NICHOLS: happiness is (maybe not) or Feudalism 2.0

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is made up of people that I don’t know, that I have no chance of ever knowing, and, I am quite sure, they like it that way. 

They are the elite and powerful. Their wealth can buy them just about anything they want (except happiness) and they will never miss the money. Somebody else manages their accounts and all they have to do is spend. Simple.

Bill Gates, (you have a vague idea of who he is) for example, gets some of his jollies by buying up farm land. Now, I don’t know if Mr. Gates is a member of the WEF or even knows about the WEF; it doesn’t matter. But he is elite and powerful. People listen to his ideas. Some people believe in his ideas. Some people don’t. And that’s OK.  But why, is Mr. Gates, among several others of the elite buying up farmland? Can you imagine him in coveralls and rubber boots out at one in the morning hosing down the milking parlour in readiness for the first of the herd to file in and take their accustomed places? Or mucking out the parlour after the cows have contributed to the oversupply of milk? Or perhaps he’s combining in the spring to salvage a bit of second-grade grain?

Maybe not.  Then why is Mr. Gates, among several others of the elite, buying up farmland? At latest count 242,000 acres of it making him the largest private owner of farmland in the USA. Why? (Don’t know if he has farm holdings in Canada.)

Think again: farm land is a scarce commodity. Our blighted world has a finite supply and that supply is shrinking from a variety of reasons one of which is not CO2. You control the land, you control the food supply. You control the food supply, you control hungry people. Over 70% of farm land is expected to change hands in the next 20 years. These are US stats but Canada is not far behind. Oh yes! In some things.

We can’t see into Mr. Gates’ mind to read his reasons for buying farm land but clearly, there must be economic reasons, among other benefits, for doing so.

So where does the Great Reset play into these transactions. We, the people, are being told that when the Great Reset comes to maturity in the foreseeable future we will own nothing and we’ll be happy in that blessed state. Come again? I will own nothing? And I’ll be happy for owning nothing?

Look, I’ve worked for the things I call mine (though I know who actually owns them and it ain’t the government or the bank); I’ve paid for everything. Debt free, I won’t give up easily Great Reset or no! Europe escaped from feudalism slowly and painfully. Modernity had a difficult birth and it didn’t happen all at once.

Under communism in the Soviet Union (USSR) private property was abolished by the state in exchange for a sort of feudalism they called the collective farm in the agricultural belt. Farm workers owned nothing and we know the wretched outcome. Millions died of starvation on the rich farmlands of the USSR.  What makes the proponents of the Great Reset think it will be better this time around?

If I own the farm I’ll work to make the farm prosper. If I own the factory, I’ll work to make it succeed. If I own the business, I’ll work and scrape by, cut my own salary, funnel as much as possible back into the business, cultivate my employees, and watch the business grow. 

So, WEF, get real. There is no future to your fantastic musings. Don your coveralls and learn some real skills. Experience the satisfaction of working toward a tangible dream. Find your happiness, not in manipulating other people’s lives…. By the way, anciently it was said (and it is relevant to all of us as well because, in a sense, all of us who read these lines are the rich), “Come now, you rich ones, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming on you; your gold and silver are now worthless; your clothing is riddled by moths and this will be evidence against you in the judgment. Indeed the wages of the labourers who mowed you fields, which you kept back by fraud cry out against you and have reached the ears of the Lord.”

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Dawson Creek Mirror can be found here ***