The “Great Reset”: A Blueprint for Destroying Freedom, Innovation, and Prosperity
by J.B. Shurk
- Notice that no nation has managed merely to print money and tax its citizens on the path to prosperity. Real wealth cannot simply be conjured from thin air. There must be recognized value in what a nation and its citizens possess.
- More than any other source for national wealth, however, one towers above the rest: innovation. The ability of the human mind to create something new and valuable provides society with endless wealth creation…. Innovation is the magic sauce for generating wealth.
- Humans struggling merely to survive in the world do not waste time, labor, or resources on projects that offer no prospect for future reward. Humans working as servants to the state under centrally controlled economies have no incentive to innovate. Only when private ownership and personal liberty combine can human innovation flourish. Freedom is the secret ingredient to innovation’s magic sauce for increasing wealth.
- A country whose institutions do not respect property rights or whose customs do not value freedom will remain a barren desert for human innovation. In this way, nations have a great incentive to liberalize over time. Should they not, they quickly become financially and militarily vulnerable to more innovative and wealthier nations. Observing this simple truth, classical liberals have always understood free markets as the gateway to human emancipation. Economic self-interest, in other words, ultimately leads to expansive human rights and liberties across the planet.
- Nothing about Western politicians’ embrace of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” or “Build Back Better” paradigms protects property rights or liberty in the slightest. The WEF’s agenda promotes radically anti-liberal programs… [that] will smother human innovation by first depriving Westerners of their freedoms.
- Wealthy free nations are a threat to the WEF’s New World Order. If censorship must be embraced to control the “narrative,” then so be it. If citizens must be denied freedom of movement under the guise of a “health emergency,” no big deal. If private bank accounts must be seized to intimidate protesters, then such threats are the price for ensuring compliance. In this way, the WEF’s plans for a controlled economy intentionally reverse centuries of liberal progress. Political leaders today are dragging the West into the past.
- First, individual liberties will continue disappearing. Then, the greatest economic engine of all, innovation, will dry up. Finally, wealth will return solely to the hands of a small “ruling class” minority. This is the future the World Economic Forum hails as “progress.” It is not. It is a recipe for human bondage.
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How do nations become wealthy? Many are blessed with abundant natural resources. Others conquer foreign lands. Some specialize in unique trade skills and crafts. Timber, mining, fishing, sugar, rum, narcotics, cotton, silk, agriculture, conquest, human slavery, manufacturing, oil, industry, banking, and so on — depending on the century and the region, nations have attained tremendous wealth in myriad ways. Notice that no nation has managed merely to print money and tax its citizens on the path to prosperity. Real wealth cannot simply be conjured from thin air. There must be recognized value in what a nation and its citizens possess.
More than any other source for national wealth, however, one towers above the rest: innovation. The ability of the human mind to create something new and valuable provides society with endless wealth creation. Unlike central bank quantitative easing and other monetary tools (or tricks?), the brain really is a money-printing machine. Whether an innovator alters existing farming, mining, or manufacturing techniques to make production cheaper and more efficient, or an inventor designs something entirely unique, value that did not exist yesterday materializes the next. Innovation is the magic sauce for generating wealth.
If innovation produces wealth, why aren’t all nations wealthy? Because too many nations fail to value innovators or encourage innovation. Without fundamental property rights, strong social institutions, and a dependable legal system, potential inventors have few incentives to build anything new. Humans struggling merely to survive in the world do not waste time, labor, or resources on projects that offer no prospect for future reward. Humans working as servants to the state under centrally controlled economies have no incentive to innovate. Only when private ownership and personal liberty combine can human innovation flourish. Freedom is the secret ingredient to innovation’s magic sauce for increasing wealth.
When economists crunch gross domestic product numbers to see whether a nation’s economy is rising or sinking, a measure of innovation becomes quantifiable. Embedded within that number is something that encapsulates human ingenuity, personal freedom, and property ownership. In this way, economic innovation directly reflects the human condition at any point in time. It provides a measurement of a nation’s freedom.
Now “liberalism” as it is classically understood — as a political philosophy embracing natural rights, limited government, free markets, political and religious freedoms, and freedom of speech, all promoted and protected by an impartial and just rule of law — has always grasped this fundamental truth. Liberty and property rights spawn creativity. Where both are soundly valued, great writers, artists, and inventors produce novelties that would not otherwise exist. It is why medieval Florence birthed at once both modern-day banking and the European Renaissance. The personal freedom to create, build, invest, and own property generates tremendous innovation and national wealth.
Conversely, when today’s central planners argue for socialized control over markets and the substitution of “collective rights” in place of “individual rights” while calling their agenda “progressive liberalism,” they co-opt and subvert liberalism’s historic meaning.
From this recognition that a nation’s freedom directly affects a nation’s wealth arises an even more remarkable truth: any nation that fails to embrace and protect human liberty will be the poorer for it. A country whose institutions do not respect property rights or whose customs do not value freedom will remain a barren desert for human innovation. In this way, nations have a great incentive to liberalize over time. Should they not, they quickly become financially and militarily vulnerable to more innovative and wealthier nations. Observing this simple truth, classical liberals have always understood free markets as the gateway to human emancipation. Economic self-interest, in other words, ultimately leads to expansive human rights and liberties across the planet.
Now with all that as a bit of rudimentary background, how is it that today we have entities such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) pushing for a radical “Great Reset” of Western society that promises to handcuff free markets with economic regulation while concentrating power into the hands of a small international coalition of central economic planners — most notably their own? How could promising a future where people will “own nothing and be happy” possibly be conducive to a free and productive society — or even a happy one? How can a future in which all energy is controlled by international governing bodies and multinational corporations possibly provide individuals with the institutional building blocks for endless innovation? How can farmers sustain larger and more prosperous populations when Western governments continue to stifle agricultural production through regulation and eminent domain?
The questions answer themselves. The WEF’s agenda promotes radically anti-liberal programs such as the use of artificial intelligence to censor dissent, regulate free speech, and even erase ideas from the Internet. Its repressive efforts to control all hydrocarbon energy and cattle and crop farm production will smother human innovation by first depriving Westerners of their ability to create, invent, and grow food. Its policies betray millennia of Western civilizational advancement by replacing respect for individual choice and free will with top-down management of human activity through the blunt instruments of force and coercion. Its motivations are indisputably anti-human at their core because each individual human life is treated as nothing more than a cog or input that can be manipulated as part of a centrally-controlled social machine. When Westerners are reduced to ones and zeroes that are sorted and shifted by the WEF’s social programming codes for a “better future,” builders obey but no longer create.
Whereas personal liberty has unleashed the human mind and generated tremendous Western prosperity, the World Economic Forum’s push for a centrally controlled economic system will crush rights, stifle creativity, and mass-produce poverty and servitude. Its proponents, in fact, seem mostly committed to using a combination of pandemic, famine, and fear to centralize dominance for themselves.
In order to persuade Westerners to give up more and make do with less, the WEF and its globalist allies promise Westerners a future Utopia. As with every similar lie ever told to justify the extraordinary acquisition of power, though, they will fail to deliver. No society, after all, was ever promised more than in Stalin’s 1936 Constitution of the USSR — or subsequently treated more abysmally. Despite its claims to the contrary, the WEF’s mission directives intentionally reverse Western trends toward greater human freedom, social mobility, and more broadly obtainable wealth — or what, in another era, would have been rightly regarded as true, liberal progress.
Although the WEF and its sister organizations claim to be “saving the planet,” their efforts seem primarily an ignoble design to control the planet. “Clean” energy, after all, is controlled energy; and the more that energy is controlled by centralized governments, the more completely once-free markets become centrally controlled. If every potential entrepreneur must first receive permission to use electricity before producing anything new, then no entrepreneur can thrive without the central authorities’ blessing. If all manufacturing is viewed as a “threat to the planet,” then no independent upstart can innovate or build wealth without first seeking and obtaining government approval. If consumers are forbidden from buying anything unless it is first pre-approved, then free markets are transformed into controlled markets.
Taking this trend to its logical yet communist conclusion, private property becomes antithetical to the state’s goals. We already see the ominous subversion of private ownership today with so-called ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) standards used to strong-arm industry goals and manipulate free markets. Because control over information makes control over markets more manageable, the more economic uncertainty that results from market manipulation, the more censorship we’ll continue to see. Recently, even a senior economist who correctly stated that the American economy had entered into a recession found his research “fact checked” and “corrected” by the U.S. government’s friends at Facebook. Where free markets are under attack, free speech is inevitably under attack, too. The individual blessings of liberalism are not easily dissected from the body politic without inevitably rendering liberalism’s death, as a whole.
The issue today may be “climate change” or COVID-19 or “sustainable food supplies,” but the stated issue never seems anything more than a public relations campaign for fooling the masses. It always appears to be merely a disposable excuse designed to seduce Westerners into handing a small cabal of “elites” power and control over everyone else. Convincing mankind to believe that free markets will inevitably lead to some kind of apocalypse increasingly looks like the only policy goal that matters. It may well be the most diabolical trick those with power have ever played against those with no power at all. Fear is used expertly as a torturer’s tool to convince Westerners to forsake willingly their own freedom. The innocent mantra whispered into their ears is simple: Trust us, humanity, we will save you. The implication, however, is far more sinister: For your own good, you must be made to enjoy your new chains.
Notice that for the World Economic Forum to succeed in its mission to control all human activity, it must first destroy the sovereignty of nation states. Why? Because, as noted above, liberal nations that embrace freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and free market entrepreneurship foster innovation and great wealth. Any nation not encumbered by the WEF’s market proscriptions will most likely continue to prosper, while those shackled to the “Great Reset” will most likely languish. This is why Western politicians have worked so hard together to push their “Build Back Better” proposals irrespective of the wishes of any one nation’s voting citizens.
Wealthy free nations are a threat to the WEF’s New World Order. If censorship must be embraced to control the “narrative,” then so be it. If citizens must be denied freedom of movement under the guise of a “health emergency,” no big deal. If private bank accounts must be seized to intimidate protesters, then such threats are the price for ensuring compliance. In this way, the WEF’s plans for a controlled economy intentionally reverse centuries of liberal progress. Political leaders today are dragging the West into the past.
First, individual liberties will continue disappearing. Then, the greatest economic engine of all, innovation, will dry up. Finally, wealth will return solely to the hands of a small “ruling class” minority. This is the future the World Economic Forum hails as “progress.” It is not. It is a recipe for human bondage.
JB Shurk writes about politics and society.
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33 Reader Comments
I think it’s about time we doxed all members of the WEF and protested outside their houses. Their faces must be printed everywhere, we have to make life intolerable for them.
Total corruption in government for the pursuit of power will always trump innovation and anything else. Welcome to Biden’s America.
The current English (not German!) Wikipedia article describes all you need to know about Klaus Schwab, founder of WEF and Young Global Leaders. His organization , while operating under maximum non-transparency, is accused of aiming at a silent Coup d’Etat, networking with prominent YGL members like Germany’s Angela Merkel, French Emanuel Macron, Finland’s Sanna Marin, Tony Blair, Justin Trudeau, Jean-Claude Juncker, Jose Manuel Barroso, Jacinca Ardern, Sebastian Kurz and others.
Some of Germany’s most incompetent (but sometimes extremely left) politicians like current foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, Ska Keller are part of it too.
It seems as if the WEF attempts to lobby its alumni into global leadership positions to drive a sort of eco-socialist agenda where a few selected not only control all assets but make all decisions on behalf of the world’s population – for their own benefit, that is – and where all contenders are repressed.
Thank you for a beautifully written article. America still has raw materials and strong people to build a dynamic positive future. But we must guard the precious inner will that is the breath of innovation and realization of imagined improvements. The most horrible albatross this liberal sinkhole has brought is the false privilege of injuring others because of their opinions. As long as another’s ideas are not feeding action that harms, thought cannot be censored and the worth of others cannot be devalued by the cancel and shame culture which false victories and petty power needs brought to life. The abused has no heart to believe in personal dreams. The diminished will battered by bullies has a harsh road to climb. Society must lift up all people.
How do you break into the circle of self-hate and loathing promoted by bogus educational institutions? The philosophy of the Frankfurt school is psychobabble and yet it seduced academia by taking over the administration of seats of higher learning. Tenure trumps tenacity. Western countries outsourced labour to communism and we luxuriate in comfort that is founded on slave labour. How the Roman empire rotted from within. Rome never generated innovation just better techniques in conquest and subjugation. In those days administration of the subjected failed due to long lines of communication allowing the opposition to consolidate. The WEF has this covered using powerful tools. Perhaps the only bright spot is that Russia and China appear to have broken away from globalism. Sorry Ukraine, but you guys may not be suffering in vain. The Democrats are an insidious force of evil. In the 50’s black communities were more robust, the civil rights movement inadvertently allowed the welfare state to build the new plantations in inner city areas. Segregation again, it was OK for a few blacks to excel in sports not so good when they escaped into the ranks of the professions. CRT is merely the new face of segregation. America needs to stop allowing the pregnant and the young to use drugs and must fortify all its citizens to be individualist and yet respectful towards each other and their beliefs. Abortion is a medical issue and living with one’s own conscience. Surrendering to control by groupthink is like drowning, in the end it feels good

“Rome never generated innovation…”
Where does one begin? Rome was huge BECAUSE of innovation.
If you really think China and Russia have broken away from globalism then you have not been paying attention.
It’s no surprise that one group of socialist communist bullies is beginning to fail the EU. Now we have another set of the same in the WEF hoping to rise to their zenith. It seems the main obstacle to there plan is the US which was and still is the land of free enterprise which is the main reason Biden and cabal want to turn it into the USSR pronto, as the writer has explained.
Has any nation found the path to prosperity by plutocratic policies of tax cuts for the wealthy while giving service cuts to everybody else?
The WEF members’ collectively arrogant cupidity and pursuit of increased individual wealth through tyrannical control will reduce the total wealth they seek, increase conflict between and among them, and the extent and severity of the harm they inflict everyone else.
What we are witnessing is a craftily drafted expression of Stalinist dialectical materialism. Without the reference to Stalin. A state global, in which the political caste lives above the law and can only be brought down by other party members who eventually rest power in one man. But what they are in fact building is a tower of babel and one in which their attempts to “redistribute the Wealth”, remember Obama’s favorite expression for economics?
The world’s resources are waning and while they exploit the lack of they are merely hastening it along without the responsibility or accountability to do better. Move Forward? Build Back Better? I’m sure Hitler and Stalin made the same promises.
So much has been written exposing impending eco-dictatorship of the Great Reset, the tyranny of the progressive Left, the single-mindedness and fanaticism of the ‘woke’ generation, the triumph of the long march through the institutions etc. – forums such as this are full of knowing, insightful, shrewd below-the-line comments from people who feel deeply opposed to the way the world is changing. Fine words and strong opinions – yet nothing halts the progress of the sociopolitical juggernaut.
‘Go woke, go broke’ may be true in a few well-publiicised cases. The woke may encounter popular resistance here and there but while they are losing a battle or two they are most certainly winning the war. Unless those toxic woke progressives are opposed by a serious organised movement (ie. a movement which a majority of people can get behind) their total victory is inevitable. If our generation lacks the strength and determination to produce such a movement then the future we get will be the future we deserve.
Still, at least we’ll be able tell our grandchildren that in the war-against-woke we made some very stern comments on social media!
WEF. The greatest enemy of all mankind.

Evil PERSONIFIED.
The worst of it all is that these nameless faceless people whose obsessive need for accumulation is hoarding, just as we view it on the TV shows. Whether they hoard money or power or both, they cannot be dissuaded. Every day we see our republic disintegrate is merely a symptom of this sickness. Eventually, they’ll kill us all. If that’s hyperbole, check your local library under history of buried civilizations, for details.
The Earth is a finite resource as are its people. As in the past civilizations the poor uneducated are the fodder of the powerful. The mistake is believing that there is time and resources to build more wealth while climate change and the fragile nature of the World economy point to a coming disaster. Mankind and its pundits once again use the poor as labour to build wealth. No more. We have run out of time. The result will be wars trying to get the remaining wealth for themselves. Man has not made social progress to lift the disadvantaged out of their misery.
These high minded ideas of how to grow ourselves out of our continued misery is yet again a cruel reminder that whatever we do is bound to fail because the complexity is beyond our simple minds.
So forge ahead into the inevitable destruction of not just man but all of Nature and the bountiful Earth which will take thousands of years to recover, if ever.
WEF is nothing but a crowd of Marxists wanting world wide Communism to prevail. Each and every one of our political leaders in collaboration with BigTech and many Globalist organisations have allowed this to happen in collaboration with the UN and its functional entities. Donald Trump and the Republican party know this however the Marxists are trying every trick available to prevent a correction and our freedoms being restored. Each and every globalist organisation and their owners have benefitted from slave labour and in process accumulated vast amounts of wealth along with their Marxist friends around the world principally the CCP and this has enabled their pursuit of the Great Reset. This has taken several decades but right under our noses without us being aware.
In short, the World Economic Forum menaces all our best values.
I have always admired Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” as a powerful novel that so perfectly explained her philosophy of Objectivism. I never imagined that it was also a prophecy that described the reality of living under the draconian rule of the Democrat party in 21st century America.
Capitalism was great when their was equal opportunity for everyone, not just the select few with entitlement and privilege. A selfish Godless society creates it’s own demigods the more paradoxical the better, or so it would seem. This wake up call is brought you by none other than… The weather!
Are there any countries in the world that carry out cost benefit analyses of how public bodies, particular the government, spend our money?
I have long thought this must be an essential means of curtailing the activities of government, if the examination of their tax and spending activities is conducted by a body that is funded by the people but outside the normal tax regimen of the country.
Is Switzerland such a country?

I certainly agree with your comments and questions. For many years I have asked myself the following questions . What percentage of social welfare reaching those in need, must be spent on (a) hiring more bureaucrats for administration, (b) prevention of fraudulent applications, (c) launching legal action against those who have already allegedly benefited through fraudulent applications. For example if 10 billion dollars directly reaches those in need is another 2 billion, 3 billion , 4 billion dollars respectively needed for (a) (b) (c). Does the government of the day know the answer to such questions and if so reveal such information to the
taxpayers? Are such social welfare programs really worthwhile? My answer to the last two questions is probably no!!
Excellen article, right on the money. I am trying to spread it, posted on Facebook, Twitter, can’t overstate the importance of what the writer meant to communicate. Thank you. We need to stand up for ourselves, nobody else will do it. Don’t be a sheep!
An important, but truly chilling article.
Very impressive.
But how are we common citizens to fight the neo-feudalism of the WEF
and their fellow-travelers ?
Shabbat Shalom
Congratulations to the author for his sharp analysis. — Truth will certainly prevail in the long run. Unfortunately my expiry date or shelf life will hardly allow me to see “the time after the great reset”. The present times remind me much too much of the chorus in the classical Greek dramas. The chorus warns and calls both, actors and spectators alike, for repentance, but his calls have not the slightest influence on the further course of the events. The downfall of everything became unavoidable. Our fate seems to be similar, unless a new Kurt Gödel will be providing the world with an augmented view beyond the presently prevailing scientific paradigm. I mean, a consequent practical realisation/implementation of the already known findings of quantum physics by courageous scientists could undo the bold aspirations of the ruling elites in both, “West and East”, sooner rather than later.
The WEF is nothing. Only an banner under which sovereign governments (greedy bands of government workers) freely band together to rob the private sector of their homeland.
The goal is simple, as it was in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Maoist China: No matter what, government officials and workers must never lose their jobs and benefits, must never be forced to return to the private sector. These leeches will grant power to any group (global warming jetsetters, Gates, WEF, NIH, CDC, Pfizer, etc etc) that helps them avoid returning to the private sector that they suck blood from.
If you have a spouse, mother, father, child, relative, who works in the government (especially unionized government employees), they are most likely willing participants in this takedown of America. They are the enemy, not the WEF.
Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, USA, in fact EVERY western government leadership all push the same WEF policies. Our leaders all repeat the ‘Build back better’ strapline in each of their countries, they are also committed acolytes of Net Zero.
In the UK Conservative leadership election the two remaining candidates (Sunak and Truss) both have webpages on the WEF website. The choice is simple, WEF-approved candidate A or WEF-approved candidate B. It seems the age of unelected global governance is upon us.
Your second last paragraph accurately describes what is now happening to the freedoms and economy of communist China. In addition your article warns of the dangers posed by powerful politicians, businessmen such as John Kerry, Barack Obama, Al Gore who constantly warn citizens of the alleged dangers of climate change and global warming. These same people own at least tens of millions of dollars, massive houses,massive real estate fortunes and consume high energy while owning and using numerous air conditioned, heated multi-room houses, expensive cars, boats and private planes, Their hypocrisy and deceit is so obvious.It is truly an example of “do as I say, not as I do”
There’s something here about hollowing-out the middle class.
I Agree 100% that “Freedom is the secret ingredient to innovation’s magic sauce for increasing wealth.”
It is just such a pity that the word “Liberalism”, which classical liberals use to describe the process whereby freedom is achieved – liberalise – has been hijacked by the leftists and socialists and socalled progressives, to describe their vision of totalitarian one world government as the only form of freedom that can exist. I don’t see why nations that are proud of their heritage and culture and want to protect and cherish it, are considered incapable of doing so, namely have liberal economic policies that shun harmful outside influences. Nationalism has always been the bulwark behind nations protected themselves against foreign enemies. Nation states with freedom promoting policies for its own citizens are in fact also conservative classical liberals. It is actually a crime against humanity how the autocrats (socialists, wokists, communists) have hi-jacked and weaponized certain concepts and words against the mindset and policies that made the Judeo-Christian western democracies the most successful ever to improve living standards and promote freedom in the history of mankind.
The World Economic Forum’s CEO Klaus Schwab has publicly stated: “by 2030 you will own nothing and you will be happy”. Thinking people should take this to mean; by 2030 all your possessions taken from you and you will be forced by medication or propaganda to be happy.
Another publicly stated position on COVID-19: “the COVID-19 pandemic creates an opportunity to introduce the 4th Industrial Revolution, to fusion of digital technology and the human genome”.
The saying that “in a democracy, the people always get the Government they deserve” is absolutely true. So when do the people wake up and demand that their elected representatives renounce the policies of the WEF, or, conversely endorse them. But which ever way, the voting citizens must choose for themselves, otherwise they live in tyranny, and anything they do to restore democracy is warranted, even including violence and civil war which I fear is coming to the West. We have fought major world wars for less provocative policies than those the WEF seems intent on imposing upon us all, so why do we fear this unelected and unrepresentative body of globalist elites called the WEF.
It looks like the leaders in the West, “no longer the free world”, are caught napping ,with a march having been stolen by globalisation since the 1980’s a corrupt United Nations, and communism that crept into America immediately post WWII, and now Davos fascists giving China too much rope, about to let an Iranian genie out of a terror bottle, Islam relentlessly driving a silent conquest. We are heading to hell before global warming has even taken hold. I can see no captain able to steer the world out of its kamikazi dive to oblivion other than Trump. Not perfect but one with standards and backbone of a patriot

Perfect by whose standards? Donald Trump is an outstanding human being when you consider how he has been standing up to this globalist behemoth, not because he wants power, but because he is a real humanitarian who wants us to be free, prosperous and happy.

Thank you Solomon, for your brilliant decision. I agree wholeheartedly.
It rests with Trump!
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