The grand vision is that eventually all of our everyday products (including clothes, furniture, lighting, household appliances and means of transport), should be rented rather than owned. This is said to increase the incentive for making products more durable instead of today’s planned obsolescence and price wars creating substandard products.
Already, more and more of our entertainment is consumed as streaming services, and software sold as a subscription rather than as an app that you buy and own (which is not something every user prefers).
In a futuristic article for the World Economic Forum, with the remarkable title “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better
”,
Danish parliamentarian Ida Auken describes a future where the sharing economy and the circular economy have gradually developed into a total relinquishing of private property rights. Even homes are shared and used for other purposes, e.g., as offices, when occupants are not home.
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The vision presupposes universal digital connection, and that the items leased and reused are included in the IoT. The goal is for us all to become “one happy family
”,
sharing everything. The downside is that there is no longer any privacy or private property.
In some cases, it can certainly be more practical to rent than to buy, e.g., a tuxedo, ski equipment, machines, or vehicles, needed only for a specific occasion; or to share seldomly used power tools or garden equipment with one’s neighbours. But forced collectivisation and proletarisation has already been tried, with well-known horrendous results.
Green Climate Fund
The Green Climate Fund (GCF), in Incheon, South Korea was established in 2010 within the framework of the UNFCCC. It has set a goal of raising $100 billion per year by 2020 from UN member states for supporting projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing countries using “thematic funding windows” – in other words, another wealth redistribution scheme with vague guidelines, no transparency, and no oversight, opening up for endless possibilities of fraud and corruption at taxpayer expense.
T
echnocracy
The sustainable utopia as described by, among others, the World Economic Forum, entails a total transformation of society, replacing it with a new social and economic system; a synthesis between socialism and capitalism.
The future demands that we reinvent capitalism for the sake of the planet and the life it sustains. (Stephen Heintz, CEO,
Annual Report 2016,
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
)
This coincides with the vision outlined by W. Warren Wagar at the World Future Society Conference 1980, where Technocracy was presented as the final phase of capitalism – a merging of State Bureaucracy and Big Business, forming a monolith that can act as a single unit (see Chapter 5). This was one of the goals of the early futurists, initially using social justice as means towards this end, now the environment and climate change.
In his books,
Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse Of Global Transformation
(2015) and
Technocracy: The Hard Road to World Order
(2018), Patrick M. Wood has mapped out in detail the development of the Technocratic movement and its impact on world politics and Sustainable Development – to a large degree through the Trilateral Commission.
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It started with Technical Alliance, formed in 1918 by a group of scientists, engineers, economists, and educators, to study the effects of technology on our social structure. Out of this grew Technocracy Inc., a research and educational organization founded by Howard Scott at Columbia University in 1933, advocating economic technocracy.
There are several forms and degrees of technocracy:
As Patrick Wood has brought to public attention, Technocracy Inc. still exists and the agenda is the same; transforming the current economic system into a new global economic technocracy.
This also relates to the dream of Trilaterals David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, of a New International Economic Order.
The post-industrial society is becoming a ‘technetronic’ society: a society that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially, and economically by the impact of technology and electronics—particularly in the area of computers and communications. (Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Between Two Age
s, 1970)
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Once the technocratic system is in place, it is absolute and cannot be revoked by popular vote. In such a world organism, man is only a sub-component, subordinate to the collective, guided by common values and governed by the central planning of a small scientific elite. According to proponents, this is the road to the lost paradise.
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In 2008, a New Age version of technocracy was spread to a wider alternative audience through the film
Zeitgeist Addendum
, based on Jacques Fresco's visionary Venus Project.
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The World Economic Forum's version of this high-tech Utopia is, however, devoid of any New Age imagery or terminology and focuses solely on outlining the promising technology, science, politics, and business opportunities.
A full political–economic technocracy does not yet exist, but China is rapidly moving ever closer to becoming an autocratic political technocracy, while leading international organisations and corporations use Agenda 2030 as a tool for implementing softer versions of economic technocracy in the West.
Social Credits
Social credits
is a top-down ranking
system, developed and tested in China, where c
itizens and companies are scored according to reliability, credit-worthiness, law-abiding, and behaviour.
Scoring can be done manually (in rural villages) or automatically (in cities). The most advanced system includes ubiquitous camera surveillance with AI facial recognition software
for scoring of each individual in real time, based on behaviour, consumption patterns, lifestyle, opinions, friends, and activity in social media. Plans were to have the system fully developed by 2020.
Social credits
was developed
from Sesame Credits, created by Ant Financial Services Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba (whose founder, Jack Ma, is a board member of World Economic Forum) to rank their customers.
In the extensive surveillance system now being implemented in China, all human activity is to be monitored and rated in real time. Conscientiousness, loyalty, obedience, and “wise” lifestyle choices are rewarded with VIP service on hotels and airports, favourable loans,
prime schools, and attractive jobs and housing. Criminal offences, criticising the regime, and undesirable personal choices are punished with slower internet connection, travel bans and difficulties getting home loans or access to certain products and services. Once blacklisted (e.g. for displeasing authorities or being associated with a low-score person; for minor misdemeanours such as littering or jaywalking; or even
by mistake
) it is not possible to appeal. No warning is given. One only notices the blacklisting through tangible restrictions in everyday life – or by being named and shamed on public billboards.
Even though the system is far from complete and, as of 2019, “only” tested in about ten cities, more than ten million Chinese people have already met restrictions such as not being able to buy a train or plain ticket.
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Stockholm 2040
Meanwhile in the West, official authorities and media are working hard at normalising surveillance as a natural part of modern life.
In September 2018, the City of Stockholm published an astonishing brochure (also available online in English) depicting a vision of city life in the year 2040 featuring, among other things, special offline “tin foil hat" zones for citizens to meet and interact without supervision, facial recognition, virtual reality and digitalised commercials.
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“The tin foil hat has become a natural meeting place and I like to be completely offline for a while.” (‘Elin Zakholy, analogian’, fictitious citizen 2040)
Other features in this 2040 vision are “firefly” mini drones to light up parks, streets and squares. They can “follow you when you are out jogging or taking the dog for a walk in the woods at night” and “supply communication, data, and navigation services”.
“I use my personal Firefly to film, document and broadcast my life in realtime on social media.” (fictitious citizen of Stockholm 2040)
The All-Seeing Eye
In
Global Risks Report
(2019), the World Economic Forum actually warns that a digital panopticon with an “all-seeing eye" (AI) is now being implemented.
Facial recognition, gait analysis, digital assistants, affective computing, microchipping, digital lip reading, fingerprint sensors—as these and other technologies proliferate, we move into a world in which everything about us is captured, stored and subjected to artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. (Global Risks Report)
Examples include Moscow, which in 2017 had a total of 160,000 surveillance cameras at the entrances to about 95 percent of the city's residential buildings and other buildings. When the system is upgraded with facial recognition software, it can automatically compare with law enforcement databases and identify wanted and suspects.
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This surveillance state is not decades into the future but is already being gradually introduced. Camera drones for both civilians and corporations are suddenly an everyday thing, even if there are some legal restrictions on how they may be used. Smart TVs and the AI function in cell phones and computers may both watch, listen and share content with a third party – which can be used by law enforcement and other government authorities.
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Sometimes, though, there are limits to what citizens will accept. In August 2019, the City of Norrköping in Sweden announced that they had purchased bracelets with bluetooth tracking chips, to be tested on 12–15 children in a kindergarten. The bracelets would alert staff if children attempted to move outside the kindergarten area (known as
geofencing
). This pilot project was said to be part of the Department of Education’s efforts to “increase school attendance” (thus, not just
preschoolers
).
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The announcement elicited intense reactions from both the public, the political opposition, and the Swedish Data Protection Authority, leading to the project being stopped
.
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Information Control
RBF Chief Executive Stephen Heintz was concerned that the new technology with its high-speed information flow could be manipulated and abused to achieve political goals. This had become apparent during the U.S. presidential election in November 2016 when real estate magnate and reality show star Donald Trump was elected President. This elicited concerned debates on filter bubbles, fake news, foreign influence and people’s behavior online. The information shared in social media often lacked “a basic standard of accuracy and documentation
”,
according to Heintz. Trump’s nationalist and populist rhetoric required counter-measures. A more effective control of the information flow would be required and people helped to distinguish between “deliberate manipulation, unfounded lies, lively debate, and evidence-based knowledge.”
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By 2019, popular resistance to the technocratic–globalist agenda had grown into a real obstacle for the Rockefeller sphere. In their report
Democracies Under Stress
, the Trilateral Commission expressed concern that social media was dividing people and making developed democracies turning inward. Their new approach was to initiate “domestic dialogues.”
Trilateral Commission domestic dialogues will bring together “coastal elites” and individuals from rural and other areas. The two-day dialogues, taking place in different locations in the heart of the North American continent, will each be organized around a concrete issue—such as urban renewal, manufacturing, or various aspects of the energy industry.
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In April 2019, a Rockefeller Family sponsored event was held at the Columbia Journalism School, with the stated objective of changing how climate change is reported in the media. Panels included Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Chris Hayes, Kyle Pope, and AOC, discussing topic such as how to sell the New Green Deal to the public. Shockingly, many panelists agreed that the journalistic aim of
neutrality
(which Klein calls “fetish for centrism”) needed to be replaced by journalistic
activism
in order to save the planet!
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