‘Occupy Davos’ backlash against inequality

DAVOS, Switzerland – The Occupy movement, which went global after protests against Wall Street last year, is camping in igloos to bring its argument with the super-rich “1 per cent” to Davos.

It is a reminder to the leaders of finance and industry at the World Economic Forum of the resentment that is leading to questions about the future direction of capitalism.

“At meetings the rest of society is excluded from, this powerful ‘1 per cent’ negotiates and decides about the fate of the other 99 per cent of this world,” says David Roth, “Camp Igloo” organiser and head of the Swiss centre-left’s youth wing.

“The economic and financial concentration of power in a small, privileged minority leads to a dictatorship over the rest of us. The motto ‘one person, one vote’ is no longer valid, but ‘one dollar, one vote’. We want to change that.”

Roth’s group has set up camp in sub-zero temperatures and snow to “occupy” the WEF in a car park just outside the security cordon around the meeting that has become a byword for globalisation.

He is seeking dialogue with the WEF but few of the 2,000 visitors are likely to see the camp by the train station, many preferring to travel by private jet or helicopter from Zurich. A one-way trip costs 5,100 Swiss francs (US$5,500) according to a WEF handout.

Police arrested two men suspected of scrawling ‘SMASH WEF’ on the walls of the Swiss National Bank in Zurich last week. They also stopped an unauthorised anti-WEF demonstration in the capital Berne on Saturday.

In its Global Risk Report earlier this month, the WEF showed it is well aware of the Zeitgeist, warning that a backlash against rising inequality risks derailing the advance of globalisation and threatens growth worldwide.

Rising youth unemployment, a retirement crisis among pensioners dependent on debt-burdened states and a wealth gap have sown the ‘seeds of dystopia,’ according to the report, based on a survey of 469 experts and industry leaders.

“The middle class is thinning out,” says Lee Howell, the WEF managing director behind the report. “It’s no longer simply cyclical, with everybody down and everybody getting to go back up. This time some people may not get up.”

Klaus Schwab, a former business school professor who launched the annual get-together in 1971, is calling for more humility from executives who he says “have still not learned the lessons from past mistakes”.

“Dystopia, the opposite of utopia, could precipitate a downward spiral of the global economy, pulled by social disruption, protectionism, nationalism and populism,” he says.

A survey of 1,200 experts the WEF published on Monday showed fear of a major geopolitical disruption over the next year has risen significantly to 54 per cent from 36 per cent last quarter.

Ahead of this year’s Davos meeting, based on the theme “The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models”, everybody is adding their two cents to the debate on the state of the world.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who will speak at Davos tomorrow, says years of uncontrolled “turbo capitalism” have broken the link between risk and reward, giving some executives generous pay deals despite lacklustre performance.

In a “Call to Action” ahead of Davos, 11 leaders of international organisations including International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde said economic growth, jobs and protectionism are the top three worries at the start of 2012.

– Nampa/Reuters