#112 The Great Reset

The World Economic Forum is attempting “The Great Reset”, after learning of problems with the US capitalist economy.  Christians believe in two: When Christ came, and when He returns. In-between them, we do the best we can in a fallen world.

 

In Christianity, we believe in two Great Resets: The first was when Jesus came to earth, Emmanuel: God with us.  We believe Jesus was fully man and fully God.  The second reset will be when Christ returns.  In the “in-between times,” we seek gradual improvements in the condition of humanity, knowing we can’t find perfection.  “Utopian plans are not in our wheelhouse,” is one of the defining statements of the book I wrote with Sergiy Saydometov, titled Biblical Economic Policy.  

The specific phrase “Great Reset” came into general circulation over a decade ago, with the publication of a 2010 book, The Great Reset, by American urban studies scholar Richard Florida.  

Four years after Florida’s book was published, at the 2014 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab declared: “What we want to do in Davos this year . . . is to push the reset button”—and that’s what is now meant by the term “The Great Reset.”

What do they want?  Well, they intend to “reset” the economy so it serves everyone better.  Hmmm, let’s look back at history.  Has anyone tried that before?  Lenin promised that with Communism, the nation’s wealth would serve the proletariat, instead of the bourgeois.  That didn’t work out so well.  Hugo Chavez was praised by US loud mouths Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore when he captured the industries of Venezuela, promising the wealth of the nation would serve the people, not the owners of the corporations. 

Oh, by the way, one of the guys attending the Davos Economic Forum many years ago asked himself why we didn’t have a Christian version, so he started it.  I’m a member of the Christian Economic Forum.  Here’s the website.  

 

Markets Work

In my introductory Econ lecture this week, I covered some of Gregory Mankiw’s Ten Principles of Economics.  One of them is “Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity.”  I tell my DBU students, “When you hear the “beep” at the check-out counter at Wal-Mart, someone just voted.  And if it’s Hunt’s Ketchup in the 24-ounce bottle at $2.35, they voted for the brand, the size and the price.  The next time you shop, if it’s Heinz ketchup in the 36-ounce bottle for $3.35, it will be because your fellow shoppers voted for it.  Ok, I realize it’s not a totally free market, and fallen people are continually trying to put their thumb on the scale, but generally, in free markets, the products and services we receive are determined by almost a perfect democratic vote of your fellow consumers.  The Davos crowd doesn’t like free markets.  They don’t like it when “everyone votes” because the outcome is inequality.  I deal with inequality in podcast #6 titled Jesus Distributed the Gospel Unequally.

So the Great Reset, as defined by the Davos bunch, is a power play.  Those of us who live in relatively free-market economies have voted for the production and distribution of services in a very democratic way.  But they don’t like the outcome of the vote. 

In a very good article in Imprimis, published by Hillsdale College, Michael Rectenwald states, “While approved corporations are not necessarily monopolies, the tendency of the Great Reset is toward monopolization—vesting as much control over production and distributi...