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Another, unmentioned and even more dull reason's that Schwab charges quite a lot for corporate access to WEF (along with a ton of donations etc), while giving free access for politicians, NGOs, and media, along with offering a lot of very favorable amnesties. That's not an unusual form of scratch-your-back just-pols-being-pals, but it's a lot about how a lot of this runs.
There's a certain risk involved whenever writing dystopian fiction, as any serious reader of Huxley knows, but I don't think this an accurate summary in the slightest. In particular:
To steelman, there's a Huxleyian "I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard", where this is supposed to be the measures imbued into the speaker's preferences changing their opinion and perspective, rather than outside measures of value or those measures from the view of the described group. But it's a really reaching one and very hard to make compatible with the buzzword-laden groping that the writer gives otherwise: the City is nearly free, closer to 'nature' (or at least the City's version), long-lasting goods with a variety of environmental and practical benefits, yada yada. The intuitive read is not people who were poor, and it's notable that the lost are separated not by those who were obsolete by robots and AI (the viewpoint character themselves seems in this category, given "When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people."), but those who felt obsolete.
That's... a bit of a weakman. "Some human interest" stories are coming at a near-monthly pace not just from food blogs but a half-dozen times in the NYTimes, TIME magazine lauded a Clinton initiative, so on. "I will not eat the bug" became a meme because it keeps fucking coming up.
Now, I don't like lobster (or crab, or most other shellfish), to the point where I prefer 'imitation crab sticks' even in sushi, but I also like cinnamon in chili and pineapple on pizza: my tastes are... unusual. And as a furry, in general I kinda need to support the rule de gustibus non est disputandum. If someone wants to chew down on a nice tasty roach, I'm not gonna join 'em, but that's their opportunity.
Except one can't help but notice that this comes at the same time and from many of the same outfits also curiously interested in making beef more expensive and less available -- and you can't help notice it because the same sources will happily make the link for you. Sometimes it's for health reasons, sometimes it's cow farts, sometimes it's land usage, and sometimes it's whatever new purpose of the day pops up.
And yet it's there.
Again, this is a bit of a weakman. This one's a little harder to show since so many of the search times are bloated with shipping container houses, but even ignoring them as noncentral there's still an absolute ton of emphasis among an amazingly wide number of sources promoting tiny living spaces while (more importantly!) attacking and arguing for state restrictions or discouragement of more conventional living conditions. More broadly, it's also the subtext for almost every complaint about suburbia and a lot of the complaints about 'auto culture'.
And I think this focus on weakman kinda undermines your point. Contrast:
from your op, with the later
The "bizarre conspiracy theory" you originally brought up wasn't that the WEF has secret police powers and its own army, or that it's proposing some nightmare vision scifi dystopia only one man would want otherwise. I mean, I'm pretty sure someone has proposed that, if only because there's a lot of nutters out there, but it's still not the actual softball you t'd up.
It's that Schwab was a leader of a group planning their dire acts. Which, to be fair, is still wrong: he's 'just' bringing a whole bunch of people together, pointing the ideological to the powerful, and selecting which match his viewpoint. As you say, he doesn't have the breadth of vision or charisma to really drive people. But that still does have a ton of powerful people and corporations meeting and listening to his carefully-selected goals that happen to overlap with theirs, which they often go out afterward to use their power to implement.
That tells us that if Schwab made the wrong stock picks and went backrupt and the WEF disappeared, these positions wouldn't go away. The commonness of this sort of giant coordination conference, if seldom so high-profile or large-scale, tells us that it isn't and never was the only coordination mechanism. But it doesn't tell us whether the WEF acts as a significant coordination mechanism.
I think that's a fair description for the privacy concerns; I don't think it's accurate to describe those left outside as the "poor people struggling to survive" (note even the WEF page describes them as "discontents". More importantly, it's very obvious and overt that the "you will own nothing and be happy" isn't and very obviously isn't supposed to be part of the "significant problems" side.
That's be a far stronger position were there a few dozen 'no we don't want this and in fact want the opposite of this' arguments to point toward, rather than something that gets promoted under other terms for everything from air compressor to carpet tiles.
((And, uh, also if Auken or involved editors were shoved out of the organization in a giant high-confrontation mess over the matter.))
That would be a useful rejoinder, if still not within the limits of your original "some human interest stories by food blogs ", if it were just the NYT's food journalism section. Instead it's the Opinion section (complete with Learning Network study questionaire), a small section on cricket flour in Climate FWD, applauded by a comedian (?) giving relationship advice. And that's just one outlet.
Sure, it's all a bunch of people bringing up this stuff (or rewarding it when it comes from outside), and it being happily rubberstamped by layers of fact-checkers and editors), and no one bothering with any objections. Sure there's tons of random things like that.
And then there's a pretty wide variety of common things that don't, and it becomes noticeable.
Yes, people who care about things care about them. But that's going from 'it's not happening' to 'and it's good that it is' pretty quick.
Naraburns below linked to this piece with a smorgasboard of Western-specific focuses; the Times has lauded "the winner of the small space/tiny home competition sponsored by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development". For other examples on broader restrictions against conventional housing, see here for one that highlights an American local law!, natgeo about specifically average American home sizes.
They're just people interested in the matter! And it's not that aggressive yet. But they're just people interested in it here. The pretense that this is solely for the developing world (and parts of the UK no one likes) runs into some problems given that.
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