What's the agenda of the World Economic Forum? What does it have in store for us in the future? Is it a think tank with an agenda? And what are they really trying to do with all that data? In this episode of the podcast, we talk to Margaret Atwood, a writer and journalist who has written extensively on the topic, about what the WEF is trying to achieve, and why it should be worried.
00:00:04.420Great. Oh, I really appreciate it. And the timing is good. I mean, we booked you before this came about with Danielle Smith and the Alberta thing, but it actually brought it into the news.
00:00:13.560And it's an opportune time to really clarify a bit of just what is the WEF and what is their agenda. As I said, it's not a hidden sort of thing.
00:00:22.120No, no, not at all. And the article you're referencing is a review that I have written for a C2C journal on the subject about a book, a review of a book called Against the Great Reset.
00:00:40.500What is the Great Reset? The Great Reset is an idea espoused by the World Economic Forum.
00:00:48.840What is the World Economic Forum? It is an annual gathering of the world's elite industrialists, politicians, even royalty shows up, certainly media, politicians of all stripes show up for a gab fest, to exchange ideas, to do lots of networking.
00:01:09.180It's existed since 1971, started out just as a conference led by a gentleman by the name of Klaus Schwab, a business professor who lives in Geneva and who has since built this annual gathering into a major international institution.
00:01:32.360They now have headquarters in Geneva. They are more than a gab fest, they are now a full-blown think tank with ideas, with prescriptions, and with promotional ability for the very clear ideas they have about how the global economy should run.
00:01:53.260Great. Well, I appreciate you clearing that. I misinterpreted how that book came about. But yeah, I did read the essay. And just that reminder to people, yes, it's at the C2C journal, 18 essays in Against the Great Reset.
00:02:04.600The book does exist. I mean, the book is far more comprehensive than anything I've written. I've just glanced across some of the key zingers and ideas in it.
00:02:15.260Yeah. And so, I mean, when it's gone beyond think tank and they've gotten a bit activist, it's a bit of what I said in my opening monologue. And you sort of had a line on that in the article in the C2C, you know, or as part of the essays, when just talking is no longer enough, like they're ambitious. They don't just want to talk about it anymore. They want this stuff to get going.
00:02:32.940That's right. Absolutely. And that's why they're actually in the process now of setting up contracts. I wasn't aware of the one that they had contracted with Alberta, but certainly they have done a contract with the
00:02:45.240federal liberals with a view to getting some kind of a digital ID system in place. And of course, the digital ID is one of the fourth industrial revolution's new ideas, new innovations that will bring us all. Well, who knows what the agenda here is?
00:03:03.580But it's, you know, on the one hand, you think, yes, digital ID sounds great. It will solve all kinds of problems in terms of communication, pulling together different files and different bits of stuff that we all have to carry around with us all the time.
00:03:19.640But on the other hand, the downside, what's the disturbing side? Is this not possibly the beginning of the surveillance state? Is this not the sorry lesson? We had a taste of this, of course, when the supporters of the truckers had their bank accounts foreclosed.
00:03:43.640So, you know, there are always two sides to all of these great innovations, all these great ideas. And it's up, you know, the question is, how do you sort through them? Do you sign on with what the great thinkers and experts and ideas people at the World Economic Forum?
00:04:00.640Well, maybe we let our legislators deal with this kind of thing. And one of the conclusions by one of the essayists in the book is that they clearly don't have any confidence in our individual governments, somehow or other, they've got to come up with the ideas and somehow or other, we're going to sign on with them.
00:04:23.280So this is one of the aspects, the arrogance and some of the disrespect that you see coming out of the World Economic Forum.
00:04:31.280Yeah, well, the digital ideas is another one of those things. It's an ambition right in the wide open that can, I mean, it makes sense to some of us. I open my wallet, I've got my social insurance card, I've got my health care piece of paper one in Alberta, it's falling apart, I have my driver's license.
00:04:44.280Boy, it'd be convenient to pack it all on one card, certainly be convenient to me, but it'd also be convenient to somebody who wants to track and control everything I do, whether it's accessing health care, driving, entering a business or purchasing something.
00:04:57.280And I don't want somebody else in control of all that.
00:05:00.280That's right. And your health records and everything else and all of a sudden, you're an open book to somebody who's running the system like this.
00:05:08.280At least at the moment, it's spread out. It'd be hard to track down if somebody wanted to.
00:05:15.280So no, this is fairly typical, though, of how the ideas that are coming out.
00:05:21.280Let me just recapitulate some of those ideas for you.
00:05:25.280One is, the ideas come from three main publications from Klaus Schwab himself.
00:05:35.280Of course, he's the instigator, he's the ideas man, he is the chief organizer behind the World Economic Forum.
00:05:41.280He's been at it since 1971, which is when he published his first book, a very obscure book whose title I can't even remember.
00:05:48.280But its main idea is must not be forgotten, which is stakeholder capitalism.
00:05:54.280He's been pushing stakeholder capitalism now since 1971.
00:06:01.280It's no longer should corporations be answerable merely to their shareholders, but to the whole of civil society.
00:06:10.280Another idea, another book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution came out in 2016.
00:06:17.280There he talks about, gives a big history of all the different revolutions that have taken place, what the internet brought, what the different transportation systems that have totally turned our world.
00:06:35.280I mean, these resets have come along on a regular basis, it has to be said, and he's got this, he's certainly got that side of things right.
00:06:43.280Every time a major new transformative technology comes along, it changes everything.
00:06:48.280So the internal combustion engine is what I'm thinking of here, and of course, marry that to Texas oil gushers, and you've got a totally different continent, right?
00:06:59.280From highway systems and suburbs and three car garages and bridges and what have you to accommodate what arose out of this technology.
00:07:12.280So yes, so the Fourth Industrial Revolution, he's saying now, what we're looking, can look forward to, is the fact that we have new technologies, physical, digital, and biological, which will impact all our disciplines and even challenge ideas about what it means to be human.
00:07:37.280I think about that. Well, you marry biological and physical and digital.
00:07:44.280Yeah, it's, I mean, yesterday's conspiracies are becoming today's realities.
00:07:50.280Absolutely. In fact, it's taking about five months these days.
00:07:54.280Like the stakeholder governance. Well, what that is, is ESG, which has been, in my view, just polluting corporate governance around the world, particularly in the West.
00:08:06.280Where they've, they've lost track of what your corporation was even set up for in the first place. You're not social justice warriors. You're, you should be providing a product or service and trying to generate a profit for your shareholders, nothing else.
00:08:18.280I mean, while staying within the law, of course.
00:08:20.280Yes, of course. And you leave it with your shareholders to have their own conscience about how things should work and how they should operate.
00:08:27.280And because they're the ones who are plugged in and they're the ones who have confidence in your company to begin with, and they're carrying the cost.
00:08:34.280And once you bring other people in, they come in with no risk. And yet they have loud, they've given all these, given a megaphone with which to, to, to shout out their, their latest grievance.
00:08:49.280I beg your pardon. And the shareholder has to pay for this. I don't think so. Now a conscientious shareholder will say, well, yes, I'm listening to this. So I will act, you know, like my own governments do.
00:09:02.280I will act and, and see that something's done about this, but it's vastly different from giving power to outsiders, I think.
00:09:08.280Yeah, well, and we're, so we're seeing that influence coming in. I mean, one of the big areas that kind of exposed it in Canada was, well, Schwab bragged about influencing the Trudeau cabinet and Trudeau himself.
00:09:20.280And Justin Trudeau did let slip in a sense. He, I mean, again, he's not a deep thinker. He might just be parroting a line he read somewhere, but he spoke to a great reset.
00:09:29.280And actually when we have a prime minister who, I guess you could say could be as easily influenced as prime minister Trudeau.
00:09:35.280I guess I don't want people like Schwab whispering in his ear.
00:09:38.280Well, indeed, but you know what? You don't even have to have Schwab whispering in his ear.
00:09:44.280Although in his case, it probably has taken place. Don't forget.
00:09:47.280We've got people like Trudeau and, and Krista Freeland who were, who were actual graduates of their young leaders forum.
00:09:56.280In fact, Klaus Schwab himself has boasted to the effect that, that half of Trudeau's cabinet has been a young World Economic Forum leader.
00:10:07.280So these are people who have not, okay, they're, they're acting independently.
00:10:11.280They have ideas of their own, but they all have been exposed to and have been part of this great thing called the World Economic Forum.
00:10:21.280And so has Mark Carney, incidentally, both Christopher Freeland and Mark Carney have been either are or have been members of the board of trustees.
00:10:31.280I'm not sure about Mark Carney. There's a little bit, it's not clear on the net exactly what his relationship is now with the World Economic Forum.
00:10:42.280So no, you don't even have to have anybody whispering in anybody's ears.
00:10:47.280You just have these people who have had the privilege to, you know, hobnob with the world's elite and just think what kind of influence that by itself would have.
00:10:57.280Not only that, not only do they not have to whisper in the ears, they have gone so far as to provide the language themselves.
00:11:05.280So where do words terms like the great reset come from? Where do terms like build back better come from?
00:11:13.280Where do terms, you know, you know, that this is such a great opportunity?
00:11:18.280How many times have we heard here in this country about what an opportunity, the pandemic, the pandemic gave us so that we could reset and get on with, you know, completely new, you know, building back better.
00:11:32.280That's that was that's those are phrases straight from the World Economic Forum.
00:11:37.280So they're providing the language sounds great.
00:11:40.280You know, it sounds utopian. It sounds noble.
00:11:43.280It sounds it's it's you know, why would anybody complain?
00:11:48.280And of course, they're absolutely they're counting on this.
00:11:52.280So I mean, one of the big cautionary lessons I've I learned from this or rather this this book again confirmed for me is how important it is.
00:12:01.280That we monitored how language is used because it can be manipulated.
00:12:12.280And that's just, you know, when it's well intentioned, when it isn't well intentioned, when you get name calling, when you get which again has its own set of metrics, you know, name calling for which at a minimum is usually about people who can't make their case.
00:12:29.280But increasingly it is being used to shut down debate and worse than that, to apologize your political opponents.
00:12:39.280And what happens when you apologize your political opponents is you no longer have to pay them any attention, give them any respect, even encourage other people not to pay them attention or give them any respect.
00:12:51.280So this is very, very disturbing how language is being used.
00:13:15.280You want, I mean, that gives a motivation to actually make a crisis worse because the theory behind it is that if we can drag the world down to a crisis level, it gives us the opportunity to tear down their systems and rebuild them.
00:13:28.280But there's going to be a whole lot of suffering in that transition to this socialist utopia.
00:13:33.280And that's a pretty horrible way to get to it.
00:13:37.280And there's no question we are going through a major transition.
00:13:41.280But the point is, and one actually, some of the very good essays in the book talk about how you can't design these things.
00:13:50.280I mean, the problem with any kind of grand schemes is you're looking at grand catastrophes.
00:13:58.280That's always what's happened, in fact, with, I mean, with Marxist attempts at Marxist-style governments, whether Stalin or Mao or Hitler.
00:14:08.280I mean, it's a, you know, they don't work.
00:14:13.280And it's not just that there aren't any useful ideas within them.
00:14:17.280It's just that once you start to impose huge grand plans, you're just asking, begging for some little thing to be wrong.
00:14:25.280And then all of a sudden the whole thing is thrown off gear.
00:14:28.280So, no, it's, and the same thing is true with innovation.
00:14:34.280You know, for all the stimulus that our bankers, central bankers, and our governments can supply in terms of monetary and fiscal stimulus, there is no substitute.
00:14:44.280They can't, you know, they can take the horse to water, but they can't make them drink.
00:15:10.280So the book is chalk a block with, you know, useful stuff like, hey, how did the, how did the, the, the big industrial revolution and that really fashioned the rest of fashion the world for, for the better part of the centuries out of England?
00:15:56.280And you don't do it with grand schemes.
00:15:59.280You do it by liberating people to do their best and to come up with their great ideas.
00:16:05.280We're seeing, I won't go far down that rabbit hole, but Atlas Shrug seems to be playing itself out in a lot of ways almost with what was a fictional concept of a world where lobbying is more effective than innovation.
00:16:17.280And, you know, you want to get them with the government rather than serve the people.
00:16:21.280But I mean, we're seeing something is, are we maybe hitting a tipping point?
00:16:25.280Like have they maybe pushed it too far?
00:16:27.280We're starting to see that sort of discussion.
00:16:29.280We're seeing it from Pierre Polyev though.
00:16:31.280I felt he felt perhaps pressured into it.
00:16:33.280The premier Smith is definitely genuine when she's saying, I have no use for these guys and I want them to have no part of what we are doing whatsoever.
00:16:41.280Maybe we're going to see more of that.
00:16:43.280Yes, hopefully, but I think, I think there's a fine line to navigate here.
00:16:49.280The vast majority of, for instance, Albertans, I would assume are still ordinary Albertans are ordinary Canadians.
00:16:57.280And we, all of us are, are not really up to speed on this stuff.
00:17:02.280And most of us are worried about climate change and we are looking for solutions.
00:17:06.280And anybody who comes along with some utopian idea, some, some, you know, some, some, some brand sounding idea, no matter how woolly it is ideologically, we're, we're inclined to buy into it.
00:18:05.280And I mean, so long as we do it in a reasonable way and get education.
00:18:11.280I mean, the, the politics of explanation is never wasted.
00:18:14.280Explain, explain, explain, you know, get out there and say, this is in a, in a, in a, in a measured way and in a way that people, and in plain language.
00:18:43.280Well, I can, I can speak about this with some authority because I, I spent five years of my life studying the technological transition cycle, which is really what the great reset is all about.
00:18:54.280And what's interesting is that, that, that the World Economic Forum has absolutely right.
00:19:00.280We are moving into a great reset where they have it dead wrong is all the things that are, that are discussed in, in, in, in the book against the great reset.
00:19:09.280You cannot prescribe, you cannot go out there and make things happen.
00:19:12.280You cannot, you have to get the problems out there and then let, let human ingenuity at the local level, find the answers.
00:19:23.280And, and furthermore at the local level, you mitigate risk.
00:20:14.280I think this is my third or fourth that I've done on generally on the subject of, of, of the vaccine mandates on, and now on, on, on the, uh, great reset.
00:20:52.280Feed wheat is steady at $4.65, and corn is unchanged at $4.76 per tonne.
00:20:57.280In the milling wheat markets, December Minneapolis futures are lower a quarter cent at $9.58 and a quarter,
00:21:03.280with local hard red spring bid for November movement at $12 per bushel.
00:21:07.280In the oil seeds, nearby canola futures slipped $8.20 at $8.68.10 per tonne, with delivered values per November movement at $19.25 per bushel.
00:21:16.280In the pulse markets, nearby red lentil prices are steady at $0.33.5 per pound,
00:21:21.280and yellow peas are trading at $13 per bushel.
00:21:24.280And in the cattle markets, December live cattle are lower $0.10 at $1.53.48 per hundred weight.
00:21:30.280For more information on pricing or fob farm options, give me a call here at Marketplace 403-394-1711.
00:21:37.280Accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.
00:21:40.280Alberta Prosperity Project is dedicated to protecting Alberta's world-class energy sector and has invited Alex Epstein,
00:21:47.280American author of the bestselling new book, Fossil Future, to speak on the importance of fossil fuels and the vital role they play in our economy.
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