For decades, the World Economic Forum (WEF), which gathers this week in Davos, Switzerland, has advocated for “stakeholder capitalism.” In practice, stakeholder capitalism meant NGOs like WEF working with the world’s largest corporations and governments to change laws across the West to mandate stricter climate regulations and heavily subsidize green energy.
As a result, uncompetitively high energy prices led Europe to lose its manufacturing base to China, while taxpayers in the US and other nations have lost trillions of dollars subsidizing green energy. “Stakeholder capitalism” had no visible impact on the trajectory of fossil fuel use, which rose globally by 34 percent between 2000 and 2025. What it accomplished was transferring trillions in wealth from the public to bankers, renewable energy investors, and the managerial class of bankers and consultants who attend Davos.
