Once a year, the uppermost echelons of the global elite fly their private jets to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, the exclusive conference where the ultra-wealthy discuss the dayâs big issues. Who put these people in charge? What qualifies them to lead? Why should the fate of humanity be entrusted to a bunch of unelected CEOs? Such questions will wisely be left unexamined at Davos, where your future is decided for you, without you, and your opinion isnât requested.
Wikipedia describes the WEF as a ânon-governmental and lobbying organisationâ. Its members are mostly gigantic corporations, and its public output renders conspiracy theorists obsolete. In one widely-shared clip, WEF chairman Klaus Schwab brags on stage in his thick German accent of using his WEF Young Global Leaders to âpenetrate the cabinetsâ of elected governments. âMore than halfâ of Justin Trudeauâs inner circle, Schwab tells the crowd, are WEF stooges - a stretch if ever there was one of the meaning of ânon-governmentalâ. If this is a conspiracy itâs an inept one, since conspiracy implies youâre trying to keep it secret.
There are, to be fair, some genuinely nutty ideas out there about Schwab and the WEF, as can be seen every time they trend on Twitter. Schwab himself stands accused by Internet randos of having family ties to both the Nazi party and the Rothschilds - spot the contradiction? - but neither claim is credible.
Other accusations place Schwab and the WEF at the centre of the âGreat Resetâ, a supposed plot to achieve world domination by exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic. The precise details depend on whom you ask, but most theorists will tell you that itâs not even a conspiracy: Schwab had the audacity to lay out his plans in a book! The man idolises Lenin, for Godâs sake! And I mean câmon, just take one look at the guy:
Itâs true: Schwab really does keep a bust of Lenin in his office. And he really did write a book called COVID-19: The Great Reset, published in mid-2020 while the virus was raging. âThe Great Resetâ was also the name the WEF gave to its conference that year, held online for obvious reasons.
Against that backdrop, The Great Reset is one disappointing read. When a German-speaking egghead convenes a cabal of billionaires to plot a global âresetâ at the height of a once-in-a-century pandemic, youâd expect his accompanying manifesto to be an epoch-defining masterwork of evil. Or at least, youâd expect it to contain a faint trace of intelligent thought anywhere in its 250 pages - but COVID-19: The Great Reset isnât an evil masterplan, itâs an idiotic pile of nothing, and Schwabâs no Bond villain, heâs a Monty Python punchline.
The basic premise of The Great Reset is unoriginal: never let a crisis go to waste. COVID-19, Schwab writes, is a âwindow of opportunity to reflect, reimagine and reset our worldâ - sorely needed, as itâs clearer than ever that our economic and political structures arenât working for the great majority of people. Past pandemics have been catalysts for change, so why not this time? Might COVID-19 bring about a world thatâs, in Schwabâs words, âmore inclusive, more equitable and more respectful of Mother Natureâ?
He might have a point. The basic assumptions of society have been reset before - just ask Louis XVI - and another reset feels overdue, but there are many things wrong with The Great Reset, firstly that if you gathered in one room the worst possible people to be lecturing anyone else about inclusion, equity and respect for nature, you would be at the World Economic Forum. Besides, vague dreams of a better world are worthless without a coherent plan for what it looks like in practice, and The Great Reset is a vacuous mish-mash of buzzwords and platitudes thatâs as coherent as a pattern pissed in snow.
Whatâs Schwab trying to achieve? The man wastes words like an earthquake at a Scrabble tournament, puffing his prose with such endless verbiage that the most basic points drag on for chapters - like Part 1.1.1, âInterdependenceâ, in which Schwab makes the mundane observation that our modern world is highly interdependent, then does little more than define that word recursively (âthe dynamic of reciprocal dependence among the elements that compose a systemâ) then prattle on for three pages listing its synonyms. The world isnât just âinterdependentâ, itâs also âinterconnectedâ, in fact âhyperconnected - a variant of interdependence on steroids!â and also full of âsystemic connectivityâ (a doublet used three times in two paragraphs) and even âconcatenatedâ, that is, âlinked togetherâ! Having exhausted his thesaurus Schwab then blathers a little about what interdependence is not (âisolating and containment cannot rhyme with interdependenceâ) and caps it off with a meaningless diagram. Subsequent sections do a similar number on âvelocityâ and âcomplexityâ, which is to say youâd lose no information if you only kept the titles.
Schwabâs tactics are familiar to anyone whoâs ever half-assed a school assignment: when you have nothing to say, stretch things out with redundancies like âan accident or an aberration might occur and propagateâ (p33) or jumbled clichĂŠs like âthe first domino or the last straw that marked a momentous tipping pointâ (p243), replace simple words like âspeedâ with pointless obscurities like âcelerityâ (p127, p174, p175), add gratuitous Latin (which, hilariously, he gets wrong: âstatus quo ex anteâ, p113) and hope the reader mistakes verbosity for substance.
On page 199 we get another meaningless diagram, this time to illustrate the âpotential implications of spending more time at homeâ:
As you can see, all these âimplicationsâ are embarrassingly obvious. But even if they werenât, nothing is gained by arranging them in graphical form, except to give simple-minded readers the false impression that theyâre reading something smart.
Trying to pick the most poorly-written sentence in The Great Reset would be like trying to pick the most overpaid mediocrity at a Davos afterparty, but here are some contenders:
[R]esilience will need to be better measured and monitored to gauge the true health of an economy, including the determinants of productivity, such as institutions, infrastructure, human capital and innovation ecosystems, which are critical for the overall strength of a system. (p59)
[The pandemic] does entail worrisome perspectives for all the reasons already mentioned; in todayâs interdependent world, risks conflate with each other, amplifying their reciprocal effects and magnifying their consequences. (p247)
Let us consider, in an arbitrary and non-exclusive fashion, some of these potential changes whose likelihood of occurrence, it seems to us, even if not very high, is nonetheless greater than commonly assumed. (p233)
True to the notions of interconnectedness and complexity, outbursts of social unrest are quintessential non-linear events that can be triggered by a broad variety of political, economic, societal, technological and environmental factors. (p87)
This is profoundly pointless nonsense, but on the rare occasions when Schwab says something that means anything, youâll wish he hadnât tried. On page 224, we learn that âan epidemic of mental health has engulfed the world.â Great news! Letâs hope it keeps spreading - but perhaps Schwab meant to say weâre engulfed by an epidemic of mental illness?
On page 70 Schwab writes that âit is hard to imagine how inflation could pick up anytime soon.â Schwab wrote those words at a time when governments were shutting down supply chains while printing trillions to pay people to not work, so itâs hard to imagine how he could be less imaginative. Iâm sure he now blames the war in Ukraine - that ever-convenient distraction - for the inflation he failed to predict, but I havenât forgotten that inflation in both the US and UK had already quadrupled in the 12 months before Putin invaded.
Page 78 makes a prediction so preposterous that I snorted coffee out of my nose when I read it, and I was drinking tea: âthe post-pandemic era will usher in a period of massive wealth redistribution, from the rich to the poor and from capital to labour.â Iâm not sure of Schwabâs reasoning, and neither is he, since he doesnât make it a page before contradicting himself: âCOVID-19 has exacerbated pre-existing conditions of inequality ⌠The pandemic is in reality a âgreat unequalizerâ that has compounded disparities in income, wealth and opportunity.â
The Great Reset is full of this kind of equivocation. Schwab can never seem to decide what point heâs trying to make. Was lockdown worth it? What lessons can we learn for the next pandemic? Should we accept increased government surveillance? Will China replace the U.S. as the worldâs dominant superpower? How many tenuous ways can we relate everything back to climate change? Schwab doesnât know: he just dances around both sides of the debate, stating the obvious, shoe-horning in quotes from more serious thinkers with no indication that he understands what heâs writing.
I mean, just look at this flaming bollock of stupid:
âWe think that observation and measurement define an âobjectiveâ opinion, but the micro-world of atoms and particles (like the macro-world of geopolitics) is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics in which two different observers are entitled to their own opinions (this is called a âsuperpositionâ: âparticles can be in several places or states at onceâ). In the world of international affairs, if two different observers are entitled to their own opinions, that makes them subjective, but no less real and no less valid. If an observer can only make sense of the ârealityâ through different idiosyncratic lenses, this forces us to rethink our notion of objectivity. It is evident that the representation of reality depends on the position of the observer. In that sense, a âChineseâ view and a âUSâ view can co-exist, together with multiple other views along that continuum â all of them real!â (p120-121.)
Pass the aspirin. This word salad means nothing; itâs just an unintelligent manâs idea of what smart thoughts sound like. In that respect The Great Reset is unremarkable; hundreds of half-baked pseudo-intellectual nothingburgers like this are shat out onto the Kindle Store every day.
What makes Schwabâs babble noteworthy is that people apparently take it seriously. Davos is Burning Man for billionaires, and itâs hard to name a world leader who hasnât shaken Schwabâs hand. Weâre ruled by people who find meaning in Schwabâs gibberish, and thatâs much scarier than a respiratory virus.
Two years since Schwab wrote his screed, itâs safe to say that if there was ever an opportunity for the pandemic to change anything for the better, itâs been missed comprehensively. To protect us from a virus with a 99.9% survival rate, lockdown made everyone poorer, sicker, unhappier and lonelier - everyone, that is, except the worldâs most rich and powerful. Everyone, in other words, who doesnât get invited to Davos. The elite had a great pandemic, and theyâll have a great time with the next crisis, which is probably why Schwab is so obsessed with climate change: large-scale resource distribution problems are the perfect excuse for the further centralisation of power.
The Great Reset is full of lamentations about the sorry state of our world - inequality, market failure, climate destruction - and it sounds agreeable until you remember whoâs writing it. âWe value least economically the individuals society needs the mostâ (p81), writes a man whose WEF salary is a reported 1,000,000 Swiss Francs (~1,000,000 USD) a year. âInclusiveâ and âinclusivityâ appear 19 times in the book from an organisation that costs up to 600,000 CHF to join. âInequalityâ, âinequalitiesâ and âunequalâ appear 32 times; WEF members collectively control more wealth than the rest of humanity combined. Letting these people âresetâ the world economy would be like letting Al Capone rewrite the tax code.
Schwabâs solution to everything is so-called âstakeholder capitalismâ - an ESG-compliant future where corporations make decisions for the benefit of everyone, not just for their profit-hungry shareholders. Itâs a beguiling idea that ignores how we already have a system for protecting societyâs stakeholders from the predatory instincts of the profit motive, and itâs called government. Herr Schwab would apparently prefer that we fix capitalism by ceding even more decision-making power to the same neoliberal tyrants that got us into this mess in the first place. No wonder they fund him so handsomely.
Anyway, itâs not clear what any of this has to do with a virus. Schwab wants to relate everything back to his hobby horses (ESG, stakeholder capitalism, climate change) and the need for better âglobal governanceâ because the globalised outfits whoâd do that governing are the same ones who pay his salary. Unfortunately for him the pandemic didnât go as hoped: national or sub-national governments led their own COVID responses while globalists watched from the sidelines. In that context the Great Reset can be seen mostly as a pathetic, failed attempt to remain relevant during a crisis that exposed Schwab et al. for the empty suits they are.
The only thing I learned from The Great Reset is that the conspiracy theorists are wrong. Schwabâs a terrible writer and a worse thinker, but heâs not some kind of Illuminati Lizardmason hellbent on destruction. Au contraire, heâs an ordinary man: not particularly smart or talented, not the least bit insightful, and not remotely qualified to lead humanity through the colossal challenges we face - but thatâs not going to stop him from trying. In that respect maybe heâs the perfect figurehead for the Davos class.
As badly as my own government bungled COVID, thereâs no doubt it would have been worse under WEF rule. Team Schwab would happily have made us slaves to China-led âzero COVIDâ insanity, and weâd still be sealed in our homes today. We do need a great reset, but itâs one where Schwab and his enablers are removed as far as possible from the levers of power.
Beautiful.
Well put
I thought the book was going to be more interesting even if i didn't agree at all with the ideas, but not worth wasting the time.