The WHO, the UN, and the Reality of Human Greed

This article originally appeared in the American Journal for Economics and Sociology.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is not plotting to take over the world. We need to remember what it is; an organization of fairly ordinary people, not especially experts in their field, who have landed jobs and benefits that most of us would envy. Not intrinsically nefarious, the organization is just being obedient to those who fund it and who define how those funds must be used. This is necessary if its staff are to keep their jobs.

The WHO is, however, promoting a new treaty being discussed by its governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), aimed at centralizing its control over health emergencies. The WHA is also amending the International Health Regulations (IHR), which have force under international law, to give the WHO power to demand lockdowns, mandate vaccines for you and your family, and prevent you from travelling. 

‘Health emergencies,’ in this context, are any potential risk that the Director-General determines might cause a significant problem to health. This could be a viral variant somewhere, an outbreak of information that he/she disagrees with, or even changing weather. The current DG has already insisted that all of these are major and growing threats. He even declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern after 5 people in the world died of monkeypox.

The rest of the United Nations (UN), in its current desperation over impending climate Armageddon, is much the same as the WHO. As temperatures reach giddy heights that were useful for growing meat and barley in Medieval Greenland, most of its staff don’t really believe we are on the cusp of extinction. They are just ordinary people paid to say these things, and concerned about job security and promotion if they don’t. 

People whose wealth has made them very powerful see great gain in having the WHO and the UN act in this way. These people have also invested heavily in the media and politics to ensure broad support. Staff of the WHO and the UN who fight this from within are hardly going to enhance their career prospects. There is also just enough of a grain of truth in the stories (viruses do kill people and CO2 is rising while the climate is changing) to self-justify the overall harm they know they are doing.

The advantages of organizational capture

In reality, large organizations work for those who fund them. Most of their staff just do what they are told and accept their paychecks. A few courageous ones tend to leave or get pushed, many who lack the courage of their convictions hide behind the organization hoping that others will step up first, and some are a bit clueless and cannot really figure out what is going on. An unfortunate few genuinely feel trapped into submission due to difficult personal circumstances.

When the ethos of funding the WHO and the wider UN was about helping the world’s populations to improve their lot, this is what the staff generally advocated for and worked to implement. Now that they are guided by the very wealthy and by multinational corporations that have investors to please, they advocate and work for the benefit of these new masters with the same enthusiasm. This is why such organizations are so useful to those who wish to expand personal power.

In discussing how a relative few can influence or run these powerful international organizations, it is easy to think it is all unbelievable or conspiracist, if you don’t pause and really apply your brain. How could so few take over the whole world? If someone has as much money as whole countries, but does not have a country to look after, they really do have quite a lot of scope. Applying some of this money strategically to specific institutions that then serve as tools to influence the rest is achievable. Their staff will be grateful for this apparent largesse.

Institutional capture of this type is achievable when we relax rules on taxation and conflict of interest. allowing certain individuals and corporations to gain vast financial leverage and to openly apply it. If we then allow them to form public-private partnerships, their aims can be further subsidized with our money. If we allow our politicians to treat politics as a lifetime career, they will soon realize that rather than pleasing the populace it is more effective to cozy up with these people who can fund their career. 

They can do this behind closed doors at resorts like Davos, while the corporate media distracts us by fawning over a teenager on the main stage raging against the machine. The result is inevitable, because the politicians need money and positive media coverage, and the cartels of the wealthy need more amicable laws.

International public health is now a stunning example of such corporate capture. The same entities fund the training colleges, research groups where the students will seek jobs, modelling that will define their priorities, agencies where they will implement their learning, journals they will read, and the mass media that will assure them it is all for the best. The media will also publicly vilify those who step out of line. The climate issue is not terribly different if you dig a bit. Those who comply will have assured careers, and those who don’t will not. Such industries will then shift to policies, and study results, that benefit the sponsors.

Try to think of a rich person who genuinely lost interest in becoming wealthier. There are a few saints in history, but greed is a powerful force that is seldom assuaged by accumulation of the stuff that greed seeks. There is nothing new under the sun, not greed and not those who try to pretend that the fruit of greed is something good.

The opportunities of feudalism

To achieve success in accumulating more power and wealth, you would have to, by definition, take sovereignty and wealth from others. Most people don’t like having this taken away from them. Power in a true democracy is granted by the people, not taken, and only held on the consent of those who granted it. Few ordinary people want to give up their wealth to someone already wealthier than them – they may consider transferring it in taxes in order to gain mutual benefit, but not giving it to another to use as the receiver pleases. To succeed in accumulating power and wealth it is therefore often necessary to take it by force or by deceit. Deceit (lying) is usually the least risky alternative.

Lies and deceit don’t work on everyone, but they work on many. As the enemy of deceit is truth, and the enemy of tyranny is equality (i.e., individual sovereignty or bodily autonomy), people who insist on truth and individual rights must be suppressed by those who wish to accumulate power. The most effective way is to silence them, and to reassure the majority who have fallen for the deceit that these nonconformists are the enemy (remember “Pandemic of the unvaccinated”).

Denigration and scapegoating, using terms such as “anti-X,” “Y-denier,” or “so-called Z,” make the non-complying minority look negative and inferior. The majority can then safely ignore them, and even feel superior in doing so.

If the mass media can be brought on board, it becomes almost impossible for non-compliers to clear their name and get their message across. The largest funders of media are now pharmaceutical companies. They are also large funders of politicians. The largest owners of media are BlackRock and Vanguard (who are coincidentally also the largest shareholders of several pharmaceutical companies). So, imagine how profitable it would be if these investment houses, directly and through lackey organizations such as the World Economic Forum, WHO or the UN, thought of using such assets to provide maximum profit (as, indeed, in an amoral business environment, they are supposed to do).

If a relatively new virus came along in such a scenario, all that would be needed is to apply those media and political assets to sow fear and confine people, then offer them a pharmaceutical way out of their confinement. Such a scheme would virtually print money for their investors. This pharmaceutical escape could even be made to look like a saving grace, rather than a scheme born of, and run through, greed. 

Facing reality

A short glance at reality indicates that we do seem to be going through such a scenario. We have got society into a total mess by dropping the basic rules that kept greed at bay, then let greed run rampant and called it “progress.” Fear and impoverishment are symptoms. 

The WHO, the UN, and the mass media are tools. Soon other tools will impose Central Bank Digital Currencies and generously provide a Universal Basic Income (an allowance, as is given to a child) to relieve the impoverishment. This programmable currency will be spent on what the financiers decide, and withdrawn on their whim, such as on any sign of disloyalty. It is exactly what slavery is, except a whip, or even the current approach of media sponsorship, will no longer be required to keep people in line.

To fix this, it will be necessary to take the tools away from those who are misusing them, whether the tools are the WHO, UN or whatever. If your really useful hammer is going to be used by an intruder to break your legs, then get rid of the hammer. There are more important things in life than banging in nails.

Put more plainly, as democratic countries we should not be funding organizations that do the bidding of others to impoverish us and erode our democracy. That would be self-destruction. We need to decide whether individual sovereignty is a worthwhile cause. Is it really true that all are born equal and should live equal? Or should we embrace a hierarchical, caste-like, or feudal society? History suggests that those on top will probably be keen on the feudal approach. Therefore, those not on top, and those who hold to beliefs that transcend greed, had better start taking this problem seriously. Ceasing support for institutions that are being used to steal from us is an obvious starting point.

By regaining maturity regarding the reality of human nature, we can start dismantling the prison being built around us. Treat the sponsored media as if they are sponsored. Try to tell the truth as often and as rigorously as we can. When light is shed on a trap, others are less likely to fall into it. When enough decide that what is intrinsically ours must remain ours, those who want to take it will be unable to do so. Then we can address health, climate, and whatever else in a way that benefits humanity, rather than just benefiting a bunch of wealthy self-entitled miscreants.