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uoou's review against another edition
Critique of capitalism which advocated capitalism as the solution.
vickywoodburn's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
“Davos Man” was an infuriating deep dive into the world of the billionaires who profit while everyone else suffers. In a world with more innovation than ever before, the majority of the profits go to a handful of global power players— or those known as the “Davos Man.”
The central thesis of this book is that billionaires have taken advantage of capitalism and government loopholes to game the system to their advantage. Rather than passing any substantial amount of riches back to the people, these Davos Men only focus on protecting their own pockets, leading to rising inequality and underfunded government resources. As those in power fail to provide basic government services, regular people turn to Davos Men for help and instead place the game on “others” rather than the billionaires who have profited off of their suffering.
While the book was interesting, the central points became a bit repetitive, and I started to feel the book drag towards the second half. While I appreciated Goodman’s attempts to propose possible solutions for mitigating the impacts of the Davos Men, his solutions felt less developed than his central thesis. Goodman makes a somewhat contradictory argument for how to achieve better wealth redistribution— advocating for both more government intervention and freer markets.
Despite any potential inconsistencies in his plan to reduce wealth disparities, Goodman has clearly outlined an alarming and growing trend in the amount of influence billionaire players have on global politics. Without some form of reducing inequality, democracy around the world will continue to become more imperiled.
“When people are deprived of the material for stable lives, they take refuge in traditional privileges— tribal identifies, and fantasies of glorious futures enabled by reclaiming what they view as theirs. They become susceptible to simplistic explanations peddled by demagogues who weaponize democracy itself. The result is chaos, anger, and instability. No one wins except the people who have already won.”
jrc2011's review
4.0
The author has a lot of dishy tidbits - which are verifiable if you care to hit "pause" and follow up on the sources. The book has some repetition but it's overall quite a good read with plenty of supporting anecdotes and details. Not as practical as Robert Reich on "yes and what do we do now" type of questions but this should really provide plenty of food for thought for anyone who thought that Democrats were any different from Republicans: a billionaire is a billionaire is Davos man. "Left" leaning philanthropists are still ... philanthropists. That's to say: people who exploited loopholes to allow them to amass hoards of cash without paying taxes and then deign to "fix" problems they created in the first place.