ARE CBDCs ALL PART OF THE GREAT RESET PLAN?
By now, most of us have heard of the great reset driven by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. Some are all for it, thinking it’s time to build a fairer society and press the reset button on capitalism. Many are ambivalent towards the idea or think it’s just a conspiracy theory.
Well, according to Klaus and the WEF, they have us covered with a master plan. Even better, it has the backing of some pretty high-profile organizations like the IMF and the European Central Bank. Here's the big question. Do these global elites really have our best interests at heart?
It could well be that the so-called utopian idea of a great reset is not all that it appears to be, and possibly be the greatest assault on our freedom we've ever seen. We see news headlines about the Central Banks conducting research with issuing their own Digital Currencies.
Is it too farfetched to suggest that the global Elites will use the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs.pdf) to gain even more control over us all? Are we entering into a dystopian Orwellian reality? How can we keep our entrepreneurial spirit and financial freedom from being oppressed or even confiscated?
Haven’t Heard Of The Great Reset Yet?
It's a vision for how the world should progress going forward by the World Economic Forum. The WEF is a non-governmental organization claiming to have the sole mission of “improving the state of the World by engaging business, political academic and other leaders in society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.” So you could say it's kind of like a super-exclusive private member's club for the world's leaders and titans of industry.
Klaus Schwab, the founder of WEF, has been planning and writing about the concept of the great reset over many years. The last 18 months have been a very stressful time for us all as we’ve been on the receiving end of a pandemic. While we’ve been hoarding supplies, staying at home, wondering when and if things will ever get back to normal, Klaus was busy sharing his thoughts on this great reset and telling everyone how the pandemic represented a rare opportunity to reset the world.
Three Main Components
According to Klaus, there are three main components to his great reset idea. The first is all about steering the market towards fairer outcomes and creating a stakeholder economy. He also acknowledges that governments are incentivized to do that due to astronomical levels of public debt. He then states that this could all be done via wealth, taxes, encouraging green energy, and disrupting things like trade and competition. In other words, it would seem that he wants wealth distribution through taxation and regulation.
Also, the wording is questionable; steering the market seems to indicate a top-down approach as if we mere peasants need to be told exactly what to do by our superiors. Now I'm a staunch advocate for equal opportunity; however, “equality in outcomes” sounds very similar to communism.
Klaus’s second essential component for the great reset is all about how large-scale spending programs by governments represent a significant opportunity for progress. However, instead of plowing that money into the old system, he argues that the government should just break the wheel instead and should be done by creating an entirely new system, which he believes is more equitable and sustainable in the long run.
Klaus tells us that environmental, social, and governance metrics should be prioritized, and that does sound all well and good, warm and fuzzy at face value. However, the government doesn't own anything. Isn’t it true that anything the government has is taken from the private sector in the form of taxes?
Also, what’s being called for is essentially enforcing global standards, which task forces would impose. Controlling every aspect of our lives and being regulated to the hilt, which is not something we are used to or want, would you agree?
The last piece of the great reset puzzle is essentially about leveraging technology to further the public good. Could Klaus and his cohorts be planning to go along the same path as China's controversial social credit system? That was introduced under the guise of promoting public good by penalizing those that the government had deemed to have misbehaved, and with their extensive surveillance systems, they can track you and know your every move daily.
We could all be forgiven if we look at all the components that supposedly make up the great reset, and only see a new system of control for a global Elite. We are all painfully aware that the current system has been very efficient at enslaving much of humanity through debt. However, the emerging technology of the fourth industrial revolution may mean that this arguable new system is very conceivable.
But here is the all-important question. Do you really think that central banks and governments would tell us about the failings of the old system; and then say, let's transition us all over to a new system, where we will get greater control over you?
This is where the old saying comes in, and it is very appropriate right now, and that is, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” That crisis is covid-19, which is a very convenient excuse to crush the old system and bring in this new one.
Shaping Economic Recovery
At the end of Klaus Schwab’s article on the great reset, a detailed graphic with seven key points makes up this great reset. These cover every sector and can be interpreted in many different ways. He mentions designing social contracts, skills, and jobs, which begs the question, can we as an individual reject this, or will it be enforced on all of us carte blanche.
Then there’s the shaping of the economic recovery, which sounds good; however, here's another question; who precisely is shaping it?
Is it a coincidence that numerous central banks are looking into implementing CBDCs, with some already running pilot projects of their own form of Central Bank Digital Currencies? CBDCs are a new Financial infrastructure and provide the perfect method for an entirely new and upgraded form of financial control.
Klaus also speaks of the fourth Industrial Revolution, an embellished way of saying technological progress and involves things like machine learning, big data, the internet of things, and blockchain. Also, pervasive mobile supercomputing, intelligent robots, self-driving cars, neuro-technological brain enhancements, and genetic editing are becoming a reality.
Equality Of Outcomes
The key takeaway from this is that Klaus and his buddies are looking to move towards “equality of outcomes,” which sets off alarm bells given the World Economic Forum tweeted out that “by 2030 you will own nothing and you will be happy.”
Also, would the equality of outcomes remove the incentive for individual effort and aspirations or reward personal risk? Systemic inequality exists, but humanitarian tech companies are already looking to reduce this in emerging countries as well as in first-world cultures and further the individual’s financial freedom and autonomy.
The top-down approach of the great reset gives rise to the danger of populists and demagogues using that rhetoric as a disguise for their own goals. Think Hugo Chavez and Maduro of Venezuela.
Food For Thought
The desire to improve our own position in life and that of our family motivates productivity and progress. We all want a better life for our children, right? The pursuit of this goal is what drives us. During this pandemic, we've already seen lower productivity levels in the economy seen through GDP falling off a cliff at the end of 2020.
We’ve had stimulus payouts to help pay the rent and put food on the table, but at what point does it trap people in stagnation? Suppose we have businesses that are zombie companies and only operating due to government handouts. In that case, that comes at the price of future taxation or inflation and most likely a lower standard of living.
These stimulus measures cannot continue to be handed out ad infinitum. If they do, we will have severe side-effects like pervasive inflation. The idea of regulating people seems soul-destroying. Isn't it better for people to pursue economic productivity by and for themselves? Indeed it's more efficient to incentivize entrepreneurs to take risks to satisfy the needs and wants of society.
Those who reject the idea of entrepreneurial freedom may say entrepreneurs are self-indulgent and greedy; we need some government officials to control them for the greater good of society.
But hey, is political self-interest really more benevolent than economic self-interest? I tend to think the only thing that will happen from this great reset is a lot more cronyism, more power for corporations, and significantly less personal freedom, for the people.
What's the driving force behind the great reset in 2020?
We know the financial state of governments from 2020 with its crippling National debts is due to covid-driven public spending. All those stimulus checks need to be paid for somehow.
Those sky-high national debt levels are pretty worrisome for politicians, and so it follows that they meet with Klaus and his gang at the World Economic Forum. In fact, the WEF has been meeting with governments for decades. Chances are the governments know Klaus pretty well, and they all want to help each other out of the mess they’re in. (a form of cronyism)
The great reset is looking like nothing more than a blueprint for global elites to seize more control through increased taxation, regulation, and power. The tax has already been rising in the US without anyone really noticing it. Also, stealth taxation has been around for a while now, but it's not enough to cover the unsustainable government debt levels.
So what now? Are CBDCs A Thing?
About 70% of the world's central banks are researching Central Bank Digital Currencies. There’s the Fed, the Chinese, Sweden, Cambodia, Brazil, and many others in various stages of launching their own CBDCs.
CBDCs powered by blockchain tech are indeed more efficient than traditional payment systems. They also make it easier to deploy monetary policy and allow central banks to cut out commercial banks. These could be considered quite valid reasons to roll out and use a CBDC.
Scenarios That Could Become A Reality
However, the technology of a CBDC does leave a Central bank plenty of questionable options. One option is to ban cash and force everyone in the country to use the central bank's digital currency instead. Possibly, the Central Bank might decide that every time a transaction happens, there is economic activity that needs to be taxed.
So there could be logistic rules integrated, requiring that if there is a CBDC transaction made, 20% of that transaction automatically goes to the government in tax. Essentially, tax collection could be made very efficient through automation.
CBDCs also give governments the power to literally freeze, make your money vanish, or redistribute your cash in a way they think is fair at the push of a button. So if anyone steps out of line or does something that the government doesn't like, they could make life very difficult.
Control of money like this could also mean that a government could tell where you've been by looking at your spending habits and even punish you for using your own money for something the government deems inappropriate.
The big problem faced by World governments this year is the vast amounts of national debt that have racked up throughout the pandemic. And guess what? CBDCs can solve that issue too.
So how could they get rid of that debt?
They could opt for a stagflation strategy by inflating it away and paying that debt back using currency with a significantly reduced purchasing power. That seems like the way the government will go when you consider the other option is defaulting.
But here's the problem. A government with crippling national debt, resorts to negative interest rates as seen by Japan and Europe. Even crazy amounts of quantitative easing have not been enough to get inflation to the level that's needed to reduce the debt load.
Basically, to get the insane levels of inflation needed to reduce government debt, you need to increase the M2 money supply and increase the velocity of money. After all, if you increase the number of times money is transacted, you can collect more tax.
So, how could they do that?
How about introducing Universal Basic Income? (UBI) The brilliant thing about this strategy is that you can avoid archaic methods like quantitative easing, which simply inflate assets like the stock market and don’t necessarily increase inflation in the real economy.
CBDCs would enable governments to roll out UBI very quickly and increase that money supply. They could also ban cash, and a government might say, everyone gets $2,000 in UBI every month, and that's payable in the government's CBDC. All you need to do is download the official government app, and if you don't spend it in a fixed time frame, then the money vanishes into thin air.
That means no one can save their money, and they're incentivized to spend it fast. That's good news for increasing the velocity of money to get that extra tax income. The really genius thing about CBDCs is that governments don't need to issue debt to create money. If you can allocate money without issuing debt, then guess what? Your debt never goes up.
Then if they really want to boost inflation, they can shrink the supply of goods and services in an economy. A way of doing that is deglobalization and is where nations turn inward for fear of being dependent on other countries, thereby protecting their domestic economic sovereignty.
Another thing a government can do is pay people more money in UBI than they would earn by going to work, which creates a disincentive to work that produces goods and services, therefore shrinking the supply. This creates a situation where you have an increased money supply, chasing a smaller amount of goods and services, which leads to more inflation.
So, how do you deglobalize and raise unemployment without it being political suicide? Well, the government seems to have been doing just that throughout the pandemic. So yes, it looks very much like Klaus Schwab and his mates have not wasted this pandemic. They're pushing the concept of the great reset to reduce government debt and gain more control over populations through the rollout of CBDCs.
I pray these scenarios and what they could mean for us all never come to fruition. However, what is certain is the global wealth inequality, and covid-induced government debt loads are a real problem, with the massive rollout of CBDCs on the horizon.
It’s scary how global elites could leverage this new tool to serve their own agendas and impose a whole new system of financial control upon us. If all this becomes a reality, would you consider this to be the biggest assault on our freedom and privacy?
Guy at Coin Bureau shares his thoughts on CBDCs
Time To Prepare
However, all is not lost, and we do have a way to protect ourselves against this threat. It’s called decentralized cryptocurrency, and the rival future tech giants are doing everything to preserve and ensure we sustain our freedom and financial sovereignty. To keep entrepreneurialism alive and continue to prosper and grow in this increasingly uncertain world.
The social media and tech oligarchs have been under scrutiny, and the landscape is precarious at best. Things are slowly changing, and the lifesavers of livelihoods are about to rise up in what I consider as Divine timing with technology that leaves the established platforms way behind the eight ball.
So hold your crypto, learn more about the state of the economy and how cryptocurrency can be the solution, and prepare by joining us at Markethive, the complete ecosystem for entrepreneurs. It is a sanctuary that gives you autonomy, privacy, freedom, and the ability to accumulate and earn a sovereign income.
Markethive is a blockchain-driven, decentralized social media, inbound marketing, broadcasting network that has somewhat turned inward, protecting its sovereignty and the sovereignty of the people in the culture, but still able to reach out to the whole world aligning with the many other platforms. It is the way of the future in working and socializing online, especially if you want to protect yourself from the global elites.
Special thanks to Guy at Coin Bureau for his insights
Written by Deb Williams
Chief Editor and writer for Markethive.com, the social, market, broadcasting network. An avid supporter of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. I thrive on progress and champion freedom of speech and sovereignty. I embrace "Change" with a passion, and my purpose in life is to enlighten people en masse, accept and move forward with enthusiasm.
Bruce Jacobs