The point is not that the billionaires are puppeteers in a master conspiracy; it is that Davos Man thrives amid confusion, conflict, and suspicion. The billionaires exploit governance that is compromised by discord and dysfunction as an opportunity to profiteer absent the usual checks and balances. But democracy is itself a powerful tool—a system of governance that guarantees nothing and is forever vulnerable to being hijacked by organized interests, yet contains within it the mechanism by which the public can realize its own interests.
