Billionaires Are Destroying Everything, And They Know It

The World Economic Forum's 2025 Global Risks Report is a roadmap for the devastation to come

“Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.” – Martin Luther King.

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The world’s wealthiest and most powerful people are gathered at Davos, Switzerland, this week for their annual World Economic Forum, and they’ve got a handy little list of all the known risks they’re imposing on humanity.

The 20th edition of the groups’ Global Risks Report identifies continued armed conflict, extreme weather events, “geoeconomic confrontation,” misinformation and disinformation, and societal polarization as the top global risks for 2025.

The report is for the 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries that should really be held accountable for this mess. They’re the ones in charge. They’re the ones running and permitting the industries that deplete resources, degrade the environment, spread propaganda and thrive on the ever-growing global inequality.

Who cares? We still look good in suits. (Illustration: AI generated.)

The report is based on a survey of more than 900 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders. Here’s what Saadia Zahidi, managing director for the report, had to say in its preface:

“Societal risks such as inequality rank high among today’s leading concerns as well as over the last years. Polarization within societies is further hardening views and affecting policy-making. It also continues to fan the flames of misinformation and disinformation, which, for the second year running, is the top-ranked short- to medium-term concern across all risk categories. Efforts to combat this risk are coming up against a formidable opponent in Generative AI-created false or misleading content that can be produced and distributed at scale.”

Forget about the long-predicted singularity when machines become smarter than humans. For now, the world’s richest are armed with a new technology that can end the world long before the machines stand a chance.

Here’s how our big thinkers rank the risks over the next two and ten years:

Global risks ranked by severity over two and ten years:

So what are the world’s wealthiest and most powerful leaders going to?

The truth is that they have more incentives to capitalize from these risks than to mitigate them. Zahidi says they’re “ill-equipped” to deal with these issues, anyway:

“The ensuing risks are becoming more complex and urgent, and accentuating a paradigm shift in the world order characterized by greater instability, polarizing narratives, eroding trust and insecurity. Moreover, this is occurring against a background where today’s governance frameworks seem ill-equipped for addressing both known and emergent global risks or countering the fragility that those risks generate.”

No one really goes to Davos to resolve the unprecedented economic inequality that is destabilizing the planet. They’re there to rub shoulders and learn how to acquire more.

Last year, the world minted 204 more billionaires, bringing the total to 2,769, according to the latest inequality research by Oxfam, released on Sunday. Five of them are in a grueling race to become the world’s first trillionaire.

Oxfam concludes that 60% of billionaire wealth comes from inheritance, cronyism, corruption and monopoly power.

All kleptocracy aside, the WEF report is a nice attempt at empathy while the billionaire class celebrates its success at Davos.

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