Hope lies in challenging the power of the rich

Date: 21 January 2015

Today ‘the great and the good’ meet in Davos, Switzerland to discuss how the world is changing, and how corporate executives and senior politicians should respond to these changes.

At this meeting, these important people spend a great deal of time convincing each other that they are creating a more prosperous world than we’ve ever seen in history. Without their business practices, their overseas investments, their entrepreneurial talent and their philanthropy, you would easily imagine that we would all be much worse off.

What’s scary to me is that the myths of this elite class have become so deeply engrained in society that it can be difficult to challenge the power that these elites hold. Ideas like creating markets in endangered species that not so long ago would have been considered pretty wacky, if not downright anti-social, are now so mainstream that they present a serious obstacle to building a fairer, more sustainable world for the vast majority of humanity to enjoy. You’re left with the impression that if we just sit back and let them get on with things, all the poverty, inequality, and environmental destruction created by their out-of-control-capitalism would sort themselves out.

We’ve made 7 interactive infographics dedicated to challenging these elite myths. The world will not be ‘saved’ by a tiny group of super-rich who have done incredibly well from putting their economic dogma into practice.

Hope lies in challenging the power and wealth of this powerful set, and learning lessons from the millions of different ways this is done around the world at this very moment, to try something different. Something which leaves behind the selfish accumulation of wealth as a primary goal, and is instead guided by the desire for a more equal, sustainable, democratic and just world.

Photo: World Economic Forum/flickr