A case can be built that Davos offers significant sectors of the so-called "globocrats" the opportunity to buy intellectual seriousness. Essentially these globocrats are politicians, chief executive officers, bankers, hedge fund managers, diplomats and academics, plus U2's Bono, not all of them meritocracy darlings.
Davos though offers an added bonus. A stint does not entail listening to "the rest", that annoying, amorphous entity also known as "the people" - as in drought-afflicted subsistence farmers, desperate refugees from failed or failing states, flesh-and-blood victims of "structural unemployment", and those millions of foreclosed-upon, riches-to-rags middle classes and lower middle classes barely surviving in the developed North. They are unlikely to crash the Davos talkfest anyway.
The WEF is a prestige brand (some would say "scam") - promoted with ruthless efficiency. As it duly congregates mostly the super-wealthy (some would say plutocracy) of what Zygmunt Bauman has defined liquid modernity, it costs a ton of money; from basic membership at about US$52,000 (plus an entrance ticket at $19,000) to an annual "strategic partner" membership at a whopping $527,000 (plus five allowed invitations at $19,000 each).
WEF is not accepting any more "strategic partners" for 2011 unless it's a Chinese or Indian company placed among the 250 largest in the world. Probably eyeing them as well, and not leaving anything to chance, Google with throw a $250,000-plus party at Davos on Friday night.
