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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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.