Davos Man Strikes Again

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos took place from May 23rd to May 26th, 2022. This year’s theme, “History at a Turning Point: Government Policies, Corporate Strategies,” was indicative of the globalist, central-planning hubris of the WEF. The government policies administered by the WEF include deliberate inflationary schemes meant to reduce consumption, and energy policies meant to drive up oil and gas prices so as to force a “transition” toward a “net-zero” economy. The corporate strategies administered by the WEF entail “stakeholder capitalism” and its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index. Stakeholder capitalism and the ESG drive investment toward companies that abide by woke dictates and away from the non-compliant. They are means to establish a woke cartel that dominates all economic activity. Through the WEF’s coordination, governments and corporations also are to “collaborate” in “public-private partnerships,” all of which will vest governmental power in a corporate-state hybrid that undermines democratic processes.

In his welcoming remarks, WEF founder and chair Klaus Schwab suggested that current global conditions, including the war in Ukraine and the post-pandemic new normal, made this year’s forum the most important in its 50-year history. Schwab stated that Covid-19 represented the most severe health crisis of the last hundred years, yet warned that something worse may be on the horizon: “We have to reinforce our resilience against a new virus, possibly, or other risks which we have on the global agenda” (8:30 mark, emphasis mine). “The future is not just happening,” Schwab declared, “the future is built by us, by a powerful community, as you here in this room” (11:20 mark, emphasis mine).

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Recognizing that the Great Reset project has sparked an enormous backlash, Schwab and Thierry Malleret penned a second Great Reset book—The Great Narrative—to recast the Great Reset as both necessary and benign. One would think, then, that Schwab might have refrained from suggesting that a “new virus” or “other risks” are part of “the global agenda,” as if the WEF and its partners were planning such future events. And Schwab might have weighed his words more carefully rather than blatantly stating “the future is built by us, by a powerful community.” These kinds of statements are exactly what has precipitated global resistance to the WEF’s agenda in the first place. As it turns out, most people are not willing to surrender their life plans so that globalist dictators like Schwab and the WEF’s partners can control every aspect of their lives. Yet the mainstream media outlets still label concerns about the WEF’s Great Reset as “conspiracy theories.”

This year’s annual meeting featured 400 panel discussions on a great number of issues, including augmented reality; central bank digital currencies; climate transition in emerging economies; crypto’s carbon footprint; the digital economy; diversity, equity, and inclusion; economic sanctions; employment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution; energy transition in China; Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) indexing; geopolitics; a global tax; pandemic healthcare; responsible consumption; returning nature to cities; and Russia, as well a special address by the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The range of topics was staggering but also indicative of the centralized control sought and being secured by the WEF. From central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to planning that eliminates all but urban living, the WEF’s concerns are reminiscent of the Club of Rome and are replete with its neo-Malthusianism.

A highlight of the 2022 meeting included Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant’s assertion during a panel titled Ushering in a Safer Digital Future that “freedom of speech is not the same thing as a free for all,” and that “we are going to need a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online—from freedom of speech, to, you know, to be free from online violence.”

These ominous comments come on the heels of Australia’s slide toward totalitarianism during the pandemic and the European Union’s recent approval of the Digital Services Act, which bans “hate speech” and “disinformation” and represents a major step toward one-world governance of the internet. In particular, the EU framework for digital communications will regulate speech regarding “climate change,” health challenges like the coronavirus and other “pandemics,” and “hate speech” or other “illegal speech” as defined by the EU. To meet the EU’s regulatory requirements and to streamline their efforts, search sites and social media platforms most likely will simply apply one set of rules, the EU’s, to all online content. So much for Elon Musk’s “free speech absolutism” on Twitter.

In a forum on globalizing ESGs and stakeholder capitalism, Bank of America CEO Brian T Moynihan admitted that the goal of the WEF and its corporate partners was not to make ESGs a “sidecar” for investors. Rather, all capital must be “aligned” with stakeholder capitalism. Those companies that fall below the stakeholder “bar” are not worthy of investments. They should wither on the vine and die. Moynihan argued that the entire economy must be revamped in terms of stakeholder capitalism.

In short, the WEF consists of powerful influencers who are impacting everything from government policies to corporate decision-making. As Ludwig von Mises noted, such central planners are always authoritarians who aim to supplant the plans of individuals with their own master plans. Thus, the resistance to the WEF will only grow as their plans unfold and cause untold economic hardship and loss of rights for the vast majority.