Enter the new utopian promise: the World Economic Forum (WEF) has decided that, in “Consumption 2.0,” the world will run on a sharing economy—a new, improved communism in which hyper-efficient capitalism looks a lot like state-controlled collectivisation.

The WEF has referenced Rachel Botsman, who argued in What’s Mine Is Yours (Harper Business) that online sharing platforms can enable a new form of collaborative consumption, in which citizens access products rather than own them. Under this new “better distribution” doctrine, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy” means you don’t own the car. You use online platforms to rent someone else’s idle vehicle only when you need it. That’s what the technology enables; the claim is that most people still won’t have the privilege of ownership, but distribution will be smarter and more frictionless thanks to online platforms.

This idea is also based on concentrated cities and the new digital collectivism envisioned by the players behind the curtain: the old idea, repackaged under a new name.

In East Germany, there wasn’t exactly a law that said, “You are forbidden from owning a second car.” Instead, the state-controlled allocation system made it practically impossible for an ordinary family to obtain more than one vehicle. The reasoning was simple: Why would you need more if you already had enough? The system was intended to prevent overconsumption among the masses.

In East Germany, government bureaucrats thoroughly vetted applications based on social merit, workplace productivity, and political loyalty. This is the point many of you may not like: the WEF promotes authors who look to Socialist China’s credit-score system and emissions-control penalties as a viable foundation for the next digital gulag.