The World Economic Forum (WEF) was founded in 1971 by Klaus Schwab in Switzerland. Its annual meeting in Davos brings together political leaders, central bankers, corporate executives, major asset managers, and heads of international organisations in a closed forum format. It presents itself as a platform for improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation.

To its critics, though, Davos serves as an elite network where policy direction is decided by corporate and government elites who then seek to force compliance with that consensus downwards into the societies in which they operate. They see Davos as a system that embeds corporate and institutional power into global policy formation, reducing transparency and increasing alignment pressure across countries, with consequences that have done great damage to the global economy, the living standards of people, and the standing of Western culture.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) emerged as its intellectual and political counterweight. It is associated with a spectrum of thinkers and public intellectuals who argue that Western economies have become overly centralised and constrained by technocratic policy frameworks and that the underpinning tenets of Western culture have been eroded in the process. Its core aim is to reassert national sovereignty, strengthen government and corporate accountability to people, and restore economic decision-making to individuals, families, and competitive markets. It positions itself against forced compliance with elite consensus and argues that prosperity and civil liberties are assured when supranational convergence pressures are resisted.

The core ideological difference is that ARC believes that progress emerges from individual agency and local decision-making rather than central coordination. Davos, on the other hand, operates on the assumption that modern economies require elite networks to align governments, corporations, and international institutions across borders.

The way these ideologies play out in the lives of people can best be seen in the two conferences’ different approaches to energy and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies.

WEF championed the fear of climate change in order to set net zero as a central global objective. The consequence has been lower investment, weakened global growth, and inflated energy prices, thereby reducing living standards across some Western societies.

ARC, on the other hand, holds that while global temperatures have risen modestly over the past century, living standards have absolutely rocketed upwards. That is set to remain the case. Modest increases in temperature will likely persist, but living standards and human prosperity will leapfrog the consequences.

The key difference between Davos and ARC on energy and climate, expressed by an ARC conference delegate, is that for Davos energy is treated as a risk to be managed by reducing access, whereas for ARC energy is a life-giving opportunity to be developed and expanded, as this will vastly lift global living standards.

A second major difference is how the two conferences see ESG policy.

ESG refers to policies that Davos has been central in developing and set the rules with which private companies and individuals are required to comply if capital is allocated to them. The environmental element covers requirements and expectations around energy use. The social element focuses on the cultural values that firms and individuals are expected to practise. The Western culture war over gender arose from this. The governance element deals with the metrics that boards and companies use, such as around the employment of designated groups and the dilution of the merit principle.

ESG is then used by institutional investors, pension funds, and large asset managers to decide where money flows and under what conditions, which means it can indirectly shape how companies are run and what behaviours are rewarded or penalised in the wider economy.

If you do not comply with the rules, then you do not get to play.

WEF sees society as a collective system to be built by elite institutions, with the punishment of economic exclusion for anyone who dissents against forced compliance with rules decided by corporate and government elites.

ARC sees the world very differently, arguing that societies should be built not around forced compliance with corporate edicts but instead around the sovereign worth of individuals to decide things for themselves.

The energy and cultural edicts that have flowed from Davos have done much damage to Western societies. Their economies have become significantly less competitive than they should have been, they have become deeply fractured across questions of values, and they show alarming levels of emotional and mental dysfunction as a consequence. They also face a serious set of threats from their non-Western peers, who have become relatively more competitive through continued investment in efficient energy sources and continued prioritisation of merit in appointments to their militaries, universities, and corporations.