🌍 Historian Rutger Bregman after Davos: the world needs populists again
That same Bregman, who in 2019 at Davos publicly reprimanded billionaires for not paying taxes, is again saying uncomfortable things
🧠 The main idea is simple and harsh:
ideals and values are worthless without power.
📉 What he believes is happening to the world:
🇺🇸 USA — a mix of immorality and unseriousness in power.
🇪🇺 Europe — weak and irrelevant: well-regulated, but creates and protects almost nothing.
🤖 AI is already changing the world, but most people don't even understand what awaits them in the next 3–5 years.
⚠️ History, Bregman says, is ruthless:
every technological revolution initially makes life worse for the majority, while enriching a minority.
If this also happens with AI — we are facing a new digital feudalism.
Meanwhile, wealthy people could really address poverty, disease, and inequality — but they do not.
⚔️ The key phrase of the entire article:
"Politics is power. And ideals without power are worth very little."
Even the abolition of slavery worked not because of beautiful words, but because real power stood behind them.
🎯 The world is entering a dangerous period.
AI, weak elites, crisis of democracy.