You Will Own Nothing

by Carol Roth

There’s a war coming. A global war. You may be thinking about World War III—which, at the time of this writing, hangs in the balance with a certain probability—but I am talking about a different war. This is World War “F”—a financial world war where you are “F’d.”

World War F, though, is a modern and unique war. It is not a quest to dominate the American government, but for the government and other related forces to dominate you.

Wealth comes from ownership.

More concretely, wealth comes from the ownership of assets that increase in value over time.

So, if there was an institutional, governmental desire for more people to become wealthy and grow that wealth, making it easier to invest and gain ownership would be a priority. Today’s reality is the polar opposite. Ownership—and the opportunities for individual wealth creation and economic freedom that come with it—is under attack.

I am known as someone with a commonsense approach to just about everything, so when I first heard that the World Economic Forum (WEF), an international organization connected to a cadre of elites that includes business, financial, and political leaders, put out a set of predictions for this decade that included the disappearance of ownership, I figured it was a conspiracy theory. The WEF has courted, developed, and associated with business magnates and political heavyweights like Bill Gates, Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and former chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. The WEF hosts a fancy networking forum in Davos, Switzerland, yearly. They put out “thought leadership” around social, political, business, and economic concepts. Surely there must have been some mistake that this organization littered with the global elite would be predicting the end of private property? It didn’t take much research to find that it was right out in the open. The WEF’s 2030 predictions included the stark warning, under the guise of sunshine and rainbows, “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.” And that’s just the beginning. Yes, property rights and the ownership they convey, the cornerstone of freedom and wealth creation opportunities, have come under fire. And I am quite certain that owning nothing and being devoid of the opportunities that come with ownership makes you poor and unfree, not . . . happy. What is being said by the elites...

It is all part of a multipronged shift toward a new financial world order where they own everything and you own nothing.

those in charge of safeguarding individual rights—the government—were derelict in their duties. They realized that to take and hold power, they had to make promises and offer “services.” Services that, by the way, they weren’t paying for—you were. This led to massive increases in spending. As the government spent, given that government doesn’t produce anything of intrinsic value, there were only so many ways to pay for that spending. Of course, one source of financing government spending is taxation—the taking of a portion of your productivity and wealth.

The government is desperate and in debt, and you and your fellow citizens represent a massive amount of wealth to be “legally” conquered.

American Dream is under fire and may soon be unattainable. The intention is to hollow out the middle and working class and leave them with nothing. It’s being done via the encroachment of government, Big Tech, big finance, and other ruling elite into all aspects of your life.

The government pressured businesses and used virtue-signaling supporters, deciding that the very people who had been previously labeled heroic and who kept themselves and others safe for well over a year now had to be punished for noncompliance with this government mandate. The punishment for noncompliance was taking away people’s livelihoods, the ultimate bullying control tactic. And that punishment was aimed at the same people who were pushed to work while others stayed home for months on end.

Other mandates remained in place for health care workers and federal employees. It might not have been called social credit, but if it walks like social credit and talks like social credit, it might just be the foundation of it. Your social standing and your livelihood are the core of your opportunities and path to create wealth. If you are not aligned with the elite, you will find that social credit, whether or not formalized into a system, puts this wealth creation path and its outcomes at risk.

There’s a fairly straight and certainly disturbing line that goes from social acceptance to a social credit system. It stems from the type of tribal approval mechanism that either embraces you or rejects you as part of a group. Do you support the “current thing”? If you do, you can put up an emoji in your social media biography or a ribbon on your profile picture and a sign in front of your house. You can signal that you are a virtuous and worthy moral being. You are deemed by your peers and the mainstream media as a good citizen and part of the crowd of “right think” instead of “wrongthink.”

When a social moral code replaces a legal code and gains acceptance, it is only a matter of time before those in power want to leverage that dynamic to secure more power for themselves. That begets the foundation for social compliance and social credit at the state/government level. This is the perfect tactic for the elite in a new financial world order to ensure that the people connected to them come out on top. But how does a true state social credit system come to be? It requires two steps. The first is information-gathering on individuals. The second is those in power using the information without being challenged. When both of those become easy to do at scale, tyranny quickly follows.

And so, today, we lie just a fraction of a millimeter away from a true state social credit system, the ultimate in tyrannical control. We are remarkably close to a place where by acting outside the preferred narrative, not agreeing with the mob, having a bad day, or engaging in wrongthink like not complying with government directives, criticizing the president, or being a gun owner, the government can penalize you. Potential penalties could remove your freedoms, big and small, including your ability to earn a living and provide for your family.

Social credit takes the concept of trust in society and puts it in the hands of central planners to dictate their morals and other priorities. This is fascism masquerading as trust. It is a tyrannical and complete centralization of powers and control over the population, with no regard for individual rights.

individual rights are substituted with “common good,” which is code for what the elites in control want.

Limiting and controlling wealth creation opportunities is a key method for controlling a society, and so it makes sense that China would focus on that first in terms of social credit, getting those with any sense of entrepreneurialism or capitalistic instincts “in line.”

China’s SCS is heavily backed by a variety of technologies. It is focused on gathering information on everything from what you look like to who your family members are to where you work. The “digital dang’an” is backed by “big data” algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify issues and noncompliance on an ongoing basis. Additional technology implemented involves drone monitoring and facial recognition matched to a database that has more than 1.3 billion photos.35

Depending on the scope of your behaviors, sometimes due to an individual infraction, sometimes from a cumulative result, you may be placed on “blacklists” or “redlists.” As you can imagine, a blacklist bans individuals and entities from access and activities. A redlist can confer upon you perks, privileges, and other benefits for being deemed a good citizen. The types of punishments and blacklist ramifications are still evolving. Currently, being on a blacklist may preclude you from access to jobs, access to financial accounts, prevent your kids from attending schools, and even publicly shame you in person, online, or via TV channels. It ensures that you will own nothing.

The complexities of noncompliance go beyond simple penalties; they overtake your life, by design.

So, what gets you negative points or on a blacklist? Being behind in paying your debts is a big one, from all reports, as is refusing to serve in the military. But even personal, mundane actions or nonactions are judged. For example, in Shanghai, not visiting your elderly parents is an infraction.37 Loitering, spreading “fake news” (whatever that is deemed by the powers-that-be), cheating when playing video games, taking up too much room in an airplane, making an insincere apology, jaywalking, and blocking sidewalks are all activities that can lower your social credit score and lead to punishments.

An article in Slate mused about a version of this future: we imagine a time when credit scores do indeed take into account not just our payment history, but our entire social web. . . . your credit score can be augmented by simply looking at how positive your comments are, how often you “like” posts from high- or low-risk accounts, how quickly you respond to DMs, and even how long you spend mindlessly scrolling. How often do you text your friends back? Did you call your mom on her birthday? . . . It all adds up to a nice little score at the top of a brightly colored readout: your credit score, enhanced.48 Again, this isn’t a conspiracy or fringe set of theories. These are concepts being used and evaluated by major governments and big businesses around the world and ideas being proposed by entities with ties to the leading financial and consulting organizations in the world.

Not only are “experts” people who sometimes make mistakes and whose behavior is motivated by a variety of incentives, but also government officials and their helpers are typically seeking more power for themselves, and that comes at your expense.

We have lived through government narratives around Covid—including those related to vaccines/therapeutics and masks—becoming items that couldn’t be argued with, even when much of what was portrayed as misinformation has proven to be fact.

we have free speech as the first protected right in the Bill of Rights to ensure our individual rights are protected against the government, regardless of who occupies the White House. To have any government entity as a type of arbiter of speech stands at odds with our natural rights and is a mechanism for social credit–type control. Moreover, the government’s definition of disinformation (and, by extension, that of many social media platforms) by their own actions is not “things that are factually untrue,” but rather, “things that disagree with the narrative.”

It is not a coincidence that some of the worst genocides in history, from the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust, have begun with the disarming of the population. With the trajectory of the government and its actions, having a well-armed population (aka a well-regulated militia) is critical for keeping the balance of power between the people and the government. Arms are also important to help protect your property, not just from the government, but from mobs when nobody else shows up. The right to bear arms is fundamental to individual rights and intertwined with freedom and property rights.

Having your rights infringed is all part of the new financial world order and the plan to have you own nothing. It becomes easier to enact if you can’t physically fight back or defend your property.

Once the government has started a digital file on you and created the infrastructure for collection and storage, why not fill it up? Why not link it to financial information or a digital wallet? Perhaps they can link up with your other accounts—for your convenience, of course.

They are already implying that your identity will allow for participation in society and they want to build something new to facilitate this. It’s saying the quiet part aloud.

authority to cut off the protesters’ financial resources. The government “obligated” processors of financial transactions, including crowdfunding sites, to report any funding, including donations that “they deemed suspicious,” to the government authorities.71 The Wall Street Journal reported that “financial institutions froze more than 200 financial accounts belonging to individuals and an account held by a payment processor with a value of 3.8 million Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of $3 million. Police also ceased transactions involving 253 cryptocurrency addresses.”72 Despite outrage from civil rights groups, thought leaders, and others, the Canadian government proceeded to treat protesters and dissenters as terrorists.

A GoFundMe page was put up and raised more than C$10 million from supporters. Despite its headquarters being located in California, the site bowed to political pressure from the Canadian government. GoFundMe put out a statement saying the fundraiser was a violation of their terms of service as its reason to remove it from the platform.73 Another US-based crowdfunding site, GiveSendGo, was used to raise close to $10 million from supporters, many of whom reportedly resided in the US. Hackers decided to align with the Canadian government, attacked the GiveSendGo website, and leaked private data on who had made the contributions.74 The hackers posted a message intimating that the protest was an “insurrection” and alluding to the Canadian government’s desire to freeze the assets of the participants.

This is a perfect example of how social credit is being seeded.

In 2017, WEF president Klaus Schwab participated in a discussion at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he talked about key politicians who have been featured as WEF Young Global Leaders.76 One of the names he bragged about was Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Schwab then said, “So, we penetrate the cabinets. So, yesterday I was at a reception for Prime Minister Trudeau, and I know that half of this cabinet, or even more than half of this cabinet, are . . . young global leaders of the World Economic Forum.”

Today in the US, steps are being taken that illustrate how state-run schools already believe that they have some sort of ownership over children. Again, I understand how this can sound conspiratorial. You may be thinking, “Carol, 1984 is a work of fiction, not a government playbook, and we don’t live in Nazi Germany.” But I plead with you to keep an open mind and look at the way certain trends are connected before you dismiss this. Over the past several years, a lengthy list of issues, including curriculum and educational materials transparency and teachers keeping information about children from parents, has been the source of parental angst and backlash during

school board meetings around the US. Other parents have expressed concerns about free speech, both for the child and for the parents, discrimination based on race and other immutable characteristics, transparency of school meetings, and privacy, among other issues.80 As parents sought to fight back, some found themselves targeted as domestic terrorists by the FBI and Department of Justice.

This movement will only be exacerbated by social credit. If you now have an official score or rank that deems you unacceptable to society for whatever reason, that will give the state even more license to believe you are not capable of being a good parent and that they should take over increasingly more of the parental authority and moral and leadership roles for kids. Or vice versa—if you don’t comply with education mandates for your kids, that will impair other aspects of your social credit. Not having the right to make decisions for your child, not because you have violated the child’s rights (which everyone should agree is a legally founded exception) but rather because of wrongthink, puts a vastly different and scary spin on the concept that you will own nothing.

The pandemic created an unbelievably dangerous precedent for the US government putting the rights of the collective above the individual and infringing on those rights, based on the weasel words “for the good of society.”

Many people did comply. These mandates were accepted and embraced by a meaningful percentage of the population. The elite now know that social credit can be an effective tool for them.

Moreover, with the new financial world order, a slew of entities may be weighing in on what is right and what is wrong, and incentivizing the racketeers and useful idiots to help them police their version of “right think.”

As much as people innovate and advance technology and science, human nature and behavior remain remarkably constant over time. Because of that, history evolves in fairly predictable cycles, including those of “empires” or world-dominating countries.

What nation wants to support the “privilege” of having to do business in dollars as an anchor if the US, at any point in time, can keep your dollars from you and try to collapse your economy?

It bears mentioning that these actions were undertaken with the hubris of the Biden administration, the Department of Defense, and other political (and likely business and financial) elite. There was no congressional declaration of war. There were purely these actors, with a mindset that “it’s not my money.” They held the attitude that they could just do what they wanted without bearing much of the literal or figurative costs.

In fact, four months after this historic freezing of reserve assets, CBS News reported on June 28, 2022, that “Russia’s ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year” and that from January to that date, the ruble was up 45 percent versus the dollar.

First, these actions illustrate, in real time, the willingness of the US government to use money as a weapon, regardless of the blowback. Second, they undermine and threaten the value of the dollars and wealth you have created. Finally, they underscore the government’s lack of protection of individual property rights when the narrative suits them.

These cycles are not coincidental. They are understood by those who research and observe history. One such perception, attributed to Mark Twain with a few small differentiations, is, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” The “rhymes” allow students of history to see patterns, themes, behaviors, and actions that not only are similar in form but also lead to similar outcomes.

What we can project is that the US is in the twilight of its financial empire. The end of King Dollar and a US-led financial world order will lead to disorder before any stable new financial world order. This disorder will lead to chaos in all kinds of ways.

Technical know-how will be lost, as has been the case in Germany with the shutdown of their nuclear energy plants. They couldn’t bring them back online at scale if they wanted to because they no longer have the individuals who have trained for that highly specialized expertise. The elites have put us in this situation because, in thinking they are smarter and better, they have become completely decoupled from reality. Or, perhaps, more accurately, they are setting themselves up to benefit, financially and otherwise.

This is, in effect, the concept that if you own nothing, the powers that be own you.

Instead of creating more opportunities for wealth and prosperity for all, the political elite have worked with special interests and big businesses to enable the “Great Consolidation” of wealth and power. They have put up more laws, rules, and regulations that make it harder for you to accumulate property and wealth.