Fourth Industrial Revolution? What about inequality?
21st January 2016,
"The way that the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is being proposed at Davos makes it clear that this will entrench corporate power and and exacerbate global inequality."
| Global Justice Now press release |
|
21 January 2015 |
|
Davos comment - Fixation on technology will reinforce, not solve, inequality
|
|
On the second day of the World Economic Forum taking place in Davos, Nick Dearden the director of Global Justice Now commented on the theme of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’: “Technology clearly has an important role to play in meeting the many challenges that the world faces, but the way that the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is being proposed at Davos makes it clear that this will entrench corporate power and and exacerbate global inequality. One of the biggest threats that the world is facing is obscene accumulation of money and power that is embodied by the participants of the World Economic Forum, and focusing on robots and automation is an attempt to quietly sweep that global inequality under the carpet. “This techno-fixation is also a prominent theme amongst the various ‘philanthrocapitalists’ at Davos, often with very harmful consequences. The Gates Foundation is aggressively pushing industrial farming methods involving plenty of chemicals and privatisation of seed distribution. Time and again, these ‘solutions’ have proved disastrous for small farmers, allowing big players to effectively control the whole food system.” This week Global Justice Now released the report Gated Development - Is the Gates Foundation always a force for good? which accused the foundation of ‘dangerously skewing’ the entire development sector towards corporate globalisation and techno-fixes. The foundation is expected to release its annual letter on the subject of addressing global poverty at some point around the time of the World Economic Forum. |
