Covid-19: The Great Reset is written by Klaus Schwab and Theirry Malleret. The book is 280 pages long and was published in July 2020. This is just an observation, but it’s odd that the book was published around 6 months after Covid was officially declared. It has a list of endnotes that are within a 3 month timeline of the book being published, but we’ll get into that later. Klaus starts out strong, page 3 he tells us that...
Klaus breaks down the Covid-19: The Great Reset into three broad categories: Macro Reset, Micro Reset, and Individual Reset. A Macro Reset sounds ominous, but the way Klaus makes it sound, it’s no big deal. He makes the observation that the world is interconnected, very much so. He quotes Kishore Mahbubani: “The 7 billion people who inhabit planet earth no longer live in more than one hundred separate boats [countries]. Instead they all live in 193 separates cabins on the same boat....
Klaus switches gears on page 36 and talks about the Economic Reset and the economics of Covid-19. He tells us that our current economy differs vastly from the past, so much so that is it “unrecognizable”.(36) He gives multiple reasons, like the airplane, “which result in more than a billion of us crossing a border each year”(36). He also tells us we are: “encroaching on nature and the habitats of wildlife....
Klaus talks about societal reset starting on page 76. He tells us historically pandemics have tested societies and COVID-19 is no exception. According to Klaus: “… the societal upheaval unleashed by COVID-19 will last for years, and possibly generations.” (76) To Klaus, he says that governments, policy-makers, and political figures have “appeared inadequate or ill-prepared in terms of their response to dealing with COVID-19.” (76) He goes on to state what Henry Kissenger observed:...
Page 103 Klaus talks about the geopolitical reset, he states that geopolitics and pandemics basically go hand in hand, and in keeping with his viewpoint he tell us: “… the chaotic end of multilateralism, a vacuum of global governance and the rise of various forms of nationalism make it more difficult to deal with the outbreak.”(103). This is curious considering the UN/WHO basically quarter-backed the entire global response which our leaders followed without question....
Klaus, it seems, believes the most critical of all challenges facing human existence is environmental. According to Klaus, the pandemic, climate change and ecosystem collapse are existential threats to our existence.(134) The strange thing is Klaus says: “COVID-19 has already given us a glimpse, or foretaste, of what a full-fledged climate crisis and ecosystem collapse could entail from an economic perspective…”(134) Yeah, I don’t think so. First, climate crises are local....
Klaus switches gears and tells us about how in the 4th Industrial Revolution he said that technology and digitization will revolutionize everything. I don’t have an issue with that statement, we’ve already seen situations where technology has revolutionized our way of doing this, etc. I’m just curious how this “technological reset” will work when Klaus told us that by 2050 we need to reach net zero. This, by even the most liberal of view points has to admit this is incompatible with net zero by 2050....
The Micro Reset as Klaus calls it relates to industry and business and will require a long and complex series of changes and adaptation.(173). Klaus make the observation that: “… some industry leaders and senior executive may be tempted to equate reset with restart.” (173) I don’t believe that is an unfair assessment, but I don’t think it should mean delete then restart. Klaus believes returning to normal can’t happen because Covid changed the working landscape forever....
Finally, on page 211 Klaus gets around the individual and what this “great reset” will have in store for us from a personal perspective. We’ve already experienced lockdowns and isolation from families etc., to Klaus “what starts as change may end up as an individual reset” (211) Hopefully, it’s a positive reset but given what we have seen to date, probably not. Klaus tells us about how humanity somehow percolated through the lockdown and negativity Covid-19 had, by providing examples of how in Italy, opera singers would entertain their neighbours among other things....
Klaus reminds us that by June 2020, the world isn’t the same. He’s right and three years later it still isn’t. It is a very correct observation that things won’t go back to a pre-Covid normal from a personal perspective. Other things like: “rising inequalities, a widespread sense of unfairness, deepening geopolitical divides, political polarization, rising public deficits and high levels of debt, ineffective and non-existent global governance, excessive financialisation, environmental degradation: these are some of the major challenges that existed before pandemic....