In the 1940s, Budd Schulberg dreamed up a character named Sammy Glick, who in just a decade rises from New York City's Jewish slums to the peak of the Hollywood studios by stepping over or double-dealing nearly every person he meets. The novel, which became a runaway best seller, is narrated by an idealistic, older screenwriter obsessed with the question: "What Makes Sammy Run?" How, he wonders, can you explain a person who sprinted out of his mother's arms?"
He wondered if he asked the wrong question. The deeper questions raised by Sammy are how to slow him down and how to slow down the culture that threatens to run away with us.
The men and women attending the World Economic Forum in the Swiss mountain village of Davos should be asked about it. The subtitle of his recent book, "Davos Man: How Billionaires Devoured the World", shows that Peter Goodman sees the menace clearly. The director of the UN's World Food Program called on Musk and Bezos to step up and end world hunger at this year's forum. Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA from Sweden, and Bernard Arnault, the French business magnate, are other notables. Each in their own way, as Goodman puts it about Arnault, a master at the art of avoiding taxation.
The World Economic Forum is both a reliable gathering place for the world's economic and political leaders to make deals on a global scale and a conference meant to assure the public that those in attendance are committed to Improving the State. The Cosmic Lie is that when the rules are organized around greater prosperity for those who already enjoy most of it, everyone is a winner.
The wealth of billionaires worldwide increased in the first year of the epidemic.
In another section, we see how Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, tries to make the government of Argentina pay back its debts at 55 cents to the dollar instead of 53 cents. The billionaire who ran the world's largest asset management company had menaced a desperate country for two pennies on the dollar.
To document a recent textbook case of billionaire wreck, one need only sit still and observe Musk's recent Glick-like cynicism. He made a bid to acquire it at a premium, trashed its executives, cast doubt on its business model, and made common cause with those who would own the libs.
In light of the damage done to the billionaire, the solutions of Goodman seem tame and no remedy wins his full praise. Universal Basic Income is a favorite of socialists and billionaires. On one hand, it is a fancy flight of fancy, and on the other, UBI can be used to expand employment and encourage economic growth. But fails to make any real demands, such as an insurrection or revolution of ideas. It demands thoughtful use of a tool that has been there for a long time.
One hopes that democracy can save us. Reducing wealth inequality and boosting the power of workers through labor unions is a vital check on the powerful. The kind of solutions you would rarely see bandied about at an event like the World Economic Forum at Davos.
It's important to replace the image of sophisticated, two-faced Davos Men with a more Glick-ish one, that's manic folk running madly to the top for some mysterious reason and without concern for the rest of us.
Slow them down for the sake of society and the planet.
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