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Resisting the Future the Global Elite Have Planned for Us
The Global Elite…represented by the folks who fly to Davos and Climate Change conferences on fleets of private jets… have plans for the world. These plans were summarized as “You will own nothing and be happy.” And also, eat bugs. For some reason, forcing “the poors” (i.e., anyone who does not have a private jet to fly to Davos) to eat bugs is a really big deal to the Global Elite. However, the people who would be the subject of their global governance schemes are less enthusiastic, and this is very vexing to the global elite.
“The good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more… the bad news is that the majority of people trusted that elite less…”
Yes, the more people become aware that the future the Global Elite have in mind for us is one in which we are crammed into urban pods and fed bugs (while they keep their private jets, mansions in the Hamptons, and Wagyu steaks), the less enthused the common people are about these plans. And this is a problem for them.
This lady quoted above (I don’t know who she is) is verifying something that’s been said for a long time; the trans-national global elite considers themselves above the citizens of their respective countries. If billionaires from the USA, Europe, the Middle East, and China get in a room together; they are all going to be quite chummy. Concerns about differences in ideology, in human rights, seem a lot less important when you’re discussing whether to trade up from a Gulfstream G700 to an ACJ350.
Sort of related, the Smithsonian Museum has a new exhibit on their version of the future. It aligns with what the World Economic Forum envisions and it’s so depressing Morrissey would have written at least eight songs about it back in the eighties. Whereas seventy years or so ago, visions of the future meant flying cars, robot workers, and colonies on the moon, the Smithsonian vision of the future is one in which cars are illegal, we make our own clothes, and live in buildings constructed from garbage.
And the Global Elite wonder why we’re not enthusiastic about their plans for us.
Published in General
California, anyone?
If you have so little influence on policy why are you rich while people in the Global South with similar skill sets to yours are poor?
Have you heard of the World Bank and the IMF? These two institutions have immense influence over how people in the Global South live, and they are both basically run by the (democratically elected) Govt of the USA. Their impact is not always malign – often some good comes from them – but if you’re talking about power over others, there it is.
Similarly consider countries that the US (democratically elected) Govt sanctions. That has a huge impact on the lives (and deaths) of ordinary people in those countries. But if you voted for a US Govt that does that, you voted for that impact. How is that not power?
Is that really a serious question?
If so, then let me answer with a question: if you think that government policy is a prime indicator of wealth,and that being elite means you get to choose policy, then why don’t the elites in the Global South choose better policies? Or do you think that it’s more a matter of Western elites stealing from and oppressing Global Southern poor? Or that there are no Global Southern elites?
In any event, modern conservatives believe that the values and policies which helped build our domestic wealth have been hollowed out and we’re in danger of losing our wealth and prosperity if it’s not too late already. Wo’s hollowed things out? Establishment/elites.
Basically run by the US? I don’t believe that any more than I believe the US basically runs the WHO, WEF, or UN.
Also, I don’t vote for every single thing the US does. That’s not how it works. In fact, as a long time Ricochet member you of all people should know that there’s so much that conservatives specifically do not like and want to be different. We vote that way but you know what? The elites who claim to represent those views unfailingly fail to advance the conservative agenda for at least the last several decades with few exceptions.
Which sanctions? Which countries?
The accumulation and investment of capital has something to do with it.
Let’s use India as an example. India first encountered Britain in the form of the East India Company. The Company (always capitalised) was formed in the sixteen hundreds, but really started feeling its oats about a hundred years later, with a key event being the defeat of Mughal Armies in Eastern India and as a consequence being granted the right to collect taxes in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.
The Company spent two thirds of the taxes they collected on maintaining order (sepoys etc.) and themselves. One third of the taxes they collected they spent on buying goods for export, which they then sold at pretty much 100% profit. This could only work because India has a huge population and exports were a relatively small portion of the total economy, but it basically siphoned off the economic surplus through taxes so it couldn’t be invested to increase productivity and prosperity in India itself.
Unsurprisingly this ended badly, and the British Govt took over running India after 1857. Of course HMG didn’t engage in anything as vulgar as trade, but they continued siphoning off the economic surplus by setting aside a third of the taxes they collected in India for ‘expenditure in Britain’. If someone overseas wanted to import an Indian product (for example jute) they’d give their money to the British Govt in London. The Govt would then issue them a ‘promisary note’ for the equivalent in Indian Rupees. They’d send this to their supplier, who would go to a designated Govt Institution in India, which would issue them the amount in Indian Rupees. Sourced, of course, from the one third of taxes set aside for Expenditure in Britain.
Similarly with the railways. These were funded by Govt Bonds – which promised a return that was far higher than most other investment opportunities on the market. When the railways (of course) failed to turn such a profit the Govt Bonds were honoured by (obviously) raising taxes in India. It should be no surprise to you that building a mile of railway in India was costed at approximately five times the amount that building a mile of railway in the United States during the same period. With a guaranteed return that’s a great investment opportunity!
Neat tricks, right? But it also meant that for two centuries the country’s surplus was exported and invested elsewhere (including North America). That does have something to do with growth rates and prosperity, even today. And it’s not unreasonable to see that in terms of plebes and elites.
Like Davos.
Well Iraq, for example. Discussed in this article, from which:
I won’t argue with your telling of the history or the assessment of the excess and where it went because I don’t know enough to quibble or disagree. So all that stipulated.
Now that the surplus isn’t being siphoned off to the benefit of Global Western nations, shouldn’t growth have skyrocketed? Shouldn’t conditions have improved for the average person?
Assuming it was siphoned off and sent to North America (again, stipulating just for sake of argument), why do you say that redounded to the benefit of the average North American?
Wait, let’s go back to the argument you started with. You’re trying to connect VTK’s specific prosperity to influence and you’re then trying to connect that influence to causing some other group to be poor. I don’t have to defend or agree with every sanction to disagree with your propositions. Not to mention your example really doesn’t contend with whether sanctions are just or ultimately successful – which is a form of not contending with the real cause of that suffering being their leaders and culture!
How about answering me with an answer?
We all live in one economy. Global North and South are integrated, they aren’t separate and independent of each other. There are some tarriff and non-tarriff bariers, but they are holding back the tide rather than isolating different oceans.
You can certainly argue this, but I believe conservatives possibly overstate the role of personal values and understate (ignore) how policies include those which deal with the Global South – in the past and in the present.
And those policies have changed, I’ll grant you that: producers in the Global North now have to compete more directly with producers in the Global South to sell more and more items that require the same level of technology and skill to make. It doesn’t seem to be about values – though perhaps reintroducing barriers to trade in order to preserve local jobs and economies is a values issue. Conservatives seem to have a hard time articulating that, or mobilising around that politically.
It’s unanswerable because the question is flawed at the level of its premises. So I asked questions to try to get at the premises.
Fair enough. And the interaction between Britain and India was/is so long that it can’t really be dumbed down to one single narrative.
They did Ed. India’s growth rate during the Raj averaged about 1.2% per annum. Shortly after independence, and despite the semi-socialist policies that the Govt adopted, it went up to about 3.5% and stayed there for decades. Not good enough, I will say, and we didn’t really experience transformational growth until the 1980s when the economy was opened up.
Any investment which grows business and increases employment opportunities is good for a place, don’t you think?
Integrated perhaps, yet independent still. Otherwise why do some succeed and others fail? It’s not lack of natural resources. So the answer must be either bad individual choices or injustice from outside. Or is it that there is no inside or outside, there is just one economy in which some win at the expense of others?
I don’t believe that there is One Economy. Local, regional, national, continental, global economies. Some a subset of others, all interactive, sure.
If you live in a democracy, and the Govt you voted into power (as a group, so none of this ‘not my President’ nonsense) engages in actions that significantly affect people across the globe, don’t you think you have more influence than, say, the Iraqis in this situation? Why is this controversial?
We aren’t talking about whether causing hunger in another country to achieve a military goal is just or not, we’re talking about the power to do so.
Not just personal values, but cultural values too. Otherwise which policies are disadvantaging the Global South to the benefit of the Global North? Trade agreements? Draining physical and human capital to Chiona, Mexico, South America, Southeast Asia, India instead of employing people in the Global North in those capacities?
And what does that have to do with VTK’s individual prosperity and whether or not he’s influential or elite?
Ok so you agree with me then that those countries have made poor internal policy decisions since that surplus stopped being exported forcibly? Otherwise I don’t understand what your argument is.
I don’t know what we’re talking about anymore. As a supposedly participatory political system, I suppose I have 1/350,000,000 portion of indirect influence over policy. If a person is living in a non-participatory political system then they have 0 divided by whatever the population is. Their proportion of influence works out to exactly 0% in that case, but while my proportion isn’t equal to zero it is effectively zero.
So I can concentrate my influence in the form of political party but that doesn’t increase MY influence to rival that of the elites previously mentioned.
Not all Global South people live ion non-participatory systems though. SO they have influence just like I do. The ones that don’t have the ultimate influence – civil unrest.
I think increasingly we are one economy, though you could persuade me differently. But we are a tiered economy, hence Global North and Global South.
As borders become less relevant to the passage of goods, services and capital (but not people) these differences start to mean something different from before. You can define an economy to mean a labour market, but even that’s sketchy.
Example: there are municipalities in the UK where if you call up to ask about your water bill (or whatever) the call is answered and dealt with by a call centre in some municipality in India. Is that part of the Indian economy? Definitely? Is it part of the UK economy? Arguably yes, since the rate payers are getting that service at a more competitive price, which means they pay less for it.
And that’s just an in your face example – where it’s very apparent to the caller. If you’re talking cars and car parts it gets dizzying.
Right, so the Global South is getting richer at the expense of the Global North. Or there’s trade. Increasingly, the solid infrastructure is located elsewhere, leaving the north to consume goods produced in the south and paid for with accumulated capital and debt reaching a point of unsustainability.
If you cook eggs in a skillet then why do panda bears have long toenails is just about as much sense. The amount of relative prosperity I have now in no way will prevent my hypothetical grand children from being forced to live in small urban pods and eat bugs if that’s what the Davos crowd wills. But the grandchildren of the Bush family will still have their sprawling manse in Kennebunkport.
One thing you can say is zero sum economics where non-westerners are poor because westerners are rich is either fantasy or excuse-making. Wealth has increased globally by orders of magnitude over time. But, rather than imitating what works (free enterprise in a law abiding society), we can complain about how some have it so much better than others. The politics of envy.
Honestly, as technology and skills spread and as countries become more capable of good governance and securing their own economic surplus the terms will become less and less meaningful. Places like Somalia or Libya get more screentime, but the Global South is increasingly more like India or Indonesia or even China. (All problematic.) These places are where most of the GS lives.
Right now there’s a downward pressure on wages in the GN because of the GS and an upward pressure on wages in the GS because of the GN. At some point it’ll level out. Whether that’s good for people in the GN or not, you tell me.
Mixed, imho. Look at NAFTA and Mexico.
How is physical and human capital being drained to these countries? Investment is going to these countries instead of the Global North because they’re cheaper and provide a better return. That demonstrates a cultural value held by investers (in the GN), yes, and if you want to contest that I think it’s arguable.
Just by being a US citizen you’re part of a global elite. You can vote and influence who forms your Government. Your Government is deeply influential across the globe.
I have no idea what VTK does, but take someone that works at McDonalds in Chicago and someone that works at McDonald’s in Mumbai. Same exact job, requiring the same exact skills, but a vast difference in pay, going by what that paycheck can buy – not because Chicago is extremely well paid, but because Chicago is paid in US Dollars and they’re buying the same sort of China produced stuff as Mumbai is. That’s a built in advantage to working in an economy with a strong currency.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say McDonald’s Chicago is more prosperous than McDonald’s Mumbai. Is that a matter of personal values? I don’t think so.
Shoes, clothing, textiles, electronics, just about everything is actually made elsewhere. Those factories not repurposed, but gone. Wat is also gone (eventually) is employment opportunities, tax base, technical knowledge, ancillary products and services (which follows the main engine to wherever it goes). So American engineers don’t get drained from one and go to another, they cease to exist in one and are created domestically in the other and then sometimes that surplus imported back to the US to compete with whatever laborers or technical workers/professionals remain.
Which country hasn’t made some bad decisions? We’re all human.
I think this begins to address the fight we are now having in America. Considering the arguments @zafar has been making, Zafar should be joining us. The Founders of the American Republic could see the developments we are facing today. The Constitution was written anticipating many of the types of political situations that non-representative government would present and has been represented to the world and largely accepted as the best governing approach ever. What are these developments? The original Constitution has several amendments that have diminished its effectiveness in serving the people and increased the power of the federal government. That power increase was crucial in rendering the nation’s public education approach into the hands of the elite powers that be. Now we face cheating in elections and efforts to pass unconstitutional legislation to further the elite power and join the global government proponents. Zafar should acknowledge that 90% or more of western people in what are referred to as first world countries are in the class of people being oppressed by the global elites.
Yes, that’s partly true. So if you think India should just suck it up and not make Britain feel ‘uncomfortable’ about two centuries of colonialism why wail about Davos Elites and being made to eat worms? How is that different and not the politics of envy?
Edited to add:
How is saying colonialism made India poor and Britain rich different from saying Davos makes Elites rich and Plebes poor?
GN still seems pretty rich, but it’s a mistake imho to posit this as a matter of values rather than policies, and to ignore policies that affect how the GN deals with the GS. That is unrealistic – or to put it another way, a matter of feelings rather than facts.
Sure, I think that’s true as well. I guess I responded because people seem so invested in seeing themselves as oppressed by others but very closed to the idea that they are also part of systems where they are oppressive to other people and groups. Both can be true.
Wrt eating insects:
https://www.thailandunique.com/edible-insects-bugs
Apparently you can buy Tom Yum flavoured crickets!