Reconsidering The ‘Great Reset’ In Davos – Analysis

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A wish-list of diversifying strategy options

With the World Economic Forum once again meeting at the mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland, one of the most important items on the agenda will be the Great Reset, a series of ideas about rebuilding the global economy equitably and sustainably after the Covid-19 crisis, which now looks to be with us more or less permanently.

The Great Reset is primarily supported by the Biden, Johnson, and Trudeau administrations of the US, UK, and Canada respectively after having been proposed by Prince Charles, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Klaus Schwab, founder and CEO of the Forum. WE. The narrative is about building back better, green growth, smart growth, and fair growth. New metrics are proposed to supplement GDP measures in future growth through this globalist initiative. 

The Reset sees climate change model predictions as alarming, in need of drastic intervention led by aa collective and responsible leadership to prevent a catastrophe. Proponents also see innovation through Industry 4.0, or a fourth industrial revolution as holding the solutions to food shortages, lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, congested cities and political and social unrest. 

But Industry 4.0 is just a continuation of the same development trajectory the world has been travelling for the past 200 years. It will keep the means of production in the hands of a few due to high capital costs. For this reason, it has the potential to lead to increasing unemployment, poverty and inequity, rather than doing anything to solve these problems. The thought of the world being led by multinationals whose leaders might somehow undergo a sudden re-awakening into stakeholder capitalism is just too naïve. 

Multinationals have long been criticized by the traditional left for manipulation of economies, markets, labor, and tax systems to their advantage. The power of big tech over freedom of speech, the mass media abandoning the role of watchdog over government, the unaccountability of the bankers, and the pollution caused by multinationals doesn’t provide much hope for any metamorphic change. A future carbon trading market mechanism will just be another playground for bumper profiteering by global speculators. There is a lack of critical thinking over a number of the basic assumptions behind the Great Reset idea package, as hard data to support many assumptions is worryingly lacking.

Over the past 200 years, human development has destroyed many of the earth’s natural ecosystems which supported early communities and shaped their way of life. In early December, the New York Times published a shocking presentation demonstrating that the earth itself is starting to fail, with every one of 193 countries being affected by climate change. Deforestation, agriculture, mining, urbanization, and transport systems have compromised self-supporting and co-dependent natural eco-systems, which provide life needing resources such as water and shape microclimates. 

Local natural ecosystems are unique to specific areas. They contain the geography, soils, drainage, water resources, and forests to support sustainable co-dependency of flora and fauna. Human settlements traditionally used them for life and survival until the end of the 19th century, when the industrial revolution changed the way people lived. 

There needs to be an intense effort to rediscover these local eco-systems and where possible rehabilitate them. The world’s biological diversity is quickly disappearing which will have massive consequences to the stability of the planet’s aggregate eco-system and civilization itself. 

The development of civilization has been the biggest threat to these eco-systems. The belief that humankind can mold and control nature is a fallacy. Government planning and development and corporate motivation for profit has done irreparable damage. Smart societies are not those doused with technologies, but those that know how to blend settlement into their local eco-systems. 

Over-urbanization

In 1800, only 2 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. Urban population has grown from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018. This is 55 percent of the world’s population. According to the United Nations, this is projected to rise to 68 percent by 2050. Although, some cities are losing population, China, India and Nigeria are urbanizing rapidly. In contrast, world rural population is now close to 3.4 billion, and is expected to peak in a few years. World rural population is expected to decline to 3.1 billion by 2050, according to the same United Nations report. 

Global population in 1950 was estimated at around 2.6 billion people. It reached 5 billion in 1987 and 6 billion in 1999.  The world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 11 billion around 2100 according to the United Nations.

Clearly the earth cannot support that many people. Every parameter shows it can’t support the number on earth now. What is needed is draconian population control, so drastic as to reduce the population to manageable levels of perhaps 3 billion. And in the best of all possible worlds, policies would need to be put in place to de-urbanize the earth.  

Rapid urbanization is bringing with it urban heat islands (UHL), causing excessive heat during summers, and making winters milder. Cities reflect heat back into the atmosphere at 15-30 percent less than rural areas. This means that cities are warmer by 0.6-1.3 degrees centigrade than rural areas. Urbanization is also creating poor regional air quality, resulting in haze and pollution troughs across cities and surrounding regions.  Urban areas not only affect weather patterns, form water runoff, and lower water tables. These water tables and water runoffs also become carriers of pollution.

Mega-cities are resource-wise unsustainable and require energy inputs from far outside city limits. As has been found over the last 18 months, they generate special public health issues, with infectious diseases spreading rapidly, leading to long-term lockdowns, causing adverse community, health, and economic effects. 

The economic costs of saving lives under locked-down public health strategies is much higher than for rural areas, where low population density is a prime defense. Many of these mega-cities developed in the 1960s and 70s were structurally cement-based, which is starting to decay. In the near future, massive capital will be required to renew them.

Urbanization is an issue which requires much more study within the areas of public consumption, energy use, regional climate change, and public health. In the climate change study, this area has received very little funding, compared to other areas. There are strong arguments for revisiting the policies of decentralization.

The Great Reset is still work in progress. There is a need to conduct a much more diverse dialogue on how to make it an effective and acceptable economy philosophy. De-urbanization and the development of communities would turn the concept of a global village into a globe of villages which can learn from each other.

Decentralization: The return of communities       

De-urbanization presents the opportunity to redefine the concepts of community, enterprise, employment, technology, and economy. It is also an opportunity for humankind to learn how to co-exist with long tossed-off natural ecosystems. Establishing sustainable communities is a way to utilize cheap, currently existing, and appropriate technologies rather than capital intensive Industry 4.0 technologies out of reach of micro-entrepreneurs. 

Going back to smaller communities would reverse the rural-urban migration patterns of the past 70 years and help decongest already overpopulated mega-cities. Changed consumer patterns would assist in alleviating lifestyle causes of global warming. Craft workers would take pride in producing whole products with their hands. Community based family enterprises would diversify the nature of capitalism today, making entrepreneurs stakeholders in their local economies.

Sadly none of this is likely. As shown in the seven years since the 2015 signing of the Paris Accords on climate change by 196 nations, almost nothing has been done. The most recent conference, in Glasgow, Scotland, was highlighted by the demand by China and India for more time to phase out coal for energy production. The agreement that was finally signed was toothless. The industrial nations – led by the very industrialists soon to meet in Davos – are showing little inclination to adopt the Great Reset despite the pleasant words they are likely to utter before they leave again in their private jets and helicopters.

Murray Hunter

Murray Hunter has been involved in Asia-Pacific business for the last 30 years as an entrepreneur, consultant, academic, and researcher. As an entrepreneur he was involved in numerous start-ups, developing a lot of patented technology, where one of his enterprises was listed in 1992 as the 5th fastest going company on the BRW/Price Waterhouse Fast100 list in Australia. Murray is now an associate professor at the University Malaysia Perlis, spending a lot of time consulting to Asian governments on community development and village biotechnology, both at the strategic level and “on the ground”. He is also a visiting professor at a number of universities and regular speaker at conferences and workshops in the region. Murray is the author of a number of books, numerous research and conceptual papers in referred journals, and commentator on the issues of entrepreneurship, development, and politics in a number of magazines and online news sites around the world. Murray takes a trans-disciplinary view of issues and events, trying to relate this to the enrichment and empowerment of people in the region.

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