The Realignment: Realignment Q&A Mailbag: Does Davos/the World Economic Forum Matter, the Gilded Age and Today's Politics, Dungeons & Dragons, and Neocon Thoughts? (Supercast Exclusive)

The Realignment The Realignment 1/18/23 - Episode Page - 7m - PDF Transcript

Hey, realignment listeners, Marshall and Sager here.

We are back with exclusive content for Supercast subscribers this year.

If you'd like to get full access to the Q&A that we're about to get into here today,

you could submit your own questions and upvote others at realignment.supercast.com.

There you could support the show five a month, 50 a year or 500 for lifetime membership.

I'm really excited that as part of our efforts, we're going to be upping the

amount of great exclusive content and of course, help fund the show.

On to the first question.

And once again, that's realignment.supercast.com or the link at the top of the show notes.

First question, it's always a free question before we get into the exclusive ones.

For folks, Sager and Marshall, what do you two think about the Davos conference

that's going around this week?

Sager, I have a lot of thoughts on this, so I'm curious what you think.

I almost, at a point where I don't think about it anymore, I think Pete Davos Gringe,

Pete, I would say 2017, whenever Xi Jinping gave that speech at Davos and he was like,

I am now the leader of the liberal international order and Trump wasn't going to Davos,

but Gary Cohn and all those people there.

That was well before, you know, that guy talked about taxes on the stage.

That's when I think that was like Pete Gretta Thunberg and Bill Gates and the pre,

everyone was like, wait, why is everyone flying private jets here?

To the extent I care about it now, it's more just, here's my thing.

It was fun to think about when it wasn't conventional wisdom that Davos is Gringe.

Now, like, I think I just saw in semaphore, like Jill Abramson at the New York Times,

former managing editor of the New York Times, just said that Davos is a circle jerk.

So I'm like, now it's like center left discourse to even accept that Davos is Gringe.

And also I saw a tweet on this.

I don't know if it's actually true.

Did Bill Gates not go to Davos this year?

Cause it's so in the summits that I was seeing rumors that Bill Gates had maybe dropped out.

But hold out or something like this kind of gets to my topic.

So there's two angles on Davos.

So one is the left critique of Davos, you know, I had, we had Peter Goodman.

Yes.

On the realignment, Peter Goodman has been on breaking points.

Breaking points, my beef with Peter, and I said this to him is that the left version,

actually both the left wing and the right wing critique of Davos are fundamentally flawed

in that they give Davos just way more power and significance than it already has.

So look, here's the dry so I've been in DC for a while.

We know how these things work.

Take rich people and aspirationally rich upper middle class people like going to fancy events

where they get feted and hang out and get drunk and be patted on the back of their head.

That is all Davos is extending that to mean anything more than that inherently means in

them itself is just a flaw.

So Peter talks about how well Davos is bad because it basically is a bunch of people

saying they want things to change, but it actually they control everything.

They're not trying to make change at all.

And they actually take us now called cross swab isn't the impediment to any systemic

change. So let's say you're a socialist in America.

You don't like our system.

You don't like capitalism, whatever.

Close swab and a sorted group of billionaires of one billion to $20 billion a year are not

the impediment to political change there.

Frankly, your bigger impediment to political change is probably the fact that a working

class white voter in Arkansas isn't in favor of your agenda.

And I promise you there is nothing close for what can do to tell you to tell that person

to agree with you.

And then from the right wing version, we're seeing this kind of very hardcore conspiracy

theory, great reset.

They talked about microchips.

They talked about COVID vaccines.

EOD, if you don't spend time in this space, you're going to kind of miss the fact that

rich people and people with quote unquote influence talk about things all the time.

Close swab talks about fourth industrial revolutions.

He talks about UBI.

And yeah, he talks about COVID.

He talks about how we need to have a different looking society.

But we've kind of always had groups like this.

So I just struggled to really see a single example of the World Economic Forum, Davos,

et cetera, actually influencing events beyond just the fact that there are a bunch of countries

that have like center left or center right consensus that are similar to whatever the

Davos party line is.

So yeah, you're going to see close swab talk about a fourth industrial revolution.

But you also saw a bunch of politicians in the 2010 say things like automation is coming

and we need to have UBI.

Is that close swab pulling puppet strings?

Or is that just people generically finding talking points to use?

Yeah, I mean, I think close swab is bad.

I think Davos mindset is bad.

I think what it is is just like extension of like the center left hive mind.

And so I'm not like Davos controls the center left.

I'm like, more it's just like Davos is the center left like crystallize.

And I get that.

That's why it becomes a focal point because it's like the one time that they all get together.

It's kind of like what I don't know, just any of these, you know, big types of conferences where

it's not the it's not the conference like itself.

It's just that what the people in the conference think.

So yeah, anyway, I'm bored of Davos.

I just don't think about it anymore.

And I'm glad that the general consensus is that has moved on to the fact that it's cringe.

Honestly, in five years, I don't even think it's going to exist in its current format anymore.

Yeah, this is an interesting example of how it's very clear that World Economic Forum

and Davos-related Twitter posts and YouTube content does very well.

So a bunch of folks have acted the fact post 2017 jumped on it.

And there's been some interesting pushback from Scott Greer, Chris Rufo.

There's been like plenty of people like on the more like right, right, right end of things

where basically you're saying like, hey, guys, yes, Davos is cringe,

but whatever your problems are actually closer to home.

And I've nothing to do with this kind of annoying German dude thinks.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

Next question.

And this question is covered by the Supercast.

So if you'd like to subscribe, go to realignment.supercast.com

or click the link in the show notes.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

WANT TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE? SUBSCRIBE TO OUR SUPERCAST: https://realignment.supercast.com/

Marshall and Saagar answer Realignment Supercast subscriber Q&A from our ask-me-anything page.

Subscribers to The Realignment's Supercast help us monetize the show, submit questions for Q&A episodes, listen to exclusive content, and more.