The annual migration of the world’s most expensive parasites is apparently due for a change in scenery. Larry Fink, the man whose shadow is essentially a lien on the future of the human race, has taken to LinkedIn—the digital sanitarium for the corporate-adjacent—to muse about the relocation of the World Economic Forum. For decades, the global elite have huddled in the Swiss Alps, breathing air filtered through the lungs of children and patting each other on the back for solving the very crises they manufactured during the previous fiscal year. But Davos, it seems, has developed a branding problem. It is too cold, too cliché, and far too easy for conspiracy theorists to find on a map. Thus, Fink—serving as the interim co-chief of this glorified lobbyist gala—is suggesting a pivot toward ‘listening’ in the places where the ‘modern world is actually built.’

One must admire the sheer, unadulterated gall required to suggest that the architects of the current global malaise need to go on a listening tour. Fink’s list of potential destinations—Detroit, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Dublin—reads less like a itinerary for economic progress and more like a predator’s inventory of damaged goods. To suggest that the WEF should ‘show up’ in Detroit is a special kind of cruelty. It is the equivalent of a landlord visiting a tenant in a condemned building to ‘listen’ to the sound of the pipes bursting, while simultaneously calculating how to securitize the moisture. Detroit, a city hollowed out by the very neoliberal trade policies and financialization that Fink’s BlackRock represents, is now being auditioned as a gritty backdrop for the next round of ESG-scented virtue signaling. It is ruin-porn for the billionaire set, a chance to wear a Carhartt jacket once and pretend to understand the concept of a shift-worker.

Then we have Buenos Aires and Jakarta—cities currently grappling with the chaotic fallout of global inflationary pressures and climate-induced instability. The irony is so thick it could be leveraged as a subprime asset. Fink wants to go where the world is ‘built,’ apparently oblivious to the fact that his firm and its contemporaries have already dismantled the scaffolding. The ‘modern world’ in these places is indeed being built, but it is being built out of necessity, desperation, and the wreckage of the ‘rules-based order’ that the WEF spends its every waking hour defending. The idea that a group of billionaires can fly private jets into Jakarta to ‘listen’ to the locals as the sea levels rise is the peak of 21st-century performance art. It isn't an economic forum; it’s a safari where the big game is human resilience, and the hunters are looking for a way to monetize it.

The Left will, of course, find a way to be performatively outraged by this, weeping into their oat-milk lattes about ‘corporate imperialism’ while secretly wishing they were invited to the after-party in Dublin. The Right, meanwhile, will descend into their usual fever dreams of a ‘Great Reset,’ as if Larry Fink needs a secret underground lair to ruin your life when he can do it quite efficiently from a glass-walled office in Midtown Manhattan. Both sides fail to see the more pathetic reality: these people are bored. The Swiss Alps are no longer enough of a shield against the creeping realization that their jargon—‘stakeholder capitalism,’ ‘synergy,’ ‘resilience’—has become a hollow language of a dying empire. Moving the circus to Buenos Aires doesn't change the act; it just changes the quality of the local steak and the exchange rate for the service staff.

Fink’s LinkedIn manifesto is the ultimate testament to the professional managerial class’s obsession with optics over substance. They don't want to fix the world; they want to be seen standing near the people who are suffering from the world they fixed. By choosing cities like Jakarta and Detroit, the WEF is attempting to hijack the aesthetic of the working class to revitalize its own flagging relevance. It is a desperate attempt to launder their reputations in the grime of reality. If Fink actually wanted to ‘listen,’ he wouldn't need a venue change. He could simply open a window or read a balance sheet that isn't his own. But listening is a passive act, and men like Fink are only interested in the sound of their own voices echoing back from increasingly exotic locations. Whether it’s in the shadows of the Alps or the streets of Detroit, the result will be the same: more meetings, more manifestos, and absolutely no change for anyone who doesn't have an eight-figure net worth.