Klaus Schwab Quotes

The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.

when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on the table between them or in their peripheral vision changes both what they talk about and their degree of connectedness.65

Shared understanding is particularly critical if we are to shape a collective future that reflects common objectives and values.

It may be too soon to tell, but extrapolating from current trends indicates that mobility will play an ever more important role in society and economics in the future than today:

When devastating things happen, creativity and ingenuity often thrive.

History shows that epidemics have been the great resetter of countries’ economy and social fabric. Why should it be different with COVID-19?

The fact that a unit of wealth is created today with much fewer workers compared to 10 or 15 years ago is possible because digital businesses have marginal costs that tend towards zero.

My concern, however, is that decision makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and nondisruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.

As all these trends happen, the winners will be those who are able to participate fully in innovation-driven ecosystems by providing new ideas, business models, products and services, rather than those who can offer only low-skilled labour or ordinary capital.

The second industrial revolution has yet to be fully experienced by 17% of the world as nearly 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity.

On the societal front, a paradigm shift is underway in how we work and communicate, as well as how we express, inform and entertain ourselves.

Many of our beliefs and assumptions about what the world could or should look like will be shattered in the process.

Psychologists point out that the pandemic, like most transformative events, has the ability to bring out the best and the worst in us.

Put in simple terms, in a post-pandemic world beset by unemployment, insufferable inequalities and angst about the environment, the ostentatious display of wealth will no longer be acceptable.

In 2016, two academics from Oxford University came to the conclusion that up to 86% of jobs in restaurants, 75% of jobs in retail and 59% of jobs in entertainment could be automatized by 2035.

The sobering truth is that the heroes of the immediate COVID-19 crisis, those who (at personal risk) took care of the sick and kept the economy ticking, are among the worst paid professionals – the nurses, the cleaners, the delivery drivers, the workers in food factories, care homes and warehouses, among others.

This work indicates that the fourth industrial revolution is unique, driven as it is by a global network of smart (network-driven) cities, countries and regional clusters, which understand and leverage the opportunities of this revolution – top down and bottom up – acting from a holistic and integrated perspective.

Imagine North Korea in 2030, when every citizen has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day. If you listen to a speech by the Great Leader and the bracelet picks up the tell-tale signs of anger, you are done for.

Today, a middle-class job no longer guarantees a middle-class lifestyle, and over the past 20 years, the four traditional attributes of middle-class status (education, health, pensions and house ownership) have performed worse than inflation.

To a large extent, the millennial generation is setting consumer trends. We now live in an on-demand world where 30 billion WhatsApp messages are sent every day32 and where 87% of young people in the US say their smart phone never leaves their side and 44% use their camera function daily.33 This is a world which is much more about peer-to-peer sharing and user-generated content. It is a world of the now: a real-time world where traffic directions are instantly provided and groceries are delivered directly to your door. This “now world” requires companies to respond in real time wherever they are or their customers or clients may be.

The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future,” WEF founding chairman Klaus Schwab wrote in June 2020. “Populations have overwhelmingly shown a willingness to make sacrifices.

Back in 1971, Herbert Simon, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978, warned that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” This is much worse today, in particular for decision-makers who tend to be overloaded with too much “stuff” – overwhelmed and on overdrive, in a state of constant stress.

Oligarch globalist claim they want to help the poor through globalization! Klaus Schwab is the CEO of the WEF. Schwab is one of the globalist leaders who said "You'll own nothing. You'll be happy" It makes you wonder how this will help the poor who already have nothing? What a rich man know what means not to have anything?

The fourth industrial revolution, however, is not only about smart and connected machines and systems. Its scope is much wider. Occurring simultaneously are waves of further breakthroughs in areas ranging from gene sequencing to nanotechnology, from renewables to quantum computing. It is the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions. In

the cost of storing information is approaching zero (storing 1GB costs an average of less than $0.03 a year today, compared to more than $10,000 20 years ago).

This could be one of the unexpected upsides of COVID-19 and the lockdowns. It made us more aware and sensitive about the great markers of time: the precious moments spent with friends and our families, the seasons and nature, the myriads of small things that require a bit of time (like talking to a stranger, listening to a bird or admiring a piece of art) but that contribute to well-being. The reset: in the post-pandemic era, we might have a different appreciation of time, pursuing it for greater happiness.[

The more nationalism and isolationism pervade the global polity, the greater the chance that global governance loses its relevance and becomes ineffective. Sadly, we are now at this critical juncture. Put bluntly, we live in a world in which nobody is really in charge. COVID-19 has reminded us that the biggest problems we face are global in nature. Whether it’s pandemics, climate change, terrorism or international trade, all are global issues that we can only address, and whose risks can only be mitigated, in a collective fashion.

The more we think about how to harness the technology revolution, the more we will examine ourselves and the underlying social models that these technologies embody and enable, and the more we will have an opportunity to shape the revolution in a manner that improves the state of the world.

Technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between “accept and live with it” and “reject and live without it”. Instead, take dramatic technological change as an invitation to reflect about who we are and how we see the world. The more we think about how to harness the technology revolution, the more we will examine ourselves and the underlying social models that these technologies embody and enable, and the more we will have an opportunity to shape the revolution in a manner that improves the state of the world.

Technology is not an exogenous force over which we have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between “accept and live with it” and “reject and live without it”. Instead, take dramatic technological change as an invitation to reflect about who we are and how we see the world.

How will this expanded role of governments manifest itself? A significant element of new “bigger” government is already in place with the vastly increased and quasi-immediate government control of the economy. As detailed in Chapter 1, public economic intervention has happened very quickly and on an unprecedented scale. In April 2020, just as the pandemic began to engulf the world, governments across the globe had announced stimulus programmes amounting to several trillion dollars, as if eight or nine Marshall Plans had been put into place almost simultaneously to support the basic needs of the poorest people, preserve jobs whenever possible and help businesses to survive.

While there are reasons to be sceptical about the predicted technological dystopia that has prompted many high-tech plutocrats to come out in support of basic income, this may nevertheless be a strong factor in mobilizing public pressure and political action. Whether jobs are going to dry up or not, the march of the robots is undoubtedly accentuating insecurity and inequality. A basic income or social dividend system would provide at least a partial antidote to that, as more commentators now recognize.6 For example, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and author of The Fourth Industrial Revolution, has described basic income as a ‘plausible’ response to labour market disruption.7

It is true that in the post-pandemic era, personal health and well-being will become a much greater priority for society, which is why the genie of tech surveillance will not be put back into the bottle. But it is for those who govern and each of us personally to control and harness the benefits of technology without sacrificing our individual and collective values and freedoms.

For many, an explosion of mental problems occurred during the first months of the pandemic and will continue to progress in the post-pandemic era. In March 2020 (at the onset of the pandemic), a group of researchers published a study in The Lancet that found that confinement measures produced a range of severe mental health outcomes, such as trauma, confusion and anger.[153] Although avoiding the most severe mental health issues, a large portion of the world population is bound to have suffered stress to various degrees. First and foremost, it is among those already prone to mental health issues that the challenges inherent in the response to the coronavirus (lockdowns, isolation, anguish) will be exacerbated. Some will weather the storm, but for certain individuals, a diagnostic of depression or anxiety could escalate into an acute clinical episode. There are also significant numbers of people who for the first time presented symptoms of serious mood disorder like mania, signs of depression and various psychotic experiences. These were all triggered by events directly or indirectly associated with the pandemic and the lockdowns, such as isolation and loneliness, fear of catching the disease, losing a job, bereavement and concerns about family members and friends. In May 2020, the National Health Service England’s clinical director for mental health told a Parliamentary committee that the “demand for mental healthcare would increase ‘significantly’ once the lockdown ended and would see people needing treatment for trauma for years to come”.[154] There is no reason to believe that the situation will be very different elsewhere.

we are at the threshold of a radical systemic change that requires human beings to adapt continuously. As a result, we may witness an increasing degree of polarization in the world, marked by those who embrace change versus those who resist it.

In all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects.

AI, robots and humans work better when they work together. Human chess players in collaboration with AI chess programmes consistently beat both other humans and other computers working on their own.

The complex human brain is a fascinating domain. A skull has around 1.4 kilograms of cells, including over 80 billion neurons connected in over 100 trillion ways. If each of the 7.4 billion people living on earth knew everyone else, understanding their social relationships would be simplistic compared to understanding the pattern-making potential of the human brain.

The tools we’ve relied on for decades to manipulate and interact with computers – the mouse and keyboard – will quickly fade with next-generation technology. Interface will move towards the fidelity of the real world, as simple as the sound of your voice and a blink of your eyes.

To delve deeper into these concepts, one great resource for learning about the impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and AI is the book The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab.

the integration of materials with blockchain technologies could aid in the implementation of a global database for trusted materials sourcing and recycling provenance records.

Since the first Industrial Revolution, the average real income per person in OECD economies has increased around 2,900%.

While inequality between countries has reduced considerably since the 1970s due to the rapid development of emerging market nations, inequality within countries is rising.

To paraphrase Madeleine Albright, we face the task of understanding and governing 21st-century technologies with a 20th-century mindset and 19th-century institutions.

One way in which the Fourth Industrial Revolution could exacerbate inequality is via monopoly power: already, for example, Google controls almost 90% of the global market share of search advertising, Facebook controls 77% of mobile social traffic and Amazon has almost 75% of the e-book market.

The data shows the necessity to acknowledge this legacy, through the cumulative carbon emissions per capita from 1850 to 2021. During this period, Canadians emitted the most (1,751 tonnes per capita), followed by the Americans (1,547), the New Zealanders (1,388), the Russians (1,181) and the British (1,100). By contrast, during that same period, the Chinese emitted 197 tonnes per capita and the Indians 61 tonnes.61 Today, the Chinese and the Indians are among the largest world emitters in absolute terms, but the ranking in relative terms (that is, emissions per capita) is still dominated by the Americans.

In practical terms, this means that leaders cannot afford to think in silos. Their approach to problems, issues and challenges must be holistic, flexible and adaptive, continuously integrating many diverse interests and opinions. Emotional intelligence – the heart As a complement to, not a substitute for, contextual intelligence, emotional intelligence is an increasingly essential attribute in the fourth industrial revolution.

Voltaire, the French philosopher and writer of the Enlightenment era who lived for many years just a few miles away from where I am writing this book, once said: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”74

cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind.

blockchain technology records financial transactions made with digital currencies such as Bitcoin, it will in the future serve as a registrar for things as different as birth and death certificates, titles of ownership, marriage licenses, educational degrees, insurance claims, medical procedures and votes

the deluge of information available today, the velocity of disruption and the acceleration of innovation are hard to comprehend or anticipate. They constitute a source of constant surprise. In such a context, it is a leader’s ability to continually learn, adapt and challenge his or her own conceptual and operating models of success that will distinguish the next generation of successful business leaders. Therefore, the first imperative of the business impact made by the fourth industrial revolution is the urgent need to look at oneself as a business leader and at one’s own organization. Is there evidence of the organization and leadership capacity to learn and change? Is there a track record of prototyping and investment decision-making at a fast pace? Does the culture accept innovation and failure?

In all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects”.52 Being overwhelmed due to ignorance is precisely what we should avoid, particularly when it comes to how the many diverse communities that comprise modern society form, develop and relate to one another.

Source: Deep Shift – Technology Tipping Points and Societal Impact, Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software and Society, World Economic Forum, September 2015.

Emerging operating models also mean that talent and culture have to be rethought in light of new skill requirements and the need to attract and retain the right sort of human capital. As data become central to both decision-making and operating models across industries, workforces require new skills, while processes need to be upgraded (for example, to take advantage of the availability of real-time information) and cultures need to evolve. As I mentioned, companies need to adapt to the concept of “talentism”. This is one of the most important, emerging drivers of competitiveness. In a world where talent is the dominant form of strategic advantage, the nature of organizational structures will have to be rethought. Flexible hierarchies, new ways of measuring and rewarding performance, new strategies for attracting and retaining skilled talent will all become key for organizational success. A capacity for agility will be as much about employee motivation and communication as it will be about setting business priorities and managing physical assets. My

a thorough and all-encompassing decoupling from China would require from companies making such a move an investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in newly located factories, and from governments equivalent amounts to fund new infrastructure, like airports, transportation links and housing, to serve the relocated supply chains. Notwithstanding that the political desire for decoupling may in some cases be stronger than the actual ability to do so, the direction of the trend is nonetheless clear. The Japanese government made this obvious when it set aside 243 billion of its 108 trillion Japanese yen rescue package to help Japanese companies pull their operations out of China. On multiple occasions, the US administration has hinted at similar measures.

Antiglobalization was strong in the run-up to 1914 and up to 1918, then less so during the 1920s, but it reignited in the 1930s as a result of the Great Depression, triggering an increase in tariff and non-tariff barriers that destroyed many businesses and inflicted much pain on the largest economies of that time. The same could happen again, with a strong impulse to reshore that spreads beyond healthcare and agriculture to include large categories of non-strategic products. Both the far right and the far left will take advantage of the crisis to promote a protectionist agenda with higher barriers to the free flow of capital goods and people.

A hasty retreat from globalization would entail trade and currency wars, damaging every country’s economy, provoking social havoc and triggering ethno- or clan nationalism. The establishment of a much more inclusive and equitable form of globalization that makes it sustainable, both socially and environmentally, is the only viable way to manage retreat. This requires policy solutions addressed in the concluding chapter and some form of effective global governance. Progress is indeed possible in those global areas that have traditionally benefited from international cooperation, like environmental agreements, public health and tax havens.

fighting a pandemic does not require a substantial change of the underlying socio-economic model and of our consumption habits. Fighting environmental risks does.

One of the great lessons of the past five centuries in Europe and America is this: acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state. It’s always been the case and there is no reason why it should be different with the COVID-19 pandemic. Historians point to the fact that the rising fiscal resources of capitalist countries from the 18th century onwards were always closely associated with the need to fight wars, particularly those that took place in distant countries and that required maritime capacities. Such was the case with the Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763, described as the first truly global war that involved all the great powers of Europe at the time. Since then, the responses to major crises have always further consolidated the power of the state, starting with taxation: “an inherent and essential attribute of sovereignty belonging as a matter of right to every independent government”.[66] A few examples illustrating the point strongly suggest that this time, as in the past, taxation will increase. As in the past, the social rationale and political justification underlying the increases will be based upon the narrative of “countries at war” (only this time against an invisible enemy).

COVID-19 has acted as an amplifier of pre-existing conditions, bringing to the fore long-standing issues that resulted from deep structural frailties that had never been properly addressed. This dissonance and an emergent questioning of the status quo is finding expression in a loudening call to revise the social contracts by which we are all more or less bound. Broadly defined, the “social contract” refers to the (often implicit) set of arrangements and expectations that govern the relations between individuals and institutions.

10% de las personas usarán ropa conectada a internet 91,2 El 90% de la gente tendrá almacenamiento ilimitado y gratuito (patrocinado mediante publicidad) 91,0 Un billón de sensores estarán conectados a internet 89,2 Primer farmacéutico robótico en Estados Unidos 86,5 El 10% de las gafas de lectura estarán conectadas a internet 85,5 El 80% de las personas tendrán presencia digital en internet 84,4 El primer automóvil impreso en 3D estará en producción 84,1 Primer gobierno que sustituirá su censo poblacional por uno basado en el Big Data 82,9 Primer teléfono móvil implantable disponible comercialmente 81,7 El 5% de los productos de consumo estarán impresos en 3D 81,1 El 90% de la población utilizará teléfonos inteligentes 80,7 El 90% de la población tendrá acceso regular a internet 78,8 Los automóviles sin conductor serán el 10% de todos los vehículos en las carreteras de Estados Unidos 78,2 Primer trasplante de un hígado impreso en 3D 76,4 El 30% de las auditorías corporativas

Like any of man’s inventions, artificial intelligence can be used for good or evil. In the right hands and with proper intent, it can do beneficial things for humanity. Conversely, it can be used by evil dictators, sinister politicians, and malevolent leaders to create something as dangerous as a deadly weapon in a terrorist’s hands. Yuval Noah Harari is a leading spokesperson for the globalists and their transhumanist, AI, and Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda. Harari is also an advisor to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. Barack Obama refers to Harari as a prophet and recommends his books. Harari wrote a book titled Sapiens and another titled Homo Deus (“homo” being a Latin word for human or man, and “deus” being the Latin word for god or deity). He believes that homo sapiens as we know them have run their course and will no longer be relevant in the future. Technology will create homo deus, which will be a much superior model with upgraded physical and mental abilities. Harari tells us that humankind possesses enormous new powers, and once the threat of famine, plagues, and war is finally lifted, we will be looking for something to do with ourselves. He believes the next targets of our power and technology are likely to be immortality, happiness, and divinity. He says: “We will aim to overcome old age and even death itself. Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn homo sapiens into homo deus. When I say that humans will upgrade themselves into gods in the 21st century, this is not meant as a metaphor; I mean it literally. If you think about the gods of ancient mythology, like the Hebrew God, they have certain qualities. Not just immortality, but maybe above all, the ability to create life, to design life. We are in the process of acquiring these divine abilities. We want to learn how to engineer and produce life. It’s very likely that in the 21st century, the main products of the economy will no longer be textiles and vehicles and weapons. They will be bodies and brains and minds.48

As media strategist Tom Goodwin wrote in a TechCrunch article in March 2015: “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate.”9

the second machine age”2

creating more space for stillness in order to reflect on important decisions.

It is the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions.

Now, faced with a combination of increased complexity and hyper-specialization, we are at a point where the desire for purposeful engagement is becoming a major issue.

As sociologist Manuel Castells, professor of communication technology and society at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, has noted: “In all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects”.52 Being overwhelmed due to ignorance is precisely what we should avoid, particularly when it comes to how the many diverse communities that comprise modern society form, develop and relate to one another.

New technologies will dramatically change the nature of work across all industries and occupations.

Turkle refers to studies showing that, when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on the table between them or in their peripheral vision changes both what they talk about and their degree of connectedness.

Businesses, industries and corporations will face continuous Darwinian pressures and as such, the philosophy of “always in beta” (always evolving) will become more prevalent. This suggests that the global number of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs (enterprising company managers) will increase. Small and medium-sized enterprises will have the advantages of speed and the agility needed to deal with disruption and innovation.

Professional activities are dissected into precise assignments and discrete projects and then thrown into a virtual cloud of aspiring workers located anywhere in the world.

is clear that neither countries nor regions can flourish if their cities (innovation ecosystems) are not being continually nourished. Cities have been the engines of economic growth, prosperity and social progress throughout history, and will be essential to the future competitiveness of nations and regions. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, ranging from mid-size cities to megacities, and the number of city dwellers worldwide keeps rising. Many factors that affect the competitiveness of countries and regions – from innovation and education to infrastructure and public administration – are under the purview of cities. The speed and breadth by which cities absorb and deploy technology, supported by agile policy frameworks, will determine their ability to compete in attracting talent. Possessing a superfast broadband, putting into place digital technologies in transportation, energy consumption, waste recycling and so on help make a city more efficient and liveable, and therefore more attractive than others. It is therefore critical that cities and countries around the world focus on ensuring access to and use of the information and communication technologies on which much of the fourth industrial revolution depends. Unfortunately, as the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2015 points out, ICT infrastructures are neither as prevalent nor diffusing as fast as many people believe. “Half of the world’s population does not have mobile phones and 450 million people still live out of reach of a mobile signal. Some 90% of the population of low-income countries and over 60% globally are not online yet. Finally, most mobile phones are of an older generation.”45

In the automotive realm, a car is now a computer on wheels, with electronics representing roughly 40% of the cost of a car.

Boundaries between sectors and professions are artificial and are proving to be increasingly counterproductive. More than ever, it is essential to dissolve these barriers by engaging the power of networks to forge effective partnerships.

OpenAI,

The app economy provides an example of a new job ecosystem. It only began in 2008 when Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, let outside developers create applications for the iPhone. By mid-2015, the global app economy was expected to generate over $100 billion in revenues, surpassing the film industry, which has been in existence for over a century.

Detroit in 1990 (then a major centre of traditional industries) with Silicon Valley in 2014. In 1990, the three biggest companies in Detroit had a combined market capitalization of $36 billion, revenues of $250 billion, and 1.2 million employees. In 2014, the three biggest companies in Silicon Valley had a considerably higher market capitalization ($1.09 trillion), generated roughly the same revenues ($247 billion), but with about 10 times fewer employees (137,000).3 The fact that a unit of wealth is created today with much fewer workers compared to 10 or 15 years ago is possible because digital businesses have marginal costs that tend towards zero.

increasing inequalities might emerge between tech-savvy individuals, who understand and control these technologies, and less knowledgeable individuals, who are passive users of a technology they do not understand.

Labour markets, meanwhile, are becoming biased towards a limited range of technical skill sets, and globally connected digital platforms and marketplaces are granting outsized rewards to a small number of “stars”.

According to the innovation charity Nesta in the UK, the five cities that are globally best placed in terms of having the most effective policy environment to foster innovation are: New York, London, Helsinki, Barcelona and Amsterdam.

This book is organized in three chapters. The first is an overview of the fourth industrial revolution. The second presents the main transformative technologies. The third provides a deep dive into the impact of the revolution and some of the policy challenges it poses. I conclude by suggesting practical ideas and solutions on how best to adapt, shape and harness the potential of this great transformation.

Shaping the fourth industrial revolution to ensure that it is empowering and human-centered, rather than divisive and dehumanizing, is not a task for any single stakeholder or sector or for any one region, industry or culture. The fundamental and global nature of this revolution means it will affect and be influenced by all countries, economies, sectors and people. It is, therefore, critical that we invest attention and energy in multistakeholder cooperation across academic, social, political, national and industry boundaries. These interactions and collaborations are needed to create positive, common and hope-filled narratives, enabling individuals and groups from all parts of the world to participate in, and benefit from, the ongoing transformations.

The fourth industrial revolution, however, is not only about smart and connected machines and systems. Its scope is much wider. Occurring simultaneously are waves of further breakthroughs in areas ranging from gene sequencing to nanotechnology, from renewables to quantum computing. It is the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions. In this revolution, emerging technologies and broad-based innovation are diffusing much faster and more widely than in previous ones, which continue to unfold in some parts of the world. This second industrial revolution has yet to be fully experienced by 17% of world, as nearly 1.3 billion people still lack access to electricity. This is also true for the third industrial revolution, with more than half of the world’s population, 4 billion people, most of whom live in the developing world, lacking internet access. The spindle (the hallmark of the first industrial revolution) took almost 120 years to spread outside of Europe. By contrast, the internet permeated across the globe in less than a decade.

I am convinced that the fourth industrial revolution will be every bit as powerful, impactful and historically important as the previous three. However, I have two primary concerns about factors that may limit the potential of the fourth industrial revolution to be effectively and cohesively realized. First, I feel that the required levels of leadership and understanding of the changes under way, across all sectors, are low when contrasted with the need to rethink our economic, social and political systems to respond to the fourth industrial revolution. As a result, both at the national and global levels, the requisite institutional framework to govern the diffusion of innovation and mitigate the disruption is inadequate at best and, at worst, absent altogether. Second, the world lacks a consistent, positive and common narrative that outlines the opportunities and challenges of the fourth industrial revolution, a narrative that is essential if we are to empower a diverse set of individuals and communities and avoid a popular backlash against the fundamental changes under way.

interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions.

No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war,” the Chinese president declared, in a none-too-subtle dig at his incoming American counterpart. Three days later in Washington, Trump delivered a shockingly combative inaugural address, condemning “other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.” Rather than embracing trade, Trump declared that “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.” Xi’s speech was the sort of claptrap that global leaders were supposed to say when addressing business tycoons. The media fawned over his supposed defense of economic openness and globalization against populist shocks like Trump and Brexit. “Xi sounding rather more presidential than US president-elect,” tweeted talking-head Ian Bremmer. “Xi Jinping Delivers a Robust Defence of Globalisation,” reported the lead headline in the Financial Times. “World Leaders Find Hope for Globalization in Davos Amid Populist Revolt,” the Washington Post declared. “The international community is looking to China,” explained Klaus Schwab, the chair of the World Economic Forum.

Who knows how the devil look like? You could of look at him with your eyes right now, and you don't know it is him

was zero in 1914; a year after the end of World War I, it was 50%. Canada introduced income tax in 1917 as a “temporary” measure to finance the war, and then expanded it dramatically during World War II with a flat 20% surtax imposed on all income tax payable by persons other than corporations and the

We have all been reminded of our innate human fragility, our frailties and our flaws. This realization combined with the stress engendered by the lockdowns and the concurrent deep sense of uncertainty about what is coming next could, albeit surreptitiously, change us and the way we relate to other people and to our world. For some, what starts as a change may end up as an individual reset.

The German Klaus Schwab, who controls the World’s money and how it will be used, born out of the 3rd Reich in 1938, began plotting the new Globalized economy in 1971 when he wrote his first book, “Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering.” In

The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally has offered societies an enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value. With the economic emergency responses to the pandemic now in place, the opportunity can be seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on a new path towards a fairer, greener future. The history of radical rethinking in the years following World War II, which included the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, the EU and the expansion of welfare states, shows the magnitude of the shifts possible. This raises two questions: 1) What should the new compass for tracking progress be? and 2) What will the new drivers of an economy that is inclusive and sustainable be?

The most progressive tax years in US history were 1944 and 1945, with a 94% rate applied to any income above $200,000 (the equivalent in 2009 of $2.4 million). Such top rates, often denounced as confiscatory by those who had to pay them, would not drop below 80% for another 20 years. At the end of World War II, many other countries adopted similar and often extreme tax measures. In the UK during the war, the top income tax rate rose to an extraordinarily stunning 99.25%!

Outbreaks forced empires to change course – like the Byzantine Empire when struck by the Plague of Justinian in 541-542 – and some even to disappear altogether – when Aztec and Inca emperors died with most of their subjects from European germs. Also, authoritative measures to attempt to contain them have always been part of the policy arsenal. Thus, there is nothing new about the confinement and lockdowns imposed upon much of the world to manage COVID-19. They have been common practice for centuries. The earliest forms of confinement came with the quarantines instituted in an effort to contain the Black Death that between 1347 and 1351 killed about a third of all Europeans. Coming from the word quaranta (which means “forty” in Italian), the idea of confining people for 40 days originated without the authorities really understanding what they wanted to contain, but the measures were one of the first forms of “institutionalized public health” that helped legitimatize the “accretion of power” by the modern state.[1] The period of 40 days has no medical foundation; it was chosen for symbolic and religious reasons: both the Old and New Testaments often refer to the number 40 in the context of purification – in particular the 40 days of Lent and the 40 days of flood in Genesis.

It is easy to give way to excessive pessimism because we human beings find it much easier to visualize what is disappearing than what is coming next. We know and understand that levels of unemployment are bound to rise globally in the foreseeable future, but over the coming years and decades we may be surprised. We could witness an unprecedented wave of innovation and creativity driven by new methods and tools of production. There might also be a global explosion of hundreds of thousands of new micro industries that will hopefully employ hundreds of millions of people. Of course, we cannot know what the future holds, except that much will depend on the trajectory of future economic growth.

Some have called for “degrowth”, a movement that embraces zero or even negative GDP growth that is gaining some traction (at least in the richest countries). As the critique of economic growth moves to centre stage, consumerism’s financial and cultural dominance in public and private life will be overhauled.[42] This is made obvious in consumer-driven degrowth activism in some niche segments – like advocating for less meat or fewer flights. By triggering a period of enforced degrowth, the pandemic has spurred renewed interest in this movement that wants to reverse the pace of economic growth, leading more than 1,100 experts from around the world to release a manifesto in May 2020 putting forward a degrowth strategy to tackle the economic and human crisis caused by COVID-19.[43] Their open letter calls for the adoption of a democratically “planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less”. However, beware of the pursuit of degrowth proving as directionless as the pursuit of growth! The most forward-looking countries and their governments will instead prioritize a more inclusive and sustainable approach to managing and measuring their economies, one that also drives job growth, improvements in living standards and safeguards the planet. The technology to do more with less already exists.[44] There is no fundamental trade-off between economic, social and environmental factors if we adopt this more holistic and longer-term approach to defining progress and incentivizing investment in green and social frontier markets.

A positive aspect of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyle. Almost instantly, the crisis forced companies and individuals to abandon practices that were long considered essential, from frequent air travel to working in an office. " – Klaus Schwab. Founder and Executive of the W.E.F.

Illustrious past episodes corroborate that creative characters thrive in lockdown. Isaac Newton, for one, flourished during the plague. When Cambridge University had to shut down in the summer of 1665 after an outbreak, Newton went back to his family home in Lincolnshire where he stayed for more than a year. During this period of forced isolation described as annus mirabilis (a “remarkable year”), he had an outpouring of creative energy that formed the foundation for his theories of gravity and optics and, in particular, the development of the inverse-square law of gravitation (there was an apple tree beside the house and the idea came to him as he compared the fall of an apple to the motion of the orbital moon).[157]

climate change solutions will be actively pursued. Taxation will increase, particularly for the most privileged, because governments will need to strengthen their resilience capabilities and wish to invest more heavily in them.

The deep disruption caused by COVID-19 globally has offered societies an enforced pause to reflect on what is truly of value. With the economic emergency responses to the pandemic now in place, the opportunity can be seized to make the kind of institutional changes and policy choices that will put economies on a new path towards a fairer, greener future. The history of radical rethinking in the years following World War II, which included the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United Nations, the EU and the expansion of welfare states, shows the magnitude of the shifts possible.