Capitalism and Slavery, the Great Reset, and no-one just “Follows the Science”

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck, welcome to this World Economic Forum newsletter.

This week... a murder, protests and the origins of modern capitalism. Plus more on COVID–19 and why the world needs a Great Reset.

Remember newsletters are for sharing!

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1?? It’s More Than Fifty Years Ago...

Since Martin Luther King Jnr spoke these words.

• “I don’t mind saying to Chicago or to anybody – I’m tired of marching. Tired of marching for something that should have been mine at birth ...
• I don’t mind saying to you tonight that I’m tired of the tensions surrounding our days.
• I don’t mind saying to you tonight that I’m tired of living every day under the threat of death.
• I have no martyr complex. I want to live as long as anybody in this building tonight, and sometimes I begin to doubt whether I’m going to make it through.
• I must confess I’m tired. Yes, I’m tired of going to jail.
• I’m tired of all of the surging murmur of life’s restless sea.
• But I’ll tell anybody – I’m willing to stop marching, I don’t march ’cause I like it. I march because I must. And because I’m a man, and because I’m a child of god.”

He didn’t make it through. And you might ask, after one more killing – what’s changed?

? The data on racism.

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2?? American Slavery and American Capitalism

It didn’t take a pandemic to reveal inequalities that have their origins in America’s founding.

New historians of capitalism have been talking about this for a long time. Read Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development:

• During the 19C, the United States entered the ranks of the world’s most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery’s Capitalism argues for slavery’s centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.
• According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation’s spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and centre.
• American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.

These historic wrongs are woven into the fabric of modern America, including the endowments of elite universities where professors like Sven Beckert work.

Here’s how New York’s business leaders reacted:

[N]o amount of philanthropy can make up for the divisions in American society that the pandemic has exposed and deepened.

? Why the Great Reset also means fighting racism.  

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3?? We need a Great Reset

The pandemic has exposed critical fractures in our economies and societies.

The World Economic Forum wants to help address those issues, because:

• “Left unaddressed, these crises, together with Covid-19, will deepen and leave the world even less sustainable, less equal and more fragile. Incremental measures and ad hoc fixes will not suffice to prevent this scenario. We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.
• The level of cooperation and ambition this implies is unprecedented. But it is not some impossible dream. In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles. Almost instantly, the crisis forced businesses and individuals to abandon practices long claimed to be essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office.”

? The Great Reset.

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4?? What if COVID–19 Was a Blood Disease?

Evidence is growing that the virus is not just a respiratory problem.

Here’s a more scientific explanation:

• An alternative theory is that the blood clotting and symptoms in other organs are caused by inflammation in the body due to an over-reactive immune response — the so-called cytokine storm. This inflammatory reaction can occur in other respiratory illnesses and severe cases of pneumonia, which is why the initial reports of blood clots, heart complications, and neurological symptoms didn’t sound the alarm bells. However, the magnitude of the problems seen with COVID–19 appear to go beyond the inflammation experienced in other respiratory infections.

? Stay up to speed on COVID–19 here.

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5?? COVID–19 has Fast-Forwarded the Future of Work

Here’s economist Richard Baldwin:

• Pushed by COVID–19, firms and workers have invested in, say, ten years’ worth of digital transformation in just a few months. My guess is that this will accelerate the trend towards more service sector jobs coming into competition with ‘globotics’, i.e. telemigrants working in our offices while sitting abroad (the globalisation part), and software robots replacing particular office-tasks (the robotics part). The jobs that survive competition from telemigrants will be those that require face-to-face interactions. The jobs that survive competition from white-collar robots will be those that stress humanity’s great advantages. 

? What else has changed? Join Robin, Linda, Max and the team with World vs Virus for free – it’s Apple recommended!

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6?? Nobody Just “Follows the Science”

There’s no value-free science, especially not in a pandemic.

[I]t is wrong to say that decision-makers (as well as epidemiologists advocating for or against public health measures) are just “following the science.” They are taking political action that is as much informed by social and political values as it is by science.

? Everyone needs better mental health.

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7?? I Found This Helpful

? Why the Great Reset also means fighting racism.

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Hope you’ve enjoyed this artisan crafted content,

Adrian

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With thanks to Ceri, David and all those folks without whose encouragement and critical feedback this newsletter would never get written.