Last year, one of the most talked-about exchanges at the event was about Davos itself.

On a panel discussion featuring, among others, the conservationist Jane Goodall and Edward Felsenthal, the editor of Time magazine, Rutger Bregman, a Dutch journalist and historian, spoke about what he saw as the rampant hypocrisy on display in the Alps.

“Fifteen hundred private jets have flown in here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about how, you know, we’re wrecking the planet,” Mr. Bregman said, eliciting nervous chuckles from the crowd. “I hear people talk in the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency, but then, I mean, almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share. I mean, it feels like I’m at a firefighters conference, and no one is allowed to speak about water.”

The clip went viral and seemed to confirm people’s suspicions that for all the talk of world-changing agendas in Davos, not much really happened there. Moreover, his comments echoed a broader line of criticism that the global elite are uninterested in solutions to intractable problems if those solutions threaten their dominance.

“They’d rather listen to a Buddhist monk talk about meditation or hear about power poses, but they don’t like to talk about the source of tax evasion,” Mr. Bregman said in an interview, noting that he had not been invited back to Davos this year. “They want to hear about how individuals can change their lives, rather than how structural reform can affect inequality or climate change.”

Mr. Schwab defended the substance of the event.

Other dissenting voices will be in attendance this year, including the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who will attend for a second time. And Mr. Schwab was an early proponent of socially responsible business, helping define the “stakeholder theory,” which holds that corporations should answer not just to shareholders, but to employees, customers and the environment.

That may not sound particularly controversial today, but Mr. Schwab was ahead of his time in the early 1970s. “Back then you had to fight against Milton Friedman, who gave a moral justification to profit maximization,” Mr. Schwab said, referring to the economist who wrote that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”