The “Great Reset” has become the biggest political buzzword of our time. It’s a term that World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab has put forward as a proposal for restructuring society in the aftermath of the Wuhan virus outbreak.
The Great Reset generally involves Big business and government working in tandem to usher in a new technocratic era that erodes individual freedoms, breaks down civil society, and lays the groundwork for a rentier society where people are effectively serfs.
Few people have stood up against the Great Reset, out of fear of being labeled as “conspiracy theorists.” One of the select individuals who have criticized this new political experiment is former Texas congressman Ron Paul. In a piece titled “The ‘Great Reset’ Is About Expanding Government Power And Suppressing Liberty”, Paul argued that the “Great Reset is about expanding government power and suppressing liberty worldwide.”
Schwab’s overall vision is basically for business and government to set up a public-private partnership. Paul added that “Big business would exercise its government-granted monopoly powers to maximize value for “stakeholders,” instead of shareholders. Stakeholders include the government, international organizations, the business itself, and ‘civil society.’”
Despite all the talk about equity and fighting structural inequality, bureaucrats and politicians will ultimately decide who gets government loot and which businesses will be allowed to operate under this new paradigm.
Furthermore, the Great Reset paints a picture that belongs in a dystopian cyberpunk novel. Technocratic elites will likely be pushing for an expanded surveillance state, which Paul believes will be used for “real-time tracking.” In addition, Paul speculates that Great Reset programs “will also mandate that people receive digital certificates in order to travel and even technology implanted in their bodies to monitor them.”
The type of thought control some of the most avid boosters of the Great Reset are proposing could have major implications for civil liberties. With cutting art technology, companies and the state will have the ability to police and modify the behavior of people deemed to be threats to the current political order. Paul explained what Schwab and his cronies might have in mind for freedom-loving Americans:
Included in Schwab’s proposal for surveillance is his idea to use brain scans and nanotechnology to predict, and if necessary, prevent, individuals’ future behavior. This means that anyone whose brain is “scanned” could have his Second Amendment and other rights violated because a government bureaucrat determines the individual is going to commit a crime. The system of tracking and monitoring could be used to silence those expressing “dangerous” political views, such as that the Great Reset violates our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
On the spending front, one of the Great Reset’s fixtures is the Universal Basic Income. This measure could be used in a manner that fosters dependency and compliance with the managerial state. The income won’t be so universal for individuals holding views that butt heads with the managerial orthodoxy, as they could be potentially barred from receiving funds for simply exercising political dissent. More importantly, the cost of a UBI would be enormous and put it on the path to bankruptcy and potential inflation once the Federal Reserve starts monetizing the debt.
Paul ultimately believes that the Great Reset is destined for economic failure due to the flimsy economic premises it’s based on. Paul went into this in further detail:
The Great Reset ultimately will fail for the same reason all other attempts by government to control the market fail. As Ludwig von Mises showed, government interference in the marketplace distorts the price system. Prices are how information about the value of goods and services related to other goods and services is conveyed to market actors. Government interference in the marketplace disturbs the signals sent by prices, leading to an oversupply of certain goods and services and an undersupply of others.
The devastating lockdowns pursued by state governments across the nation have brought about mass unemployment, shut down small businesses, and generated social unrest. Given the massive economic dislocations, big business is consolidating at unprecedented rates and creating the conditions for an unholy alliance with it and the managerial state. Big Tech has already shown that it’s willing to act as a privatized arm of the state, or at the very least, carry out many aspects of the state’s agenda.
A course correction is long overdue. If we’re going to have a reset, it’s one that has us going back to a Gilded Age style political economy where individuals and voluntary associations are free from the federal government breathing over their necks, while local and state level units would focus on managing their own affairs.
Let us have a reset from the managerial state’s chicanery.
