Well, this week, amidst all of the domestic political hubbub here in the United States,

the World Economic Forum is happening over at Davos.

Now, why exactly is the World Economic Forum important?

Well, we have a video, a fact video over at YouTube.

You should check out for all the background on the WEF.

But the short story is this.

In 1971, there was a organization that was established by a guy named Klaus Schwab,

who is a German engineer, economist, and professor with a James Bond villain accent.

He created this organization so that heads of business and heads of state could talk over

what he called stakeholder capitalism. Stakeholder capitalism was a theory he was expressing that essentially

suggested that if you owned a company, you ought not to answer to your shareholders. If you managed

a company, you ought not answer to profit margin or shareholders. Instead, you ought to answer

to every stakeholder in the world, meaning governments, meaning people who didn't own stock

in your company, meaning everyone. Now, you might ask yourself, well, then exactly who are you

accountable to? Because it turns out that the Rando, who doesn't own shares in your company,

can't actually fire you or sell your stock or change anything about the way you run your company.

And the answer that Klaus Straub would give is, you are answerable to no one. You as the head of a company should be like a king with his own little

kingdom. You as the head of a company, you should be a lord, and the company act as your fiefdom.

And you can pretend that you're acting in the name of the general will, but really what you are

is some sort of profit from on high brought to spread your values.

And this was the basis of stakeholder capitalism.

Now, this theory was promoted via what was called the European Management Symposium.

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