Klaus Schwab Worried About China? — Yuval Harari — The WEF Guru — Abandon the World Economic Forum (WEF) - [11-27-2022]

Direct from BOOM Finance and Economics at the links below - Note - BOOM uses American English whereas AP uses British English.

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THIS WEEK’S EDITORIAL

KLAUS SCHWAB WORRIED ABOUT CHINA?  In last week’s editorial on Sunday 20th November, BOOM suggested to China that it was important for its economic future to “abandon all connections to the World Economic Forum“. This appears to have generated a response from Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the WEF.

Just 5 days later, in an interview, Klaus Schwab described China as a role model for other nations. Schwab said he respected China’s “tremendous” achievements at modernizing its economy over the last 40 years. However, he was reported as qualifying those statements by saying that he thinks each country should make its own decisions about what system it wants to adapt. “I think we should be very careful in imposing systems. But the Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries,” Schwab said.

Schwab was clearly attempting to strengthen the WEF’s relationship with China. However, at the same time, he wanted to distance himself from appearing to impose his “Great Reset” on independent nations. It was damage control in full swing. It looked like he is very concerned about the Chinese abandoning the WEF and was taking evasive action desperately trying to keep China under his control, while at the same time, distancing himself from that external control.

However, BOOM expects that China will see through this tactic.

BOOM’s advice to China is unchanged. China’s future cannot be improved by any external controls coming from the transhumanist, technocratic, unelected, corporatist World Economic Forum. Corporatism is anathema to the spirit of communism.

YUVAL HARARI — A WEF GURU:  Yuval Harari is a “guru” of the World Economic Forum — the WEF — the group of transhumanist, corporate technocrats who meet in Davos Switzerland each year to decide what direction the world should take in regard to whatever matter they choose to discuss.

They believe that corporations and their selected leaders should rule the world rather than elected representatives of the people. They clearly wish to bypass sovereign, national governments, both democratic and communist. The gathering is led by the mysterious Klaus Schwab and many billionaires are invited to fly in on their private jets. Workers are not invited.

Harari is becoming influential and is listened to by many people anxious for thought leadership. Thus, it is important for BOOM readers to carefully consider what he is saying.

He is especially known as a promoter of “inorganic life” which seems to mean robots or the robotization of humans. That is transhumanism — the merging of humans and machines, guided by the philosophy that humans themselves are nothing but machines, some being “useful” and others “useless eaters”.

Three months ago, in early August, he gave an interview which is available on YouTube and is titled “Yuval Noah Harari Reveals the Real Dangers Ahead: The TED Interview”.

In the interview, Harari warns the world of what may be coming and starts by referring to the plural “We” whereby he represents himself as the (unelected) spokesman for the entire human race. That is hubris writ large at the very outset of his many explanations.

He launches into a generalization of human history by describing all of 20th century history (and possibly all of human history) as either “Fascist” which he defines as nationalist in essence or “Communist” which he defines as driven by class warfare. He then explains that there is a third narrative (and only a third narrative, no more) which he describes as “Liberal” — the struggle between freedom and tyranny where “peaceful cooperation” is the desired outcome.

He goes on to declare that “Fascism ended with the end of the Second World War” and “Communism ended in 1990 when the Cold War ended”. He announces that at the end of the 20th century “only one story was left, Liberalism”. But then he goes on to state that the narrative of Liberalism is now dead and that “We now have no narrative”, implying that “We” are lost.

The interviewer tries to correct him about his particular definition of “Liberal” by pointing out that the world is much more complex than Harari thinks. However, Harari does not seem inclined to entertain a discussion of complexity.

The interviewer surrenders and begins to agree because he is not willing to engage in any real debate with his guest.

Harari seems inexperienced in the real world of endeavour. For him, it seems there are no conspiracies, no power plays from psychopathic personalities, no personal dramas, no accidents of history; just communally inclusive narratives. He prefers simple, generalized explanations.

Thus, there is the ever present danger that false assumptions may generate false conclusions. He has probably never had a real job of consequence outside academia. Perhaps he has never had to carry personal responsibility for any other person or persons such as an airline pilot might experience, a family doctor, a surgeon or even a father or mother of children?

Harari’s views appear to reflect a world view that is heavily US-centric. For example, he says “when people in the US feel miserable, the entire world shakes”. Again, a deeply simplistic view of a world that contains 8 Billion people. In fact, he says that most of those 8 Billion people are “no longer part of the story of the future” because they don’t listen to the big ideas of “smart people who are planning an amazing future” to be found in listening to TED talks.

He then says “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population” (presumably because they are not listening to the “smart people” on TED talks) “because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology“. “This technology will make it possible to replace the people“.

To his credit, he also says that raising families, looking after children and building communities are very important jobs and “possibly the most important jobs of all”. He wishes that society would recognize that more and pay for those jobs. BOOM agrees wholeheartedly. However, he soon falls back into the deductive thought that human beings may be useful only if they are being exploited either by surrendering their personal data to an Artificial Intelligence or by being “hacked”.

Indeed, “hacking humans” seems to excite him greatly, saying that “it will be worth Trillions and Trillions of Dollars …. not just Billions”. He defines this as “understanding human beings better than they can understand themselves” so that “their choices can be predicted better than they can predict and allowing them to be manipulated in their emotions. Being able to make decisions for them.”

In response to this dystopian view of the future, the interviewer becomes rather easily seduced into imagining that such a world “may not be all bad”.

Harari then moves on to discuss “so what’s new?” and he answers that question by stating “the borderline is now the skin”. He says “the future is about going under your skin and looking directly at what is happening in your brain“. “This can be done by invading your body with electrodes” or by using clever external technologies to observe you more closely such as very clever cameras.

“This can move towards full blown Totalitarianism as in regimes like North Korea, forcing every citizen to wear a biometric bracelet”. “The private world inside your mind is about to disappear in a world of surveillance capitalism”. He acknowledges the potential danger in this. However, as soon as he does that, he wants to consider that this could be a good thing where a tracked citizen simply surrenders to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and takes the advice given.

He then imagines a life where we just follow the AI algorithms as passive beings. His vision is a world without pain and anger. Soma? He explains that if he can take 60-day holidays where he can just meditate so why shouldn’t everyone do the same? He actually admits that his mind is “such a crazy world — full of crazy thoughts and emotions” and that he doesn’t want anyone else to understand how crazy his mind really is.

The interviewer then changes the discussion to very special human qualities that an AI computer can never achieve such as “sentience, love, joy and creativity”. However, Harari turns immediately to the “threats confronting us such as climate change, nuclear war, and economic uncertainty”. He says we need “global cooperation” ….. “to solve these problems”. He does not discuss how local solutions built on local cooperation can do the same. For him, Globalism is the only option.

His mind appears to be a jumble of transhumanist solutions, technocracy, autocracy, useless humans and the hacking of human brains. But overwhelmingly, it is technology and a US-centric view which will deliver the power he seems to envision. He does not deeply consider the dangers of technology.

The interviewer tries to get him to consider human rights but, again, he quickly changes the subject.

In his world, past and future, there appears to be no caring, no compassion, no real self, no money, no finance, no violence, no individual value, no privacy, no secrecy, no psychopathy, no evil, no good, no peace, no crime, no mistakes, no conspiracy, no alternative view. He is intent on convincing the world with his determined vision of the future; a future in which he sees control coming from a position of centralized global power.

He seems to discount facts and logic that lead to probabilistic conclusions and prefers narratives, fiction and mythologies. But he says he “definitely believes in scientific objectivity and truth”.

Towards the end of the interview, perhaps because he feels guilty for proposing a world of disturbing dystopia, he makes an appeal for people not to feel fear, anger and hatred because those emotions are harmful. And, believe it or not, he tries to warn us against “people who are trying to hack your brain, your mind”.

The writer Eric Blair, otherwise known as George Orwell was once asked to imagine the future — “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever“. Harari does not seem to know how to prevent such a possible world from becoming reality.

He admits he couldn’t focus his attention for 10 seconds on his own breathing when he was in Oxford, convinced that he was very clever, doing his PhD. He says he was shocked to learn that “he had no idea of what is happening in my mind”. Thus, he took up meditation to achieve calm though mindlessness. “There is such a crazy world inside my mind”. “I don’t want anybody to access my mind. If so, they could manipulate me”…. “in ways that were never possible before in history”. “My power over my mind is so limited, my power over it is so limited, it would be very, very dangerous to allow outsiders access to it.”

Yuval Harari’s speeches appear devoid of the most important elements of life on Earth — human capacity for calmness, knowledge, compassion, humility, respect, empathy, commitment. If such words are ever mentioned by Harari, they are included as quick afterthoughts and not as central considerations.

The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes once said —

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

ABANDON THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM:  BOOM strongly recommends all governments of all sovereign nations to abandon all influence from the World Economic Forum. We need leaders with experience, thoughtfulness, wisdom, compassion, breadth of vision and calmness. Those attributes are not to be found in Davos.

In economics, things work until they don’t.  Until next week.  Make your own conclusions, do your own research.  BOOM does not offer investment advice.

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Most economists are unaware of this and even ignore the banking & finance sectors in their econometric models.  EMAIL: gerry{at}boomfinanceandeconomics.com

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