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Published: February 4, 2022



The book in...
One sentence:
A plan to use Covid-19 to usher in a new world order (literally).

Five sentences:
The WEF (World Economic Forum) sees themselves as de facto rulers of the world (after all, if they weren't chosen, they wouldn't be rich). Building on Schwab's Fourth Industrial Revolution's technical predictions (that are really a plan) to solve the problems of Covid-19 (the real problem has been the reaction). The gist is that we need more globalization in the form of a hyperconnected, consumer driven, mass surveilled global society. He claims that there is no inflation in sight (there is), but it will show up soon (it did) and it will be a threat (that happens when you print trillions in 18 months) and likely the global economy will have to be reset to use some kind of digital currency while also redistributing wealth (universal basic income to keep the guillotines from rolling) In the end, there is 'no place for the nation state' in Schwab's future (dream).

designates my notes. / designates important. / designates very important.


Thoughts

Inderdependence

One of, if not the, main points in this book is that of interdependence. We live in a hyper-connected world and complex world where ideas move so fast that we scarcely have time to understand them and even less chance of understanding their ramifications. The speed applies to the physical world with the just-in-time delivery system and in the financial world with its high-frequency trading much in the same way as it applies to ideas. The complexity part of the equation can be thought of as how many components in a given system touch other components in that system. When you have a high degree of coupling like this, it becomes very hard to make predictions and the system can respond intuitively, non-linearly, or exponentially when a simpler system responds predicatively linearly.

The covid-19 pandemic has forced a lot of the fragility in out world into the light.

This book contends that the challenges that must be overcome to ensure stability into the future will constitute what many have been calling the “new normal.” What this new normal looks like, and how it can be shaped, is the second aspect of this book.

One of the major changes we have seen is the use of lock downs. The question here is not whether the lock downs are effective, but how will people respond to the confinement? Will the pandemic lead to social unrest or will the policies put in place ostensibly to combat covid lead to unrest?

One outcome could be a docile response where people are more than willing to comply with any new policies, however unpalatable, in the name of safety. This seemed to be what we saw for most of 2021 and some of 2022. On the other hand covid could give rise to nationalism and retard globalization. This I think we have seen in the later part of 2022.

Whatever the response turns out to be, there is no denying that the world is' seeing the largest and fastest changes it has seen since the end of World War 2, and possible ever. Klaus compares the covid changes to women starting to work and vote, but he fails to mention how those seemingly minor changes precipitated a whole slew of societal changes. For example, once mom was out of the house, the children were being raised by then the television and now the internet. With mom in the workforce you diluted the labor market and brought down the price of a unit of labor. Now, mom and dad both must work to provide what a single earner could provide in the 70s and prior. These are good examples of how one change (women working) can have numerous downstream effects. (I have written about this more extensively in No History, No Family, No Future)

The post WW2 changes were sold as a way to raise the standard of living. Looking back we can see empirically that that has not been the case. Today the changes are being sold as a way to maintain safety. There are claims that covid is killing more people than the flu and that hospitals are being overloaded. To exacerbate these claims we have seen the “daily numbers” go from deaths “of” to deaths “with” to cases to suspected cases. It is of little surprise that each time we are presented with a new metric, the numbers get bigger. Clearly bigger numbers mean more danger, right?

So what are some of the changes that this book (and the media) are suggesting?

Big Brother

The number one measure in my opinion is the roll-out of a new global surveillance and tracking system. This takes a number of form, from the covid passport to smartphone (contact) tracking apps to pervasive facial recognition. All of this is being done, of course, to protect you and is only there to track covid, not you, right?.

allowing public-health officials to identify infected people very rapidly

Sadly, this will still be an easy sell since the media will tell us that tracking/tracing is for the greater good and will save lives. Then, any privacy laws that might have been in place to curtail this exact kind of thing (health record privacy laws for example) will be essentially ignored. The lockdowns forced regulators to relax because there was no other choice. (there was a choice, but the media framed it as life-and-death) We saw this in things like online learning, and e-medicine.

The honesty in regard to the degree of surveillance is actually a bit shocking:

it not only allows backtracking all the contacts with whom the user of a mobile phone has been in touch, but also tracking the user’s real-time movements, which in turn affords the possibility to better enforce a lockdown and to warn other mobile users in the proximity of the carrier that they have been exposed to someone infected.

Don’t worry though, we can trust the technology.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU Commissioner for Competition: I think it is essential that we show that we really mean it when we say that you should be able to trust technology when you use it, that this is not a start of a new era of surveillance.

See, we can trust the technology (my concern is with the people harnessing said technology) and that this is not, definitely not, for sure not, no-way no-how a “new era of surveillance”>

Trust is a four letter word to me, especially if we consider the increased surveillance after 9/11. The tracing/tracking apps and similar tech, once rolled out, will never be uninstalled.

Interestingly and unsurprisingly Mr. Schwab doesn’t spend a great deal of time looking at those kinds of changes. He hand waves them away as non-issues and while there is concern, it isn’t a big deal. He is more interested in the other class of major change we are already seeing, and I fear will be far more opaque to the average person than something as in-your-face as a phone app or surveillance camera.

The Great (Economic) Reset

“History shows that epidemics have been the great resetter of countries' economy and social fabric. Why should it be different with COVID-19?”

The real meat in regard to this “great reset” is economics. Klaus posits that the recovery will be slower for the pandemic than it would be for a war. He thinks that things will not be back to normal for at least 40 years! He thinks that in this uncertain time people will save more (good luck with all the inflation) and that labor will (somehow) do better than capital. Then he immediately changes his tune and says that labor won’t do better this time because of his expected covid driven surge in automation.

For the last 2 decades we have been hearing about automation being a job killer, but it really hasn’t come to fruition. Now though, with the advancements we have seen in machine learning (AI), this time I think automation is actually going to be a serious problem. While I think most people think robots when they hear automation, today I think the inroads will be in mid-level white collar jobs. Computers can now do things like legal research (a little worse than humans), interpret MRI-like scans (better than humans), and write trivial copy for newspapers (about the same as humans). With things like ChatGPT being trained by millions of curious people, it will improve very rapidly and we could easily see low level computer programming jobs and office/personal assistants replaced by it. Either way, my point is that automation is in my opinion a serious headwind I had previously dismissed.

When it comes to what really drives the economy, Klaus is spot on:

Because consumer sentiments are what really drive economies, a return to any kind of “normal” will only happen when and not before confidence returns.

This lull in consumer activity, which I argue is a good thing, will be used to as an opportunity to sell “degrowth”. You will “live better lives with less” and “you will own nothing and be happy.”

While Klaus flat out says “economic life cannot be activated by fiat” he then suggests all of the typical MMT (modern monetary theory) go-to fixes:

He then warns:

The artificial barrier that makes monetary and fiscal authorities independent from each other has now been dismantled, with central bankers becoming (to a relative degree) subservient to elected politicians.

Now that is some crazy talk. The money has always controlled the politics and that hasn’t changed one bit.

Then there is this gem:

One of the greatest concerns is that this implicit cooperation between fiscal and monetary policies leads to uncontrollable inflation. It originates in the idea that policy-makers will deploy massive fiscal stimulus that will be fully monetized, i.e. not financed through standard government debt. This is where Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and helicopter money come in: with interest rates hovering around zero, central banks cannot stimulate the economy by classic monetary tools; i.e. a reduction in interest rates – unless they decided to go for deeply negative interest rates, a problematic move resisted by most central banks.[49] The stimulus must therefore come from an increase in fiscal deficits (meaning that public expenditure will go up at a time when tax revenues decline). Put in the simplest possible (and, in this case, simplistic) terms, MMT runs like this: governments will issue some debt that the central bank will buy. If it never sells it back, it equates to monetary finance: the deficit is monetized (by the central bank purchasing the bonds that the government issues) and the government can use the money as it sees fit. It can, for example, metaphorically drop it from helicopters to those people in need. The idea is appealing and realizable, but it contains a major issue of social expectations and political control: once citizens realize that money can be found on a “magic money tree”, elected politicians will be under fierce and relentless public pressure to create more and more, which is when the issue of inflation kicks in.

This is probably the most important point in this book and around covid in general. 2 years later (in early 2022) the inflation is here. It was not transitory. And I suspect people are going to shake the “magic money tree” again at some point. (which will only make things worse) And again I say, this all points to universal basic income.

Right after he literally calls for helicopter money, he says:

At this current juncture, it is hard to imagine how inflation could pick up anytime soon.

What?

And then in regard to pent-up demand caused by lockdowns:

When social distancing eventually eases, pent-up demand could provoke a bit of inflation, but it is likely to be temporary

Don’t worry, it is only going to be transitory!

Post WW2 redux

radical rethinking in the years following World War II, which included the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, the EU and the expansion of welfare states, shows the magnitude of the shifts possible.

Klaus goes on to talk about some of the things we might need to rethink:

Another thing that needs rethinking, and this on I agree with, is that we currently count the shifting of financial assets around as some kind of growth that is included in GDP. While I am certainly not against the reward one receives in the form of interest when they loan money, there exists today a lack of risk in the sense that the central banks will simply bail out (or in) anyone in their in-group that fails. This is commonly refered to as social losses and privitize gains. Both of these examples (and there are many more) should be enough to exclude financial “gains” from GDP calculations.

At the core of the US dollar status as a reserve currency lies a critical issue of trust: non-Americans who hold dollars trust that the United States will protect both its own interests (by managing sensibly its economy) and the rest of the world as far as the US dollar is concerned (by managing sensibly its currency, like providing dollar liquidity to the global financial system efficiently and rapidly).

This is misplaced trust, at best. On the other hand it also demonstrates the current belief that the central bank (US Fed in this case) will make everyone whole. Further, this belief does not seem to take into account the next point the Klaus makes:

As for a global virtual currency, there is none in sight yet, but there are attempts to launch national digital currencies that may eventually dethrone the US dollar supremacy.

While he alludes to replacing the USD as world reserve currency with a digital currency, he conviniently leaves out several alternative that could also replace it: the yuan, gold, special drawing rights, or even some kind of commodity or commodity back currency.

Inequality (will only get worse)

Here again we see a contradiction.

the post-pandemic era will usher in a period of massive wealth redistribution, from the rich to the poor and from capital to labour.

I don’t even know what to say to this… Small businesses were crushed, people out of work, high CPI (which simultaniously hits the middle and lower classes that are living paycheck-to-paycheck while inflating the assets the upper class holds), and more automation in response to lockdown are only a few of the headwinds against this redistribution of wealth downward.

COVID-19 has exacerbated pre-existing conditions of inequality

He says this right after talking about wealth transfer from capital to labor.

Angus Deaton, the Nobel laureate who co-authored Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism with Anne Case, observed: “drug-makers and hospitals will be more powerful and wealthier than ever”,[59] to the disadvantage of the poorest segments of the population.

Again, how does this fit in the capital to labor weath transfer?

Bigger Brother

Rather than simply fixing market failures when they arise, [governments] should, as suggested by the economist Mariana Mazzucato: “move towards actively shaping and creating markets that deliver sustainable and inclusive growth. They should also ensure that partnerships with business involving government funds are driven by public interest, not profit”.[68]

This economist doesn’t mince their words: “actively shaping and creating markets”.

For decades, it [social contract] has slowly and almost imperceptibly evolved in a direction that forced individuals to assume greater responsibility for their individual lives and economic outcomes, leading large parts of the population (most evidently in the low- income brackets) to conclude that the social contract was at best being eroded, if not in some cases breaking down entirely.

This is a shortsighted view. Up until the advent of things like social security the individual, or rather the family, was dependent upon no one but themselves. Social security, pensions, and other forms of welfare are the historic exception rather than the rule. At best the past few decades are a return to the mean. This doesn’t mean it is not uncomfortable to the current generations that have grown up in the “welfare state”.

New World Order

Democracy and national sovereignty are only compatible if globalization is contained. By contrast, if both the nation state and globalization flourish, then democracy becomes untenable. And then, if both democracy and globalization expand, there is no place for the nation state. Therefore, one can only ever choose two out of the three – this is the essence of the trilemma.

See: the EU. “Globalized”/integrated economy and democracy leaves no place for the nation.

According to Wang Jisi, a renowned Chinese scholar and Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, the fallout from the pandemic has pushed China–US relations to their worst level since 1979, when formal ties were established. In his opinion, the bilateral economic and technological decoupling is “already irreversible”,[89] and it could go as far as the “global system breaking into two parts” warns Wang Huiyao, President of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.[90]

And why is this such a bad thing? 2 parallel systems would provide redundancy would they not? I am not saying it would be good, but I entertain the idea that is could be good. And what ever happened to diversity good?

The conspiracy theorist take might be that to build a world government, one must first construct regional governments. This now looks to be shaping up as the age-old east versus west, but I could see the Americas and Africa being sites for regional government along with Europe and Asia. I would expect India and Australia to fall in line with the east simply as a matter of location.

There isn’t a “right” view and a “wrong” view, but different and often diverging interpretations that frequently correlate with the origin, culture and personal history of those who profess them. Pursuing further the “quantum world” metaphor mentioned earlier, it could be inferred from quantum physic that objective reality does not exist. We think that observation and measurement define an “objective” 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 “superposition”: “particles can be in several places or states at once”).[92]

While this seems like Schwab is making the same argument I am (that a multi-polar world may be better), he is subtly injecting the concept of moral relativism and not so subtly rejecting objectivism.

In the words of [Niall] Ferguson: “The real lesson here is not that the U.S. is finished and China is going to be the dominant power of the 21st century. I think the reality is that all the superpowers – the United States, the People’s Republic of China and the European Union – have been exposed as highly dysfunctional."[100] Being big, as the proponents of this idea argue, entails diseconomies of scale: countries or empires have grown so large as to reach a threshold beyond which they cannot effectively govern themselves. This in turn is the reason why small economies like Singapore, Iceland, South Korea and Israel seem to have done better than the US in containing the pandemic and dealing with it.

The small countries in some cases did better with the pandemic, but others (Israel) did not. That said, I think the idea of diseconomies of scale is on point. Too big too fail is a blatant example of this. I am not sure how to square this idea with the potential rise of regional governments. I personally think more, smaller, nations that cooperate but are free to experiment with different forms of society would be best. Sadly, I think the WEF-types will push for more centralized control, much like what we have seen with the European Union.

Covid and Climate Change

At first glance, the pandemic and the environment might seem to be only distantly related cousins; but they are much closer and more intertwined than we think. Both have and will continue to interact in unpredictable and distinctive ways, ranging from the part played by diminished biodiversity in the behaviour of infectious diseases to the effect that COVID-19 might have on climate change

Covid reduced global CO2 by ~8%, not much at all considering how extensive lockdowns were. This tells me that people driving cars and industry in general are much less a contributor to CO2 “pollution” than we are told. That doens’t really matter though since the crisis cannot go to waste.

the COVID-19 crisis cannot go to waste and that now is the time to enact sustainable environmental policies.

and a few pages later, incase you missed it:

in effect, make “good use” of the pandemic by not letting the crisis go to waste.

In regard to economy being more important than climate change in post-covid recovery era:

Low oil prices (if sustained, which is likely) could encourage both consumers and businesses to rely even more on carbon-intensive energy.

Klaus gets another one wrong. This oil price increase has been blamed on Russia, but the real culprit is the printing and injecting trillions of dollars into the economy.

Our consumption patterns changed dramatically during the lockdowns by forcing us to focus on the essential and giving us no choice but to adopt “greener living”.

Here we go again with “forcing” the “greener living” on everyone.

The Micro Reset

Micro reset is literally the title of the second half of the book. By micro though, Klaus means industries and companies. I guess that is micro if your macro is global governments. What we he call home economics?

“online” should be the largest beneficiary of the pandemic

“just-in-case” will eventually replace “just-in-time”

Small businesses are the main engine of employment growth and account in most advanced economies for half of all private-sector jobs. If significant numbers of them go to the wall, if there are fewer shops, restaurants and bars in a particular neighbourhood, the whole community will be impacted as unemployment rises and demand dries up, setting in motion a vicious and downward spiral and affecting ever greater numbers of small businesses in a particular community. The ripples will eventually spread beyond the confines of the local community,

Interestingly enough, this is basically what I want via a general boycott. Painful? Yes. Although I see no way out of the consumer-driven money-over-everything world we live in. Sadly I suspect that if this “downward spiral” was not chosen willingly (as with a boycott), the people would likely clamor for the government to step in and save them. I could see this as the final phase in getting the people to accept universal basic income.

big businesses will get bigger while the smallest shrink or disappear.

The bigger the business the more likely they can weather the storm. Additionally, the bigger the business the more likely they will have a seat at the free money trough we call the Federal Reserve.

During the lockdowns, a lot of consumers were forced to learn to do things for themselves (bake their bread, cook from scratch, cut their own hair, etc.) and felt the need to spend cautiously. How entrenched will these new habits and forms of “do it yourself” and auto-consumption become in the post-pandemic era? The same could apply to students who in trimester spent watching their professors on their screens, will they start questioning the high cost of education?

This is, in my opinion, the best effect that the pandemic has had. Anytime people learn that they can do it themselves they gain a bit more independence.

The combination of AI, the IoT and sensors and wearable technology will produce new insights into personal well-being. They will monitor how we are and feel, and will progressively blur the boundaries between public healthcare systems and personalized health creation systems – a distinction that will eventually break down. Streams of data in many separate domains ranging from our environments to our personal conditions will give us much greater control over our own health and well-being.

Here “us” is supposed to be you and I, but in typical misleading language, Klaus really means us as in he and his fellow oligarchs will have greater control. Similar to “YOU will own nothing and be happy” instead of “WE…”.

In banking, it is about being prepared for the digital transformation. In insurance, it is about being prepared for the litigations that are coming. In automotive, it is about being prepared for the coming shortening of supply chains. In the electricity sector, it is about being prepared for the inevitable energy transition.

Central bank digital currency, obviously, is the digital transformation in banking. As for the litigations in insurance, is he alluding to lawsuits for improtper treatment of covid (no Ivermectin, no early treatment, wait and see approach)? The automotive shorting supply chains seems reasonable (as I assume we will see more supply chain shortening across the board where applicaable. Finally the energy transition I think is total bullshit. Look at how Europe is doing right now without Russian gas.

And for one more time, incase you missed it the first two times (and the countless other implicatins):

Those that adapt with agility and imagination will eventually turn the COVID-19 crisis to their advantage.

Get Used to It

“Jin Qi (one of China’s leading scientists) had it right when he said in April 2020: “This is very likely to be an epidemic that co- exists with humans for a long time, becomes seasonal and is sustained within human bodies."[19]”

We have already seen that in the 2022-2023 winter. There has been a push to scare people with the “triple-demic” of flu/RSV/covid. From what I can see locally, the people aren’t buying it.


Table of Contents


About Covid-19: The Great Reset

page 3 (pdf 4):

Introduction

page 11 (pdf 12):

when things will return to normal. The short response is: never.

page 12 (ped 13):
page 13 (pdf 14):
page 14 (pdf 15):
page 15 (pdf 16):
page 16 (pdf 17):
page 17 (pdf 18):

Chapter 1: MACRO RESET

1.1. Conceptual framework – Three defining

page 19 (pdf 20):
page 20 (pdf 21):
page 22 pdf (23):
page 25 (pdf 24):
page 28 (pdf 27):
page 28 (pdf 29):

1.2. Economic reset

page 31 (pdf 32):
page 32 (pdf 33):
page 33 (pdf 34):
page 35 (pdf 36):
page 36 (pdf 37):
page 39 (pdf 40):
page 45 (pdf 46):
page 46 (pdf 47):
page 47 (pdf 48):
page 50 (pdf 51):
page 51 (pdf 52):
page 52 (pdf 53):
page 53 (pdf 54):
page 54 (pdf 55):
page 56 (pdf 57):
page 57 (pdf 58):

1.3 Societal Reset

page 59 (pdf 60):
page 60 (pdf 61):
page 61 (pdf 62):
page 64 (pdf 65):
page 66 (pdf 67):
page 68 (pdf 69):
page 71 (pdf 70):
page 71 (pdf 72):
page 73 (pdf 74):
page 73 (pdf 74:
page 74 (pdf 75):
page 75 (pdf 76):
  1. A broader, if not universal, provision of social assistance, social insurance, healthcare and basic quality services

  2. A move towards enhanced protection for workers and for those currently most vulnerable (like those employed in and fuelling the gig economy in which full-time employees are replaced by independent contractors and freelancers).

page 77 (pdf 78):
page 78 (pdf 79):

1.4. Geopolitical reset

page 79 (pdf 80):
page 80 (pdf 81):
page 81 (pdf 82):
page 82 (pdf 83):
page 83 (pdf 84):
page 86 (pdf 87):
page 89 (pdf 90):
page 90 (pdf 91):
page 91 (pdf 92):
page 96 (97):
page 97 (98):

1.5. Environmental reset

page 102 pdf (103):
page 107 pdf (108):
page 109 (pdf 110):
page 110 (pdf 111):
page 111 (pdf 112):

1.6. Technological reset

page 116 (pdf 117):
page 117 (pdf 118):
page 118 (pdf 119):
page 119 (pdf 120):
page 121 (pdf 122):
page 122 (pdf 123):
page 123 (pdf 124)
page 124 (pdf 125):
page 126 (pdf 127):
page 127 (pdf 128):

Chapter 2. MICRO RESET (INDUSTRY AND BUSINESS)

page 131 (pdf 132):

2.1. Micro trends

page 133 (pdf 134):
page 136 (pdf 137):
page 139 (pdf 140):

2.2. Industry reset

page 144 (pdf 145):
page 145 (pdf 146):
page 148 (pdf 149):
page 155 (pdf 156):
page 156 (pdf 157):
page 157 (pdf 158):
page 159 (pdf 160):

Chapter 3. INDIVIDUAL RESET

3.1. Redefining our humanness

page 161 (pdf 162):

This didn’t last. Division and protest came less than a year later.

page 162 (pdf 163):
page 163 (pdf 164):
page 164 (pdf 165):
page 165 (pdf 166):