John Hawkins: The “You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy” Mentality

Conservative News DailyJuly 14, 2022

The World Economic Forum is an “elite” group of fabulously wealthy business leaders and politicians based out of Switzerland. The WEF has made headlines because some of its plans sound a lot like creepy delusions of grandeur to the public ear. For example, you may have heard of “The Great Reset”:

For decades, progressives have attempted to use climate change to justify liberal policy changes. But their latest attempt – a new proposal called the “Great Reset” – is the most ambitious and radical plan the world has seen in more than a generation.

At a virtual meeting earlier in June hosted by the World Economic Forum, some of the planet’s most powerful business leaders, government officials, and activists announced a proposal to “reset” the global economy. Instead of traditional capitalism, the high-profile group said the world should adopt more socialistic policies, such as wealth taxes, additional regulations, and massive Green New Deal-like government programs.

“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in an article published on WEF’s website. “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

Schwab also said that “all aspects of our societies and economies” must be “revamped,” “from education to social contracts and working conditions.

Put into “normal human speak,” that sounds like a bunch of out-of-touch elitists describing how they can take advantage of the chaos and death caused by the pandemic to create a new world order to make themselves richer and more powerful at everyone else’s expense. All they need to do is hold their meetings in a dormant volcano, defended by faceless goons with laser rifles, and they could be the villains of any Saturday morning cartoon show in the eighties.

This is the same group the “You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy” idea came from.

Back in 2016, Danish MP Ida Auken published a piece for the WEF called, “8 Predictions for the World in 2030,” most of which seemed to read like a dystopian liberal wish list. The article has been taken down, but the video is still out there.

He sure does look happy about owning nothing, doesn’t he?

Imagine yourself owning nothing, while the World Economic Forum and their pals own everything and rent it to you. Does imagining yourself having nothing put that big smile on your face? Probably not so much.

One thing on this front that is starting to get more attention is the wealthy, corporations, and REITs scooping up single-family homes as investments in skyrocketing numbers:

Prior to 2010, the single-family rental market was largely ignored by big institutional investors, which preferred easy-to-scale multifamily properties. But since the financial crisis-and especially since 2019-that’s changed. Financial heavyweights like J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Blackstone, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management have helped bankroll an industry of more than two dozen single-family home rental companies that are snapping up existing properties-and building new ones too.

Residential real estate acquired by companies or institutions soared to 90,215 homes in the third quarter of 2021, as investors, both large and small, accounted for 18% of single-family home sales. That’s up 80.2% from the year prior, according to the online real estate firm Redfin. Nearly three-quarters of residential purchases by investors were single-family homes, while multifamily homes-a market in which investors have been significant players for decades-accounted for just a quarter of sales.

Sure, they have the right to do this, and it may even be a good investment for them. On the other hand, how do you feel about regular people increasingly having to compete with corporations bankrolled by Goldman Sachs to buy their next house? Long-term, it certainly seems like a recipe for a poisonous level of discontent.

There are an awful lot of unappealing ideas being pushed on people for “their own good” these days, which is more than a little alarming. On a semi-regular basis, we’re all being encouraged to eat bugs, replace meat with vegetable meat substitutes cooked up in a lab, forget about “wasteful” single-family homes, and get rid of oil, coal, and gas-powered cars. Why? Well, for “OUR OWN GOOD” and the good of the world, obviously. You see, there are very smart people that want what’s best for all of us, telling us the way to go and we know they have our interests in mind because they tell us so. Certainly, they wouldn’t lie about that, would they?

It reminds me a bit of that famous story about Republican Senator Phil Gramm:

Roughly, it goes like this: Phil Gramm was talking to a group of voters. He was asked what his educational policies were. He replied, “My educational policies are based on the fact that I care more about my children than you do.”

A woman interrupted and said something like, “No, you don’t. I love your kids too.”

Gramm replied, “Okay: What are their names?”

Do you think the government cares about you? A politician? Somebody virtue signaling on Twitter? Anyone at the World Economic Forum? The answer to that question is, “no.”

Under the best of circumstances, when you’re talking about people that don’t know you, what can you expect? Maybe “thoughts and prayers” and if your problems are entertaining or have a good enough hook, perhaps a Go-Fund-Me contribution or smart advice if you’re really lucky. Even if you’re talking about good-hearted people, it’s not that they don’t want you to succeed, it’s just that your success or failure isn’t a major concern for them one way or the other.

On the other hand, whether you’re talking about groups like the World Economic Forum, the Democratic Party, Black Lives Matter, or even the Catholic Church, when they start telling you how they want to fix the world, you can be 100% sure that there’s SOME DEGREE of self-interest involved. In fact, it’s more likely to be MOSTLY self-interest, with the hope that maybe a little good gets accomplished in the process. For example, even under the best of circumstances in our example (the Catholic Church), you can be sure that any perfect world they would want to create would feature a high percentage of the population being Catholic and the Pope having a prominent role.

…And all of that is fine and good as long as it’s VOLUNTARY.

Have you ever heard of the book, Vagabonding? In it, Rolf Potts talked about getting rid of almost everything he owned, putting a few things in a backpack, and traveling the world. That is a man who was able to own nothing and be happy. Good for him, but even someone like me, who loves to travel, was sick and tired of it the last time I went on a 10-day-long vacation and couldn’t wait to get back to my own house and my own bed. So, what percentage of the population could really own nothing and be happy?

When someone arbitrarily makes decisions about “what’s in everyone’s best interests” and tries to FORCE or COERCE other people into going along with it, you can be sure of three things.

#1) Whatever change they’re suggesting benefits them far more than most people.

#2) It’s not a very popular idea or they could convince people to do it voluntarily.

#3) It’s going to be a bad idea for a large portion of the population at a minimum and a large majority of the population at worst.

You can also be sure that they’re going to cheat the system. Bill Gates may not want YOU to eat meat, but if he wants a steak, he’ll have it and it won’t be a cheap cut of meat. The same goes for the World Economic Forum. They may think you should, “own nothing and be happy,” but you’d have to be an idiot to believe they plan to do that. Undoubtedly, in their ideal world, you’ll be renting all those things from them. Of course, my suspicion is that if we really did have a world where regular people could only rent things from the wealthy, it would end with a lot of the wealthy heads being lopped off by guillotines before everyone looted their giant mansions.

If people want to eat bugs or impossible burgers and live in pods instead of their own homes, more power to them. When a central government, a bureaucracy, or a group of wannabe Illuminati like the World Economic Forum want to push that kind of thing on you, dig in your heels, don’t move back an inch, and demand that anyone “on your side” in government fight back with you to get your support. You don’t have to own nothing. You don’t have to be replaced. You don’t need any busybodies trying to change your life for the worse because they insist that they know better than you what your interests happen to be. If enough people stand up, speak out, and fight back, the bad guys that want to ruin your life in the process of “helping you” will have no power.