Something unexpected happened at Davos this year. The conventional wisdom took some tentative steps toward the right.
Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, the “global conversations” that take place among business, political and social leaders at the World Economic Forum each year have trended left. Elite Western opinion seemed destined to move toward more faith in state planning and less in the power of markets.
There were reasons for the shift. China’s economic success seemed to vindicate central planning. People believed massive state intervention would promote a fast, cheap and effective transition to a net-zero world. The economic crisis seemed to demonstrate that American-style “cowboy capitalism” was a flop. “Stakeholder capitalism” and environmental, social and governance investing would, backers promised, be at least as profitable and considerably more popular than the old-fashioned kind. Business leaders needed to adapt to a woke world.