Davos Altitude Sickness: Where Poverty Is a Panel and War a Workshop
I was working at a lakeside villa for a man who lived in the margins of newspaper profiles and diplomatic cables—a man whose world revolved around Pegasus racehorses, private jets, and personal assurances from people who didn’t usually return phone calls. That year—early 2000s, I think—I arranged a meeting between him and the president of Eldorado: a country where everything glittered and nothing was quite real.
It started with a phone call. "A man from Eldorado is on the line,” my assistant said.
“Let him wait,” I said calmly. “No one from Eldorado is important enough to wake the boss.”
She hesitated. “But… it’s the President of Eldorado.”
I glanced up—her face had gone pale.
“All the more reason,” I said. “Tell him to try again later.”
Somewhere in the ensuing diplomatic shuffle, an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos landed on my desk. Perhaps by mistake. Or perhaps they assumed my employer would need me on the Magic Mountain.
Instead, I stayed in St. Gallenstein, where I was living above a legendary drifters' bar with a few cheerful filous and old jukebox ghosts. I had a blind date lined up with a Maori woman I barely knew. Honestly? The best snow was already in town and in the early morning hours, the sound of silence always brought me to tears.
At the lakeside office villa, the careerists in their starched shirts were apoplectic. “You could have given your WEF invitation to someone else!” one exclaimed, as if I’d turned down a seat at the Council of Elrond. They stopped speaking to me for weeks. To them, Davos was Olympus. To me, it was just weekend work and a long train ride through slush.
And that was the year I unknowingly dodged the fever dream that had once been a sanatorium.
Curing the World from Above
Long before the lanyards and limousines, Davos was a sanatorium. A real one. Thin air, strict regimens, and silence broken only by coughs. The town gained fame as a last resort for the tubercular—Europe’s pale elite sent there to convalesce in sunrooms and snowlight, suspended in time between life and death.
Thomas Mann immortalized this world in The Magic Mountain. His young protagonist, Hans Castorp, arrives for a brief visit and stays for seven years. The mountain becomes a metaphor for a Europe already ill—physically, morally, and politically. Its patients discuss great ideas, but their lofty conversations float above the mounting fever of the world below. As they talk, smoke, flirt, and philosophize, war draws closer, like a cough that becomes a rattle in the chest. The sanatorium is insulated—but not immune.
Mann’s Davos was a world of arrested time. Ideas were discussed endlessly, but no decisions were made. Life happened elsewhere.
Now, it’s a different disease: not tuberculosis, but technocracy. The patients are healthier, perhaps—but the soul is not.
Settembrini and Naphta are gone. In their place: Klaus Schwab moderating panels on blockchain governance. The conversations are still abstract, still far removed from reality—but instead of dialectics and mortality, they talk metrics and planetary dashboards.
What Mann saw as a metaphor for Europe’s decadent twilight now returns as reality: a ruling class cloistered in altitude, speaking fluently in acronyms, designing blueprints for a world they no longer inhabit.
The symptoms have changed. The altitude remains.
Still perched high above the world.
Still convinced they are its cure.
Still missing the fever that rises below.
From Lisbon to Davos: The Original Pangloss
Voltaire’s Candide wasn’t merely satire—it was revenge. A philosophical hit job executed with surgical wit against the optimism of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and his intellectual heirs. These were men who, despite war, plague, and poverty, clung to the belief that we lived in “the best of all possible worlds.”
Why? Because if God is perfect, and God created the world, then this world—no matter how blood-soaked or broken—must be the optimal configuration. A few bodies here, a war or two there—collateral damage in a cosmic algorithm written by divine reason. That was the Leibnizian creed.
Then Lisbon happened.
On All Saints’ Day, 1755, a massive earthquake split the city open. Tens of thousands were crushed or drowned. Churches collapsed onto congregations mid-Mass. Fires raged for days. It was a disaster not just of earth and stone, but of faith and philosophy.
And still, the Panglossians chirped on: all for the best, they said. Part of the plan.
Voltaire didn’t argue. He laughed. Cruelly. Brilliantly.
He created Dr. Pangloss—the tutor who, even while being flogged, nearly hanged, enslaved, and watching others perish, insists with unshakable serenity that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.” It was philosophy as farce. A mirror held up to metaphysical absurdity.
But Candide wasn’t just a personal vendetta. It was a warning: optimism, untethered from reality, becomes cruelty.
And Pangloss?
He never died.
Today, he wears a Patagonia vest and speaks at breakout panels.
He doesn’t quote Latin anymore—he speaks fluent jargon: “resilience,” “sustainable impact,” “holistic governance.” He doesn’t explain the Lisbon earthquake. He explains the polycrisis.
Today’s Pangloss builds dashboards, not cathedrals. He believes data will deliver justice. He calls his optimism “systems thinking,” and if you press him about failure, he smiles and reminds you it’s part of a “necessary transition.”
And just like his 18th-century cousin, he means well.
But the road to absurdity, as always, is paved with good intentions—and beautifully branded PowerPoint slides.
And just like his 18th-century cousin, today’s Pangloss means well.
But look closely and you’ll find him everywhere: the bright-eyed NGO director in Davos quoting behavioral economics while sidestepping famine; the ESG consultant who flies private to a panel on carbon offsets; the UN youth ambassador in $800 sneakers explaining resilience to villagers with no clean water.
You might even catch glimpses of Pangloss in someone like Trustin Rideau, whose carefully crafted optimism and choreographed virtue seem designed to reassure rather than resolve. Everything is always a “learning moment,” every crisis an “opportunity to grow.” Even as systems fail, he calmly reminds us that Canaduh is still leading the way—just don’t ask to see the ledger.
Or in Baroness von the Bluff, presiding over bureaucratic baroque like a Pangloss in pearls. The Eurocratic Union may be stagnating, imploding, fragmenting—but she speaks of “strategic autonomy,” “digital sovereignty,” and the ever-ascending “EUssR project.” One could lose half a continent and still be reassured that integration is on track.
These are not villains. They’re Panglossians. And that’s the danger.
They truly believe they are saving the world. One stakeholder engagement at a time.
Progress in PowerPoint
Today's Pangloss doesn't live in a book-lined study or a crumbling university. He lives in a five-star hotel suite, wears Zegna, and delivers optimism in 16:9 aspect ratio.
He doesn’t speak of God’s will—he speaks of “global governance architecture.” He doesn’t believe in divine purpose—he believes in “outcomes-based impact.” And instead of parables, he offers bullet points and breakout sessions.
At Davos, suffering isn’t solved. It’s repackaged.
At Davos, Poverty is a panel. War is a workshop.
Climate collapse? A networking lunch with oat milk lattes. Nothing is ever truly a problem—it’s an "inflection point." A chance to “build back better.” Pain is just raw material for another case study.
The Panglossians of today aren’t evil. They’re worse: they're sincere. They believe their dashboards will save the world, that their KPIs are moral compasses, that their optimization is compassion.
But like their 18th-century cousin, they are blind.
They see numbers, not lives. They model suffering, then call it progress. They hold the steering wheel of the world economy and wonder why no one trusts them.
And when the engine fails, when the dashboard glitches, when reality breaks through the glass dome?
They’ll hold another summit.
Not Evil, but Explanation
Modern oppression doesn’t bark orders—it schedules meetings.
You’re not being silenced—you’re “guided by community standards.”
You’re not being blacklisted—you’re “not aligned with our values.”
You’re not being surveilled—you’re “part of a trust and safety initiative.”
The danger isn’t in boots on the ground—it’s in lanyards around necks.
Not iron fists, but inclusive frameworks.
Not dystopia, but diversity decks.
And in this best of all possible worlds, censorship comes with a wellness app and a smile.
Davos Will Cure You—If It Doesn’t Kill You First
Voltaire mocked Pangloss to show that naïve optimism is just cruelty in slow motion.
Thomas Mann warned that when elites drift too far above the world, detachment becomes delusion. The Magic Mountain doesn’t just isolate—it intoxicates.
Davos proves them both right.
The old sanatorium is now a symposium.
The patients have become the panelists.
The disease is no longer tuberculosis—it’s progress without soul.
And the cure? Another keynote. Another white paper. Another pilot project.
There is no grand conspiracy—just a quiet consensus among well-groomed technocrats that the world can be managed like a spreadsheet.
They believe the future needs more frameworks.
That human beings are inputs to be aligned.
That history can be debugged through quarterly reports and stakeholder sessions.
And yet, far beneath the altitude of their optimism, the world groans—its pain unmeasured, its struggles unseen by those perched in their climate-controlled ivory towers. While the panelists sip espresso and speak of resilience, families are breaking, cities are burning, livelihoods are vanishing.
The Davos elites measure everything—except the depth of the crater they’ve left behind.