iPad’s Army of Critics,” CBS MoneyWatch, 2/10/2010; John McKinley, “Apple’s iPad Is This Decade’s Newton,” Business Insider, 1/27/2010; Arnold Kim, “Apple Gives a Nod to Newton with New ‘What is iPad?’ Ad,” MacRumors, 5/12/2010. With so much at stake: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 495.


pages: 312 words: 83,998

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

"World Economic Forum" Davos, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, classic study, confounding variable, credit crunch, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Drosophila, epigenetics, experimental economics, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Jeremy Corbyn, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, phenotype, publication bias, risk tolerance, seminal paper

Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/00829b22-0d14-11de-a555-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3wbxCXczm on January 3, 2015. 74. Interview with The Naked Scientists (August 3, 2015). The truth behind testosterone. Transcript retrieved from http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/interviews/interview/1001388/ on December 3, 2015. 75. According to Kristof (2009), ibid., the consensus at the World Economic Forum at Davos was that this would be the optimal bank. 76. Prügl (2012), ibid. Quoted on p. 22. 77. Nelson (2013), ibid. Quoted on pp. 205–206. 78. As described by U.S. senator Jim Bunning. Cited on p. 657 in McDowell, L. (2010). Capital culture revisited: Sex, testosterone and the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(3), 652–658.


pages: 239 words: 80,319

Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andy Rubin, benefit corporation, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Chris Wanstrath, citation needed, cloud computing, context collapse, crowdsourcing, data science, deal flow, decentralized internet, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, eternal september, fake news, feminist movement, Firefox, gentrification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, green new deal, helicopter parent, holacracy, Internet Archive, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julie Ann Horvath, Kim Stanley Robinson, l'esprit de l'escalier, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Mondo 2000, moral panic, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, packet switching, PageRank, pre–internet, profit motive, Project Xanadu, QAnon, real-name policy, recommendation engine, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social graph, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Turing complete, Wayback Machine, We are the 99%, web application, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, you are the product

Wikipedia sources were last accessed in 2018. It is notable that many of those like Barlow, speaking of grand utopia internet experiments, had more than just willpower—they had capital. As Audrey Watters has remarked about the place where Barlow wrote his groundbreaking manifesto—Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum—“that’s neither a site nor an institution I’ve ever really associated with utopia” (“Invisible Labor and Digital Utopias,” Hack Education, May 4, 2018). An early profile of Wikipedia in The Atlantic, written by Marshall Poe, provided context (“The Hive,” September 1, 2006). “Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire,” according to a story by Amy Chozick in The New York Times (June 27, 2013).


pages: 274 words: 81,008

The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything by Jason Kelly

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, antiwork, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, call centre, Carl Icahn, carried interest, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, diversification, eat what you kill, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, income inequality, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, late capitalism, margin call, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Occupy movement, place-making, proprietary trading, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, two and twenty

Golden Gate’s better-known investments included jewelry retailer Zales and outdoor clothier Eddie Bauer.4 There was nothing especially controversial in Romney’s returns from a private-equity perspective, though it was a stark reminder of how much money can be generated from investments that are only available to a small number of participants. Beyond Bain, Romney had investments in vehicles open only to qualified investors. The day after the returns were released, Carlyle’s Rubenstein spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was asked about Romney and taxes. “You change the law and they’ll pay the taxes,” Rubenstein said. “Romney said, and I’m not his defender, he’s paying whatever the law required. If you change the law, change the law, but don’t criticize him for paying the taxes that the law requires him to pay.”5 While Rubenstein’s logic is sound, private equity seems to have lost the argument.


pages: 251 words: 80,831

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups by Ali Tamaseb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, asset light, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, business intelligence, buy and hold, Chris Wanstrath, clean water, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, game design, General Magic , gig economy, high net worth, hiring and firing, index fund, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, late fees, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Network effects, nuclear winter, PageRank, PalmPilot, Parker Conrad, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, power law, QR code, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, survivorship bias, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the payments system, TikTok, Tony Fadell, Tony Hsieh, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, web application, WeWork, work culture , Y Combinator

The company 23andMe was one of the first to offer autosomal genetics testing for ancestry applications using saliva, and it took years for sales to ramp up beyond the early adopters. Initially, the tests were expensive—23andMe charged $999 for each test back in 2008. Only a very small population of affluent individuals could afford the tests, so the founders of 23andMe threw “spit parties” at high-end gatherings, like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in an attempt to win influential customers. As the volumes went up and Moore’s Law (a historical trend in which the computational power of electronic chips doubles while the cost halves about every two years) became applicable to genetics, the cost for sequencing DNA went down considerably, opening and growing the market.


pages: 370 words: 112,602

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Cass Sunstein, charter city, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, congestion charging, demographic transition, diversified portfolio, experimental subject, hiring and firing, Kickstarter, land tenure, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, microcredit, moral hazard, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thomas Malthus, tontine, urban planning

Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom is that today, at $20 per household per month, providing piped water and sanitation is too expensive for the budget of most developing countries.13 The experience of Gram Vikas, an NGO that works in Orissa, India, shows, however, that it is possible to do it much more cheaply. Its CEO, Joe Madiath, a man with a self-deprecating sense of humor who attends the annual meeting of the world’s rich and powerful at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in outfits made from homespun cotton, is used to doing things differently. Madiath’s career as an activist started early: He was twelve when he first got into trouble—for organizing the labor on the plantation that his father owned. He came to Orissa in the early 1970s with a group of left-wing students to help out after a devastating cyclone.

Paul Schultz,Theodore Security Self-control Self-employment Self-help groups (SHGs) Sen, Amartya Sengupta, Somini Seva Mandir camps by immunization and Sex Sex-determination services Shantarama Share Shleifer, Andrei Singer, Peter SKS Microfinance Social norms Social Security South African Council of Churches (SACC) Spandana microfinance program of repayment crisis and Steele, Claude Sterilization Strauss, John Subsidies Sugar daddies Suharto Sunk-cost effect Sunstein, Cass Supply-demand wars Supply wallahs Svensson, Jakob Swayam Shakti Tamayo, Fernando TAMTAM (Together Against Malaria) Teachers behavior of higher-caste mission of private-school public-school volunteer/semi-volunteer Technology entrepreneurship and food information preventive production sex-selection using Television, importance of Temptation goods Testing Textbooks Thaler, Richard Three Is problem 3–3-3 rule Time inconsistency Townsend, Robert Transparency International Truman, Harry Udaipur absences in health centers in health survey in immunization camps in poor in Udry, Christopher United Nations, aid spending by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Unitus Uttar Pradesh experiment in poverty in sterilization in Uwezo Survey Vaccines Village education committees (VECs) Village Welfare Society Voting Wantchekon, Leonard Water availability of chlorination of public investment in “We Are the World” concert Wealth in 1999/2005 in Thailand curves food and population growth and Weather Weather insurance Witch killing Women discrimination against health status of politics and Women’s World Banking Work and Iron Status Evaluation (WISE) World Absenteeism Survey World Bank dollar/day and global crisis and lower-caste children and World Economic Forum World Food Summit World Health Organization (WHO) aid spending by immunization and recommendations from teen pregnancy and WuDunn, Sheryl Xin Meng Xu Aihua Young, Alwyn Yunus, Muhammad Zamindari system Zinman, Jonathan Zoellick, Robert Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Harvard University.


pages: 332 words: 106,197

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions by Jason Hickel

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, David Attenborough, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, degrowth, dematerialisation, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, European colonialism, falling living standards, financial deregulation, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, James Watt: steam engine, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Mahatma Gandhi, Money creation, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent control, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration

In early 2014, Oxfam reported that the richest eighty-five people had come to accumulate more wealth than the poorest 50 per cent of the world’s population, or 3.6 billion people. The following year things had already become worse – and so too the year after that. And in early 2017, as the World Economic Forum met in Davos, Oxfam announced that the richest eight people had as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion. It would be difficult to overstate how devastating these facts are to the success narrative that the development industry seeks to propagate. No story can survive very long when it runs so obviously against the grain of reality.

(London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, 2011). 33 ‘If growth is a substitute …’ Rob Dietz and Daniel W. O’Neill, Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources (New York: Routledge, 2013). 34 ‘Forty per cent of agricultural soil …’ World Economic Forum, ‘What if the world’s soil runs out?’, Time, 14 December 2012. 35 ‘In fact, industrial farming has …’ Oliver Milman, ‘Earth has lost a third of arable land in past 40 years, scientists say’, Guardian, 2 December 2015. 36 ‘A recent study published by …’ Andreas Gattinger et al., ‘Enhanced top soil carbon stocks under organic farming’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(44), 2012, pp. 18226–31. 37 ‘An article in Science suggests …’ R.


pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection by Jacob Silverman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, Brian Krebs, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, context collapse, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, fake it until you make it, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, game design, global village, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, life extension, lifelogging, lock screen, Lyft, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Minecraft, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, payday loans, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, pre–internet, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, real-name policy, recommendation engine, rent control, rent stabilization, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social intelligence, social web, sorting algorithm, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telemarketer, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yottabyte, you are the product, Zipcar

That company already sells your genetic profile to third parties—and that’s just in the course of the (controversial, non-FDA-compliant) testing they provide, for which they also charge you. Tellingly, a version of this proposal for a data marketplace appears in the World Economic Forum (WEF) paper that announced data as the new oil. Who could be more taken with this idea than the technocrats of Davos? The paper, written in collaboration with Bain & Company, described a future in which “a person’s data would be equivalent to their ‘money.’ It would reside in an account where it would be controlled, managed, exchanged and accounted for just like personal banking services operate today.”

., 108–9, 109n Washington Post, 105–7, 123–24 Ways of Seeing (Berger), 24 Waze, 140 weddings, 46 WEF (World Economic Forum), 281–82, 328–29, 330–31 Weird Twitter, 352–53 WhatsApp, 156, 264 White Noise (DeLillo), 313 whitewalling, 350 Who Owns the Future? (Lanier), 328 WiFi, 323–24 Wikipedia, 198 Winnebago Man (documentary), 72 Winogrand, Garry, 48 women and abusive labor practices in Asia, 266n and revenge porn, 210 and shadow work, 271 targeting ads by gender in the physical world, 298–99 tracking feelings of unattractiveness, 304 warning other women about deadbeat men, 191 Wonkblog (Washington Post), 105–7, 123, 124 Wood, Graeme, 213 World Economic Forum (WEF), 281–82, 328–29, 330–31 World Wide Web.

It’s more accurate, then, to say that privacy is submitting to market pressure, becoming increasingly commoditized. Your privacy has been taken, chopped up into packets of data, and circulated through commercial transactions beyond your view. A now-famous paper produced by Bain & Company and published in 2011 by the World Economic Forum argued that personal data should be considered a “new asset class.” “Personal data will be the new ‘oil,’” the report’s authors claimed. “It will emerge as a new asset class touching all aspects of society.” This kind of hyperbolic talk reflects the wild promises of high-powered consultants determined to earn their (surely enormous) fees, and it brushes away some important details.


pages: 684 words: 212,486

Hunger: The Oldest Problem by Martin Caparros

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, carbon credits, carbon footprint, classic study, commoditize, David Graeber, disinformation, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, index fund, invention of agriculture, Jeff Bezos, Live Aid, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, plutocrats, profit maximization, Slavoj Žižek, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the market place, Tobin tax, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%

In a recent report the Asian Development Bank argued that if emerging Asia’s income distribution had not worsened over the past twenty years, the region’s rapid growth would have lifted an extra 240 million people out of extreme poverty. More controversial studies purport to link widening income gaps with all manner of ills, from obesity to suicide. The widening gaps within many countries are beginning to worry even the plutocrats. A survey for the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos pointed to inequality as the most pressing problem of the coming decade (alongside fiscal imbalances). In all sections of society, there is growing agreement that the world is becoming more unequal, and that today’s disparities and their likely trajectory are dangerous. […] The unstable history of Latin America, long the continent with the biggest income gaps, suggests that countries run by entrenched wealthy elites do not do very well.

Surely they do it because they are good people, authentically concerned about the poor, willing to give up a few crumbs. But one also has to listen when they say how much their activities help them. In his book Enough, Roger Thurow quotes Peter Bakker, president of the huge Dutch express delivery company, TNT, who explained to the World Economic Forum in Davos, in front of his colleagues, how he gained through his collaboration with the World Food Program. “The skeptics want to know how much the share price has grown, or how much revenue is up…In 2001, we were number twenty-six. In 2008, we were number four.”16 The period corresponded to the beginning of his humanitarian activities.


pages: 291 words: 90,200

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age by Manuel Castells

"World Economic Forum" Davos, access to a mobile phone, banking crisis, call centre, centre right, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disintermediation, en.wikipedia.org, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, income inequality, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Port of Oakland, social software, statistical model, Twitter Arab Spring, We are the 99%, web application, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, young professional, zero-sum game

Dutra was succeeded both as mayor and as governor by Tarso Genro, who extended the participatory scheme (using the Internet) to the state government. The city was also the convener of the first three World Social Forums, a global gathering that was organized as an alternative to the corporate World Economic Forum meeting at Davos. So naturally, in 2013, a new Block of Struggles for Public Transportation was formed there. The movement soon shifted to other regions, particularly Amazon, Rio Grande do Norte, Bahia, etc. Between February and May 2013, following calls posted on the social networks, thousands of people demonstrated in several cities opposing the increase in transportation fares.


pages: 294 words: 96,661

The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity by Byron Reese

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, basic income, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, business process, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cognitive bias, computer age, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, dark matter, DeepMind, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Eratosthenes, estate planning, financial independence, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, flying shuttle, full employment, Hans Moravec, Hans Rosling, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Hargreaves, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, lateral thinking, life extension, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Lou Jepsen, Moravec's paradox, Nick Bostrom, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, OpenAI, pattern recognition, profit motive, quantum entanglement, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, strong AI, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, Timothy McVeigh, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, Von Neumann architecture, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator

In 1961, Time magazine printed, “What worries many job experts more is that automation may prevent the economy from creating enough new jobs. . . . Today’s new industries have comparatively few jobs for the unskilled or semiskilled, just the class of workers whose jobs are being eliminated by automation.” Is this a valid concern today? Will new jobs be slow in coming? I suspect not. In 2016, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, published a briefing paper that stated: In many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate. By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.


pages: 321 words: 89,109

The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon! by Joseph N. Pelton

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Biosphere 2, Buckminster Fuller, business logic, Carrington event, Colonization of Mars, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, global pandemic, Google Earth, GPS: selective availability, gravity well, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, life extension, low earth orbit, Lyft, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megastructure, new economy, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Planet Labs, post-industrial society, private spaceflight, Ray Kurzweil, Scaled Composites, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tunguska event, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, X Prize

It is no longer your grandfather’s concept of outer space that was once dominated by the big national space agencies. The entrepreneurs are taking over. The hopeful statements in this book and the hard economic and technical data that backs them up are more than a minority opinion. It is a topic of growing interest at the World Economic Forum, where business and political heavyweights meet in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss how to stimulate new patterns of global economic growth. It is even the growing view of a group that call themselves “space ethicists.” Here is how Christopher J. Newman, at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom has put it: Space ethicists have offered the view that space exploration is not only desirable; it is a duty that we, as a species, must undertake in order to secure the survival of humanity over the longer term.


pages: 401 words: 93,256

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, butterfly effect, California gold rush, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Firefox, Ford Model T, General Magic , George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, IKEA effect, information asymmetry, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, John Harrison: Longitude, loss aversion, low cost airline, Mason jar, Murray Gell-Mann, nudge theory, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Veblen good, work culture

If this book provides you with nothing else, I hope it gives you permission to suggest slightly silly things from time to time. To fail a little more often. To think unlike an economist. There are many problems which are logic-proof, and which will never be solved by the kind of people who aspire to go to the World Economic Forum at Davos.* Remember the story of those envelopes. We could never have evolved to be rational – it makes you weak. Now, as reasonable people, you’re going to hate me saying this, and I don’t feel good saying it myself. But, for all the man’s faults, I think Donald Trump can solve many problems that the more rational Hillary Clinton simply wouldn’t have been able to address.


pages: 344 words: 94,332

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity by Lynda Gratton, Andrew Scott

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, asset light, assortative mating, behavioural economics, carbon footprint, carbon tax, classic study, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, diversification, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial independence, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, future of work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Google Glasses, indoor plumbing, information retrieval, intangible asset, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Economic Geography, old age dependency ratio, pattern recognition, pension reform, Peter Thiel, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, The Future of Employment, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, young professional

., ‘Power Couples: Changes in the Locational Choice of the College Educated 1940–1990’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 115 (4) (2000): 1287–315. 7Johns, T. and Gratton, L., ‘The Third Wave of Virtual Work’, Harvard Business Review (2013). 8The fears over robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are much broader than just employment. In spring 2015 Lynda facilitated a discussion at the World Economic Forum at Davos on the question ‘Will machines make better decisions that humans’. On the panel were four professors from the University of California, Berkeley, experts in AI, neuroscience and psychology. Later that week the UK Telegraph reported on the session with the headline: ‘Sociopathic robots could overrun the human race within a generation’, accompanied by a particularly scary picture of aggressive, demonic-looking fighting robots.


Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime by Julian Guthrie

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Benchmark Capital, blockchain, Bob Noyce, call centre, cloud computing, credit crunch, deal flow, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, game design, Gary Kildall, glass ceiling, hiring and firing, information security, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, new economy, PageRank, peer-to-peer, pets.com, phenotype, place-making, private spaceflight, retail therapy, ROLM, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, Teledyne, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban decay, UUNET, web application, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce

Theresia knew the sacrifices required to build a company from idea to IPO and to keep going from there. For many founders and employees, an IPO was a life-changing event, a before and after, when they knew they could buy that house they always wanted and make important strides in their lives and contribute to the lives of others. Theresia was invited to speak on a panel at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, where she talked about trends she saw in mobile and the Internet. She noted that she was seeing more and more companies bypass creating websites to go straight to mobile apps. After the talk, Theresia was approached by a man who asked for examples of companies doing mobile apps rather than websites.


pages: 299 words: 87,059

The Burning Land by George Alagiah

"World Economic Forum" Davos, fear of failure, gentrification, land reform, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nelson Mandela, out of africa, pre–internet, urban decay, white flight, éminence grise

Overnight Willemse had become a darling of the international lecture circuit, that group of men and women who move from the sanitised first-class cabin of a plane to the carpeted splendour of a five-star luxury hotel without really having to touch the ground. Here was a man who was willing to think the unthinkable, to speak out against tired old dogmas. Within days, the director of the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland had been in touch to offer him an open-ended invitation to deliver a speech at a future meeting. Jake Willemse, it seemed, could do no wrong. Lindi let him walk out of earshot. ‘What an unspeakable little shit he is!’ ‘Oh! He’s that, all right. He’s also one of the most powerful men in the country with some even more powerful friends.’


pages: 395 words: 116,675

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, altcoin, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Broken windows theory, carbon tax, Columbian Exchange, computer age, Corn Laws, cosmological constant, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, Donald Davies, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Eben Moglen, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, endogenous growth, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fail fast, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, George Santayana, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, imperial preference, income per capita, indoor plumbing, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, land reform, Lao Tzu, long peace, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Necker cube, obamacare, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, twin studies, uber lyft, women in the workforce

And it disempowers junior staff, who think nobody listens to their concerns or suggestions. As Hamel points out, a person who is free to make a $20,000 purchase of a car as a customer, might not be free to buy an office chair for $500 as an employee. Little wonder that big companies grow more slowly than small ones (firms whose chief executives attend the annual World Economic Forum schmooze-fest in Davos tend to underperform the stock market), and big public bodies have worse reputations than small ones. For all his or her apparent power, the chief executive of a big firm these days is sometimes little more than a hired spokesman. He is perpetually on the road, explaining ‘his’ strategy to investors and customers, relying on a chief of staff or two to hire, fire, promote or ostracise his people.

(with Paul Paddock) 207 Page, Larry 188 Pagel, Mark 80, 81–2 Pakistan 32, 206 Paley, William 38–9, 41–2, 51 Panama 286 Paris 102, 121, 254 Park, Walter 139 Parris, Matthew 303 Parys Mine Company, Anglesey 278 Pascal, Blaise 273 Paul, Senator Rand 241 Paul, Ron 114, 285, 292, 295 Paul, St (Saul of Tarsus) 8, 258, 264 Pauling, Linus 121 Pax Romana 239 Peace High School, Hyderabad (India) 181 Peel, Robert 246, 283–4 Peer-to-Peer Foundation 308 Peninsular War 280 People’s Printing Press 288 personality: and the blank slate 156–7, 158–9; and genes 159, 160–2; and homicide 169–71; innateness of behaviour 157–8; intelligence from within 165–7; non-genetic differences 162–5; and parenting 159–60, 161–2; and sexual attraction 172–3; and sexuality 167–9 Peterloo massacre (1819) 245 Pfister, Christian 276 Philippe, duc d’Orléans 286 Philippines 190 Philips, Emo 140 Philostratus 258 Phoenicia 101 Pinker, Steven 28, 30, 31–3, 172–3; The Better Angels of Our Nature 28–9 Pinnacle Technologies 136 Pitt-Rivers, Augustus 127 Pixar 124 Planned Parenthood Foundation 204 Plath, Robert 126 Plato 7, 11 Plomin, Robert 165, 167 Poincaré, Henri 18, 121 Polanyi, Karl 133 Polanyi, Michael 253 politics 314–16 Poor Law (1834) 195 Pope, Alexander 15 Popper, Karl 253; ‘Conjectures and Refutations’ 269 Population: American eugenics 200–3; control and sterilisation 205–8; and eugenics 197–9; impact of Green Revolution 208–10; Irish application of Malthusian doctrines 195–7; Malthusian theory 193, 194–5; and one-child policy 210–14; post-war eugenics 203–5 Population Crisis Committee 206 Portugal, Portuguese 134 Pottinger, Sir Harry 233 ‘Primer for Development’ (UN, 1951) 232 Prince, Thomas 242 Pritchett, Lant 179–80; The Rebirth of Education 176 Procter & Gamble 130 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 194–5 Prussia 176 Psychological Review 159 Putin, Vladimir 305 ‘The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage’ (Henrich, Boyd & Richerson) 89 Pythagoras 85 Pythagorism 259 Qian XingZhong 213 Quesnay, François 98 Raines, Franklin 292 Ramsay, John 25 RAND Corporation 206, 300 Ravenholt, Reimert 206 Ray Smith, Alvy 124 Reagan, Ronald 254, 290 Red Sea 82 Reed, Leonard 43 Reformation 216, 220 religion: and climate change/global warming 271–6; and cult of cereology (crop circles) 264–6; existence of God 14–15; heretics and heresies 141–2; as human impulse 256–8; predictability of gods 259–60; and the prophet 260–3; temptations of superstition 266–8; variety of beliefs 257–8; vital delusions 268–71 Renaissance 220 Ricardo, David 104–5, 106, 246 Richardson, Samuel 88 Richerson, Pete 78, 89 Ridley, Matt, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves 110–11, 126–7 Rio de Janeiro 92 Roberts, Russ 4 Robinson, James 97–8 Rockefeller Foundation 229, 230–1 Rodriguez, Joã 47–8 Rodrik, Dani 228 Rome 257, 259, 260 Romer, Paul 109 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano 251 Roosevelt, Theodore 197 Rothbard, Murray 243 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 165, 216 Rowling, J.K. 122 Royal Bank 281 Royal Mint 278, 279 Royal Navy 297 Royal United Services Institution 198 Rudin, Ernst 202 Rufer, Chris 226 Runciman, Garry, Very Different, But Much the Same 94 Rusk, Dean 206–7 Russell, Lord John 195 Russia 119, 204, 227–8, 250, 303 Russian Revolution 318 Sadow, Bernard 126 Safaricom 296 St Louis (ship) 202–3 St Maaz School, Hyderabad (India) 181 Salk Institute, California 67 San Marco, Venice 53 Sandia National Laboratory 136 Sanger, Margaret 201, 204 Santa Fe Institute 93, 126 Santayana, George 10 Sapienza, Carmen 67 Satoshi Nakamoto 307–8, 309–10, 312 Schiller, Friedrich 248 Schmidt, Albrecht 222 Schumpeter, Joseph 106, 128, 251; Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 106–7; Theory of Economic Development 106 science: as driver of innovation 133–7; as private good 137–9; pseudo-science 269 Science (journal) 70 Scientology 263 Scopes, John 49 Scotland 17, 280–2, 286 Scott, Sir Peter 211 Scott, Sir Walter (‘Malachi Malagrowther’) 283 Second International Congress of Eugenics 200 Second World War 105, 138, 203, 231, 252, 254, 318 Self-Management Institute 226 Selgin, George 297; Good Money 279, 280 Shade, John 188 Shakespeare, William 15, 131, 216, 224 Shanker, Albert 180 Shaw, George Bernard 197 Shaw, Marilyn 155–6 Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein 16 Shelley, Percy 16 Shockley, William 119 Shogun Japanese 130 Sierra Club 204 Silk Road 311–12 Silvester, David 274 Simon, Julian 209 Singapore 190 Sistine Chapel, Rome 256 Skarbek, David, The Social Order of the Underworld 237–8 Skinner, B.F. 156, 267–8 Skirving, William 244 skyhooks 7, 13, 14, 18, 65, 67, 71, 150, 267 Slumdog Millionaire (film, 2008) 185 Smith, Adam 3, 20, 21, 22–7, 28, 33, 110, 112, 117, 234, 243, 244, 246, 249; The Theory of Moral Sentiments 23–4, 27, 28, 37–8, 98; The Wealth of Nations 24, 38, 98–100, 103–4, 137 Smith, John Maynard 53 Smith, Joseph 263, 264, 266 Smithism 110 Snowden, Edward 303 SOLE (self-organised learning environment) 186 Solow, Robert 108, 137 Somalia 32 Song, Chinese dynasty 101 Song Jian 210–11, 212–13 South America 247 South Korea 125, 190, 229 South Sea Bubble (1720) 285, 294 South Sudan 32 Soviet-Harvard illusion 3 Soviet Union 114, 122 Spain 101, 247 Sparkes, Matthew 313 Sparta 101 Spencer, Herbert 216–17, 249, 253 Spenser, Edmund 15 Spinoza, Baruch 20, 141–2, 148, 268; Ethics 142; l’Esprit des lois 142–3 Sputnik 138 Stalin, Joseph 250, 252, 253 Stalling, A.E. 10 Stanford University 184, 185 Stealth bomber 130 Steiner, George, Nostalgia for the Absolute 266 Steiner, Rudolf 271 Steinsberger, Nick 136 Stephenson, George 119 Stewart, Dugald 38, 244 Stiglitz, Joseph 292 Stockman, David 288, 289–90; The Great Deformation 294 stoicism 259 Stop Online Piracy Act (US, 2011) 304 Strawson, Galen 140 Stuart, Charles Edward ‘The Young Pretender’ 282 Stuart, James Edward ‘The Old Pretender’ 281 Sudan 32 Summers, Larry 110 Sunnis 262 Suomi, Stephen 161 Sveikauskas, Leo 139 Swan, Joseph 119 Sweden 101, 284 Switzerland 32, 190, 247, 254 Sybaris 93 Syria 32 Szabo, Nick 307, 310; ‘Shelling Out: The Origins of Money’ 307 Tabarrok, Alex 132; Launching the Innovation Renaissance 132 Taiwan 190 Tajikistan 305 Taleb, Nassim 3, 92, 107, 135, 285, 312 Tamerlane the Great 87 Taoism 259, 260 Taylor, Winslow 250 Taylorism 250, 251 Tea Act (UK, 1773) 282n Tea Party 246 technology: biological similarities 126–31; boat analogy 128; computers 123–5, 126; copying 132–3; electric light 1–2; and fracking 136; inexorable progress 122–6, 130–1; innovation as emergent phenomenon 139; and the internet 299–316; light bulbs 118–19, 120; many-to-many 300; mass-communication 200; open innovation 130; patents/copyright laws 131–2; and printing 220; and science 133–9; simultaneous discovery 120–2; skunk works 130; software 131 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) lecture 177 Thatcher, Margaret 217 Third International Congress of Eugenics 201–2, 204 Third World 231–2 Thrun, Sebastian 185 Time (magazine) 241 The Times 308 Togo 94 Tokyo 92 Tolstoy, Leo 217 Tooby, John 43 Tooley, James 181–4 Toy Story (film, 1995) 124 Trevelyan, Charles 195 Tuchman, Barbara, A Distant Mirror 29 Tucker, William 90; Marriage and Civilization 89 Tullock, Gordon 35 Turner, Ted 213 Twister (messaging system) 313 Twitter 310, 313 U-2 reconnaissance plane 130 Uber 109 UK Meteorological Office 275 UN Codex Alimentarius 254 UN Family Planning Agency 213 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 254–5 UN General Assembly 305 UNESCO 205 Union Bank of Scotland 281 United Nations 131, 213, 232, 305 United States 34, 122, 125, 138, 139, 176, 200–2, 232, 235–8, 245, 247, 250, 254, 284–5, 286, 302 United States Supreme Court 50 universe: anthropic principle 18–20; designed and planned 7–10; deterministic view 17–18; Lucretian heresy 10–12; Newton’s nudge 12–13; swerve 14–15 University of Czernowitz 106 University of Houston 71 University of Pennsylvania 133 UNIX 302 Urbain Le Verrier 120–1 US Bureau of Land Management 240 US Department of Education 240 US Department of Homeland Security 240, 241 US Federal Reserve 285, 286, 288, 293, 297, 309 US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission 294 US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 240 US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration 240 US Office of Management and Budget 290 Utah 89 Uzbekistan 305 Vancouver 92 Vanuatu 81 Vardanes, King 258 Veblen, Thorstein 249 Verdi, Giuseppe: Aida 248; Rigoletto 248 Veronica (search engine) 120 Versailles Treaty (1919) 318 Victoria, Queen 89 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 10, 23 vitalism 270–1 Vodafone 296 Vogt, William 205, 209; Road to Survival 204 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 14, 15, 20, 22, 25, 41, 143, 243, 268; Candide 15 Volvo 101 Wagner, Andreas 47 Wall Street Journal 125, 132 Wallace, Alfred Russell 20, 54–5, 196 Wallison, Peter 294 Walras, Léon 106 Waltham, David, Lucky Planet 19 Walwyn, Thomas 242 Wang Mang, Emperor 267 Wang Zhen 212 Wannsee conference 198 Wapinski, Norm 136 Washington, George 220, 222, 240 Washington Post 241 Watson, James 121, 145 Webb, Beatrice 197 Webb, Richard 5, 319 Webb, Sidney 197 Webcrawler 120 Wedgwood family 38 Wedgwood, Josiah 199 Weismann, August 55 Wells, H.G. 197, 251 West, Edwin 178; Education and the State 177 West, Geoffrey 93 West Indies 134, 286 Whitney, Eli 128 Whittle, Frank 119 Whole Foods 227 Wikipedia 188, 304–5 Wilby, Peter 315 Wilhelm II, Kaiser 198, 247 Wilkins, Maurice 121 Wilkinson, John 278–9 Willeys 278–9, 280 Williams, Thomas 278 Williamson, Kevin 33; The End is Near and it’s Going to be Awesome 238–9 Wilson, Catherine 12 Wilson, Margo 171 Wolf, Alison, Does Education Matter? 189–91 Wolfe, Tom 223 Wooldridge, Adrian 247 World Bank 181, 183, 189–90, 206, 208, 232 World Economic Forum 224 World Forum for the Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations 254 World Wildlife Fund 204 Wright, Chris 136 Xiaogang 218 Yahoo 120 Yale University 236 Yen Jingchang 218 YouTube 315 Zappos 227 Zenawi, Meles 232 Zeus 257, 276 Zola, Emile 249 Zoroaster 257 Zoroastrians 258, 261 Zubrin, Robert 195–6; Merchants of Despair 196 Zuckerberg, Mark 222, 223 ALSO BY MATT RIDLEY The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature The Origins of Virtue Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves CREDITS Cover design by Milan Bozic COPYRIGHT THE EVOLUTION OF EVERYTHING.


pages: 354 words: 118,970

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream by Nicholas Lemann

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Black-Scholes formula, Blitzscaling, buy and hold, capital controls, Carl Icahn, computerized trading, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, dematerialisation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Irwin Jacobs, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norman Mailer, obamacare, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, public intellectual, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snow Crash, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transaction costs, universal basic income, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

Moonfaced, with small, animated features, thick glasses, and an unruly tousle of brown hair, he would become more excited and pay less attention to his food as he talked, roughly in proportion to the grandiosity and world-changing aspects of the idea he and his companion were discussing. Beyond his immediate territory, Hoffman often attended elite gatherings where people could talk about big ideas outside of the daily press of business. These included the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland; two annual conferences, one in Sun Valley and one in Tucson, put on by Allen & Company, an investment firm; Bilderberg, the venerable international-relations conference in Europe; dialog, in Utah, which Peter Thiel cohosts every other year; an annual get-together in Montana hosted by Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; TED, an annual conference whose initials stand for Technology, Entertainment, and Design; and FOO, which stands for Friends of O’Reilly, staged by Tim O’Reilly, a technology guru and publisher based in San Francisco.

.; criminality of; political giving by; see also investment banking; Morgan Stanley; specific financial instruments Wall Street Journal, The war Watergate wealth, concentration of; during New Deal; pre–New Deal; Silicon Valley’s solution to Weekend to Be Named Later, The (conference) Weill, Sanford Weinberg, Nat Weiner, Jeff welfare states; corporations as Wells Fargo Bank Westinghouse Electric West Wing, The Weyl, Walter Wharton, Edith WhatsApp Whedon, Joss White, William Allen White Collar (Mills) white flight white nationalism Whitewater Whitman, Walt Whittemore, Frederick Whyte, William H. Wilson, Charles Wilson, Woodrow; as antitrust Win the Future Witter, Dean Wolfe, Tom women’s labor Woodin, William Woodward, Bob workers; as uncollared; worldwide wages of; see also pension funds; unions Working Group on Financial Markets World Bank WorldCom World Economic Forum WorldsAway World Trade Organization World War I World War II Wright, George Frederick Wright, Mary Augusta Wright, Robert Wright brothers Xerox Xi Jinping Yale, professors at Yee, Michelle Yellen, Janet York, Duke of Young, Andrew Zaffron, Steve Zen Buddhism Zionism Zuckerberg, Mark Zynga ALSO BY NICHOLAS LEMANN The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nicholas Lemann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he also served as dean.


pages: 351 words: 102,379

Too big to fail: the inside story of how Wall Street and Washington fought to save the financial system from crisis--and themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, book value, break the buck, BRICs, business cycle, Carl Icahn, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, Dr. Strangelove, Emanuel Derman, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, moral hazard, naked short selling, NetJets, Northern Rock, oil shock, paper trading, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, supply-chain management, too big to fail, uptick rule, value at risk, éminence grise

That remark skirted the catch-22 involved with the Fed’s decision to make cheap loans available to firms like Lehman: Using it would be an admission of weakness, and no bank wanted to risk that. In fact, the Fed’s move was intended more to reassure investors than to shore up banks. (Ironically, one of Lehman’s own executives, Russo, could take partial credit for the strategy, as he had suggested it in a white paper he presented in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual capitalist ball known as the World Economic Forum, just two months earlier. Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had been in the audience.) After wrapping up the interview, Gregory and Callan returned to their offices and worked the phones, calling hedge funds that were rumored to be scaling back their trading with Lehman and doing everything they could to keep them on board.

.; Lehman Brothers Chairman Launches Aggressive Defense,” Washington Post, October 10, 1998. “We learned we need a lot of liquidity”: Fuld, in an interview with Craig, “Lehman Finds Itself,” Wall Street Journal. white paper he presented in Davos: Russo’s presentation, titled “Credit Crunch: Where Do We Stand?,” was originally given at the Group of Thirty meeting on November 30, 2007. He updated the paper for the World Economic Forum in January 2008. See http://www.group30.org/pubs/pub_1401.htm. for $21 million were finished: A broker told the New York Post: “It’s got great bones, but it needs tons of work,” estimating that the renovation of Fuld’s apartment would cost $10 million more.


pages: 590 words: 152,595

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Air France Flight 447, air gap, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, brain emulation, Brian Krebs, cognitive bias, computer vision, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, DevOps, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, facts on the ground, fail fast, fault tolerance, Flash crash, Freestyle chess, friendly fire, Herman Kahn, IFF: identification friend or foe, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Hawkins, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Loebner Prize, loose coupling, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, move 37, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, sensor fusion, South China Sea, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Wozniak, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, Tesla Model S, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, theory of mind, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Valery Gerasimov, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, William Langewiesche, Y2K, zero day

At all times, Taranis will be under the control of a highly-trained ground crew. The Mission Commander will both verify targets and authorise simulated weapons release. This protocol keeps the human in the loop to approve each target, which is consistent with other statements by BAE leadership. In a 2016 panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, BAE Chairman Sir Roger Carr described autonomous weapons as “very dangerous” and “fundamentally wrong.” Carr made clear that BAE only envisioned developing weapons that kept a connection to a human who could authorize and remain responsible for lethal decision-making. In a 2016 interview, Taranis program manager Clive Marrison made a similar statement that “decisions to release a lethal mechanism will always require a human element given the Rules of Engagement used by the UK in the past.”

Taranis would reach the search area”: BAE Systems, “Taranis: Looking to the Future,” http://www.baesystems.com/en/download-en/20151124120336/1434555376407.pdf. 109 BAE Chairman Sir Roger Carr: Sir Roger Carr, “What If: Robots Go to War?—World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 | World Economic Forum,” video, accessed June 7, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2016/sessions/what-if-robots-go-to-war. 109 “decisions to release a lethal mechanism”: John Ingham, “WATCH: Unmanned Test Plane Can Seek and Destroy Heavily Defended Targets,” Express.co.uk, June 9, 2016, http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/678514/WATCH-Video-Unmanned-test-plane-Taranis. 109 “The UK does not possess”: UK Ministry of Defence, “Defence in the Media: 10 June 2016,” June 10, 2016, https://modmedia.blog.gov.uk/2016/06/10/defence-in-the-media-10-june-2016/. 110 “must be capable of achieving”: UK Ministry of Defence, “Joint Doctrine Note 2/11: The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems,” March 30, 2011, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/33711/20110505JDN_211_UAS_v2U.pdf, 2-3. 110 “As computing and sensor capability increases”: Ibid, 2–4. 111 one short-lived effort during the Iraq war: “The Inside Story of the SWORDS Armed Robot ‘Pullout’ in Iraq: Update,” Popular Mechanics, October 1, 2009, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/4258963. 112 “the military robots were assigned”: Alexander Korolkov and special to RBTH, “New Combat Robot Is Russian Army’s Very Own Deadly WALL-E,” Russia Beyond The Headlines, July 2, 2014, https://www.rbth.com/defence/2014/07/02/new_combat_robot_is_russian_armys_very_own_deadly_wall-e_37871.html. 112 “Platform-M . . . is used”: Ibid. 112 videos of Russian robots show soldiers: This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?


pages: 353 words: 355

The Long Boom: A Vision for the Coming Age of Prosperity by Peter Schwartz, Peter Leyden, Joel Hyatt

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, American ideology, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, business cycle, centre right, classic study, clean water, complexity theory, computer age, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, Danny Hillis, dark matter, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, double helix, edge city, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, George Gilder, glass ceiling, global village, Gregor Mendel, Herman Kahn, hydrogen economy, industrial cluster, informal economy, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, life extension, market bubble, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shock, open borders, out of africa, Productivity paradox, QR code, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, The Hackers Conference, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Y2K, zero-sum game

Ten years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and still we define current thinking in terms of what it Is not: "Post-Cold War." We still don't have any agreed-upon term to call the current era, yet our era is not derivative of any other. We need a new vision to fit these very different times. This year at the World Economic Forum in Davos—a gathering of many of the world's most powerful business and political leaders—President Bill Clinton was asked after his keynote address what he thought was the most important thing the world needs today. Without hesitation, he replied: "A shared vision." The Long Boom provides a starting point for that shared vision.

Includes great charts on the Dow's historic rise. "World Economic Outlook," International Monetary Fund, World Economic and Financial Surveys (May 1997). G. Pascal Zachary, "The World Gets in Touch with Its Inner American," Mother Jones 0anuary-February 1999). "The Global Competitiveness Report," World Economic Forum, 1997. Nicholas Kristof with Edward Wyatt, Sheryl WuDunn, and David E. Sanger, "Global Contagion, A Narrative," New York Times, Four-Part Series (February 15-18, 1999), Al. Richard Lacayo. "The End of the World!?! Counting Down to Armegeddon," Time, vol. 153, no. 2 Oanuary 18,1999), 60-79.


pages: 386 words: 91,913

The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age by David S. Abraham

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbus A320, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, circular economy, Citizen Lab, clean tech, clean water, commoditize, Deng Xiaoping, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Fairphone, geopolitical risk, gigafactory, glass ceiling, global supply chain, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Large Hadron Collider, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, planned obsolescence, reshoring, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, South China Sea, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, thinkpad, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, Y2K

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics,” accessed December 19, 2014, http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/ecycling/manage.htm. Electronics TakeBack Coalition, “E-Waste Problem Overview.” 30. “Why Are Rare Earth Metals So Important?” accessed December 19, 2014, lamprecycling.veoliaes.com/newsletter/September2013/6. 31. Desiree Mohindra, “Circular Economy Can Generate US$ 1 Trillion Annually by 2025,” World Economic Forum, accessed December 19, 2014, www.weforum.org/news/circular-economy-can-generate-us-1-trillion-annually-2025. 32. Francois-Xavier Lienhart, “The Implementation of an Energy-Saving Society Contributes to the Environment, People and Economy,” presentation, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Tokyo, Japan, November 1, 2011. 33.

Kenji Baba, Yuzo Hiroshige, and Takeshi Nemoto, “Rare-Earth Magnet Recycling,” Hitachi Review 62, no. 8 (2013): 452, www.hitachi.com/rev/pdf/2013/r2013_08_105.pdf. 38. Christian Hagelüken and Christina Meskers, “Technology Challenges to Recover Precious and Special Metals from Complex Products,” presentation abstract R’09 World Congress, September 14, 2009, Davos, Switzerland, http://ewasteguide.info/files/Hageluecken_2009_R09.pdf. 39. Christian Hagelüken and Christina E. M. Meskers, “Complex Life Cycles of Precious and Special Metals,” in Graedel and van der Voet, Linkages of Sustainability, 186. 40. Umicore, http://www.umicore.com/en/bu/precious-metals-refining/. 41.


pages: 410 words: 101,260

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bluma Zeigarnik, business process, business process outsourcing, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dean Kamen, double helix, Elon Musk, emotional labour, fear of failure, Firefox, George Santayana, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, information security, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job satisfaction, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum viable product, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Wisdom of Crowds, women in the workforce

Instead of visualizing success: Personal interview with Lewis Pugh, June 10, 2014, and personal communication, February 15, 2015; Lewis Pugh, Achieving the Impossible (London: Simon & Schuster, 2010) and 21 Yaks and a Speedo: How to Achieve Your Impossible (Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2013); “Swimming Toward Success” speech at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2014. effective strategies for managing emotions: Adam M. Grant, “Rocking the Boat But Keeping It Steady: The Role of Emotion Regulation in Employee Voice,” Academy of Management Journal 56 (2013): 1703–23. U.S. government leaders: Steven Kelman, Ronald Sanders, Gayatri Pandit, and Sarah Taylor, “‘I Won’t Back Down?’


pages: 356 words: 103,944

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy by Dani Rodrik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, full employment, George Akerlof, guest worker program, Hernando de Soto, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Multi Fibre Arrangement, night-watchman state, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, price stability, profit maximization, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, tulip mania, Washington Consensus, World Values Survey

As a result, we run the risk that the social costs of trade will outweigh the narrow economic gains and spark an even worse globalization backlash. 5 Financial Globalization Follies The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund are a premier social occasion for the world’s top economic policy makers and bankers. It’s not quite the World Economic Forum at Davos, the meeting place of the world’s business and policy elite: what gets you in is a government connection rather than corporate sponsorship, skiing is not an option, the topics discussed rarely stray beyond the economic and financial, and a tie is obligatory. But it is a time for top officials from the United States and Europe to revel in the limelight cast by each other and by the media.


pages: 322 words: 99,066

The End of Secrecy: The Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks by The "Guardian", David Leigh, Luke Harding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, air gap, banking crisis, centre right, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cloud computing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, Downton Abbey, drone strike, end-to-end encryption, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, friendly fire, global village, Hacker Ethic, impulse control, Jacob Appelbaum, Julian Assange, knowledge economy, machine readable, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, operational security, post-work, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steven Levy, sugar pill, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

Another was the anti-capitalist radicals – the community of environmental activists, human rights campaigners and political revolutionaries who make up what used to be known in the 1960s as the “counter-culture”. As Assange went public for the first time about WikiLeaks, he travelled to Nairobi in Kenya to set out their stall at the World Social Forum in January 2007. This was a radical parody of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, where rich and influential people gather to talk about money. The WSF, which originated in Brazil, was intended, by contrast, to be where poor and powerless people would gather to talk about justice. At the event, tens of thousands in Nairobi’s Freedom Park chanted, “Another world is possible!”


pages: 334 words: 98,950

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

This means that any proposal regarding these issues can be defeated if the above-mentioned five biggest shareholders band together against it. See A. Buira (2004), ‘The Governance of the IMF in a Global Economy’, G24 Research Paper, downloadable at http://g24.org/buiragva.pdf 30 Luddites are the early-19th-century English textile workers who tried to reverse the Industrial Revolution by destroying machines. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2003, Mr Richard McCormick, the chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce, called the anti-globalization protesters ‘modern-day Luddites who want to make the world safe for stagnation … whose hostility to business makes them the enemy of the poor’. As reported by the BBC website on 12 February, 2003.


pages: 572 words: 94,002

Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy by David Sawyer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, beat the dealer, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Cal Newport, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, David Attenborough, David Heinemeier Hansson, Desert Island Discs, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, financial independence, follow your passion, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, index card, index fund, invention of the wheel, John Bogle, knowledge worker, loadsamoney, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, mortgage debt, Mr. Money Mustache, passive income, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart meter, Snapchat, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, The 4% rule, Tim Cook: Apple, Vanguard fund, William Bengen, work culture , Y Combinator

The only thing limiting us now is our imagination: all sorts of communities, ideas and influences have become available to us, at the click of a button. Today, 4.3 billion of the world’s 7.6 billion people are on the internet; by 2030, everyone will be[33]. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau (addressing delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018), said: “The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again[34].” It took 75 years for the telephone to reach 50 million users[35], 13 for the television, four years for the internet, while Angry Birds did it in 35 days. And don’t get me started on Fortnite.[36].


pages: 334 words: 100,201

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Arthur Eddington, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cepheid variable, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, Columbian Exchange, complexity theory, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, demographic transition, double helix, Easter island, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Ernest Rutherford, European colonialism, Francisco Pizarro, Haber-Bosch Process, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, Late Heavy Bombardment, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, nuclear winter, Paris climate accords, planetary scale, rising living standards, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade route, Yogi Berra

His support resulted in the Big History Project, very ably managed first by Michael Dix and colleagues from Intentional Futures and now by a team headed by Andy Cook and Bob Regan. Co-creators of the Big History Project include the hundreds of teachers and schools and students who have taken the courageous gamble of teaching and learning this ambitious new approach to the past. The World Economic Forum allowed me to speak about big history as a global project, and at the annual meetings in Davos, I have had the privilege of being introduced by two Nobel Prize winners: former vice president of the United States Al Gore and Australian astrophysicist Brian Schmidt. I also had the privilege of visiting Lake Mungo and meeting Mary Pappin, a Mutthi Mutthi elder whose family played a crucial role in the return to their homelands of the remains of Mungo Lady and Mungo Man.


pages: 347 words: 99,317

Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

This means that any proposal regarding these issues can be defeated if the above-mentioned five biggest shareholders band together against it. See A. Buira (2004), ‘The Governance of the IMF in a Global Economy’, G24 Research Paper, downloadable at http://g24.org/buiragva.pdf 30 Luddites are the early-19th-century English textile workers who tried to reverse the Industrial Revolution by destroying machines. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2003, Mr Richard McCormick, the chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce, called the anti-globalization protesters ‘modern-day Luddites who want to make the world safe for stagnation … whose hostility to business makes them the enemy of the poor’. As reported by the BBC website on 12 February, 2003.


pages: 311 words: 94,732

The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, butterfly effect, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, complexity theory, Credit Default Swap, dematerialisation, Drosophila, epigenetics, Extropian, financial engineering, Future Shock, gravity well, greed is good, haute couture, heat death of the universe, hive mind, margin call, mirror neurons, negative equity, phenotype, plutocrats, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, telepresence, Turing machine, Turing test, union organizing

* * * ABOUT THE AUTHORS Cory Doctorow is the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother, Pirate Cinema and For the Win. He's a technology journalist and columnist for such publications as The Guardian, Publishers Weekly and Locus, and is co-owner/co-editor of the popular website Boing Boing. He's a fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and co-founded the UK-based Open Rights Group. In 2012, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University. Born in Canada, he now lives in London, England with his wife Alice, who runs a 3D printed toy company called MakieLab; and his daughter Poesy, who is learning to pick locks.

Even before the singularity, the pursuit of political power through elections to high office had become more of a ritualized status game than an actual no-shit opportunity to leave a mark on the increasingly hypercomplexificated and automated global ecosphere. Different governments all tended to blur at the edges anyway, into a weird molten glob of Trilateralist Davos Bilderberger paranoia, feuding and backbiting in pursuit of the biggest office and the flashiest VIP jet. By the takeoff itself, most of the WTO trade negotiators had borgified, and the resulting WorldGov, with its AI-mediated committee meetings, had become the ultimate LARP for aspirational politicians.


pages: 335 words: 96,002

WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World by Craig Kielburger, Holly Branson, Marc Kielburger, Sir Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, blood diamond, Boeing 747, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, Colonization of Mars, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, energy transition, family office, food desert, future of work, global village, impact investing, inventory management, James Dyson, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, market design, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, pre–internet, retail therapy, Salesforce, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Virgin Galactic, working poor, Y Combinator

There is also Virgin StartUp, a not-for-profit company for entrepreneurs that provides government-backed loans and one-to-one business advice to those launching or growing businesses in England or Scotland. So these companies already met the criteria of generating social and financial returns, but we hadn't established at the outset that they would be delivering on both fronts and that we would measure the impact they were driving. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In a World Economic Forum study, 5,000 millennials surveyed in 18 different countries indicated that the overall top priority for any business should be “to improve society.”1 In other words, we were already running businesses that met much of the criteria; we'd just never considered it that way. Given our history, we knew that Virgin was well-positioned to explore this growing sector further.

Holly then joined the ranks of a company involved in everything from financial services to spaceships. Craig didn't do much before he launched a children's charity. Of course, he was 12 at the time. But since then, his two decades of work as a social activist have taken him everywhere from urban slums to Mother Teresa's home to the mountains at Davos to Oprah's famous couch. After all this, he discovered that his degree in peace and conflict studies could use a shot in the arm—sheer earnestness is not enough to change the world—and so he earned an MBA to bring more business rigor to the nonprofit world. Now a leader in the nonprofit sector, he dreams of starting his own social accelerator to help others scale. 80 percent of global consumers say business must play a role in addressing societal issues.


pages: 285 words: 98,832

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, double helix, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, gentleman farmer, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, out of africa, precautionary principle, QAnon, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, stem cell, tech bro, telemarketer, the new new thing, working poor, young professional

Still the United States government was showing no sign of alarm; the only action the CDC had taken was to issue a travel alert, and to screen travelers entering the United States from China for fever. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” said President Trump. “It’s going to be just fine.” When he uttered those words he was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. So too, as it happened, were Rajeev Venkayya and Richard Hatchett. “Rajeev and I had breakfast this morning,” Richard wrote to the others, “and were imagining someone going to get Carter in a forest or cave or on a remote windswept plain kind of like Rey going to find Luke . . .”† That’s when Carter finally materialized.


pages: 743 words: 201,651

Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World by Timothy Garton Ash

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, activist lawyer, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrew Keen, Apple II, Ayatollah Khomeini, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, Clapham omnibus, colonial rule, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, digital divide, digital rights, don't be evil, Donald Davies, Douglas Engelbart, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Etonian, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, financial independence, Firefox, Galaxy Zoo, George Santayana, global village, Great Leap Forward, index card, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, megacity, mutually assured destruction, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Netflix Prize, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, Open Library, Parler "social media", Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, power law, pre–internet, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Reagan, semantic web, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Snapchat, social graph, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Streisand effect, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tipper Gore, trolley problem, Turing test, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Yochai Benkler, Yom Kippur War, yottabyte

These swing states and their societies are not simply objects of a global struggle for word power. They are decisive actors in it. The argument of this book is in no small measure addressed to them. BIG CATS In 2010, when Google was confronting China, the company’s then chief executive Eric Schmidt spoke to a small group of journalists at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. ‘Google is not a country’, said Schmidt. It does not make laws. It does not do state-to-state diplomacy. But, he went on, ‘we have to secure our borders’.131 Schmidt quickly corrected himself to ‘secure our networks’, but his slip of the tongue was revealing. Google may not be a country, but it is a superpower.

, Free Speech Debate, http://freespeechdebate.com/en/case/iacthr-setting-standards/ 130. Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Freedom & Diversity: A Liberal Pentagram for Living Together’, New York Review of Books, 22 November 2012, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/nov/22/freedom-diversity-liberal-pentagram/ 131. author’s notes of meeting, Davos, 29 January 2010 132. MacKinnon 2012 133. ‘Survival of the Biggest’, The Economist, 29 November 2012, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21567355-concern-about-clout-internet-giants-growing-antitrust-watchdogs-should-tread 134. see for example Reynald Fléchaux, ‘Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon: 10 Choses à Savoir sur les Gafa’, silicon, http://perma.cc/5G8F-Z35U, and Sylvie Kauffman, ‘La Fin de l’Internet Américain’, Le Monde, 18 November 2013 135. see Leo Mirani, ‘Millions of Facebook Users Have No Idea They’re using the Internet’, Quartz, 9 February 2015, http://perma.cc/8S4E-ES5X.


pages: 924 words: 198,159

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, business climate, business intelligence, centralized clearinghouse, collective bargaining, Columbine, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, independent contractor, Kickstarter, military-industrial complex, multilevel marketing, Naomi Klein, no-fly zone, operational security, private military company, Project for a New American Century, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Seymour Hersh, stem cell, Timothy McVeigh, urban planning, vertical integration, zero-sum game

“Our convoy, as usual, consisted of two ‘up-armored’ Humvees sheathed in tan slabs of hardened steel, a lead-armored Suburban, our Suburban, another armored Suburban following, and two more Humvees. Overhead, we had a pair of buzzing Bell helicopters with two Blackwater snipers in each.”72 Inside the SUV, Bremer and McCormack were discussing whether Bremer should attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Bremer was thinking that he “could now use some of the ski resort pampering” when a “deafening” explosion happened, followed by automatic gunfire. The lead vehicle in the convoy had its tire blown out by an improvised explosive device (IED), and resistance fighters were attacking with AK-47s.

“I swung around and looked back. The Suburban’s armored-glass rear window had been blown out by the IED. And now AK rounds were whipping through the open rectangle.” As he sped toward the safety of the palace, Bremer recalled that “with the stench of explosives lingering in the car, I considered. Davos, all those good meals. . . . Francie could fly over and we could ski. That was about as far from Baghdad’s Airport Road and IEDs as you could get.”73 Bremer’s office intentionally concealed the attack until two weeks later, when news of the ambush leaked in the U.S. press and Bremer was confronted at a press conference in the southern city of Basra.74 “Yes, this is true,” he told reporters.75 “As you can see, it didn’t succeed,”76 adding, “Thankfully I am still alive, and here I am in front of you.”77 Despite Bremer’s later description of the attack as “a highly organized” assassination attempt, at the time his spokespeople dismissed it as a “random” attack that was not likely directed at Bremer personally,78 perhaps in an effort to downplay the sophistication of the resistance.


Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Greenspan put, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mercator projection, Mont Pelerin Society, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Philip Mirowski, power law, price mechanism, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, statistical model, Suez crisis 1956, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

A World of Signals 218 Conclusion: A World of P ­ eople without a ­People 263 notes acknowl­e dgments index 289 363 365 Abbreviations AAAA American-­African Affairs Association ARA American-­R hodesian Association CAP Common Agricultural Policy CWL Walter Lipp­mann Colloquium ECLA United Nations Economic Commission for Latin Amer­i­ca ECOSOC United Nations Economic and Social Council EDU Eastern Demo­cratic Union EEC Eu­ro­pean Economic Community EFTA Eu­ro­pean ­Free Trade Area G-77 Group of 77 GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ICC International Chamber of Commerce ICIC International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation IIIC International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation ILO International ­Labour Organ­ization IMF International Monetary Fund x A bb r e v iatio n s ISC International Studies Conference ITO International Trade Organ­ization LSE London School of Economics MPS Mont Pèlerin Society NAFTA North American ­Free Trade Agreement NAM National Association of Manufacturers NBER National Bureau of Economic Research NIEO New International Economic Order TPRC Trade Policy Research Centre UCT University of Cape Town UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development WTO World Trade Organ­ization GL O BA L I S T S Introduction Thinking in World O­ rders A nation may beget its own barbarian invaders. —­w ilhelm röpke, 1942 B y the end of the twentieth ­century it was a common belief that free-­ market ideology had conquered the world. The importance of states was receding in the push and pull of the global economy. At the World Economic Forum at Davos in 1995, an iconic location of the era, U.S. president Bill Clinton observed that “24-­hour markets can respond with blinding speed and sometimes ruthlessness.”1 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder referenced the “storms of globalization” as he announced a major reform of the welfare system in reunified Germany.

Hutt Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University League of Nations Archive, Geneva Fritz Machlup Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University Wilhelm Röpke Archive, Institute for Economic Research, Cologne Rocke­fel­ler Foundation rec­ords, Rocke­fel­ler Archive Center Vienna Chamber of Commerce Archive 290 NOTES TO PAGES 1–3 INTRODUCTION 1. Bill Clinton, Remarks to the World Economic Forum, January 26, 1995, http://­w ww​ .­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­ws​/­​?­pid​= ­51667. 2. Regierungserklärung des Bundeskanzlers Gerhard Schröder (SPD), “Mut zum Frieden und zur Veränderung,” March 14, 2003, http://­w ww​.­documentArchiv​.­de​ /­brd​/­2003​/­rede​_­schroeder​_­03​-­14​.­html. 3.

., 237 Wilson, Woodrow, 9, 28, 36, 93 Wolf, Martin, 243–244, 275 Workers, images of, 283–284. See also ­Labor; Trade ­u nions World Bank, 23, 119, 125–126, 170, 243, 278; transformation of, 222; voting model in, 177 World economy: idea of, 73, 87, 258; World Economic Conference (London, 1933), 59; World Economic Forum, 1; World Eco­ nomic Survey, 59, 71, 77, 188 World Economy, The, 243, 245 Index World government, 92, 103, 118–119, 144. See also Federation, international; League of Nations; United Nations World state, 87, 108 World Trade Organ­ization (WTO), 3–4, 8–9, 13, 20, 23–25, 105, 183, 198, 201, 264, 266; Appellate Body, 257, 274; directors-­ general, 241, 273, 276; Dispute Settlement Body, 257, 260; Doha Development Round, 276; draf­ters of, 256; protest at Seattle meeting, 275–280; transformation of GATT into, 223, 257 381 Yale University, 244 Yamey, Basil, 172, 221 Yergan, Max, 169 Young, Owen D., 36 Yugo­slavia, 109–110 Zimmern, Alfred, 78 Zones, 4; export pro­cessing, 236; ­f ree trade, 188 Zuloaga, Nicomedas, 165 Zu­rich, 153, 171, 229; University of, 128


pages: 535 words: 149,752

After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul by Tripp Mickle

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, airport security, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Boeing 747, British Empire, business intelligence, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, desegregation, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Frank Gehry, General Magic , global pandemic, global supply chain, haute couture, imposter syndrome, index fund, Internet Archive, inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, thinkpad, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Y2K

They implored their aloof and robotic CEO to strike a balance between America’s volatile reality-TV star and China’s unpredictable autocrat. Amid the controversy, Cook landed in Beijing for the 2018 China Development Forum. The annual event was designed to be the Chinese Communist Party’s answer to World Economic Forum meetings in Davos. Geopolitical tensions were high as a car carried Cook through Beijing’s traffic-clogged streets to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, a diplomatic venue that had hosted President Richard Nixon and Premier Chou En-lai in 1972. Cook was there on a diplomatic mission of his own: he had signed on to cochair the three day-event and was slated to speak three times.

tesla=y; Tripp Mickle and Peter Nicholas, “Trump Says Apple CEO Has Promised to Build Three Manufacturing Plants in U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-says-apple-ceo-has-promised-to-build-three-manufacturing-plants-in-u-s-1501012372. When Cook called Trump: “Remarks by President Trump to the World Economic Forum,” The White House, January 26, 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-world-economic-forum/. In the spring of 2018: Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, Superpower Showdown. The stock market shuddered: Apple share price on March 20, 2018, was $42.33; on March 23, 2018, it was $39.84. If the Chinese retaliated: Jack Nicas and Paul Mozur, “In China Trade War, Apple Worries It Will Be Collateral Damage,” New York Times, June 18, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/technology/apple-tim-cook-china.html; Norihiko Shirouzu and Michael Martina, “Red Light: Ford Facing Hold-ups at China Ports amid Trade Friction,” Reuters, May 9, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-ford/red-light-ford-facing-hold-ups-at-china-ports-amid-trade-friction-sources-idUKKBN1IA1O1; Eun-Young Jeong, “South Korea’s Companies Eager for End to Costly Spat with China,” Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-koreas-companies-eager-for-end-to-costly-spat-with-china-1509544012.


pages: 403 words: 105,431

The death and life of the great American school system: how testing and choice are undermining education by Diane Ravitch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, confounding variable, David Brooks, desegregation, gentrification, hiring and firing, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, longitudinal study, mega-rich, Menlo Park, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

He believed this was likeliest to happen in small high schools. What should governors do? Set high standards for all; publish data showing which students were progressing to college and which were not; and intervene aggressively to turn around failing schools and open new ones. 13 I was at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in 2006, where I heard Gates enthusiastically describe the high schools his foundation had created. In a public discussion with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Gates told the world’s political and financial leaders about the dramatic improvements these schools had achieved.


pages: 358 words: 106,729

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, diversification, Edward Glaeser, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, implied volatility, income inequality, index fund, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, machine readable, market bubble, Martin Wolf, medical malpractice, microcredit, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, Phillips curve, price stability, profit motive, proprietary trading, Real Time Gross Settlement, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, seminal paper, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

However, some reasonable portion of their savings should be independent of the health of their firms. 33 See, for instance, Robert Shiller, The New Financial Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 118–19. 34 The next few paragraphs draw on my previous book with Luigi Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 35 Shlomo Benartzi and Richard Thaler, “Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Savings,” unpublished manuscript, University of Chicago. Chapter Ten. The Fable of the Bees Replayed 1 Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1714) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). 2 Ibid. 3 Yashwant Sinha, speech at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 2001. 4 Jeffry Frieden, “Global Imbalances, National Rebalancing, and the Political Economy of Recovery,” working paper, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 2009. 5 Ibid. 6 “Leaders’ Statement: The Pittsburgh Summit,” Pittsburgh Summit, www.pittsburgh summit.gov/mediacenter/129639.htm, September 25, 2009. 7 M.


pages: 571 words: 106,255

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, conceptual framework, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, delayed gratification, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Elisha Otis, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, initial coin offering, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, iterative process, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, QR code, quantum cryptography, ransomware, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, secular stagnation, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Stanford marshmallow experiment, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Walter Mischel, We are all Keynesians now, zero-sum game

It is no wonder that eight years after its invention, blockchain technology has not yet managed to break through in a successful, ready‐for‐market commercial application other than the one for which it was specifically designed: Bitcoin. Instead, an abundance of hype, conferences, and high‐profile discussions in media, government, academia, industry, and the World Economic Forum on the potential of blockchain technology has emerged. Many millions of dollars have been invested in venture capital, research, and marketing by governments and institutions that are seduced by the hype, without any practical result. Blockchain consultants have built prototypes for stock trading, asset registry, voting, and payment clearance.

But none of them have been commercially deployed because they are more expensive than simpler methods relying on established database and software stacks, as the government of Vermont recently concluded.13 Meanwhile, banks don't have a great track record in applying earlier technological advances for their own use. While JPMorgan Chase's CEO Jamie Dimon was touting blockchain technology in Davos in January 2016, his bank's Open Financial Exchange interfaces—a technology from 1997 to provide aggregators a central database of customer information—had been down for two months. In contrast, the Bitcoin network was born from the blockchain design two months after Nakamoto presented the technology.


pages: 335 words: 104,850

Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey, Rajendra Sisodia, Bill George

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Buckminster Fuller, business process, carbon footprint, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, do well by doing good, en.wikipedia.org, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, Flynn Effect, income per capita, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, John Elkington, lone genius, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, shareholder value, six sigma, social intelligence, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, union organizing, wealth creators, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

It feels more like a tactical readjustment rather than the kind of fundamental rethinking that we believe is required today. Moreover, the performance implications of SVC are unclear, whereas there is a great deal of evidence that conscious businesses outperform traditional businesses. Creative Capitalism In a widely noted speech at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Bill Gates put forward a vision for what he termed creative capitalism.5 He suggested that businesses expand the reach of market forces so they can benefit more people at the lower end of the income spectrum. Companies should work with governments and nonprofits to meet the needs of the poorest people and should invest in innovation specifically aimed at the “base of the pyramid.”6 Creative capitalism applies to products with high fixed costs and low variable costs, such as software and pharmaceuticals.


pages: 370 words: 111,129

Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, barriers to entry, Boris Johnson, British Empire, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, corporate raider, deindustrialization, European colonialism, global village, informal economy, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land tenure, liberal capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, night-watchman state, Parkinson's law, trade route

Inglorious Empire Shashi Tharoor served for twenty-nine years at the UN, culminating as Under-Secretary General. He is a Congress MP in India, the author of fourteen previous books and has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Tharoor has a PhD from the Fletcher School and was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a Global Leader of Tomorrow. For my sons, Ishaan and Kanishk, whose love of history equals, and knowledge of it exceeds, my own Scribe Publications 18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia 2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom First Published under the title An Era of Darkness: the British Empire in India by Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, India in 2016 Published by arrangement with C.


pages: 368 words: 106,185

A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-Or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine by Gregory Zuckerman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, blockchain, Boris Johnson, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Jenner, future of work, Recombinant DNA, ride hailing / ride sharing, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WeWork

Others were growing impatient that the company still didn’t have a vaccine approaching late-stage, phase 3 clinical trials, let alone in the market. “People weren’t thrilled with us,” Bancel says. By the time Bancel boarded a red-eye flight on Friday, January 17, to Davos, Switzerland, to join thousands of global leaders at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, he was becoming more concerned about the novel coronavirus. At the event, attendees debated economic, political, and environmental topics, and Bancel spent some time trying to understand why investors were so discouraged about his company. At one point, Bancel spotted Andreas Halvorsen and Brian Kaufmann, two top executives at Viking Global, the hedge fund that had dumped almost all its Moderna shares in previous months.


pages: 579 words: 183,063

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, A Pattern Language, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bayesian statistics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, decentralized internet, dematerialisation, do well by doing good, do what you love, don't be evil, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, fear of failure, Gary Taubes, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, global macro, Google Hangouts, Gödel, Escher, Bach, haute couture, helicopter parent, high net worth, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, index fund, information security, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Mr. Money Mustache, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nick Bostrom, non-fiction novel, Peter Thiel, power law, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, sunk-cost fallacy, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Turing machine, uber lyft, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator

What event or thinking triggered the depths of the despair? The lowest point in my life actually came about when I published in 2002—on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of 9/11—a book called The Dignity of Difference. I stood at Ground Zero in January 2002. The World Economic Forum had been moved to New York from Davos for that year and the archbishop of Canterbury, the chief rabbi of Israel, imams, gurus from all over the world stood at Ground Zero and we said prayers together. And I suddenly realized that this was the great defining choice that humanity would face for the next generation: religion as a force for coexistence, reconciliation, and mutual respect or religion as a force for hatred, terror, and violence.

–Colonel David Hackworth Former United States Army colonel and prominent military journalist “Celebrate the childlike mind.” Steve Jurvetson TW: @DFJsteve FB: /jurvetson dfj.com STEVE JURVETSON is a partner at DFJ (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), one of the top venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. Steve has been honored as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, and as “Venture Capitalist of the Year” by Deloitte. Forbes has recognized Steve several times on the Midas List, and named him one of “Tech’s Best Venture Investors.” In 2016, President Barack Obama announced Steve’s position as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. He sits on the boards of SpaceX, Tesla, and other prominent companies.

She began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank. Jacqueline currently sits on the advisory boards of Sonen Capital and the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative. She also serves on the Aspen Institute Board of Trustees and the board of IDEO.org, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, World Economic Forum, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jacqueline was recently awarded the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social ­Entrepreneurship. * * * What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?


pages: 474 words: 120,801

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moises Naim

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, deskilling, disinformation, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, intangible asset, intermodal, invisible hand, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megacity, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, price mechanism, price stability, private military company, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Over time, I would glean similar observations not just from heads of state and government ministers but also from business leaders and the heads of foundations and major organizations in many fields. And it soon became clear that something more was going on—that it wasn’t simply that the powerful were bemoaning the gap between their perceived and actual power. Power itself was coming under attack in an unprecedented way. Every year since 1990, I have attended the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, frequented by the world’s most powerful people in business, government, politics, the media, nongovernmental organizations, science, religion, and culture. In fact, I have been lucky enough to attend and speak at almost all of the most exclusive power-fests in the world, including the Bilderberg Conference, the annual meeting of media and entertainment tycoons in Sun Valley, and the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund.


pages: 436 words: 114,278

Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices by Robert McNally

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bretton Woods, collective bargaining, credit crunch, energy security, energy transition, geopolitical risk, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, Ida Tarbell, index fund, Induced demand, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, joint-stock company, market clearing, market fundamentalism, megaproject, moral hazard, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, price stability, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, transfer pricing, vertical integration

Genuine market management requires that one or more producers stand ready and able—over a sustained period perhaps lasting years—to proactively swing supply up or down, at times substantially, to prevent extreme oil price moves. On this measure, OPEC played the swing producer role just once, from 1982 to 1985, and it was Saudi Arabia that did all the swinging. Riyadh detested that experience and has vowed never to repeat it. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, Saudi Arabia’s current oil minister (but at the time Chairman of Saudi Aramco) Khalid Al-Falih said “if there are short-term adjustments that need to be made, and if other producers will co-ordinate, then we will be happy to co-operate … Saudi Arabia will not alone balance the market.”12 In other words, Saudi Arabia will go along, but not alone, with supply cuts to stabilize prices.


pages: 424 words: 114,905

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again by Eric Topol

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, bioinformatics, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, cognitive bias, Colonization of Mars, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital twin, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, fault tolerance, gamification, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Santayana, Google Glasses, ImageNet competition, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, move 37, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, post-truth, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, techlash, TED Talk, text mining, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, War on Poverty, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population

., “How Artificial Intelligence Could Help Diagnose Mental Disorders,” Atlantic. 2016. 14. Cao, B., et al., DeepMood: Modeling Mobile Phone Typing Dynamics for Mood Detection. arXiv, 2018. 15. Bercovici, J., “Why the Secret to Making Customer Service More Human Isn’t Human at All,” Inc. Magazine. 2017. 16. Stix, C., “3 Ways AI Could Help Our Mental Health,” World Economic Forum. 2018. 17. Reece, A. G., and C. M. Danforth, “Instagram Photos Reveal Predictive Markers of Depression.” EPJ Data Science, 2017. 6. 18. Mitchell, A. J., A. Vaze, and S. Rao, “Clinical Diagnosis of Depression in Primary Care: A Meta-Analysis.” Lancet, 2009. 374(9690): pp. 609–619. 19. Landhuis, E., “Brain Imaging Identifies Different Types of Depression,” Scientific American. 2017. 20.

To a lesser but still significant extent, all clinicians have some patterned tasks in their daily mix that will potentially be subject to AI algorithmic support. FIGURE 1.4: The four Industrial Revolutions. Source: Adapted from A. Murray, “CEOs: The Revolution Is Coming,” Fortune (2016): http://fortune.com/2016/03/08/davos-new-industrial-revolution. Most of the published deep learning examples represent only in silico, or computer-based, validation (as compared to prospective clinical trials in people). This is an important distinction because analyzing an existing dataset is quite different from collecting data in a real clinical environment.


pages: 402 words: 110,972

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets by David J. Leinweber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 11, asset allocation, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bob Litterman, book value, business cycle, butter production in bangladesh, butterfly effect, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Craig Reynolds: boids flock, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Danny Hillis, demand response, disintermediation, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Gordon Gekko, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, information retrieval, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Ivan Sutherland, Jim Simons, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, Kenneth Arrow, load shedding, Long Term Capital Management, machine readable, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, market fragmentation, market microstructure, Mars Rover, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, negative equity, Network effects, optical character recognition, paper trading, passive investing, pez dispenser, phenotype, prediction markets, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, semantic web, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Small Order Execution System, smart grid, smart meter, social web, South Sea Bubble, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, time value of money, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Turing machine, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, value engineering, Vernor Vinge, Wayback Machine, yield curve, Yogi Berra, your tax dollars at work

Similarly, these smart meters will allow utilities, small producers, and consumers to bring the benefits of ubiquitous computation and market solutions to creating a more efficient, less polluting, low-carbon electric industry. These smart meters exist now. GridPoint in Arlington, Virginia, is the lead dog firm in this space. It was selected as a technology pioneer by the heavies at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2007, as a top innovator by MIT’s Technology Review, and by the Department of Energy for its model energy-efficient homes. What Apple is to music players, GridPoint is to smart meters. An overview for the controller is shown in Figure 14.3. Figure 14.3 GridPoint’s smart grid platform is designed to align the interests of electric utilities, consumers, and the environment through an intelligent network of distributed energy resources that controls load, stores energy, and produces power.


pages: 364 words: 119,398

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, anti-bias training, autism spectrum disorder, Bellingcat, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, deplatforming, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, fake news, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, gender pay gap, George Floyd, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, off grid, Overton Window, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech bro, young professional

He considered moving both her and another woman to different jobs, in order to avoid any appearance of inappropriate ‘interactions’, despite the fact that the woman in question bluntly informed him that ‘she was not interested in him romantically and only sought to have lunches with him for mentoring purposes’.4 You can only begin to imagine the scale of the eye-roll. At the 2019 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, attendees told journalists that they were no longer mentoring women, as a direct result of the #MeToo ‘era’. By which, of course, they meant as a direct result of a deeply misogynistic and deliberate misinterpretation of the #MeToo movement. ‘I now think twice about spending one-on-one time with a young female colleague,’ an American finance executive said.5 The issue, apparently, was just ‘too sensitive’.


pages: 391 words: 112,312

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

“This is a thirty-five-year-old young man who works here in the United States, who visited Wuhan,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said on a Voice of America broadcast. “There was no doubt that sooner or later we were going to see a case. And we have.” President Trump took note of the event at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he remarked. “It’s going to be just fine.” * * * — Covid-19 arrived in America at a vulnerable moment in the nation’s history. The country was undergoing a wrenching political realignment, brought to a head by the 2016 election of Donald Trump, whose policies on trade, deficit, alliances, and immigration were at odds with traditional Republican conservativism.


pages: 409 words: 112,055

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Exxon Valdez, false flag, geopolitical risk, global village, immigration reform, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kubernetes, machine readable, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Morris worm, move fast and break things, Network effects, open borders, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, quantum cryptography, ransomware, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, software as a service, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day

While William Gibson coined the word “cyberspace,” it was Barlow who popularized its use to capture a realm separate and apart from the physical world, in which people could be freed from the limitations imposed on them by their bodies and the body politic in what he called “meatspace.” There are not too many people in the world who have had both a backstage pass to every Dead concert and an open invitation to the World Economic Forum, but Barlow did, and in Davos in 1996 he tapped out his now famous “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” In it he exhorts governments to leave the denizens of cyberspace alone, declaring, “You have no sovereignty where we gather.” Of course, that wasn’t true. As Tim Wu and Jack Goldsmith document in their excellent 2006 book Who Controls the Internet?


pages: 444 words: 117,770

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, ASML, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, ChatGPT, choice architecture, circular economy, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, drone strike, drop ship, dual-use technology, Easter island, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, energy transition, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, facts on the ground, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, GPT-3, GPT-4, hallucination problem, hive mind, hype cycle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lab leak, large language model, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, license plate recognition, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, Mustafa Suleyman, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Nikolai Kondratiev, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, profit motive, prompt engineering, QAnon, quantum entanglement, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, SpaceX Starlink, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steven Levy, strong AI, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, techlash, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, TSMC, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, warehouse robotics, William MacAskill, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, zero day

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Robots are already performing intricate surgery James Gaines, “The Past, Present, and Future of Robotic Surgery,” Smithsonian Magazine, Sept. 15, 2022, www.smithsonianmag.com/​innovation/​the-past-present-and-future-of-robotic-surgery-180980763. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT They built a fleet “Helper Robots for a Better Everyday,” Everyday Robots, everydayrobots.com. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT With honeybee populations Chelsea Gohd, “Walmart Has Patented Autonomous Robot Bees,” World Economic Forum, March 19, 2018, www.weforum.org/​agenda/​2018/​03/​autonomous-robot-bees-are-being-patented-by-walmart. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT As costs fall Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2021, aiindex.stanford.edu/​report. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The police department had a bomb disposal Sara Sidner and Mallory Simon, “How Robot, Explosives Took Out Dallas Sniper in Unprecedented Way,” CNN, July 12, 2016, cnn.com/​2016/​07/​12/​us/​dallas-police-robot-c4-explosives/​index.html.

Companies and nations, as we have seen, have divergent priorities, fractured, conflicting incentives. For the most part concerns over technology like those outlined in this book are elite pursuits, nice talking points for the business-class lounge, op-eds for bien-pensant publications, or topics for the presentation halls at Davos or TED. Most of humanity doesn’t yet worry about these things in any kind of systematic way. Off Twitter, out of the bubble, most people have very different concerns, other problems demanding attention in a fragile world. Communication around AI hasn’t always helped, tending to fall into simplistic narratives.


pages: 619 words: 177,548

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, airline deregulation, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, An Inconvenient Truth, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, basic income, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blue-collar work, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carried interest, centre right, Charles Babbage, ChatGPT, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computer age, Computer Lib, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, contact tracing, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, declining real wages, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discovery of the americas, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, factory automation, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, GPT-3, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacques de Vaucanson, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, land tenure, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, mobile money, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Neolithic agricultural revolution, Norbert Wiener, NSO Group, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, profit motive, QAnon, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, robotic process automation, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, spice trade, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, subscription business, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, working poor, working-age population

The economy may need fewer checkout attendants at supermarkets, but more massage therapists.” The report’s overall assessment: “A bright future for the world of work.” The management consulting company McKinsey expressed a similar conclusion in early 2022 as part of its strategic partnership with the annual World Economic Forum in Davos: For many members of the world’s workforces, change can sometimes be seen as a threat, particularly when it comes to technology. This is often coupled with fears that automation will replace people. But a look beyond the headlines shows that the reverse is proving to be true, with Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies driving productivity and growth across manufacturing and production at brownfield and greenfield sites.

The Manufacturing Population of England: Its Moral, Social, and Physical Conditions, and the Changes Which Have Arisen from the Use of Steam Machinery, with an Examination of Infant Labor. London: Baldwin and Cradock. Gates, Bill. 2008. “Prepared Remarks.” 2008 World Economic Forum, January 24. www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/speeches/2008/01/bill-gates-2008-world-economic-forum. Gates, Bill. 2021. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Gazley, John G. 1973. The Life of Arthur Young. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Geertz, Clifford. 1963.

The same person also conceded, “Of course, there will be some downsides: greater unemployment in certain ‘rote’ jobs (e.g., transportation drivers, food service, robots and automation, etc.).” But we should not worry too much about these downsides, for we have the same tech entrepreneurs to ease the burden with their philanthropy. As Bill Gates articulated at the 2008 World Economic Forum, these successful people have an opportunity to do good while doing well for their businesses, by helping the less fortunate with new products and technologies. He declared that “the challenge is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive the change,” with the goal of “improving lives for those who don’t fully benefit from market forces.”


pages: 825 words: 228,141

MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, Dean Kamen, declining real wages, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, estate planning, fear of failure, fiat currency, financial independence, fixed income, forensic accounting, high net worth, index fund, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, lake wobegon effect, Lao Tzu, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, Marc Benioff, market bubble, Michael Milken, money market fund, mortgage debt, Neil Armstrong, new economy, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, optical character recognition, Own Your Own Home, passive investing, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, riskless arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, survivorship bias, tail risk, TED Talk, telerobotics, The 4% rule, The future is already here, the rule of 72, thinkpad, tontine, transaction costs, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, World Values Survey, X Prize, Yogi Berra, young professional, zero-sum game

—warned me I was nuts to try to bring the complex world of finance to a wide audience. Even my publisher begged me to write about anything else. But I knew I could pull it off if I found the best voices to guide the way. Most of the people I’ve interviewed here do not give interviews, or if they do them, they’re extremely rare. They might speak in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, or for the Council on Foreign Relations, but bringing their knowledge to the general population, in their voices, has never been done before. Sharing their critical insights in a way that anyone could act on became the mission of this book. I’ve been honored to have great relationships with some of the most influential people in the world: friends in high places who were willing to make a few calls on my behalf.

GAME DAY To be able to sit with yet another of the great investment legends of our time was truly a gift. I spent close to 15 hours studying and preparing for my time with Ray, combing over every resource I could get my hands on (which was tough, because he typically avoids media and publicity). I dug up some rare speeches he gave to world leaders at Davos and the Council on Foreign Relations. I watched his interview with Charlie Rose of 60 Minutes (one of his only major media appearances). I watched his instructional animated video How the Economic Machine Works—In Thirty Minutes (www.economicprinciples.org). It’s a brilliant video I highly encourage you to watch to really understand how the world economy works.


pages: 472 words: 117,093

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Airbnb, airline deregulation, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, asset light, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, backtesting, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, complexity theory, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial innovation, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, law of one price, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Mustafa Suleyman, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, PageRank, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, plutocrats, precision agriculture, prediction markets, pre–internet, price stability, principal–agent problem, Project Xanadu, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Davenport, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, Two Sigma, two-sided market, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, yield management, zero day

We’ve given talks at academic, industry, government, and nonprofit conferences; met with elected officials, policy makers, management teams and boards of directors, educators, investors, and philanthropists; and participated in workshops with all types of wonks and geeks. It’s impossible for us to remember all of these events, let alone to thank all their organizers. But a couple stand out. Klaus Schwab and his colleagues have been including us in the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, for a few years now, which might be the event with the greatest hallway conversations ever. Its main rival in this regard is TED, where we both gave main-stage talks in 2013 and have been attending ever since. TED’s curator, Chris Anderson (a different Chris Anderson from the 3D Robotics CEO we interviewed for this book), and his team bring together in Vancouver a group so rich in ideas that any of the audience members could easily be a speaker.


pages: 433 words: 125,031

Brazillionaires: The Godfathers of Modern Brazil by Alex Cuadros

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, benefit corporation, big-box store, bike sharing, BRICs, buy the rumour, sell the news, cognitive dissonance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, facts on the ground, family office, financial engineering, high net worth, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, megaproject, NetJets, offshore financial centre, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, rent-seeking, risk/return, Rubik’s Cube, savings glut, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, stock buybacks, tech billionaire, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transatlantic slave trade, We are the 99%, William Langewiesche

To spread his ideas, he gives money to political campaigns in Brazil and funds nonprofits like the B Team, which also has Richard Branson as a backer. He complains about the “cult of the private entrepreneur,” about the “omnipotent visions” of Eike Batista, but he also talks about how to end poverty at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the entrepreneur is held up as the nexus of all progress. Leal is a contradictory figure. When I asked him how he felt about being so rich in a country as poor as Brazil, he was the first billionaire I could think of who didn’t launch into a defense of his wealth. “It makes me uncomfortable,” he said.


pages: 443 words: 125,510

The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Ayatollah Khomeini, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, Clive Stafford Smith, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, invisible hand, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal world order, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Peace of Westphalia, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, Ted Kaczynski, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs

Academics, professionals, business leaders, journalists, policymakers, and think tankers all travel abroad, meet their foreign counterparts, and often form close friendships with them. Thus, the foreign policy elites in today’s world tend to be decidedly cosmopolitan. This is not to say they all match Samuel Huntington’s caricature of the men and women at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “who have little need for national loyalty” and see “national boundaries as obstacles that are thankfully vanishing.”18 But some are not far off. Additionally, foreign policy is le domaine réservé of the state, generally carried out without much public involvement. Of course, groups of citizens can take strong positions on particular issues, organize protests, or press their representatives to vote a certain way on foreign policy–related matters.


pages: 992 words: 292,389

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, book value, Burning Man, California energy crisis, computerized trading, corporate raider, currency risk, deal flow, electricity market, estate planning, financial engineering, forensic accounting, intangible asset, Irwin Jacobs, John Markoff, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, Michael Milken, Negawatt, new economy, oil shock, price stability, pushing on a string, Ronald Reagan, transaction costs, value at risk, young professional

It was ten on the morning of December 16, and Murdoch had just heard that his visitor had arrived. A secretary escorted Ken Lay in, and Murdoch stood. “Ken, good to see you,” Murdoch said. Lay nodded. “Thank you, Rupert. How have you been?” Lay and Murdoch had bumped into each other in the past, usually at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. But this meeting was all business. The two men walked over to a conference table and sat. “So, Ken, what brings you to New York?” Murdoch said. “Well, Rupert, we’ve got some exciting projects under way, and I wanted to discuss them with you, because I think there’s a good chance we could work together.”

Enron was not a power generator in California and didn’t have significant investments in the state. He mentioned nothing about the billion dollars in California trading profits that Enron had stashed away in accounting reserves. ——— Later that same week, Linda Lay sat beside her husband on the Enron corporate plane as they traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum. On her lap she held the latest report on the family finances. “Ken,” she said, “I’m really uncomfortable that we have so much debt.” Lay smiled. All the borrowed money didn’t matter. They owned plenty of assets, particularly Enron stock. This was all part of the strategy to diversify their investments while still holding on to the company’s shares.


pages: 385 words: 133,839

The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink by Michael Blanding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, An Inconvenient Truth, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, Exxon Valdez, Gordon Gekko, Internet Archive, laissez-faire capitalism, market design, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Pepsi Challenge, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, Ralph Nader, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, stock buybacks, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, Wayback Machine

Ajayan and Nandlal met for the first time in January 2004, along with Srivastava and other international activists, at the World Social Forum, an annual progressive strategy session–cum–spring break for lefties that coincides with the meet­ ing of the world’s political and financial masters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Held in Mumbai, the forum featured a march of some five hundred people to protest Coke, led by Indian envi­ ronmentalist Medha Patkar; SINALTRAINAL president Javier Correa was marching right alongside. Immediately afterward, several dozen environmental activists came to Plachimada for a somewhat grandiosely named World Water Conference, a three-day who’s who of lefties, including Canadian water activists Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow, French antiglobalist farmer José Bové, and Bolivian peasant leader Oscar Olivera, who had organized a successful peasant movement against water privatization by Bechtel in Cochabamba.


pages: 538 words: 141,822

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alvin Toffler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, Californian Ideology, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, computer age, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, don't be evil, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global village, Google Earth, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, invention of radio, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, lolcat, Marshall McLuhan, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peer-to-peer, pirate software, pre–internet, Productivity paradox, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Sinatra Doctrine, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, social graph, Steve Jobs, Streisand effect, technological determinism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Wisdom of Crowds, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

Even though the campaign officially claims to be fighting pornography, similar technology can be easily used to prevent the distribution of text messages on any topic; it all depends on the list of banned words. Not surprisingly, this list of “unhealthy words” comes from China’s police. But there is also plenty of traffic in the other direction—that is, from companies to the state. Wang Jianzhou, China Mobile’s CEO, stunned the attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2008 by claiming that his company provides data on its users to the government whenever the government demands it. What’s worse, Western companies are always happy to provide authoritarian governments with technology that can make filtering of text messages easier. In early 2010, as American senators were busy praising Google for withdrawing from China, another American technology giant, IBM, struck a deal with China Mobile to provide it with technology for tracking social networks (of the human, not virtual variety) and individuals’ messaging habits: who sends what messages to whom and to how many people.


pages: 430 words: 140,405

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. Mcdonald, Patrick Robinson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, asset-backed security, bank run, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, business cycle, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cuban missile crisis, diversification, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, hiring and firing, if you build it, they will come, it's over 9,000, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, naked short selling, negative equity, new economy, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, value at risk

In that very same January, they mentioned that the “big-spending U.S. consumers” being fed low-priced products from China had spurred worldwide growth of over 4 percent for the second year running, the strongest two-year growth period in three decades. “And there’s more good news to come,” said Time. “The world economy is on track to enjoy another bumper year in 2006 as this twin American-Chinese engine continues to power ahead.” Those forecasts emerged from a discussion among economists that Time brought together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that month. And many of the world’s financial big-hitters went with the flow. “The outlook is basically for another Goldilocks kind of year,” stated Laura D. Tyson, at the time dean of the London Business School and a former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.


pages: 515 words: 142,354

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Alex Hyde-White

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, light touch regulation, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market friction, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, neoliberal agenda, new economy, open economy, paradox of thrift, pension reform, pensions crisis, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, working-age population

Brunnermeier of Princeton University and his coauthors have referred to as stealth recapitalizations (see his presentation at the G7 Conference in Frankfurt, March 27, 2015, available at https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/markus/files/diabolicloop_sovereignbankingrisk.pdf). 20 In the World Economic Forum’s 2012 and 2013 Global Risk reports, “severe income disparity” was ranked number one. 21 See Jonathan D. Ostry, Andrew Berg, and Charalambos G. Tsangarides, “Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth,” IMF Staff Discussion Note, SDN/14/02, 2014, available at https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf; and Federico Cingano, “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth,” OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 163, 2014, available at http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/trends-in-income-inequality-and-its-impact-on-economic-growth-SEM-WP163.pdf. 22 In countries with big ethnic and racial divides (such as the United States and France), there can be further dimensions to this growth in inequality.

Much of the money was provided through central banks, not appropriated by parliaments or national congresses—again, an intensely political act, without democratic accountability.19 If monetary policy were simply a technocratic matter, it might be left to technocrats. But it is not. There are large distributive consequences. Indeed, central banks may have played an important role in increasing inequality. INCREASING INEQUALITY Today, in most countries around the world, inequality is viewed as one of the greatest threats to future prosperity. At Davos, where the world’s economic leaders come together every January, recent surveys of global risks have consistently placed inequality at or toward the top of the list.20 Inequality is important because divided societies don’t function well; it leads to a lack of cohesiveness that has political, economic, and social consequences.


Virtual Competition by Ariel Ezrachi, Maurice E. Stucke

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Arthur D. Levinson, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, cloud computing, collaborative economy, commoditize, confounding variable, corporate governance, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, deep learning, demand response, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, electricity market, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, experimental economics, Firefox, framing effect, Google Chrome, independent contractor, index arbitrage, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, light touch regulation, linked data, loss aversion, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market friction, Milgram experiment, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, nowcasting, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, power law, prediction markets, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search costs, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, yield management

But assessing the gains and losses puts the problems we identify into perspective. Overall, all else being equal, will wealth inequality increase, decrease, or remain unchanged as we enter the age of virtual competition? The current record wealth inequality is a pressing issue. In January 2016, ahead of the Davos World Economic Forum, Oxfam released a report on global wealth inequality. According to the report, sixty-two billionaires own the same wealth as half the world’s population—3.6 billion people.27 As an Oxfam executive director said: “half of the world’s population— that’s three and a half billion people—own no more than a tiny elite whose numbers could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus.”28 One factor contributing to income and wealth inequality is market power.29 Consider, for instance, the state of competition in the United States.


The Rough Guide to Cyprus (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Berlin Wall, British Empire, carbon footprint, centre right, Ford Model T, Google Earth, sustainable-tourism

However, the election of centre-right president Nicos Anastasiades in the Republic in 2013 indicated that reunification had slipped down the political agenda, with Anastasiades stating that “the most urgent task is to face the financial crisis”. The situation seemed to have arrived at stalemate, though many hoped that Turkey’s long-held ambitions to join the EU might be a possible catalyst for new talks between the two sides. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, and later in Nicosia, Akinci and Anastasiades met – “We have the same vision” said the former, while the Republic’s president called the meetings “extremely constructive”. The hope was short-lived, however, and the entire process broke down in 2017. In 2018 Austria, as the next president of the EU council, offered to host the possible future negotiations.


pages: 578 words: 168,350

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Swan, British Empire, butterfly effect, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean water, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, complexity theory, computer age, conceptual framework, continuous integration, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, creative destruction, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, double helix, driverless car, Dunbar number, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, housing crisis, Index librorum prohibitorum, invention of agriculture, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, life extension, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Benioff, Marchetti’s constant, Masdar, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, Murray Gell-Mann, New Urbanism, Oklahoma City bombing, Peter Thiel, power law, profit motive, publish or perish, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, Salesforce, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Suez canal 1869, systematic bias, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, time dilation, too big to fail, transaction costs, urban planning, urban renewal, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, Von Neumann architecture, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, wikimedia commons, working poor

TESTING AND VERIFYING THE THEORY: SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY IN CITIES Carlo Ratti is an Italian architect/designer in the architecture department at MIT, where he runs an outfit with the catchy title Senseable City Lab. I first met Carlo when we were on the same program at the annual DLD conference in Munich. This aspires to be a sort of TED-like affair, though it’s narrower in scope with more emphasis on art and design. Like TED and the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, it’s basically a several-day networking cocktail party with a dense program of talks in an ambience of “this is where it’s at,” trying to project an image of futuristic culture, high-tech commerce, and “innovation.” An eclectic mix of interesting and even influential people are in attendance, and there are occasional glimpses of substance and brilliant insight in the presentations, though these are modulated with a heavy dose of flaky, somewhat superficial bullshit wrapped up in superb PowerPoint presentations.

Almost all official statistics and policy documents on wages, income, gross domestic product (GDP), crime, unemployment rates, innovation rates, cost of living indices, morbidity and mortality rates, and poverty rates are compiled by governmental agencies and international bodies worldwide in terms of both total aggregate and per capita metrics. Furthermore, well-known composite indices of urban performance and the quality of life, such as those assembled by the World Economic Forum and magazines like Fortune, Forbes, and The Economist, primarily rely on naive linear combinations of such measures.6 Because we have quantitative scaling curves for many of these urban characteristics and a theoretical framework for their underlying dynamics we can do much better in devising a scientific basis for assessing performance and ranking cities.


pages: 614 words: 168,545

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It? by Brett Christophers

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, business process outsourcing, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, collective bargaining, congestion charging, corporate governance, data is not the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, electricity market, Etonian, European colonialism, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, G4S, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, greed is good, green new deal, haute couture, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, patent troll, pattern recognition, peak oil, Piper Alpha, post-Fordism, post-war consensus, precariat, price discrimination, price mechanism, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, remunicipalization, rent control, rent gap, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, risk free rate, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, software patent, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech bro, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, very high income, wage slave, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, yield curve, you are the product

In a fascinating, long article that begins by comparing aspects of data-based platform capitalism with aspects of hydrocarbon-based natural-resource capitalism (see Chapter 2), there is an abrupt break: But another aspect of the data economy would look strange to dealers in black gold. Oil is the world’s most traded commodity by value. Data, by contrast, are hardly traded at all, at least not for money. That is a far cry from what many had in mind when they talked about data as a ‘new asset class’, as the World Economic Forum, the Davos conference-organiser-cum-think-tank, did in a report published in 2011. The data economy, that term suggests, will consist of thriving markets for bits and bytes. But as it stands, it is mostly a collection of independent silos.19 What is particularly striking, in other words, is precisely the absence of the data markets that most commentators expected the rise of digital platforms to engender (and that many people assume it has, in reality, engendered).

See also designs; intellectual property; intellectual property rents Trades Union Congress, 49 trading income (financial), 67, 79–80 Trafford Centre, 182 Trafford Council, 257 train operating companies (TOCs), 248, 253, 273, 281–283 Transport for London (TfL), 201, 279–280 Transport Scotland, 247 Trump, Donald, 195 Truvada (drug), 177–178 Turner, George, 224 Turo (digital platform), 184–185 Twain, Mark, 347 two-tier workforce, 271–272 Tyrie, Andrew, 387–388, 408–410 Uber, 184–186, 188, 193, 201–202, 205, 216–221, 224–225 UK Coal plc, 328–329 UK Continental Shelf (UKCS), 111–112, 122–125, 133–135 ‘UK plc’, 8, 11–12 UK Power Networks, 288, 293–294, 324 Ullrich, Hans, 160 Unilever, 7, 148, 172, 437n19 United Utilities, 9, 288, 316, 330 University Hospital Southampton, 252 University of Oxford, 147 Unwired Planet, 173–174 Upwork, 184, 189, 216 US Chamber International IP Index, 159–160 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 95 utility privatization, 279–281, 284–285 value-added tax (VAT), 61, 119, 224 The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (Mazzucato), xix van Reenen, John, 92–93 Varoufakis, Yanis, 416 Vestager, Margrethe, 206 Vinci (construction company), 249 Virgin Atlantic, 314 Virgin Media, 288 Vodafone Group, 7, 8, 288, 295, 297 Volcker, Paul, 70 Wade, Robert, 55 Walsh, Ben, 227–228 Walsh, Catherine, 4, 54 Walters, Alan, 313 Warner, Mark, 208 Warrell, Helen, 265–266 water sector, 279–280, 283, 288, 416; debt, 311, 322–323; job losses, 319; land holdings, 329–330; monopoly pricing, 289; natural monopoly, 285–286; risk transfer, 310–311; taxation of, 321–323 We Own It, 402–404 wealth inequality: growth in, 45–47, 366–367, 380; inequality of financial wealth, 88–89; inequality of residential property wealth, 366–367; Piketty on, xix, 45, 380, 391–392 Weatherford International, 239 Weber, Lauren, 231–232 West, Anne, 268 Western Power Distribution, 288, 293–294, 324 White, Alan, 269 Whitehall, 335, 342, 400 Why We Can’t Afford the Rich (Sayer), xix Wiener, Martin, 2 Wiley (publisher), 172 Wolf, Martin, 73, 289–290, 295, 302, 318, 351, 401, 424n17 Wolfe, David, 268 Wolfhagen, Germany, 404, 406 Wood, James, 92 Woolfson, Charles, 129, 131 Working Links (outsourcer), 265–267 World City (Massey), 63 World Economic Forum, 195 World Trade Organization (WTO), 152, 157, 164 Wren-Lewis, Simon, 411–412 Wright, Philip, 118, 120 Zennor Petroleum, 134 zero-hours contracts, 123, 271 Zucman, Gabriel, 46 Zysman, John, 206, 210, 216, 443n77


pages: 666 words: 181,495

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, AltaVista, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, Bill Atkinson, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, business process, clean water, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, discounted cash flows, don't be evil, Donald Knuth, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dutch auction, El Camino Real, Evgeny Morozov, fault tolerance, Firefox, General Magic , Gerard Salton, Gerard Salton, Google bus, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Googley, high-speed rail, HyperCard, hypertext link, IBM and the Holocaust, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, large language model, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, one-China policy, optical character recognition, PageRank, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Potemkin village, prediction markets, Project Xanadu, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, search inside the book, second-price auction, selection bias, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, SimCity, skunkworks, Skype, slashdot, social graph, social software, social web, spectrum auction, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, the long tail, trade route, traveling salesman, turn-by-turn navigation, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, web application, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

She remembers one employee in particular standing at the microphone and aggressively challenging Larry to say just why this was a good thing for Google. It was something that people outside Google wanted to know as well. Just before the launch, Schmidt, appearing before the annual gathering of string pullers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, explained the company’s reasoning: “We concluded that although we weren’t wild about the restrictions, it was even worse to not try to serve those users at all.” On Google’s official blog, Andrew McLaughlin (whose hellish job it was to become the chief defender of a policy design he had argued against) allowed an apologetic tone to creep into his prose.

., The Organization Man, 162 Wi-Fi networks, 343, 383, 384 Wikipedia, 240, 241 Wilkin, John, 352 Williams, Evan, 374, 376 Williams, Robin, 246–47 Winograd, Terry, 14, 16, 17, 28, 31 wireless communication, 214–16, 384 Wissman, Adam, 103 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 48 Wojcicki, Anne, 126, 253 Wojcicki, Susan, 128, 235, 356 and advertising, 78, 79, 95, 98, 101, 102, 104, 115, 119, 174, 335 house of, 34, 125–26, 133, 139 Wong, Nicole, 175–76, 178, 309, 338–39, 379–80 Wooki, 240–41 word processing, 201, 202 words, defined by content, 48 word stuffing, 25 World Economic Forum, 283–84 World Wide Web, see Internet; web Wright, Johanna, 58, 59, 68 Writely, 201 Writers Guild of America, 361 Wu, Dandan, 288 Wu, Qing, 119–20 Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), 37 Xue, Rohnsin, 289 Yahoo: and China, 273, 284, 285, 286 and competition, 98, 99, 220, 332, 380 and eGroups, 30 and email, 168, 172, 180 and Flickr, 239 founding of, 31 funding of, 73 and Google, 44–45, 57, 151 meetings with, 28 and Microsoft, 343–44, 346, 380 and Overture, 98–99 and YouTube, 247, 248 Yang, Jerry, 28, 71, 344 Y Combinator, 203 Yeo, Boon-Lock, 301–2 Yoshka (dog), 36 YouTube, 242–52, 328, 372 and China, 298, 305 and copyrights, 244, 245, 251, 261 formation of, 243 Google acquisition of, 199, 247–52 and Google management, 251, 260–65 and Google Video, 242–47, 249, 263 Insight project, 264 profitability of, 264, 383 and U.S. politics, 317–18 Yuanchao, Li, 306 Zenter, 203 Zenzu Consulting, 195 Zhu, Julie, 303, 312 Zuckerberg, Mark, 369–70, 374, 381, 382


pages: 816 words: 191,889

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American ideology, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Bretton Woods, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, defense in depth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, George Floyd, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, positional goods, post-truth, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, special economic zone, TikTok, trade liberalization, transaction costs, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, zero-sum game

., vol. 1, 296–99. 32Xi Jinping [习近平], “Chairman Xi Jinping’s Opening Remarks at the Roundtable Summit of the ‘Belt and Road’ International Cooperation Summit Forum [习近平主席在‘一带一路’国际合作高峰论坛圆桌峰会上的开幕辞],” Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, May 15, 2017, http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/jyjl/l/201705/20170502576387.shtml. 33Xi Jinping, “Jointly Shoulder Responsibility of Our Times, Promote Global Growth” (World Economic Forum, Davos, January 17, 2017), http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-09/03/c_137441987.htm. 34Devin Thorne and David Spevack, “Harbored Ambitions: How China’s Port Investments Are Strategically Reshaping the Indo-Pacific” (Washington, DC: Center for Advanced Defense Studies, 2017), 65. 35Maria Abi-Habib, “How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port,” New York Times, June 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html. 36David Dollar, “The AIIB and the ‘One Belt, One Road,’” Brookings, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-aiib-and-the-one-belt-one-road/. 37Abi-Habib, “How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port.” 38Ibid. 39Ibid. 40Xi Jinping [习近平], Xi Jinping: The Governance of China [习近平谈治国理政], vol. 1, 296–99. 41See Chapter 9. 42Robert A.

A key component of China’s “great changes unseen in a century” is the belief that the world is experiencing a new wave of technological innovation sometimes referred to as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” that offers an opportunity for China to overtake the West. This term, originally developed at the World Economic Forum in 2015, has now been adopted by Beijing and generally refers to a wide range of technologies: artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, smart manufacturing, biotechnology, and even sovereign digital currencies, among many others. Beijing believes that technology’s intersection with supply chains, trade patterns, financial power, and information flows has the potential to reshape order alongside traditional economic instruments more central to past eras of Chinese grand strategy.


pages: 704 words: 182,312

This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World: A Practitioners' Handbook by Marc Stickdorn, Markus Edgar Hormess, Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, business cycle, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, data science, different worldview, Eyjafjallajökull, fail fast, glass ceiling, Internet of things, iterative process, Kanban, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, minimum viable product, mobile money, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, RFID, scientific management, side project, Silicon Valley, software as a service, stealth mode startup, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, the built environment, the scientific method, urban planning, work culture

Just over seven years ago, the design department was established to challenge every product and service while driving customer centricity in order to achieve a best-in-class customer experience: a daunting challenge for a tech giant that used to be run by the government. Our goal From the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos to the boardrooms of billion-dollar corporations, design thinking is a widely embraced approach to creative problem solving. Thanks to the increasing importance of customer experience as a key differentiating factor in most businesses, the role of design is changing – from form-giving to strategy-giving.

By engaging diverse people to solve challenges, we unlock creativity, build communities, and make change happen. Nowadays, unlocking innovation capabilities is an important challenge for China’s economy and society. Innovation can play a catalyzing role in ensuring China’s future success – this was one of the three themes that emerged from the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in September 2014. Both Prime Minister Li Ke Qiang (李克强) and Xi Jin Ping (习近平) are promoting “Shuangchuang” (双创). Double “chuang” means creativity, which refers to “innovation and startups” as keywords to encourage co-creation. CBi China Bridge recognized this trend and started probing to discover the best methods, models, and practices of design for innovation.


America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism by Anatol Lieven

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American ideology, British Empire, centre right, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, driverless car, European colonialism, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, illegal immigration, income inequality, laissez-faire capitalism, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, moral panic, new economy, Norman Mailer, oil shock, open immigration, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Thomas L Friedman, Timothy McVeigh, World Values Survey, Y2K

Timothy Carton Ash, "Anti-Europeanism in America," New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003. "President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East," speech at National Endowment for Democracy, November 6, 2003, on www.whitehouse.gov; and the remarks by Vice President Dick Cheney to the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 24, 2004, on the same site. Cf. Elisabeth Bumiller, "A Partner in Shaping an Assertive Foreign Policy," New York Times, January 7, 2004; Robert Kaiser, Washington Post, February 9, 2003. M. J. Rosenberg, "The Full Court Pander," Israel Policy Forum, no. 163, January 9, 2004, at www.israelpolicyforum.org.


pages: 423 words: 149,033

The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid by C. K. Prahalad

"World Economic Forum" Davos, barriers to entry, business cycle, business process, call centre, cashless society, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, deskilling, digital divide, disintermediation, do well by doing good, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, financial intermediation, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, income inequality, information asymmetry, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, market fragmentation, microcredit, new economy, profit motive, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, shareholder value, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, time value of money, transaction costs, vertical integration, wealth creators, working poor

It is important to distinguish the informal, extralegal sector from the private sector even though the informal sector is about entrepreneurship under very hostile conditions. 5. C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond. “Serving the World’s Poor, Profitably.” The Harvard Business Review, September 2002. 6. CII-McKinsey Report on Learning from China to Unlock India’s Manufacturing Potential, March, 2002. 7. Hernando De Soto. Presentation at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 2004. 8. Supportive case written by Praveen Suthrum and Jeff Phillips under the supervision of Professor C. K. Prahalad. Copyright © The University of Michigan Business School, 2003. 9. The World Bank defines e-government as the use of information and communications technologies to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, and accountability of government (http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/egov/).


pages: 487 words: 147,891

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, BRICs, colonial rule, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, forensic accounting, friendly fire, glass ceiling, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, joint-stock company, low interest rates, market bubble, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Nick Leeson, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, Pearl River Delta, place-making, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, trade liberalization, trade route, Transnistria, unemployed young men, upwardly mobile

Until this is answered, Godzilla excites and terrifies in equal measure. Both Japan and Taiwan benefit substantially from being nested so close to the twenty-first century’s new economic superpower. But the political implications of change remain opaque. Speaking at a closed session of the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2007, a senior Korean corporate leader articulated the fears of all China’s neighbors. “I am very impressed with Hu Jintao and the current Chinese leadership,” he said. “They are good and honest partners and I like doing business with them. But what happens if we get a different, more nationalist leadership in China—we will all be worried and afraid.”


pages: 462 words: 150,129

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, air freight, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, food miles, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, hedonic treadmill, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Large Hadron Collider, Mark Zuckerberg, Medieval Warm Period, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, packet switching, patent troll, Pax Mongolica, Peter Thiel, phenotype, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, spice trade, spinning jenny, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, wage slave, working poor, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

As William Easterly puts it while criticising the shock therapy that did such harm in both the Soviet bloc and Africa, ‘you can’t plan a market’. The top-down imposition of a bottom-up system is bound to fail. Easterly cites the example of insecticide-treated mosquito bed nets, which are a cheap and proven way of preventing malaria. A bed net costs about $4. Encouraged by a flurry of publicity at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2005 from Gordon Brown, Bono and Sharon Stone, bed nets became a fashionable icon of the aid industry. Unfortunately, when given out free by donor agencies, they often become fashion items instead, being sold on the black market for wedding veils or used as fishing nets. They undercut local merchants supplying them for money.


pages: 772 words: 150,109

As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age by Matthew Cobb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Apollo 11, Asilomar, bioinformatics, Black Lives Matter, Build a better mousetrap, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fellow of the Royal Society, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Higgs boson, lab leak, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, out of africa, planetary scale, precautionary principle, profit motive, Project Plowshare, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Skype, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Wayback Machine, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

The company that produced the DNA said that it was not aware of what exactly it had synthesised and dispatched.77 During this period there were repeated attempts to define the object of all the worries – dual-use research – but no satisfactory definition could be arrived at. Under criteria eventually adopted by the NSABB, the Australian mousepox experiment, the polio virus study and others would all have escaped regulation.78 Although in 2012 the World Economic Forum declared synthetic biology as a key twenty-first-century technology, second only to informatics, the hype eventually subsided. This was partly because it was replaced by a new genetic engineering kid on the block – CRISPR – and partly because much of the biology turned out to be far more complicated than suggested by some of the more enthusiastic evangelists.

Furthermore, calling for safety officers was insufficient and a system of inspection would be required – the creation of disarmed microbes that could not survive outside the laboratory seemed the best bet.39 The rest of the British press simply passed over the Ashby report, although The Times did publish a brief factual account on page 14, beneath an article from the Sale Room Correspondent about the latest auction prices.40 Recombinant DNA was an international issue, not confined to the United States and the United Kingdom. In October 1974, 200 researchers met in Davos, Switzerland to discuss the ethics of genetic engineering. Berg was there, too, as part of an exhausting globe-trotting tour on which he explained to scientists and to the media what he was proposing and why. In his presentation, Berg insisted that his whole approach was technical, not ethical. ‘It is simply a public health problem,’ he said.


pages: 559 words: 169,094

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, Bear Stearns, big-box store, citizen journalism, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, company town, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, DeepMind, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, East Village, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, food desert, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, intentional community, Jane Jacobs, Larry Ellison, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Neal Stephenson, Neil Kinnock, new economy, New Journalism, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, oil shock, PalmPilot, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, public intellectual, Richard Florida, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, smart grid, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, too big to fail, union organizing, uptick rule, urban planning, vertical integration, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, white picket fence, zero-sum game

“We were looking for a place that hadn’t been saturated with a bunch of reality,” Evan Prager, one of the executive producers, told … We saw the lights of spiritual shining / Getting closer every minute … OBAMA’S NIGHT … “Something better awaits us” … AS ELECTORATE CHANGES, FRESH WORRY FOR G.O.P.… Then we skipped the rails, and we started to fail / And we folded up, and it’s not enough / To think about how close we came / I wanna walk like a giant on the land SILICON VALLEY The last time Peter Thiel went to the World Economic Forum was in January 2009. Davos was a highly visible status marker for the global elite, but inclusion that year seemed to designate you as part of the group of people who had messed up the world. Thiel went away resolved that for the next decade he would be short status, long substance. If a sort of unwinding was happening in America, status markers became weirdly problematic—in a screwed-up society, they could not be the correct, real things.


pages: 597 words: 172,130

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire by Neil Irwin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency peg, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, foreign exchange controls, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Google Earth, hiring and firing, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, Julian Assange, low cost airline, low interest rates, market bubble, market design, middle-income trap, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, Paul Samuelson, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rent control, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, union organizing, WikiLeaks, yield curve, Yom Kippur War

(The crude insult he was reported to have made about her appearance was the least of it.) The Bundesbank president gave a speech at the German embassy in Paris in November 2010, meeting with (and reportedly impressing) French political and business elites. And at the annual gathering of global elites in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum in January 2011, which both Weber and Merkel attended, Weber allies tried to rally support for the Bundesbank chief among the other political leaders present. But as the winter progressed, they saw little evidence that favor for Weber was growing enough among either European politicians or the other central bankers to make for a successful candidacy.


pages: 829 words: 187,394

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cashless society, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commodity super cycle, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Extinction Rebellion, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megaproject, meme stock, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mohammed Bouazizi, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Haywood, time value of money, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Walter Mischel, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, yield curve

‘The zero interest-rate policy,’ said Burry, ‘broke the social contract for generations of hardworking Americans who saved for retirement, only to find their savings are not nearly enough.’57 An increasing number of Americans were forced to work beyond the traditional retirement age.58 For younger workers, the dream of enjoying a comfortable old age would remain a dream – another illusion of wealth. Pensioners faced the prospect of their nest eggs running out. The World Economic Forum in 2019 observed that retirees on several continents were in danger of outliving their savings. The average American male retiree had enough savings for not quite ten years, leaving him eight years short. The ‘retirement gap’ for American women was close to eleven years. At least, Americans could be thankful not to be retiring in Japan, where the retirement gap was fifteen years for men and twenty years for women.59 Alongside longevity risk, pension providers faced the prospect that further declines in interest rates would swell their deficits.

Andrew Haldane, ‘Halfway up the Stairs’, Central Banking Journal, 5 August 2014, p. 4. 16. RUSTING MONEY 1. Lawrence H. Summers, ‘How to Stabilize the Housing Market’, Washington Post, 23 October 2011. 2. Lawrence H. Summers, comment on Twitter, 22 August 2019. 3. Mark Carney, ‘Remarks Given by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England’, Davos CBI British Business Leaders Lunch, 24 January 2014, p. 2. 4. Bill Gross, Janus Newsletter, November 2015. 5. Kenneth Rogoff, The Curse of Cash: How Large-Denomination Bills Aid Crime and Tax Evasion and Constrain Monetary Policy (Princeton, 2017), p. 115. Unlike Gross, Rogoff had no problem with interest rates below zero. 6.


pages: 827 words: 239,762

The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite by Duff McDonald

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, deskilling, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, eat what you kill, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, new economy, obamacare, oil shock, pattern recognition, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, pushing on a string, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, random walk, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, survivorship bias, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, urban renewal, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

Of course, the lack of any discernible national cohesiveness might simply be the result of the fact that they’ve gone global—not the companies, but the people who run them. Mizruchi doesn’t discount such a possibility: “Perhaps the decline of the American corporate elite is a consequence of the rise of an alternative: an increasingly cohesive, transnational ‘capitalist class.’ . . . The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, attended by business and government elites from dozens of nations, certainly has the trappings of a worldwide version of the kinds of ‘ruling class’ get-togethers that appear in the writings of C. Wright Mills. . . .”8 Indeed, several books have been written on the subject, including Leslie Sklair’s The Transnational Capitalist Class and David Rothkopf’s Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.

North, 238 Whitman, Frederick, 254 Whitman, Meg, 241, 332, 531, 563 Whitney, George, 67, 105 Whiz Kids, The (Byrne), 267, 268, 273 Whyte, William H., 144, 184, 185, 350 Wilder, Billy, 183, 186 Wilson, Charlie, 219 Wilson, Sloan, 186 Wing, John, 514, 517 Winokur, Herbert “Pug,” 522 Wolfe, Thomas, 274, 453 Wooldridge, Adrian, 60, 130 WorldCom, 381 World Economic Forum, 387–88 World War II, 139, 147; Doriot and, 123; effect on corporations, 143–44; GI Bill, 170; Harvard Method of analysis, 265; HBS and the military, 135–39, 265; HBS’s executive education, 109; HBS’s Industrial Administrator program, 117–18, 135; Marshall Plan, 229, 233 Wozny, Meg, 519 Wrapp, H.


pages: 915 words: 232,883

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, Albert Einstein, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, big-box store, Bill Atkinson, Bob Noyce, Buckminster Fuller, Byte Shop, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, corporate governance, death of newspapers, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, fixed income, game design, General Magic , Golden Gate Park, Hacker Ethic, hiring and firing, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kanban, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, Paul Terrell, Pepsi Challenge, profit maximization, publish or perish, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, The Home Computer Revolution, thinkpad, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, vertical integration, Wall-E, Whole Earth Catalog

CHAPTER 31: THE iTUNES STORE Warner Music: Interviews with Paul Vidich, Steve Jobs, Doug Morris, Barry Schuler, Roger Ames, Eddy Cue. Paul Sloan, “What’s Next for Apple,” Business 2.0, Apr. 1, 2005; Knopper, 157–161,170; Devin Leonard, “Songs in the Key of Steve,” Fortune, May 12, 2003; Tony Perkins, interview with Nobuyuki Idei and Sir Howard Stringer, World Economic Forum, Davos, Jan. 25, 2003; Dan Tynan, “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time,” PC World, Mar. 26, 2006; Andy Langer, “The God of Music,” Esquire, July 2003; Jeff Goodell, “Steve Jobs,” Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003. Herding Cats: Interviews with Doug Morris, Roger Ames, Steve Jobs, Jimmy Iovine, Andy Lack, Eddy Cue, Wynton Marsalis.


Gorbachev by William Taubman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Able Archer 83, active measures, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, card file, conceptual framework, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, haute couture, indoor plumbing, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Neil Kinnock, Potemkin village, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, trade liberalization, young professional

., education, inequality, federalism, civil society) and international (Russian-American relations, Russia and Europe, world poverty, ecology, climate change, economic development). Gorbachev has also chaired Green Cross International, which, in the face of “insecurity, poverty and environmental degradation,” promotes “a sustainable and secure future,” and the World Political Forum, which, seeking to emulate the Davos-based World Economic Forum, brings together world and other leaders to discuss global problems.3 Most retired world leaders comment from time to time on contemporary politics, particularly the irrepressible Clinton, who has campaigned almost nonstop for his party’s candidates, especially his wife. But Gorbachev has been just as political, in fact, more so.

seminar, 93–94 Whelan, Eugene, 185 “white books,” 253 White House (Moscow), 610, 611–12, 616, 619, 657–58 White House (Washington, DC), 275, 401, 404–10, 458, 551, 554, 560, 561, 610, 683 “Why the Cult of Personality Is Foreign to the Spirit of Marxism-Leninism,” 97 “Why I Cannot Forsake My Principles” (Andreyeva), 337, 342–51, 355, 356, 370, 383, 412, 586 Wiesbaden, Germany, 676 Wilson, Michael, 416 Wilson, Woodrow, 422 “Window of Opportunity: The Grand Bargain for Democracy in the Soviet Union,” 590–91 Windsor Castle, 476 Winfield House, 593 “Word to the People, A,” 586–87 World Affairs Council, 412–13 World Bank, 591, 595 World Economic Forum, 652 World Political Forum, 652, 656, 675, 676, 682 World War I, 7, 12, 260, 340 World War II, 11, 20–27, 55, 90, 122, 172, 255, 260, 266, 287, 299, 318, 320, 367, 452, 552, 596, 640–41, 658, 777n World Youth Festival (1961), 149 “wreckers,” 54 Wright, Jim, 397–98 Yakovenko, Yakov, 35 Yakovlev, Aleksandr, xxiv, 2, 5, 180, 182–86, 189, 194, 195, 197, 199, 207, 208, 221, 227, 230, 231, 244–46, 248–50, 254, 265, 276, 282, 307–13, 315, 316, 319, 328, 334, 344, 346, 347, 349, 350, 352, 353, 363, 364, 364, 372–74, 377, 393, 401, 419, 429, 430, 433, 446, 449, 451, 452, 455, 459, 490, 501, 504–7, 508, 509, 511, 512–13, 518, 520, 521, 530, 531, 532, 534, 536, 543, 575, 576, 578, 584, 636, 637, 638, 639–41, 639, 643, 647, 653, 654, 660, 678, 690, 769n–70n Yakovlev, Yegor, 342, 346, 647, 653 Yalta, 243, 319, 490, 602, 603, 604 Yanayev, Gennady, xxiv, 536, 575, 584, 596, 600, 600, 605, 607, 608, 610, 611, 617, 629 Yaroslavl (city), 141, 168, 182 Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute, 182 Yavlinsky, Grigory, xxiv, 522–28, 590–93, 625, 656, 661, 663 Yazov, Dmitry, xxv, 397, 419, 437, 511, 526, 567, 568, 572, 584, 585, 600, 600, 601, 608, 612, 619, 621, 659, 763n Yefremov, Leonid, xxv, 109, 110, 116, 119, 120, 121, 710n Yegorlyk River, 22 Yeltsin, Boris: alcohol dependence attributed to, 325, 458–59, 515, 649–50 autobiography of, 736n, 739n–40n background of, xxv, 322, 333–34 Belovezhskaya agreement of, 629, 634, 661 CIS supported by, 630, 631, 634, 636, 645, 658 Communist Party position resigned by, 521–22 correspondence of, 325–26, 330, 334, 336 coup attempt and reaction of, 608, 614–16, 618, 621–22 criticism of, 328–30, 332, 362–63, 418–19 dacha of, 460–61, 619 economic policies of, 522–23, 529, 631–32, 657–58, 776n election campaign of (1988) (Congress of People’s Deputies), 432–33, 444 election campaign of (1989) (Russian parliament), 513–16 Gorbachev criticized by, 307–13, 320–21, 322, 326–35, 336, 361–65, 399–400, 525, 530–31, 537, 578, 621–23, 622, 657–58 Gorbachev’s criticism of, 330–32, 361–65, 366, 377, 418–19, 531, 577, 579–82, 642–50, 652, 653, 654, 657–61, 676–77, 690 Gorbachev’s relationship with, 2, 4, 218, 220, 222, 325–32, 444–45, 457–61, 513–16, 522–23, 556, 580–82, 598, 622, 623–30, 635–37, 639, 653–58, 690, 736n, 781n health of, 324–25, 331, 334, 361, 663 leadership of, 332–33, 336, 461, 519, 536, 635–36, 690 Ligachev’s relationship with, 222, 307, 315–28, 331–35, 337, 362–63, 418–19 marriage of, 330, 331, 333 military support for, 635–36 as Moscow party leader, 323–26, 330–31, 333 perestroika as viewed by, 325, 326–27, 332, 335 personality of, 325, 330–34, 432 photographs of, 323, 532, 599, 622, 639 popularity of, 332–33, 461, 519, 536, 614–15 press coverage of, 324, 328, 432, 459–60, 525 reputation of, 325, 333–34, 457–61, 515, 649–50 resignation of, 658 as Russian president, xii, xxv, 2, 218, 581–82, 588, 598, 624–30, 635–37, 646 as Russian Republic deputy premier, 445 as Russian Supreme Soviet president, 530–31, 622 seventy-fifth birthday of, 682 speeches of, 326–30, 332, 335, 399–400, 445, 530–31, 626, 631–32 on State Construction Committee, 361 U.S. lecture tour of (1989), 457–60 Uspenskoye dacha of, 460–61 White House (Moscow) confrontation of, 657–58 Yeriomin, Nikolai, 101, 102 Yermak (Cossack leader), 10 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 91, 713n You and I (Barry), 288–89 Young Communist League, 121, 419 Young Pioneers, 100, 519 “Young Stalinist,” 28 Yugoslavia, 117, 206, 224, 342, 346–47, 348, 378, 381, 599, 685, 692 Yukos (company), 679 Yushkov, Serafim, 47, 48 Zagladin, Vadim, xxv, 123, 488 Zaikov, Lev, xxv, 221, 256, 332, 349, 433, 434 Zakharov, Gennady, 294 Zamiatin, Evgeny, 339 Zamyatin, Leonid, 199, 569 Zaretsky, Anatoly, 61, 62 Zaslavskaya, Tatyana, xxv, 186–88, 253, 346, 359 Zaslavsky, Ilya, xxv, 433, 456–57 Zavidovo hunting preserve, 171, 231, 308, 320 Zdravomyslova, Olga, xxv, 666, 679 Zeibert, Duke, 408 “zero option,” 295 Zetkin, Clara, 82 Zhao Ziyang, 479 Zheleznovodsk (resort), 121, 148 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 663 Zhivkov, Todor, xxv, 379, 381, 383–84, 386, 386, 465, 466 Zhukov, Gyorgy, 361 ZIL limousines, 165, 229, 421, 432, 562, 647–48 Ziman, Tatyana and Yuri, 746n Zimyanin, Mikhail, xxv, 214, 270, 309 Zionism, 251, 572 Znamya, 247 Zoellick, Robert, xxv, 553, 566–67 Zubenko, Ivan, xxv, 134, 135 Zubok, Vladislav, 93, 689 Zucconi, Vittorio, 459, 460 Zvezdich, 33 Zyuganov, Gennady, xxv, 652, 660, 661, 663 ALSO BY WILLIAM TAUBMAN Khrushchev: The Man and His Era Moscow Spring (coauthor, Jane Taubman) Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente to Détente to Cold War First published in the United States by W.


pages: 468 words: 233,091

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, AltaVista, Apple II, Apple Newton, Bear Stearns, Boeing 747, Brewster Kahle, business cycle, business process, Byte Shop, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Danny Hillis, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, don't be evil, eat what you kill, fake news, fear of failure, financial independence, Firefox, full text search, game design, General Magic , Googley, Hacker News, HyperCard, illegal immigration, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Justin.tv, Larry Wall, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Multics, nuclear winter, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, proprietary trading, Richard Feynman, Robert Metcalfe, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social software, software patent, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, The Soul of a New Machine, web application, Y Combinator

Which might have been OK, except that the senior partners in those firms were so rich that they didn’t want to spend time sitting on the boards of companies they were investing in. Why should they? They had six houses each and Gulfstream jets to get among all their houses. They were going to the World Economic Forum in Davos. Why would they want to sit at my board meeting? I used to sit at my board meetings, and I would think to myself, “This is my own company and I’m bored out of my skull.” The VCs delegated very junior people to sit on our board. One guy had been a management consultant at Bain. He had never run a company; he never had profit-and-loss responsibility, which is the key.


The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, David Wengrow

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atahualpa, British Empire, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, degrowth, European colonialism, founder crops, Gini coefficient, global village, Hernando de Soto, Hobbesian trap, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, Isaac Newton, labour mobility, land tenure, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, means of production, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, out of africa, public intellectual, Scientific racism, spice trade, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl

The last, we are supposed to believe, is just the inevitable effect of inequality; and inequality, the inevitable result of living in any large, complex, urban, technologically sophisticated society. Presumably it will always be with us. It’s just a matter of degree. Today, there is a veritable boom of thinking about inequality: since 2011, ‘global inequality’ has regularly featured as a top item for debate in the World Economic Forum at Davos. There are inequality indexes, institutes for the study of inequality, and a relentless stream of publications trying to project the current obsession with property distribution back into the Stone Age. There have even been attempts to calculate income levels and Gini coefficients for Palaeolithic mammoth hunters (they both turn out to be very low).1 It’s almost as if we feel some need to come up with mathematical formulae justifying the expression, already popular in the days of Rousseau, that in such societies ‘everyone was equal, because they were all equally poor.’