Bookmark This Moment

We want to post this bookmark leading to Davos co-founder Klaus Schwab's astonishing keynote remarks at the opening of this year's World Economic Forum.  By using this technique, we are inserting a placeholder in the Conversation of a Generation.  That's because we frankly don't know what to make of Professor Schwab's assertion that capitalism, in its present form, has outlived its usefulness.

 CBC correspondent Terry Milewski posted one of the most pertinent commentaries on the Schwab analysis, reporting that the Davos doyen remarked:  "Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us... A global transformation is urgently needed and it must start with reinstating a global sense of social responsibility."

Remarkable as the professor's words were, considering that he has presided over this annual celebration of the western democracies' economic success story for 40 years, it isn't clear that his diagnosis carried the day in 2012.  Bill Gates, for example, told the BBC that the economic system that made him the richest man in the world, is a "phenomenal system". 

"We're going through a tough period, but there is no other system that has improved humanity," the Microsoft founder told the BBC.  Amen to Bill's assessment.  But despite his brilliant success and his stellar philanthropic role model, Gates won't have the last word on the subject. After all, about the time Davos was getting under way four decades ago, the blue chip Club of Rome declared the widsom of "limits to growth".  Despite the veracity of this prognosis and the widespread promotion of its message by the club's leading disciples, including Canadians Pierre Trudeau and Maurice Strong, the lemming-like swarm still went over the cliff in 2008.

Only time will tell if this year's Davos diagnosis makes any difference.  Professor Schwab's declaration was overtaken by competing voices before the conference concluded.  But as a signal event his words are worth remembering for what they represent. 

                    

Crony Capitalism Raising an Old Stink

Only 50 per cent of respondents to a recent U.S. poll reacted positively to the word "capitalism", reports Nicholas D. Kristof in today's New York Times.  Forty per cent reacted negatively,  In the 18 to 29 age group, people who held the negative view were in the majority.  Think about what that means.

Kristif interprets the result to mean that crony capitalism is turning America's dream team into socialists.  No poll results were made available on what reaction that term received.  But for at least two generations, socialism has been likened to devil worship throughout America.  If Kristof  and the Pew poll are right, we are seeing a tectonic shift in the core values of the generation that is currently expected to turn the ship of state around. 

Just to be clear again, Prophets of Boom has always held that the insights reported here do not challenge capitalism as the economic basis for a just society.  Like democracy it is the best system we have.  But it's far from perfect. 

Wait a minute.  Doesn't this language have a familiar ring to it?  Anyone who set foot on a campus in the Sixties and were not yet turned off by the self-serving, blowhard politics of later decades might recognize that these concepts have been used to take some of the stink out of the system for generations. 

Ironically, the despotism of international communism's rogue's gallery was used to give  socialism a bad name in the salons of self-interest. 

What is common to both is the balance of power.  A natural hierarchy always seems to corrupt the best of intentions. 

Will technology's new reach be the great leveller, as seems to be the case in the Arab Spring, in Obama's first election victory, in the Occupy Movement or in a multitude of disputes that now see just-in-time demonstrations of force around the world?   No doubt a networked world is awakening the power within us all. 

      

             

Futurehype: The Genesis of Greed

Compliments of Stefan Morrell @ coolvibe.com

During this winter of their discontent, the "Occupy" movement might do well to consider the genesis of the myth that progress was preordained and inexhaustible.  While that may be so, total surrender to the myth made us vulnerable to futurehype, the subtext of life.