The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum just screams for counter-programming.

The get-together, colloquially called “Davos” because it happens in a quaint little town in Switzerland, is billed as a place where “the foremost leaders from government, business, and civil society” can “confront shared challenges and drive innovations driving the future.”

Considering all of the ills we face are man-made, it’s hard to imagine a better collection of the people responsible for them. Global warming. Wars. Starvation. Mass migration. AI. The risk of nuclear annihilation.

Yet instead of coming up with ideas or actionable plans do something about these woes, they settle into a self-congratulatory group grope at which they celebrate perpetuation of The Status Quo, wrapped in all of the blathertastic language meant to protect them — and distract the rest of us — from our supposedly shared plight.

There’s just too much money to be made by making us heat up, fight, starve, abandon our homes, give up control of our lives to machines, and otherwise live under the shadow of our imminent extinction at the press of a button.

I’ve railed against this gig in years past because it really and truly pisses me off that nobody holds these bastards accountable for their actions, or lack thereof. The media and academia are willing co-conspirators, attending, participating, and covering the various expert speeches and panel discussions about “the future of this” or “the opportunities for that.”

Stories are written. Papers are published. Declarations are shared. And everyone goes back to their regular jobs and nothing changes.

Which is the whole point of the exercise. Oh, and attending a lot of fancy parties. Can’t forget the parties.

Where is the anti-Davos programming? Imagine a “mirror” event that addressed the exact same topics as the toffs do in the Alps, but involved people other than those who profit most from doing nothing…union leaders, environmentalists, theologians, opposition politicians, and technologists who don’t buy into the inevitability of us destroying the world and are bold enough to contemplate ways of avoiding it.

Al of the people (and ideas) locked out of the drivel being shared at Davos.

Underlying the World Economic Forum is a premise that only the rich and powerful have a voice in deciding the fate of the planet. Their annual party is simply their way of proving it with a nice slap in our collective faces for good measure.