America is governed by an oligarchy. Has been for some time, with a four year interruption when Donald Trump was president. The oligarchs are rich and powerful and determined to stay that way. (Donald Trump, though rich, was not one of them but, unacceptably, a patriot.) Their only willing change will be to become more rich and more powerful. They are the elite, and they see their interests, being rich and powerful and ever more rich and powerful, as naturally best served in an international,  or “global”, alliance of the rich and powerful, whoever and wherever they may be.

Most of the oligarchs are not in government. They resent the power of governments, even of those that belong in the alliance – chiefly those of the US, the EU, Britain, and China.

In the implementation of the Great Reset, an agenda issued by the World Economic Forum from a mountain top in Switzerland, private powers will be in close partnership with governments. They call it public-private partnership. The private part will be the dog, and the public part – government – will be the tail. The dog will wag the tail. 

Ivan Wecke writes, at OpenDemocracy, a skeptic’s view of the Great Reset – and he finds that the horrified reaction to it of us ordinary citizens is not irrational or unjustified:

The Great Reset conspiracy theories don’t seem to want to die. The theories were triggered by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) summit last year, which had the theme The Great Reset …

The set of conspiracy theories around the Great Reset are nebulous and hard to pin down, but piecing them together gives us something like this: the Great Reset is the global elite’s plan to instate a communist world order by abolishing private property while using COVID-19 to solve overpopulation and enslaving what remains of humanity with vaccines.

Such laughable nonsense, the writer implies. So –

Intrigued by the palaver around last year’s summit, I decided to find out what the WEF’s Great Reset plan was really about. At the heart of conspiracy theories are supposed secret agendas and malicious intent. While these may be absent from the WEF’s Great Reset initiative, what I found was something almost as sinister hiding in plain sight. In fact, more sinister because it’s real and it’s happening now. And it involves things as fundamental as our food, our data and our vaccines.

“Almost as sinister … In fact, more sinister …”?

Then tell us, please, what the real Great Reset is all about.

The magic words are ‘stakeholder capitalism’, a concept that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab has been hammering for decades and which occupies pride of place in the WEF’s Great Reset plan from June 2020. The idea is that global capitalism should be transformed so that corporations no longer focus solely on serving shareholders but become custodians of society by creating value for customers, suppliers, employees, communities and other ‘stakeholders’. The way the WEF sees stakeholder capitalism being carried out is through a range of ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ bringing together the private sector, governments and civil society across all areas of global governance.

The idea of stakeholder capitalism and multi-stakeholder partnerships might sound warm and fuzzy …

No it doesn’t. It sounds sinister like those conspiracy theories the writer has dismissed.

…  until we dig deeper and realise that this actually means giving corporations more power over society, and democratic institutions less.

As we said, the Corporations Dog will wag the Governments Tail.

The plan from which the Great Reset originated was called the Global Redesign Initiative. Drafted by the WEF after the 2008 economic crisis, the initiative contains a 600-page report on transforming global governance. In the WEF’s vision, “the government voice would be one among many, without always being the final arbiter.” Governments would be just one stakeholder in a multi-stakeholder model of global governance. …

Multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage.

Who are these other, non-governmental stakeholders? The WEF, best known for its annual meeting of high-net-worth individuals in Davos, Switzerland, describes itself as an international organization for public-private cooperation. WEF partners include some of the biggest companies in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna).

Instead of corporations serving many stakeholders, in the multi-stakeholder model of global governance, corporations are promoted to being official stakeholders in global decision-making, while governments are relegated to being one of many stakeholders. In practice, corporations become the main stakeholders, while governments take a backseat role …

It is coming. For sure. No, wait … Oh good grief! it is already here!

The multi-stakeholder model is already being built. In recent years, an ever-expanding ecosystem of multi-stakeholder groups has spread across all sectors of the global governance system. There are now more than 45 global multi-stakeholder groups that set standards and establish guidelines and rules in a range of areas. … These groups, which lack any democratic accountability, consist of private stakeholders (big corporations) who “recruit their friends in government, civil society and universities to join them in solving public problems”.

Multi-stakeholderism is the WEF’s update of multilateralism, which is the current system through which countries work together to achieve common goals. The multilateral system’s core institution is the UN. The multilateral system is often rightly accused of being ineffective, too bureaucratic and skewed towards the most powerful nations. But it is at least theoretically democratic because it brings together democratically elected leaders of countries to make decisions in the global arena. Instead of reforming the multilateral system to deepen democracy, the WEF’s vision of multi-stakeholder governance entails further removing democracy by sidelining governments and putting unelected ‘stakeholders’ – mainly corporations – in their place when it comes to global decision-making.

Put bluntly, multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage. And they have real-world implications for the way our food systems are organized, how big tech is governed and how our vaccines and medicines are distributed. …

And all other commodities. Because by controlling resources over the whole world, they will have more power and more money. (Read more about that here).

Another landmark in the development of stakeholder capitalism can be found in the Big Tech sector. … It’s not easy to find a list of stakeholders but after some digging a long list of ‘roundtable participants’ for the roadmap includes Facebook, Google, Microsoft and the WEF.

Although the functions laid out for this new body are quite vague, civil society organizations fear it will come down to Big Tech creating a global body to govern itself. This risks institutionalising these companies’ resistance against effective regulation both globally and nationally and increasing their power over governments and multilateral organizations. If the body comes to fruition, it could be a decisive victory in the ongoing war GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft) is waging with governments over tax evasion, antitrust rules, and their ever-expanding power over society.

More than 170 civil society groups worldwide have signed another open letter to the secretary general of the UN – this time to prevent the digital governance body from forming. The secretary general was approached for comment but had not replied at the time of publication. …

So … something fishy really is going on in the realm of global governance. If you value your right to public health, to privacy, to access healthy food or to democratic representation, be wary of the words ‘stakeholder capitalism’ when they pop up at the next Davos summit.

Must we now accept that the age of democracy is over? You may still have a vote, you may even help elect a government of your choice, but it will have little power.

There will not be “world government” – that’s just conspiracy theory – but there will be “global governance”.

There will not be “communism”, but there will be “equitable redistribution” – aka communism – and it will be called “stakeholder capitalism”.

There will be?  No, there is. As the man says, it has started.