[dolorian]

Part of the confusion comes from partisan thinking. WEF supports 15 minute cities (aka walkable neighborhoods) because it's a better use of resources, there are benefits for 99%ers and 1%ers alike, urbanists and ruralites. The trouble is that our polarized system means if you think the WEF is evil, then it's impossible for any of their goals to be beneficial to you. Compare: Many people today believe that Hitler was evil, but will accept that projects like the autobahn or innovations in rocketry were mostly beneficial.

Dismissing all opposing views as "hateful misinformation" like the WEF and governments do isn't useful either. It convinces those who were suspicious of your motivations that they were right about you. The WEF videos never really explain any of the potential for good, they just exclaim with glee that this is a great opportunity to change the world the way they want. Completely tone deaf, I'd say some of these causes would receive less resistance without WEF "helping".

When it comes to the walkable neighborhood issue, the real conspiracy is that automakers "convinced" governments to create infrastructure that's miserable to nagivate without a car. If you've never been to cities outside of north america then you probably don't even know what you're missing. Those who think freedom and privacy are important (I certainly do) might want to consider that a car results in licensing, insurance, license plate tracking and gives cops an excuse to detain you arbitrarily.

The last but probably most important issue that gets left unsaid is that the current system won't continue to work. North American cities are broke from (re)building roads to subsidize trucking companies and mcmansion developers, they can't afford to continue doing so without raising taxes 300%. Even bigger: we'll run out of oil in 50 years. We won't run out of energy, just the cheap and easily transportable form that we've become accustomed to. The options are build railways, or quit bothering with silly things like "trade", "travel" and "manufacturing".