“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long – We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

— David Rockefeller

“The one thing man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by a World Government, a New World Order.”

— Henry A. Kissinger

“Unless we establish some form of world government, it will not be possible for us to avert a World War III in the future.”

— Winston Churchill

“All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a new world order.”

— Robert Kennedy

“The New World Order that is in the making must focus on the creation of a world of democracy, peace and prosperity for all.”

— Nelson Mandela

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

“Further global progress is now possible only through a quest for universal consensus in the movement towards a new world order.” — Mikhail Gorbachev

“By the end of this decade we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations … a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable.”

— Pope John Paul II

I’m sure you all know what Inclusive Capitalism is, and what the Council for it (CIC) does. No? Well me neither. Didn’t even know it existed until a short time ago. Sure enough, the CIC not only exists but sports an impressive roster of big shot members and supporters. Is this good, or bad?

From the Council for Inclusive Capitalism home page.
From the Council for Inclusive Capitalism home page.
https://www.inclusivecapitalism.com

Not too informative. Further down the home page is a sort of elaboration:

“FOR ECONOMIES TO BE MORE INCLUSIVE, WE TURN GOOD IDEAS INTO PROGRESS”

“The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a movement of CEO leaders doing business in ways that lead to a more inclusive and sustainable economy.”

“We believe the strongest and most valuable businesses are those that profitably create value for all stakeholders. Our members bring their best actions to the Council, turning them into business strategies others can use to generate positive social and environmental impact.”

“Leaders of every business, large and small, across sectors and geographies, can contribute to this movement. What is your best idea or action for inclusive capitalism? Share it with our community.”

This organization appears to have a central action purpose

It seems that, unlike so many of its ilk, the CIC is aimed at actually doing something concrete rather than pontificating and urging others to get with the doing-somethings.

“WE HAVE 599 ACTIONS FOR INCLUSIVE CAPITALISM AND 291 MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS. EXPLORE ACTIONS:”

“The Council is the global platform for private sector actions that are forging a more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted economic system. Learn from the most innovative ideas business leaders are trying today. Get inspired by hundreds of actions searchable by sector, UN Sustainable Development Goal, sustainable value creation pillar, and more.”

“Change begins with the actions we take. The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a CEO-led movement of businesses pursuing profit in ways that lead to a more inclusive and sustainable economy.“

“As a member, you join a growing network of business, investment, and public sector organizations taking and documenting their actions to build more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted economies and societies. Put forth your best ideas, innovations, and initiatives, and watch your impact multiply as others take up and apply your knowledge. Gain new ideas as other members join and contribute their commitments to action.”

“We need organizations of all sizes, from every industry, and from around the world to support our Guiding Principles for Inclusive Capitalism and to commit to action to scale the change that is needed.”

CIC appears to have a strong action orientation vs. think tank.
CIC appears to have a strong action orientation vs. think tank.

Council Commitment Platform. Council members commit to specific, measurable actions to operate their organizations in ways that advance a more inclusive capitalism. Members share their actions and experiences here for others to learn from and put forth their own actions. The result is a community of ideas and learning that advances the most impactful private sector ESG practices at scale.”

“We invite you to explore the platform and get ideas for actions you can take for inclusive capitalism. Use the dropdown menus above the table to search by industry, region, UN Sustainable Development Goal, or sustainable value creation pillar.”

What are some examples of member “commitments”?

Glad you asked. Here is what a few of these look like at a high level:

A few examples of CIC member action commitments.
A few examples of CIC member action commitments.

And a whole bunch more. This small sample should give you a sense of what CIC “Commitments” to action might entail. Check out the CIC website for what looks like the full set.

There is even a Framework for Company Action to get members started

“THE FRAMEWORK: PILLARS FOR ACTION. The Just Energy Transition: A Framework for Company Action is a comprehensive guide for governments, companies of all industries, and civic organizations to manage the transition to net-zero emissions energy in ways that are just. The framework has four core pillars: “

  • supporting universal access to energy and a net-zero emissions world,
  • evolving the energy workforce to support a low and zero carbon energy future, 
  • building community resilience, and
  • fostering collaboration and transparency throughout the process. 

“Each pillar contains five areas of action or “building blocks” that will drive progress.  These 20 building blocks each contain examples and case studies showing how the practice has been implemented. Further, the building blocks are mapped to the World Benchmarking Alliance’s Just Transition methodology and the forthcoming Climate Action 100+ just transition indicator to align the framework with just transition assessment methodologies.”

At this high level, it is hard to argue against any of these being frivolous or impossibly impractical. They are at worst “ideals” that will get more specific as each organization digs deeply into its set of “commitments”. Or maybe not.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

These CIC commitments appear solidly in the realm of “good intentions”. Nothing wrong with good intentions as a starting point, but it is subsequent implementation actions where the trouble typically begins. Easy to get on that proverbial “road to hell”.

It may well be that the commitments in many cases are simply placeholders and evidence of the organization’s being on board with the CIC game plan. Like government, actions of any consequence rarely follow, and so many that do move into action produce disastrous results.

The list of verifiable, credible, significant successes is probably largely empty.

With 291 member organizations involved and signed up for action commitments of one sort or another, the CIC certainly has built a serious roster of major players. All the while keeping a very low profile. Makes me wonder why.

Might they have an underlying agenda for which the public-facing commitments are an essential smokescreen? Seems not just entirely likely but a quite sensible approach if they are trying to avoid the considerable hassles of building public support the hard way.

Does this matter at all? If so, why?

What is “inclusive capitalism”?

Let’s ask the Council (CIC) this question. Here is what they have to say:

“Inclusive capitalism or stakeholder capitalism—whatever your terminology to describe a capitalism that produces broad value creation—is about more than doing good. It is above all about meeting market expectations and driving business excellence. Companies practicing capitalism inclusively and sustainably strengthen the economy and society as a byproduct of their pursuit of profit, which makes their example all the more important to watch and learn from.”

“As geopolitical challenges mount and inflation concerns grow, there is a natural tendency for companies to seek safe harbor, to focus on maximizing returns as the measure of value of a company. Proponents of this view argue that the rise of stakeholder capitalism and its broader focus on a company’s impact on shareholders, the environment, and employees and communities distracts companies from their core mission of producing value.”

“People are telling corporate leaders that they expect more, and consumers are shifting their spending to businesses they feel good about. Investors are demanding more on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) to understand which companies are creating broad-based value sustainably. According to EY, 39 percent of investors are currently invested in ESG products—an increase from 33 percent in 2020. It would be a breach of fiduciary duty to ignore these voices, and the market is working to catch up. The number of firms with at least one ESG fund has grown nearly 300 percent since 2016, according to Deloitte. The world’s second largest asset manager State Street points to ESG as providing a bigger and more accurate picture of a company’s value creation and sees ongoing improvements in data and analytics as certain to drive further demand for and growth in ESG.”

This story seems to mean that businesses need to focus away from traditional investor and profit concerns and toward broader social (ESG) concerns. Hard to argue with such a lofty objective, but as always the devil is in the details.

CIC seems to be a vehicle or platform for advancing ESG objectives

Again, this does not appear to be anything but good. Broadening business objectives will be a very tough job so anything such as CIC is attempting will in principle be helpful. In principle.

You have probably noticed by this point that CIC seems to be a creature of the “West” – U.S., Canada, U.K., European Union (E.U.), Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand. And South Korea and Japan more recently. This block of countries covers roughly 30% of the global population. Not exactly inclusive – at least, not so far.

The CIC as presently constituted seems to represent the West – rather exclusively. Nothing on the CIC website indicates any efforts to include some portion of the non-West. This suggests to me that the CIC is simply yet another designation for the globalist corporate-government agenda – a rebranding of the Great Reset, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the New World Order.

Being even more cynical, one might begin to suspect that the CIC is primarily a clever do-good wrapper for what has been around for more than a century in many other guises.

The founder of the CIC group is Lynn Forester de Rothschild, member of the Rothschild Dynasty that has been monetarily involved in influencing governments for generations. Even Pope Francis and the Vatican publicly aligned with the Council in 2020. This is the “West”.

Vlad Putin is seriously messing up the apparent CIC game plan

The West’s attempt to weaken and possibly break up Russia has backfired mightily. While Russia and its new best-buddy China (and India, …) seem to be doing just fine, the West is crumbling, crashing, and getting set to burn. Vlad is almost certainly smiling and largely content. For the moment, at least.

Inclusive capitalism is restricted right now to nations and organizations of the West and the globalists at WEF, WHO, U.N., and kin. Restricted by choice of the majority non-West countries? Kind of an non-inclusive outcome despite the CIC efforts and claims concerning inclusivity.

China President Xi and Russia President Putin seem happy.
China President Xi and Russia President Putin seem happy.

British author H. G. Wells wrote a book published in 1940 “The New World Order” that described his ideal of a world without war in which law and order emanated from a world governing body, and that examined various proposals and ideas. Timing a bit off there as it coincided with the outbreak of WW II.

Anyhow, it seems that a New World Order (NWO) of some sort has been in the works since at least President Woodrow Wilson: From Wikipedia:

“The phrase ‘new world order’ was explicitly used in connection with Woodrow Wilson’s global zeitgeist during the period just after World War I during the formation of the League of Nations. ‘The war to end all wars’ had been a powerful catalyst in international politics, and many felt the world could simply no longer operate as it once had. World War I had been justified not only in terms of U.S. national interest, but in moral terms—to ‘make the world safe for democracy’. After the war, Wilson argued for a new world order which transcended traditional great power politics, instead emphasizing collective security, democracy and self-determination. However, the United States Senate rejected membership of the League of Nations, which Wilson believed to be the key to a new world order. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge argued that American policy should be based on human nature ‘as it is, not as it ought to be’.”

New World Order (NWO) efforts are historically bad news

Such efforts are typically driven by very powerful and wealthy individuals and groups who want to change the grand scheme of things – our lives – into something more to their liking and advantage. Whether these help or harm us is nearly always of no consequence. We are simply part of the situation that must be dealt with as part of the changes.

Efforts by the rich and powerful to change their worlds have been going on since rich and powerful were invented. History itself is very much a chronicle of these efforts and their almost inevitable catastrophic conclusions.

That today we have yet another iteration of changes driven by the rich and powerful is bad news but nothing out of the historical-usual. Changes often result in wars because there is hardly ever a time where a single ruler or ruling group are not challenged by one or more ruler-wannabes.

Our world also seems to have its own agenda in play. While globalists in the West push intensively and erratically on their NWO schemes, these schemes have unintended consequences such as sanctions that benefit the sanctioned (Russia and friends) and harm the sanction-creators (the West). We are now seeing a West-dominated unipolar world morph into a Eurasian-powerhouse that is building a new multi-polar world. Completely unplanned. Outcomes unknown.

The CIC agenda appears unlikely to succeed in such a world.  It seems more likely to result in great damage and suffering in its own territory – the West, aka us.

Bottom line:

The Council for Inclusive Capitalism (CIC) appears to be simply a rebranding of earlier globalist agendas including the Great Reset, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and various flavors of New World Order schemes. CIC members’ commitments to action, assuming that any of these happen and are reasonably successful, have some good points and some not-so-good points – on balance and at best, likely more or less harmless. What is much more troubling is the WEF and kin finding that such a rebranding is even necessary. If the prior versions weren’t working, a rebranded version of what didn’t work will probably not work either. Each such failure increases the chances that more desperate actions will be taken.

 “Members of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism understand that taking action and following through on our commitments is essential to earning the trust of society. This month, we’ve been discussing how companies can transition to net zero so that the benefits are broadly shared with business and global leaders in Davos, learning how to reduce food waste with Niels Lorijn, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Capdesia, and exploring how gamifying financial inclusion can drive big impacts with Fundación Capital CEO Yves Moury. Trust matters, and our members are following through on their commitments in innovative and interesting ways.”

“I was fortunate to join Edelman for the launch of their 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer to discuss this simple yet critically important concept.  If you haven’t already, I invite you to explore its insights.  During the conversation, I made the point that we must be attuned to how customers, employees, and investors are viewing corporate obligations on inclusivity, sustainability, and even geopolitics. “Corporations are created by society.  We get limited liability as investors because society wants to give it to us – that is a huge give.  And if we lose that trust, we could lose our license to operate.  That’s not God-given. That’s why we have to be true to who we say we are.”

“It has never been more important to be concrete in our actions and to ensure that capital rewards those taking action. That’s why I am excited to share with you the ESG investing tools newly released by the Pension Fund Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism, with support from the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism and the Millstein Center at Columbia Law School.  These open source tools developed over the past year help pension funds create more legal responsibility for asset managers to commit to and demonstrate concrete execution of their ESG impact priorities. Read more about this work and how you can make use of the tools below.”

Methodology. The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer is our 22nd annual trust and credibility survey. The survey was powered by Edelman Data & Intelligence (DxI) and consisted of 30-minute online interviews conducted between November 1 and November 24, 2021, in 28 countries and with 36,000+ respondents.”

“Nearly 1 out of 2 respondents view government and media as divisive forces in society:

  • 48% Government
  • 46% Media”

“Vicious cycle of distrust fueled by government and media. We find a world ensnared in a vicious cycle of distrust, fueled by a growing lack of faith in media and government. Through disinformation and division, these two institutions are feeding the cycle and exploiting it for commercial and political gain.”

“Business’ societal role is here to stay. We see an even greater expectation of business to lead as trust in government continues to spiral. But this is not a job business can do on its own. Business must work with all institutions to foster innovation and drive impact.”

Business is not doing enough to address societal problems:

  • 52% Climate Change
  • 49% Economic Inequality
  • 46% Workforce Reskilling”

All stakeholders hold business accountable:

  • 58% Will buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values
  • 60% Will choose a place to work based on their beliefs and values
  • 80% Will invest based on their beliefs and values”