"Ideally the world would look like Davos, where there's more security than we can even see on the street"
About this Quote
Owens is selling a particular kind of modern governance, one that treats security as the primary public good and public space as a managed environment. Davos functions as shorthand for a gated globalism: leaders and CEOs meet behind layered checkpoints while the town performs calm neutrality. The quote quietly reframes that arrangement as an ideal baseline, not a temporary exception for high-risk gatherings. That's the ideological move: what is justified for a summit becomes aspirational for society.
The subtext is a trade disguised as a win-win. You get safety without feeling policed; the mechanisms stay offstage, presumably run by competent professionals. But the invisibility is doing the political work. It sidesteps questions about who gets protected, who gets screened, and who ends up treated as the threat. Davos is safe partly because it can be sealed, filtered, and curated. Imagining the whole world like that flattens messy democratic life into event security - a model built for VIPs, not citizens.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Owens, Bill. (2026, January 15). Ideally the world would look like Davos, where there's more security than we can even see on the street. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ideally-the-world-would-look-like-davos-where-142198/
Chicago Style
Owens, Bill. "Ideally the world would look like Davos, where there's more security than we can even see on the street." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ideally-the-world-would-look-like-davos-where-142198/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Ideally the world would look like Davos, where there's more security than we can even see on the street." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/ideally-the-world-would-look-like-davos-where-142198/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.
