The name of the Swiss village of Davos has been known to the viewer for years because of the economic forum that takes place there annually. With the pandemic, this Forum has been better known by its acronym in English, WEF, than by the name of the city. And its founder, Klaus Schwab, has come into the spotlight since he launched the book Covid-19: The Great Reset, about the post-Covid world. Klaus Schwab founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 and has chaired it ever since.
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Klaus Schwab has some recent books with a globalist theme. The first one is The Fourth Industrial Revolution, which, according to him, was written in just three months in 2016, in time to get ready for the WEF meeting. There is a Brazilian edition of Edipro. The other books with this theme are the following: Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (2018), COVID-
: The Great Reset
In these titles we see ideas that have become current in recent years: that Covid would be an opportunity to rearrange society (“great restart”), that shareholders shareholders) must become “stakeholders” ) (something like “stakeholders”) and taking care of the planet instead of worrying about profit (i.e. Klaus Schwab is the mentor of lacrador capitalism), and that narratives have a more relevant political role than mere factual truth . The idea that we are dealing with a fourth industrial revolution, however, was not so much on the agenda of the discussions. And it is just the first subject addressed by Klaus Schwab in his series of globalist books.
What is the fourth revolution industrial
Klaus Schwab lists the three previous industrial revolutions like this: the first one took place between 1760 and 1840, caused by the inventions of the railroad and the steam machine; the second, between the end of the 19th century and the 20th century, caused by electricity and assembly lines; the third began in the decade of 1760, with the invention of the computer. Klaus Schwab argues that at the turn of the 20th century to the 21st, the fourth industrial revolution began. “It is characterized by a ubiquitous and mobile internet” (p. 16), he says.
The divisions of industrial revolutions vary according to specialists. I believe that the term “industrial revolution” brings to the minds of most educated people the novels of Dickens or the Modern Times
of Chaplin. In any case, the expression evokes the great social chaos and misery that befell Europe, resolved in part by exporting the poor to the New World. To measure this in Brazil, perhaps it is worth pointing out that the Italians who formed rural communities in the South come from the North of Italy, that is, just the developed, rich and industrial part of the country. The remaining farmers accepted to come to the Americas, sometimes in conditions analogous to slavery.
Not for nothing, Klaus Schwab says: “I have two major concerns about factors that may limit the effective and cohesive realization of the fourth industrial revolution. First, I believe that the required levels of leadership and understanding of ongoing changes […] are low when contrasted with the need, in response to the fourth industrial revolution, to rethink our economic, social and political systems. […] Second, the world lacks a coherent, positive and common narrative that describes the opportunities and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution, an essential narrative if we are to empower a diverse group of individuals and communities and avoid a popular reaction against the fundamental changes underway” (p.
, my emphasis).
These two concerns set the general tone of the book. There is a problem, which is the population’s refusal to accept this new world, and there is an undisputed belief that a technocratic elite must lead the revolution so that the world does not collapse.
Why would the world collapse?
Imagine now that there was no America, and Europeans had to confine themselves to Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Britain would not have the US to evict its starving Irish; Italy would have nothing to do with the poor who came to populate America from North to South; Prussia ditto. A scenario for social chaos would be set. If Klaus Schwab’s predictions come true, that’s more or less where the world stands; for there is no new world this time. So, as much as the WEF publicly talks about environmentalism, Klaus Schwab’s main concern is the social instability that mass unemployment will cause.
The world would collapse because of mass unemployment due to automation. Today many unemployed become Uber drivers – but Google already in 1971 invested in cars without drivers. What if Uber rides become cheaper with driverless cars? To make matters worse, the typical middle-class professions are also replaceable by machines, and even medicine could be practiced by “an AI-controlled robot doctor that could give correct, perfect or near-perfect diagnoses” (p. 102).
The duration of companies has been falling from 60 years to less than . According to Klaus Schwab, the current economy is significantly different as it does away with a large number of workers, little work, little financial capital and a lot of capital
The result would be a mass of unemployed and half a dozen kings. The end of the middle class, in fact. But even before this widespread automation, “today, a middle-class job no longer guarantees a middle-class lifestyle; and in the last 20 years the four traditional characteristics of the middle class (education, health , retirement and home ownership) performed worse than inflation. […] A winner-take-all market economy, to which the middle class has less and less access, can slowly turn into malaise and democratic abandonment, exacerbating social challenges” (p. 96).
To give a dimension of the thing, I give the number of the research cited by him, “The Future of Employment”, by Carl Benedict Frey and Michael Osborne: “The research concluded that about 47% of total US employment is at risk; something that could happen in a decade or two and is characterized by a much broader scope of job destruction and a much faster pace of change than that of the labor market in previous industrial revolutions. In addition, there is a trend towards greater polarization of the labor market. Employment will grow relative to high-wage creative and cognitive occupations and jobs and relative to low-wage manual occupations; but it will decrease considerably in relation to repetitive and routine work” (p. 20)) .
Klaus Schwab recognizes the drama of the situation he foresees: “It is essential that people believe that their work is important to offer support themselves and their families, but what happens if there is insufficient demand for the job, or if the skills available no longer match the demands?” (P. 53).
Plan the world over governments
Until then, we could sympathize with Klaus Schwab, as he points out plausible problems. We are used in Brazil to complain about labor laws that prevent, for example, from firing a collector or gas station attendant, saying that there is a lack of qualified workers, etc. But what about when skilled employment is also automated? The bad doctor will wrongly claim that his work is essential; the good doctor, ditto, but perhaps he won’t find anyone willing to pay for him. The collector, if he had a lobby, might be able to commission a survey capable of pointing to a reduction in traffic accidents. But nobody cares; everyone wants a cheaper ticket, a cheaper consultation, everything cheaper. Perhaps it is a case of concluding that democracies should reassess their priorities, on pain of ending up unemployed, being served by drones, living like cattle until perhaps getting a public, free, quality euthanasia, after requesting the service through a robotic attendant of some social service.
The big problem with the book, in my opinion, is treating everything as inexorable – and calling world planning. As we have seen, from the very beginning he took on himself the task of leading the revolution. Government leaders do not have the necessary competence to do so. In fact, he writes what the role of governments will be in this new scenario: the mere provision of public services. The sovereignty of countries ends.
“Governments must […] adapt to the fact that power is also moving from state to non-state actors and from established institutions to more open networks”, he says to the page 53. The following explains further: “Parallel structures [como o próprio WEF e as ONGs] will be able to transmit ideologies, recruit followers, coordinate actions for – and against – official government systems. Governments, in their current form, will be forced to change as their central role in directing policy becomes increasingly smaller due to increasing levels of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new technologies have made possible. Increasingly, governments will be seen as public service centers, judged on their ability to deliver their expanded services in the most efficient and individualized way.” As a purely technical issue, governments would be doomed to give up care for sovereignty and leave serious matters to transnational entities. But at no time does he say why citizens should separate ideological discussion from government discussion. Should I adhere to the Planned Parenthood ideology just because it is “more capable” than Brazilian party organizations?
In one thing it has reason: there are transnational entities other than the WEF and the NGOs that we all want to fight. Al-Qaeda has ushered in this kind of problem. I believe that John Gray was the most succinct and convincing author to describe the international security problems caused by this new reality: in Black Mass
) (1971), he points out the fact that it is perfectly possible for one of these terrorist groups to carry out nuclear attacks, which was a state monopoly during the Cold War. Klaus Schwab has this in mind, cites Isis as an example. And it talks a lot about international security. That is, he does care about the matter; it is not that he forgot the matter in dealing with the State. This important assignment came out of the government’s hands.
But we have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, nor with Isis. The greatest threat to our sovereignty is precisely the plethora of NGOs that play the role of State. It is good to say that NGO abbreviates “non-state organization”, which is the same as private organization
. Private and, of course, not elected. Klaus Schwab doesn’t care about democracy.
The scenario that is drawn
Klaus Schwab talks about many things, some of which are hair-raising (like commercialization of genetically designed babies and 3D printing of living things). Anyone interested in planned scientific innovations needs to read the book, as I cannot summarize it.
In general, the scenario that is drawn it is the end of the middle class, the end of the poor, the end of private property for the overwhelming majority of the population. This will be in the hands of a technocratic elite full of robots. Naturally, no one tends to like this scenario very much, so it needs to be sweetened with narratives
. These must make this new reality of immense concentration of property and widespread spoliation desirable or acceptable. Adding this ideology to a lack of notion, explains why the WEF promoted the slogan “you will own nothing and be happy”, you will not own anything and you will be happy. It remains to be seen why this elite, these Übermenschen, would keep so many useless humans for nothing. So it’s no wonder that they are neo-Malthusians and promote abortion and castrating gender ideology around the world. Nor is it any wonder that they are already expanding euthanasia for the mentally ill – and Klaus Schwab mentions a few times that mental health is an issue in this new revolution. The common citizen will be helpless. Your country, for both economic and ideological reasons, will not fight this elite at all. The government was diminished and absorbed by it.
In addition Klaus Schwab often talks about the effect of surveillance to make people more obedient . Thus, I close this text citing the box “Well-being and the frontiers of privacy”, on page 96.
“Well-being and the frontiers of privacy”
“What is happening today with wearables gives us a sense of the complexity of the privacy issue. An increasing number of insurance companies are considering making the following offer to their policyholders: if you use a device that monitors your well-being – how much sleep and exercise you take, the number of steps you take each day, the value and the type of calories you consume etc. – and if you agree that this information can be sent to your health insurance provider, we will offer a discount on your premium. Should we welcome this advance because it motivates us to live healthier lives? Or does he take a worrying turn to a lifestyle where surveillance – from government and business – will become increasingly intrusive? At the moment, this example refers to an individual choice – the decision to accept or not to use a wellness device. But insisting on this again, suppose that the employer now asks all of its employees to wear a device that sends health-related data to the insurer, because the company wants to improve productivity and possibly lower its health insurance costs. . What if the company requires its most reluctant employees to accept the order or pay a fine? So, what previously appeared to be a conscious individual choice becomes a matter of conforming to new social norms, even if someone finds them unacceptable.”
