‘Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ 6,000-word essay, recently published in left-wing publication The Monthly, shows conservatives were correct in predicting the Albanese Labor government would be a meddling, bigger-spending, anti-capitalist nightmare.
However, while there is an understandable temptation to label Chalmers’ love letter to big government as “socialism”, that’s not quite right.
It embodies something that could prove far worse.
Chalmers’ promise to “redesign markets for investment in social purposes, based on common metrics of performance” sounds innocuous.
As does his purported optimism that “2023 will be the year we build a better capitalism” that is “uniquely Australian”.
However, this supposedly better capitalism, or “values-based capitalism”, as he puts it, is not uniquely Australian.
It’s been virulently propagated internationally for decades by the likes of Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), under the banner of “stakeholder capitalism”, and is a core component of the WEF’s Great Reset initiative.
The Great Reset is a proposed alliance between big government and big business to “reset” the global economy post-pandemic, by pushing companies to adopt “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) policies as a condition of operation.
ESG policies are characterised by identity politics and radical climate action, and are determined in part by faceless, unelected corporate elites.
It’s not socialism; it’s neo-feudalism.
ESG policies are the “values” of Chalmers’ “values-based capitalism”.
We know this because his essay bears a striking resemblance to the type of stakeholder capitalism outlined in Klaus Schwab’s 2022 co-written book, The Great Narrative, a sort of sequel to his 2020 book The Great Reset.
This, for anyone who holds right-of-centre values, should be cause for alarm.
Chalmers describes a core component of values-based capitalism as enabling investors “to work out the climate-risk rating of a firm just as a lender can work out a credit-risk rating”.
“In 2023, we will create a new sustainable finance architecture, including a new taxonomy to label the climate impact of different investments. That will help investors align their choices with climate targets, help businesses who want to support the transition get finance more easily…This strategy begins with climate finance,” he continues.
Similarly, in The Great Narrative, Schwab says stakeholder capitalism “welcomes the idea of legislative action to define with precision the benchmarks for ESG reporting and performance”.
My essay in @THEMONTHLY out tomorrow in hard copy or read it here: https://t.co/IxeNPWsazE#auspol #ausecon pic.twitter.com/gktOUGH6Nf— Jim Chalmers MP (@JEChalmers) January 29, 2023
“In the same way that companies have an obligation to report their financial results…in the not-too-distant future they will have a similar obligation to report on ESG metrics… governments will make the last call for setting the legal obligations, targets and incentives around ESG standards.”
Ultimately, the purpose of both values-based and stakeholder capitalism is to justify politicians working with corporations to create big government policies, and insidiously exert the kind of control over markets and individuals that, in isolation, is unpalatable to your average voter.
This is the antithesis of democracy.
Jim Chalmers can claim all he wants that his values-based capitalism is the right thing for Australians, but he seems to forget that values are often subjective.
While he may believe that markets geared towards controlling citizen’s behaviour is a moral good, others (like me) believe this is – at best – overly stubborn.
Chalmers would do well to remind himself of this before he positions himself as the last word on Australia’s so-called “national goals”.’https://www.skynews.com.au/insights-and-analysis/jim-chalmers-valuesbased-capitalism-takes-a-page-straight-out-of-the-great-resets-neofeudalistic-playbook/news-story/d8b32e97ea2a060d4d5d9deeddba44f8
whatyareckon 