Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The World Economic Forum, which hosts the big annual party in Davos every January, thinks “Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good”.
We must move on from neoliberalism in the post-COVID era
- COVID-19 has shaken the world in ways not seen since the world wars, affecting all aspects of human life.
- For the sustainable development of the planet, it’s vital our recovery prioritizes new, greener ways to do business.
- The ‘Great Reset’ offers an opportunity to re-evaluate sacred cows of the pre-pandemic system but also defend long-held values.
No event since World War II’s end has had as profound a global impact as COVID-19. The pandemic has triggered a public health and economic crisis on a scale unseen in generations and has exacerbated systemic problems such as inequality and great-power posturing.
The only acceptable response to such a crisis is to pursue a “Great Reset” of our economies, politics, and societies. Indeed, this is a moment to re-evaluate the sacred cows of the pre-pandemic system, but also to defend certain long-held values. The task we face is to preserve the accomplishments of the past 75 years in a more sustainable form.
…
Specifically, we will need to reconsider our collective commitment to “capitalism” as we have known it. Obviously, we should not do away with the basic engines of growth. We owe most of the social progress of the past to entrepreneurship and to the capacity to create wealth by taking risks and pursuing innovative new business models. We need markets to allocate resources and the production of goods and services efficiently, particularly when it comes to confronting problems like climate change.
But we must rethink what we mean by “capital” in its many iterations, whether financial, environmental, social, or human. Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good. There is both a fundamental need and an increasingly widespread demand for a new kind of “capitalism.”
…
I’m glad the WEF has made things so clear. Any attachment you feel to say having enough cash to pay your weekly food bill or getting the best possible deal on goods and services is old style neocapitalist thinking.
According to the WEF, what you really want deep, deep down is to know that your local supermarket cares about good causes, and that the profit from the inflated prices you pay at the checkout goes towards helping to mitigate climate change and global inequality.
“Specifically, we will need to reconsider our collective commitment to “capitalism” as we have known it.”
Indeed we do! And be a lot MORE committed to it (with NO inverted commas) and beware of substitutes!
“Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good.”
Such nonsense! Today’s consumers know companies can best contribute to social welfare and the common good BY selling more and better goods and services for a reasonable price.
“Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good.”
Just shows that none of these numpties has ever run a business.
And none have ever experienced want.
Shhhh – leave them in their bubble, revenue will drop in those woke stores/corporations because even the woke-folk will continue to buy from Walmart and PigglyWiggly
Walmart’s goods are heavily sourced from China and often produced at lower wages than any capitalist robber baron could get away with…
Walmart is therefor contributing to the Biden campaign heavily, and hoping that a “return to normalcy” will be a return to profits from cheap Chinese goods, at the expense of American manufacturing jobs, and without regard to the resulting vulnerability of our “free market” economy to forced purchasing of important or vital supplies from Chinese sources in a crisis, rather than developing on-shore/in-house sources.
Indeed, rickk. go woke, get broke is as applicable as ever.
Or ever been hungry.
Now that must have been written by the Wesayso Corporation
It is so because Wesayso
If you repeat a lie often enough you may start believing it
Bryan A, this is what happened to the NBA. As explained by announcer Bob Costas the constant pushing of BLM and suppression of all other memes has resulted in a 70% drop in TV audiences. We should all remember which company said and did what when we buy something. I’ll be wearing New Balance instead of Nike.
And I will continue to drive to Winn-Dixie rather than walk across the street to Whole (Paycheck) Foods to buy groceries. It’s not only the price difference, but larger choices AND less wokeness.
What incredible bs coming from the World Economic Forum. I’m going to try to find out if the US taxpayer is somehow funding this arrant nonsense, this compote of world government, imagined crises, lies and disinformation designed to sow panic around the world. They need to get off of their equivalent Mt. Olympus in Davis Switzerland, leave the ski slopes and conference centers, and see how the real world lives.
And of course, in league with these charlatans are idiots like Bill Gates and many other corporate executives who originally made their fortunes by low-balling and buying out their competition in ways that now makes them think they are Russian-style oligarchs playing a protection scheme. The hypocrisy runs deep within them.
Davos, Switzerland. Damned auto-correct again.
maybe it should be Davros ? 😉
That would certainly be better and more fitting auto-correction.
Maybe, sort of, …
If you label something as organic you can charge a higher price. Some folks will shop at the grocery store that pushes organic, and health, and high quality. We have one big one in town plus a couple of smaller ones. On the other hand, on a square foot basis, the regular large full service grocery stores have to be an order of magnitude bigger. Even the budget grocery stores probably exceed the organic/health/high quality stores by times five.
Way more consumers care about price than care about social justice or whatever. Get woke go broke.
This is of course an example of classic Elitist GroupThink.
They probably don’t know anyone in their professional circles of acquaintances or social circles who doesn’t think this way. Just ask them. When was the last time any of these folks went to a WalMart or a Dollar General store? When was the last time they went to Kohl’s to buy clothes? How many of them go down to local Food Bank each week, not to volunteer but to get their weekly box of foods?
I’ll bet every one of the participants in the Davos forum have top of the line smart phones, tablets, laptops, and everything else. When they start walking the walk, MAYBE I’ll think about what they’re spouting.
When you can afford to fly around the world in Falcon jets and stay at 5 star hotels in Paris, Davos, New York and Yacht around the Aegean or Caribbean Seas to escape the latest COVID lockdown, then immediately paying for the latest gilded iPhone 12 Pro goes without saying.
You know, in this economic crisis, Dollar General is doing quite well. There is one near my house and the parking lot is always full these days. Good prices and it appears that no one really cares if it’s not “preferred brand” or whatever. Ditto Walmart. They can’t keep stuff on their shelves, although the panic buying seems to be lightening up a bit. Aldi has steelhead trout in their fridge case – absolutely delicious! And a reasonable price, too, or I can go fishing at the lake north of me and catch a few for the freezer.
In other words, we must do what some “Leader” thinks we should do. Fascism.
Their goal is Technocracy. Fascism on steroids where every aspect of your life (for the time that they allow you to remain alive) is controlled totally.
Digital currency, social credit scores and linked digital “passports” will be used as a “soft” control. If you go against this you will find yourself in unable to travel or work or purchase goods, even food.
Here in Columbus, Ohio the BP gas stations want you to use a credit card for all purchases. If you use cash you have to have the correct amount or they may not have the coins to make change. Their excuse, “Coin Shortage”. I find that hard to believe. For one, no other businesses have that problem and two, U.S. Mints are highly automated. I stopped going to BP.
I’m surprised you’re finding “no other businesses” saying the same. Here in NC almost ALL of them are saying “exact change” due to that “coin shortage”.
Around here most businesses, other than CVS, don’t mandate exact change. (CVS signage says they will round up if you don’t have exact change, so something that comes to $15.15 will cost you $16 if you pay cash without the coins. Not sure if that’s all CVSes or just our local one that does that). Many have signs recommending exact change or credit cards due to the coin shortage, but they still take cash and give back coins.
How in the hell can they say that people care more about causes than they do about better and cheaper products? Do they not realize there are people and family who budget for food from their income because they can’t just spend money like it’s everywhere?
This progressive nonsense will without a doubt usher in a new era of suffering. All because of “causes”. Isn’t this same rhetoric– “greater causes”– Lenin and Trotsky wrote about and spoke about in the early 20th century that led to the deaths of millions? I suppose the modern progressive enjoys the luxury of ignoring history.
Do they not realize there are people and family who budget for food from their income because they can’t just spend money like it’s everywhere?
That’s a big part of the problem – no, they don’t. They have absolutely no concept of having to struggle just to survive.
What utter bullshit. However, our actual wishes and opinions are an easy thing to check…give us a vote on it. If the vote is an overwhelming yes and the “leaders” lead by example and accept the average wage and give up their worldly goods past the normal amount of stuff the average wage earner typically owns, and they drop travel beyond one trip per year etc.
Then if they do all that, I will continue to live my life unaffected…because I don’t do more than that anyway.
Give us a vote you commo bastards!
Our ‘dump’ is full of relatively new fridges, and it was cleared out last year. This in a community of 1000 is staggering. What we want is things that are not built with designed obsalescence built in.
Respectfully, designed obsolescence is a myth. It is simply a matter of consumer goods being so inexpensive to produce that it is cheaper to buy than to repair.
I don’t know about that. In my old lab there is still, I presume, a perfectly running round shouldered Westinghouse frig from the year I was born (1954). It was there when I took over in 1989 and it was running like a top when I left in 2016. As far as I know it never had a service or repair in that entire span of 62 years. You did have to defrost the freezer box every few months. I stored chemicals and optical pitch in it, drove industrial safety nuts.
When you build electronics into an appliance it gets “smarter,” cheaper to produce and much more fragile.
Just saw advertising for coffee machines with WLAN and USB.
What BS !!
Indeed. the more things you add, the more things there are that can break or go wrong. That old freezer still works because it does one task and it does it well. Newer appliances try to do multiple things adequately and then when one or more of those things stop working, out in the trash it goes to be replaced by a newer model that promises to do even more things.
BC, I would dispute that they are not designed with obsolescence. Seventy years ago they built appliances (and such) to last a damn long time because they were expensive to buy compared to the populaces annual income, it had to last or no one would buy another. In todays world everyone wants cheap so the companies determine how long an appliance should last in normal use then choose material and size components accordingly. Things that come into play for a fridge would be gage of wire used, duty cycle of the compressor, how heavy to make the hinges, what type of plastic to use, weight of plastic, glass vs. plastic, etc.. There’s a reason commercial refrigerators cost more and last longer than typical home refrigerators. I’m sure they don’t use the term “planned obsolescence” as that can get them into legal problems but their design choices amount to the same thing.
I read an article about consumer goods and plastics. The plastics can be designed for any purpose with any durability and any lifespan. The companies that make cheep products for household use do so with the intent of having that item replaced every X years. Just enough use that the people are happy, and just cheep enough that they’ll buy another when the old one fails. Planned Obsolescence is part of the design process for any manufacturer. Hell, I design roads with as a 10 year maintenance free design. Car manufacturers also know they make more money out of replacement parts than they do the original item!
BC wrote: “Respectfully, designed obsolescence is a myth. It is simply a matter of consumer goods being so inexpensive to produce that it is cheaper to buy than to repair.”
Nonsense. Anyone who believes what you just wrote needs to be educated about the history of how obsolescence is, and has been, designed into products:
The Lightbulb Conspiracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdh7_PA8GZU
Not only were lightbulbs DESIGNED to NOT last longer than 1500 hours in the 20th century, but there was a global consortium which was created to ensure that none of the giant member corporations made bulbs which lasted longer: GE, Philips, Sylvania, etc.
Unfortunately, even with LED lamps that can last up to 50,000 hours when well designed, are victims of planned obsolescence, either by the selection of materials that deteriorate or by deliberate skimping on heatsink structure. Also the power supplies are usually made with underrated components that fail long before the LEDs.
I recently saw some LED lamps being sold as “lasting up to 10,000 hours”, that’s a huge reduction on what lifetime is possible. So much of everything we use day to day is designed with this principle in mind, to get repeat business.
Planned obsolescence is a cornerstone of the wasteful consumerism society that we live in.
“Build, back, better” should include the word “durable” and also “repairable”.
Why, the person pushing that slogan is of the party whose ideas don’t build, they only tear down. The party that supports defunding the police and supports “mostly peaceful” protests that burn down cities.
@ John Endicott
I’m not an American, so have no care for the geriatric elections. The slogan “Build, back, better” is in common use globally to mean replacing a flawed economic model with one that is more inclusive with the general population and not just the business interests of the elite.
Myth? Go buy a new car. You’ll probably have to sign a piece of paper acknowledging that the “design life” of your pending purchase is 150,000 miles.
Warranties less than 20 yrs ago were 5 or 6 yrs, 50-60k…some even had 10 yr, 100k warranties. Now you’ll find 3 yr, 36k even from Honda and Toyota.
The car I bought new in 1990 lasted me 18 years. The car that I bought new to replace (same manufacturer, different model as the previous model I owned was discontinued sometime during that decade and a half)) it has been going strong for 12 and is in better working order than the previous one was at the same point in it’s life (and the previous one was still in pretty good working order at that point), despite having put on a more miles on the current one in that same amount of time. It could easily last another 6, and quite probably even more than that.
I’ve seen nothing to suggest that a new car today, from the same manufacturer (though again different model, as again the model I currently have isn’t being produced any more) will be worse than the previous two at going the distance. The biggest problem I’ll have when selecting a new car, when the time comes, is finding a model that I want, as the companies are doing away with the models that I’d be interested in (sedans) and pushing stuff that I have no interest in buying (SUVs & all electrics).
The main reason modern cars last longer is simply down to the safety standards that they are required to meet. Car makers tried to obsolete them out during the 50s through to the 70s by not designing in corrosion resistance, in fact, they were full of “rust traps” that caused them to become unsafe in less than 10 years when driven in areas where roads were salted in winter or coastal.
Probably caused an unknown number of unnecessary deaths when crashed cars crumpled up like tin cans as the rust had weakened the structure. It was only a consumer backlash that forced them to up their game and this has since been reinforced by stringent safety regulations on the manufacture of new cars. The issue now is that there are so many secondhand cars available, there is little incentive to repair a 15 year old car, it is easier to scrap it and buy a 10 year old car instead. Also here in Ireland, the insurance companies are starting to refuse to insure drivers in vehicles over 15 years old, thus putting perfectly good cars off the road.
Phil it doesn’t matter what reason you want to attribute it to, the point remains that, contrary to the poster I was replying to was saying, they do last longer. To go along with my previous personal anecdote, according to vehicle registration data, 2020 is the fourth straight year that the average vehicle age in the U.S. increased (to an all time high of 11.9 years) extending a trend over the last two decades during which Americans hang on to their cars and trucks longer. And 25% of the vehicles on the road are 16 or more years old.
And then after the Elitists who have the wealth to avoid the consequences of their policies, there are the every day Germans who can’t pay there skyrocketing electric bill and are getting their electrical service disconnected for non-payment. I’m sure those Germans with their power cut-off aren’t quite on board with the “do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good” nonsense.
The real culprits are of course the Green Socialist-Marxists running Germany in the form of Angela Merkel. These are the real Arsonist-Firefighters. They set the economic fires to burn the system down so they can claim to come riding like a Savior to the People’s rescue.
As here:
“Poverty in Germany: Power cuts for 289,000 households”
Elisabeth Zimmermann
in the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
12 October 2020
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/13/pove-o13.html
The Fourth International (ICFI) if you don’t know is the full-on Global Marxist COMINTERN movement started by Trotsky after his exile from Russia. These are the people the Green ecotards have aligned themselves with. The Marxists are of course using them to impoverish the once properous German middle class in order to foment a coming Revolution there.
The above article’s title and boxed http://www.weforum.org excerpt shout out: “Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price.”
Ummm . . . World Economic Forum authors, you got any data—any smidgen of data—to support that assertion?
The economic stress that the COVID-19 pandemic has put on “today’s consumers” around the globe would argue that your claim is equivalent to bovine excrement.
All of these people talk the same way, canadian government the worst.
“We know the covid recovery needs to be green”.
Really? I don’t think many people have that as a priority
Pat, just so.
So many claims being made today without any evidence whatsoever of supporting data. Pitiful.
““Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good.””
These dronessay we have to forego “better goods and service for a reasonable cost”.
But you CAN BET THAT THEY WON’T !!
Banish the fear. Early treatment works. Doctor’s Urgent Care center has treated over 1900 covid patients with only 1 hospitalization and zero deaths.
I don’t understand how the elites are against Capitalism since that put them where they are today. Are they embarrassed of their success? If so then give it all away and leave the rest of us successful people alone who worked hard for it but never made it to their income level but are happy with what we earned.
Because capitalism and access to affordable energy has created a very large, prosperous Middle Class. And that is threat to an elitist who wants it all for themselves. It has been that way for humanity since the dawn of civilizations when mankind became organized under leaders who wanted to rule and have People provide for them.
Mark,
You or I may not have a private jet and megayacht and vacation home in Aspen or Davos in addition to a home in the Carribean and the Florida… BUT we can, by the tens of millions every year, get on a commercial airplane and fly to all those destinations, get on Cruise ships to exotic tropic islands, fill up cars to vaction spots in Colorado to Yosemite and consume the vacay resources there.
The elites view us as cockroaches, unwashed peasants, Deplorables, who are filling up the ski slopes and pristine Aegean beaches while consuming precious irreplaceable fossil fuels their grandchildren wealth Trust babies will want in 50 years.
Joel, this is very likely the way that the elites think. Additionally, they count on the fact that large numbers of people are incapable of understanding the consequences of the “Great Reset”, “Green New Deal”, or whatever the current term is. Authoritarian central control, perhaps outright communism. Isn’t it sad that the wild eyed adherents have never experienced the “joy” of unaffordable, unreliable intermittent energy, state ownership of most of the economy, long lineups for meagre rations of food. Why don’t we invite the people pushing this narrative to move to an African or Indian village for a year, demonstrate their “virtuous low carbon footprint”, then come back and lecture us on the merits of cooking with cow dung, lights that only stay on if the sun shines on their solar panels, etc, etc. Should be hilarious, although California is already becoming an experiment in showing the remaining population how incredible wind and solar power is.
WEF, attended by 3,000 people from 117 countries in Davos, Switzerland. How many of the 3,000 rode a public bus to Davos? How many rode an electric train? How many rode a diesel train? How many flew in an airplane? How many flew in a private airplane? Which youth hostels or rented rooms are they staying at? How will they get back home?
Just a few of the many questions to ask the participants.
I found the old socially aware slogan of “save water shower with a friend” more rational than this recent Davos dictum.
The market, such that it is, is entirely rational. People may say they want these kinds of things, but they’re buying behavior says something else. WEF has gone full potatoe , aka “political” in this. This is what top -down looks like, the free market will push back.
Nancy Pelosi is a consumer of world goods.
She has a $24,000 freezer with $13 per pint ice cream.
So says the internet. I have not been invited to her place to see the freezer nor sample the ice cream.
From my lowly vantage point she has sought the best freezer and the best ice cream.
Apparently the folks attending the World Economic Forum are not familiar with Nancy. Hard to believe.
Pelosi is without a doubt America’s modern day version of Marie Antoinette. She even wants to be de facto President by stopping the Electoral College counting process in January to keep Trump from being re-elected.
I live in New Jersey, whose state government is totally Democrat controlled. They have set up a Northeast States pact to control electric power to prevent “climate change”. At first, it was goals towards wind and solar PV power. But now, If Trump loses, they are set on implementing a tax on carbon. This tax will be the most income regressive ever implemented, impoverishing the poor by driving up energy costs.
The Northeastern states are also fighting tooth and nail to prevent natural gas pipelines, killing off the only challenge to their regressive tax scheme.
Look up RGGI to see how they want to tax carbon at $10 per ton. It’s what the Democrats call “a start”.
God help us.
“No event since World War II’s end has had as profound a global impact as COVID-19.”
Translation: We may have to give up on CAGW as a means to rule the world, and use COVID-19 instead.
–i.e. Replace EPA dictums with WHO, NIH, etc.
‘There is both a fundamental need and an increasingly widespread demand for a new kind of ‘capitalism.'”
Yeah, I know what that is. It’s the Davos capitalism which benefit’s the Bezos’ of the world at the expense of the Mom & Pops. The world is not big enough for all the budding CEO’s in the world.
I did not elect this man. Why does he think he can dictate the world and my country, Poland, what to do?
He is the definition of the crazy scientist trying to take over the world. He should be treated as such, and locked in an insane asylum, not presiding over the World Economic Forum.
All these peoples of “clinate science” like Schellnhuber or Rahmstorf follow the idea of a non elected scientific body for the gouvernement of what ever “color” for advertising it and to decide what to do finaly.
And,
UN News
COVID-19
Can also use various topics search tabs on the webpage.
Articles: 1049 so far.
https://news.un.org/en/search/covid-19
And,
United Nations
Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, 2020
Topics include COVID-19.
Articles
https://www.un.org/press/en
And,
UN Document Repository
COVID-19
Articles: 77 items
https://wedocs.unep.org/discover?scope=%2F&query=covid-19&submit=
And,
UN Environment Programme
COVID-19
236 items so far.
Articles
https://www.unenvironment.org/search/node?keys=covid-19
And,
United Nations
UNRIC, 2020
“UNRIC Library Backgrounder: Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Webpage: Various articles and links.
Articles
https://unric.org/en/unric-library-backgrounder-novel-coronavirus
What “capitalism”? In the late 1950’s it was said that America’s was a “regulated” or “limited” form of capitalism, and not free market capitalism. Needless to say, we have significantly more regulation and limits to capitalism in 2020 than we did when Eisenhower was president.
It amazes me that those people who support the increased regulation and limitations of capitalism don’t understand the consequences. Who benefits from such regulation and limitation? What are the results? The beneficiaries are the very ones which today’s liberals most oppose, they are America’s largest corporations. The results would be increasing levels of financial inequality, poverty, and economic decline.
If we take off our ideological blinders and look at the results of previous increases in regulation and limitation over the last century, what has been the result? One need only look at the numbers and kinds of companies and industries we have in America today.
If we go back 100 years to 1920, how many car manufacturers existed in America? How many do we have today? How many airplane manufacturers did we have in 1920? And how many do we have today? How many railroads? How many private banks and insurance companies? After a century of economic and population growth, we have a fraction of the companies we had in 1920, how can this be?
The liberals of today have no idea that instead of limiting monopolies and curbing the power of corporations, the policies they pursue, like a “Green New Deal” create more of both.
For the past couple of decades there has been a movement in the corporate world away from capitalism (or what little remains of it). After all, practicing capitalism is hard work, it is difficult to compete against other companies, it is difficult to constantly engineer and innovate to stay ahead of the game, it is hard to run a company efficiently enough to earn revenue and profits, the risk is alway very high.
What can a corporation do? It can support new policies in which it “supports” the environment, social justice, and the common good. In exchange, the corporation receives state subsidies and state support. Profit via competition and innovation is no longer necessary, a corporation’s profits are guaranteed via taxpayer subsidies and support; the state and the taxpayers shoulder the risk, corporate profits are guaranteed.
The power and potential wealth of corporations over the people and politics is far higher in such a system than it would be under garden-variety capitalism. Yet the leftists of today unknowingly support this system.
The sad thing: they believe they can sell that line of reasoning.
What it means: a forced kind of socialism (is there any other kind?) for everyday folks.
Obscene profits for monopoly corporations.
(Competitors put out of business.)
In other words, a two-tier economy run by the elite for the “good” of the little people.
Oh, sure… what a load of bull.
Consumers do not want Facebook or Twitter to allow them to share information effectively, but to allow them to share only information that will, in the opinion of Facebook and Twitter, serve the common good.
Good to know that social media, well represented at the WEF because they are such aggressive monopolies, are already well ahead of the curve on “stakeholder capitalism.”
No community grocery stores, neighbourhood plumbers or piano teachers represented at Davros, I see.
They often say that Communism/Socialism has never been effected ‘properly’ yet so as to brush off all those deadly past failures.
The truth is that Capitalism has never been effected properly because in every instance the political elites have watered it down way more than was strictly necessary to adequately protect the unfortunate.
Even despite that, capitalism has fared way better than any other past system of social administration at making people better off in every way and in over time protecting the environment.
Historically, more central control has always caused more suffering and more environmental depredation for longer than capitalism would ever have allowed.
Left to themselves, on average and over time, people acting voluntarily under free capitalism lightly supervised by a system of laws applicable to all manage to produce better results for themselves and the environment than groups of elites have ever achieved.
But they can never admit that or their wealth and power comes under threat.
Is there nothing that hasnt been polluted by post-modernism?
Exactly Mr Sykes, it is a total cancer on humanity.
“Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good”.
WTF…..Why would I not want better goods and services for a reasonable price? who in all history has thought otherwise?
What I don’t want is “Made in China”.
What I don’t want is a company that makes razor blades telling me I’m toxic, and they are virtuous.
Vote with your wallet.
Translation: What consumers want are changes to the economy so that more and more of their hard earned cash is distributed to the extremely wealthy elites through government interventions and policies.
Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price
I think there may be a correct (though misinterpreted) observation hiding in there, and that Covid may indeed have led to a sea change in behaviour in the West.
It may not outlast Covid, though I am starting to suspect that Covid is going to be with us long enough that its effects will be, if not permanent, at least last for so long that in economic terms it might as well be permanent.
That is, once deprived of being able to shop as a means of entertainment, people seem to be doing without buying thing. Much of the retail economy was discretionary purchases anyway, clothes and appliances being replaced long before they became unusable.
If you talk to anyone who is in their seventies or eighties now about this, particularly in the UK or Europe, you will get accounts of a world in which people other than the rich used things forever, bought with considerable care, and had very few items.
They will tell you, for instance, about jackets with leather elbow patches. It was not for decoration, it was to cover or prevent holes due to wear. Clothes and shoes generally, at least mens, were really kept and worn.They were resoled. Ask about the first washing machine or refrigerator their parents bought, and how long it lasted. It was not unusual in the seventies to find one of them still in use that had been bought in the fifties. Cars were replaced more often than now, because they genuinely did wear out much quicker. But they were also driven less, and car ownership was less widespread.
I have the impression that with the retail holiday, people have been compelled to find other outlets and means of entertainment, and that its possible that with the second wave, this change will become a very long one.
And the retail holiday has not just been because the stores closed. Its also been driven by the fact that for many, jobs are visibly at risk, and incomes have fallen.
The combination of lack of access to retail, lack of money to spend, lack of need for the endless pointless purchases of the past, and the insecurity that the Covid closures have bought? Well you saw the results with the US handouts. First use, pay down your debt. Not go out and buy more stuff you don’t need.
Where I live all boutique shops, movie theaters, and restaurants were closed, but the stores deemed “essential” remained open. I went to a big-box home and building supply store in April and I have never seen the parking lot so full, absolutely packed. People were wandering the aisles just to have something to do. Same thing at the big-box camping supply store and the discount department store. Shopping as a form of entertainment is alive and healthy. Analysis of cell phone mobility data proved this to be true, there was only a modest reduction in the number of people who were out and about and that has mostly recovered. Any reductions in sales were probably more due to the number of people put out of work by the lockdowns. Hopefully, employment will recover and with it sales.
Sub-Saharan Africa?
I think what they really mean is that if you write ‘sustainability’ all over your website and up prices by 10%, there are now sufficient woke sheeple who will fall for it.
That appears to be the trend du jour.
Obviously, replacing free-market capitalism with crony-capitalism/corporatism has been on the agenda for a very long time. Pesky upstart competitors…
I don’t think so. I think they are mistaking a real trend, the falling of interest in consumption and buying for its own sake, with something quite different and non-existent, a supposed interest in buying less, but paying more, for greenness and political correctness.
The two have similar effects in one way, they lead to a shrinkage of retail. But they end up in very different profiles for the economy, and I think the first is where we are headed. People are not interesting in paying more for green and thus consuming less. They are interested in consuming less, period. And if possible paying less for it.
Not that they are not interested in buying “green” products, most are not able to pay for, and during Covid-19 there will be more and more people to look first for the price as for the “green” origine.
the snipers they always have and the bans on anyone going near them…pretty much tells you how they see the rest of the worlds people
ditto the bilderberg group
so out of touch its laughable
but
they do control the companies and means of production
its the idiots falling for their hype thats the worry
the virtue signallers the woke and the wanna bes
“Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price.” I think that is an accidentally true statement. They want frequent upgrades to more fashionable “better” goods for “free” or at an unreasonably low price subsidised by other people’s money. Those other people increasingly include future generations who will be paying off the current debts. Gimmigrants are imported as new consumers to promote competition between a domestic and an imported social underclass eager to consume without having to produce.
A burger at Davos WEF in 2018 cost $78 – of course consumers do not want reasonable prices !
Anyway Prince Charles will be keynote speaker at the Great Reset, not known if vegetarian burgers are available.
“The people want cake, so let them eat cake”.
It looks like the Davos crowd are about to announce the full digital currency Reset.
Sounds high tech?
Well, all your transactions and media presence will be automatically graded – Big Data, A.I., and suddenly you will find your digital wallet shadow-banned. No joke.
One false posting on Twitter, for example about Hunter’s laptop, and the shopping mall checkout will go beep – try again in 24 hours, have a nice digital day 🙂 The greenies in the queue will then frown disapprovingly. No worries, your green product quota will then be adjusted. Kudos for making the effort!
Both the EU and FED are full throttle on this, they see a great way to go green. Even BlackRock, the worlds largest hedge fund, just now running the entire US economy, backs this plan from UN Climate Finance advisor Mark Carney.
“Today’s consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price. Rather, they increasingly expect companies to contribute to social welfare and the common good”
What they mean is that people should not have a choice in how they spend their money.
We need to wake up. There is a massive push by a relatively few elitists to conquer the world. They want a two class society where most all of us are totally dependent on them for everything. The reaction to COVID is a big part of it – they want to shut the world economy down. They call it the Great Re-set. Black Lives Matter is a part of it. All of the money going to defeat President Trump is a big part of it. (Too bad they have the worst candidate of all time – right??). The money going to elect prosecutors who do not enforce the laws is a part of it.
This is just another attempt of a few people to dominate the rest of us. It has happened repeatedly throughout history, and it is foolish to think it can’t happen again. A successful powerful working middle class is an inconvenience. The Bolsheviks knew how to deal with that in 1917. Mao also knew how. History, as they say, doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Read Ecclesiastes 3 – they knew all this way back then.
Anyone shop at WHOLE FOODS? the way they have “sustainably raised” and “responsibly grown” and such phrases put up on the walls of the store, it is all marketing mumbo jumbo.
It works just fine with the “not very smart” crowd.
Progressives
https://profitableandmoral.com/a-crucial-choice-for-business-conform-to-social-pressure-or-defend-freedom/
Every event where self-appointed experts provide life advice to the rest of us is an evolutionary test. The outcome depends on the ability of those advised to determine truth and fiction. Over time the sophistication of the messaging increases, the skills of deception are honed to a sharp edge and the ability to find truth in the haystack of lies gets harder but there are some simple rules that help the wise survive and thrive. Are the arguments based on real objective evidence that anyone can access and assess? Are those providing the advice leading by their own actions? Are those providing the advice likely to be equally affected by the outcome or are they safely protected by a buffer of wealth and power? Do they have a track record of predictions, and if so what is their score? Is fear the main fuel driving change or is it reasoned argument? Are questions and debate entertained or do they attempt to silence dissent? Do those providing the advice have a position that allows them to profit if it become policy?
Applying these tests indicates WEF meetings in Davos are clearly just a grand propaganda experiment to enrich and empower a bunch of wealthy, privileged and selfishly motivated aristocrats who either deliberately lie or are too foolish to understand the idiocy of their conclusions. People who believe and take action on this nonsense could be convinced to spend their retirement funds fighting to repeal the law of gravity. Then evolution wins.
I think it is true that many consumers really do want what the WEF says, it is just not consistent with what consumers then actually do. We have a small local bookstore (yeah, a few remain), and back in the days when it had big box competition, the neighbors all clamored for its support and survival—but then actually bought their own books at Costco. Sales actually went down when the clamor for support was loudest. We all want clothes made without slave labor wages being paid the kids overseas that make them—but we still will buy the cheaper shirt to save a buck. What we want emotionally or intellectually is often far from how we actually behave. It is why so many people vote for the Left, who want to force us to do the “right” things, even though in fact we don’t want to be forced to do anything.
Hopefully, one of the outcomes of this “great reset” is an end to pointless consumerism and the insanely wasteful “planned obsolescence” where products are designed to “die” before they should to force CON(ed)sumers to buy something again. The insane business model that pursues the fastest transition from quarry to landfill, simply has to stop! We should be encouraging the maintenance and the “right to repair” for all products that can reasonably be reparable and to ensure they are not made worthless by “forced obsolescence” by manufacturers who make the spare parts only available to the newest models due to pointless redesigns that only prevent repair of older devices.
Leftists: Corporations are evil.
Also Leftists: Corporations should teach us all morality.
During my ten year stay in Scotland all through the nineties, I noticed Royal Bank Of Scotland was already all over the Global Warming Scam.
Why were the financial institutions so fast to pickup on the scam?
The ground work was probably prepared in the seventies universities in most of Europe and California. I saw this fist hand at the University Of Copenhagen.
In particular a professor named Torben Wolf explained in a one hour session, how we had to stop our strive for wealth due to the stored energy over millions of years, which we now burns in a few centuries.
Professor Wolf explained how the Earth is in a delicate balance which would “tip” if we added this stored energy, in form of coal, oil and uranium, to the atmosphere in such an instance.
I am sure Torben Wolf was only one of a whole horde very keen with words and amazing speakers. He was so good, that he convinced me at the time, despite I was a bit of a contrarian skeptic.
If Yuri Bezmenov had gotten more public presence when he defected to the US, our financial institutions would surely have had far more difficulties turning in dictatorial monopolies with Marxist style politics.
In the good old days, before 1970s, the financial institution would serve You, but now You serve the financial institutions. – Maybe a return of Glass-Steagall , which Mr. Clinton discarded, could be helpful to the common people and get sensible national projects going.
You will find “KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov’s warning to America” on YT and
“They Tried To Warn Us (Lost Video From 1984)(360P)” on utahgunexchange.
Yuri Bezmenov mention four phases:
1. Demoralization
2. Destabilization
3. Crises
4. Normalization
As I see it, Western Europe is well into stage 4.
Us is somewhere between stage 3 and stage 4.
My Guess:
If Biden/Harris take over, it will be fast forward into stage 4.
If Trump administration continues, California will go into stage 4 and the Mid West will backtrack through stage 3 to stage 1.
The rest of the US may stay in Limbo.
I”ve gone through all those comments. One thing is missing: self-sufficiency. Having to stay at home will keep you busy is you have room for a garden.
Yes, I could tear up my lawn and plant one, and the squirrel would have a field day digging up my lettuce. But why not patronize the roadside greengrocer or the local fresh foods farmers, who have roadside stands? I do that anyway, and if I want to do canning or pickling or freezing, I can call them and order what I want, then go pick it up. That is basic self-sufficiency that seems to have been left behind and, as I find when surfing the net for such things, seems to be coming back.
Baking bread on the stovetop? Simple recipe, easy to follow, and the bread is fresh, crusty, and has a good flavor, and is likely to be a healthier product than that batter-whipped stuff from the grocery.
Like anyone else, finding that I’m told to stay closeted is not my cup of tea, but it’s had its benefits, which include some very basic stuff like what I described. If it’s retro to 1954, when I made cookies for a dessert for dinner, then you get new skills and better flavor, and it’s fresh stuff, no preservatives. Better for you.
So I’ve taken the other road to travel and depend less on “the store” for everything, (except paper products) and being stuck indoors is no burden.
Once again, socialists are convinced that the whole world secretly wants more socialism.
Amazing how often that happens.
Sounds like the World Economic Forum is adopting the workbook used to train people they accuse of being “white supremacists” to change their “evil ways”. In the Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture From Dismantling Racism–A Workbook for Social ChangeGroups by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001, the following characteristics of a “white supremacist” were listed as:
1. Perfectionism
2. Sense of Urgency
3. Defensiveness
4. Quantity over Quality
5. Worship of the Written Word
6. Only One Right Way
7. Paternalism
8. Either/Or Thinking
9. Power Hoarding
10. Fear of Open Conflict
11. Individualism
12. Progress is Bigger, More
13. Objectivity
14. Right to Comfort
So if you find yourself identifying with these characteristics, you are by their definition a “white supremacist”, a racist, and in need of submission and correction.
In the interest of full disclosure, I meet their definition of being a “white supremacist” but I am not a racist and I have no intention of changing my value system because it offends them.
I submit that their program, if fully implemented, would cause a drastic decline in human civilization and pave the way for a world of humans ripe for domination by a communist political system. That appears to be the objective of one political party’s obsession with the meme “white supremacy” and why it must be fully exposed and opposed.
I do not buy organic because it costs more and am not convinced it does me or society any real benefit. And is probably not really organic in most cases, anyway. I no longer shop at Walmart since they no longer sell handgun ammo and have capitulated to the anti gun folks in many ways. See their CEO pajama boy’s statement available if you google it (use Duck Duck not google). And so on. Vote with your $$ to get at the socialists. Don’t watch professional sports or buy the stuff they are hawking. Etc.
The media have been bought.We see it very clearly now.
Like these Davos bigwigs ever had to clip coupons or worry about paying the monthly bills. They are so disconnected from reality one has to wonder if they even live on Earth.
“consumers do not want more and better goods and services for a reasonable price”
Peek 2020?
They may SAY that price vs quality/quantity doesn’t make any difference to folks any more but I see NO data to support that conclusion. Therefore it is simply woke BS. Ignore it!
I have earth shaking news for the WEF:
People vote with their feet and their wallets.
The results unequivocally say (despite phone surveys showing virtue signalling):
Cheap, prices and Capitalism win by a landslide
Sweden now the lowest death rate for september in history and easing the minimal lockdown further, and no mask of course.
https://cornucopia.cornubot.se/2020/10/september-2020-den-minst-dodliga.html