The GREAT Reset

Wow! If you happened to miss last week's webinar, the recording is now posted HERE  https://youtu.be/tTyga2OCNyc featuring Heather Douglas's presentation - "The GREAT Reset", on what Klaus Schwab, founder and executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), has in store as portrayed in his book Covid 19 - the Great Reset - a reset of the international order. The Network's follow-on discussion was insightful, sobering, and civil!

What is clear is that institutions with global influence/ leaders have yielded to the temptation to exercise their collective influence/ leadership for the global "public" good. Think the UN and WEF. Gathering the support of decentralized elected representatives may be comforting as a democratic process; not so comforting however can be the end results - the utopian promises. Why? 

The policies derived by global gatherings of leaders may moderate the extremes but as a complex compromise, they end up fitting few - so remote from people as to make the impact irrelevant, uncertain, or - worse yet, harmful. (See the article below - Assessing the cost/benefit of Covid-19.)  The histories, the cultures, the environments, the circumstances, of mankind and the social constructs are too numerous and complex for any one institution to dare understand much less rule/control. So, either reduce the numbers e.g. to 500 million, also proposed by WEF, or suffer the chaos of humanism: respect for the individual and distrust of utopian zealots.

Exploring the World of Hemp Opportunities

There will be no webinar this week - not even JUSTA CHAT, as I will be fully engaged as Master of Ceremonies for the Alberta Hemp Alliance's Conference "The World of Hemp Opportunities" featuring several Alberta Ministers and industry leaders discussing what Kevin Ma has so eloquently explained in his article "Hemp trace poised to grow in Alberta, say experts"

Ukraine War is Upsetting the World Order

The next webinar is April 28th featuring a repeat of Jane Boulden's podcast for the Conference Board of Canada - "How the war in Ukraine is disrupting the rules-based international order".  She helps make sense of the impact of the war in Ukraine on the international order, the United Nations, and on how this war has eroded the rules-based order that we thought governed international relations. Included is a discussion of Canada's vulnerability and a role for Canada in resolving the overarching nuclear faceoff. The podcast will be followed by the ever exciting and insightful Network discussion.

Assessing the cost/benefit of Covid-19

What is the human cost and benefits of public policies and associated measures to constrain the Covid-19 pandemic? The data and the science are starting to accumulate for guiding future public policy. While it may yet be early to draw a definitive conclusion, it would appear that both the public and personal costs of measures such as lockdowns have exceeded the benefits:

• Covid related deaths vs the norm e,g, Sweden https://unherd.com/2022/04/swedens-inconvenient-covid-victory/?s=09
• delayed education of youth
• deteriorated mental health and increased crime rates
• accumulated public debt
• disrupted supply chains, unemployment and jobs loss
• rising and sustained inflation
• media misinformation of all sorts

Should an erosion of public trust be added to the list?  What is apparent is that trust in public policy and institutions executing said policies, e.g.: government, health, media, pharma, are being questioned as rarely before.  While measures to constrain Covid-19 may take some blame, the erosion has been underway for some time. Why? Access to information via the Internet, social media, and a more educated, questioning and engaged, clientele have transformed relations between the elite class of professionals and their clientele. The transformation reflects a decrease in the influence of knowledge/ information while increasing the relevance of relational skills/ communications. This transition is empowering of the client cum consumer.

If this transition is viewed as negative as it surely will by the power elite, what will it take to restore the trust? An election? A series of protests? A reconciliation committee? Adding relational skills to the professional elite? If the transition is viewed as empowering and positive, then the rise in public vigilance = distrust, may in fact serve as an antidote to over-reach, constraining even decentralizing the power/ authority of "public" servants and services. Some may call this privatization, personalization, or more precise service. Whatever - it is a global force and a reaction to the reset termed by some as the GREAT Awakening.