miscellany

We tend to think that the problem with the rich is simple: they are greedy. But it is more psychologically revealing to think of our plutocrats as residents in what Buddhism calls the god realm. On the Tibetan Wheel of Life, the topmost realm is occupied by the winners, the wealthy, and the privileged, for whom every benefit and pleasure is immediate and all suffering and ugliness is elsewhere. But the god realm is not only about greed—it is also about a certain psychology: anybody outside of the god realm doesn’t exist for the gods, mostly because they can’t be seen. It’s not only that our contemporary gods are cruel; it’s that others don’t exist for them except as data points—assessments of the public’s trust in brands, surveys of consumer optimism, wage growth, unemployment rates, savings rate, etc. The gods never see us, never mix with us, don’t know us except as flunkies and wage slaves, the redundant. We’re good for a laugh with our kooky conspiracy ideas, our community college degrees, our drug and alcohol melodramas, and our tawdry neighborhoods. Otherwise our world is terra incognita, a place of riot and malcontent, a place on the map where “there be monsters.”

Davos, on the other hand, is comforting. It is an annual public dramatization of the good life in the god realm. It’s a members-only event, badges are color-coded so there will be no confusion about who belongs and who doesn’t. CEOs, prime ministers, and some media elite get white badges; most journalists and support staff get orange and purple badges. It’s not as bad as swastikas and Stars of David, but you get the point.*

In his new book, global ESG crusader Mark Carney [(!w2)] praises Faber as something of a hero and Danone as a prime example of how corporations can be reformed by redirecting their mission away from a hard focus on profits and shareholders. Carney gleefully repeated Faber’s claim last year that Danone had “toppled the statue of Milton Friedman.”*