Privilege Has Its Memberships, Ctd.

International Edition

There is no Class War.
There was a Class War.
Your side lost.

From the New York Times:

A Hefty Price for Entry to Davos
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

What’s the price tag to be a Davos Man?

Chief executives, government leaders and academics around the world are headed to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week — a heady power gathering that mixes business, politics and Champagne in the Swiss Alps. It is an event that draws a wide range of decision makers, from Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase to Prime Minister George A. Papandreou of Greece to U2’s Bono, ostensibly to contemplate how to solve the world’s problems.

Of course, much of the week is really about one thing: networking. As the “Black Swan” author Nassim N. Taleb described it to Tom Keene of Bloomberg Television, the event is “chasing successful people who want to be seen with other successful people. That’s the game.”

An invitation to the meeting is supposed to be considered an exclusive honor. But for corporate executives, the cost of being a Davos Man, or, yes, a Davos Woman, even for just a couple of days, doesn’t come cheap.
...

But before we get to the fees for private planes, hotels, and a car and driver, there’s the all-important ticket. And it isn’t free.

Just to have the opportunity to be invited to Davos, you must be invited to be a member of the World Economic Forum, a Swiss nonprofit that was founded by Klaus Schwab, a German-born academic who managed to build a global conference in the snow.

There are several levels of membership: the basic level, which will get you one invitation to Davos, costs 50,000 Swiss francs, or about $52,000. The ticket itself is another 18,000 Swiss francs ($19,000), plus tax, bringing the total cost of membership and entrance fee to $71,000.

But that fee just gets you in the door with the masses at Davos, with entry to all the general sessions. If you want to be invited behind the velvet rope to participate in private sessions among your industry’s peers, you need to step up to the “Industry Associate” level. That costs $137,000, plus the price of the ticket, bringing the total to about $156,000.

Of course, most C.E.O.’s don’t like going anywhere alone, so they might ask a colleague along. Well, the World Economic Forum doesn’t just let you buy an additional ticket for $19,000. Instead, you need to upgrade your annual membership to the “Industry Partner” level. That will set you back about $263,000, plus the cost of two tickets, bringing the total to $301,000.

And if you want to take an entourage, say, five people? Now you’re talking about the “Strategic Partner” level. The price tag: $527,000. (That’s just the annual membership entitling you to as many as five invitations. Each invitation is still $19,000 each, so if five people come, that’s $95,000, making the total $622,000.) This year, all “Strategic Partners” are required to invite at least one woman along as part of an effort to diversify the attendee list.

As part of the strategic partner level, you get access to the private sessions as well as special conference rooms to hold meetings. And perhaps the biggest perk of all, your car and driver are given a sticker allowing door-to-door pick up service.

At the moment, the forum says they are not accepting applications to become “strategic partners” unless the company is from China or India and must be one of the 250 largest companies in the world.

In fairness, it is worth pointing out that membership at all levels doesn’t just get you access to the meeting in Davos, but also to at least a half-dozen other meetings held around the world. Membership also gives you access to the forum’s various research projects as well.

All those costs, of course, don’t include the travel-related costs of getting to Switzerland, schlepping around and perhaps holding a dinner or a cocktail party for clients (which is where the real action happens anyway.).

One large investor is renting a five-bedroom chalet this year just outside of Davos for himself and his staff. The cost? $140,000 for the week. A car and driver, which the World Economic Forum will organize for you, is about $10,000 a week for a Mercedes S Class.
...

And so forth.

By way of contrast, this month I am trying to figure out how to put together enough nickels and sack lunches to get to Netroots Nation 2011.

And back.

Writing about life on Capitalism's Olympus in 1998, Richard Sennett had this to say about how the New Ruling Class views us little, shire-folk:

The dizzy life of Davos man

Yet I had an epiphany of sorts in Davos, listening to the rulers of the flexible realm. "We" is also a dangerous pronoun to them. They dwell comfortably in entrepreneurial disorder, but fear organised confrontation. They of course fear the resurgence of unions, but become acutely and personally uncomfortable, fidgeting or breaking eye contact or retreating into taking notes, if forced to discuss the people who, in their jargon, are "left behind." They know that the great majority of those who toil in the flexible regime are left behind, and of course they regret it. But the flexibility they celebrate does not give, it cannot give, any guidance for the conduct of an ordinary life. The new masters have rejected careers in the old English sense of the word, as pathways along which people can travel; durable and sustained paths of action are foreign territories.

As a reminder to those who do not already know them, here are the Two Commandments:

1. There is a Club.
2. You are not in it.