Global billionaire wealth reached an unprecedented peak in 2025. Oxfam described this as a moment that “undermines political freedom” and deepens inequality. The organisation’s annual inequality report presented shocking numbers and offered a diagnosis of a global pathology. When twelve billionaires own more wealth than the poorest half of humanity — four billion people — the language of democracy becomes a polite fiction rather than an accurate reflection of political reality. Yet these same individuals, and those within their sphere of influence, gather each winter in Davos beneath a banner bearing the words: ‘Committed to improving the state of the world’. The phrase is as hollow as it is polished.

This contradiction is what makes Davos the perfect stage for global hypocrisy. The forum, which claims to debate solutions, is itself a symbol of the problem: power without accountability, wealth without limits and elites who speak of justice while benefiting from its absence. So it’s no surprise that Chloe Hadavas of Foreign Policy wrote about the forum’s duplicity, or that her colleague Michael Hirsh described Davos as ‘a group of billionaires and elites pretending to solve the world’s problems when, in fact, they are often the very culprits who perpetuate them’. This is not hyperbole, but a........

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