Davos and Old Line Media

This is the time for the World Economic Forum again. It is a classic closed loop. Fortune Magazine's Justin Fox made a novel argument about the forum of self-proclaimed heavy hitters. The founder of Davos created a semi-closed loop with hierarchies of players. Some people there get the E ticket (a historical reference to the best rides at Disneyland) while others get lesser activity. To assure that all these yahoos can yabber to themselves only the press that is acceptable is invited. The problem with that kind of event is it does not fit the realities of today's media culture. Ultimately, these kinds of discussions are more permiable than the sponsors seem to think they are. Transparency is a constant theme that will trip up both real and imagined leaders. Sometimes public comments can become magnified. But now sometimes so can private ones. The less transparent societal institutions are the less relevant they become. So while there might be a lot of dough in Davos, there may be a lot less importance than the participants think.

The importance of the event is a reflection of who attends. Christo- the idiotic cloth artist - is an attendee. Just what does he know about anything except conning the elites to put up his bizarre pieces of performance art? So is Michael Jordan - who is probably a pretty good businessman. But there are a whole bunch of other groupies that don't deserve to work at Walmart and certainly don't have a clue about how to build the world economy. What puzzles me is why some of the world's alleged economic leaders would listen to these bozos. So exactly what is the purpose of the forum? W.C. Fields once talked about being invited to join a club where he argued that if they invited people like him he would not want to join. Davos seems a lot like one of those clubs.