The world after the pandemic

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

So let's keep up all the behaviors that are destroying places like Yosemite.  Brilliant.  

 

I’m resistant to this idea.  But I can recognize the need and potential utility.  How do you think others will react if these opportunities are taken from them, calmly, rationally?

[Spockydog]

11 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

No, it's just a statement of fact. It's also, pretty clearly, the position of most people given their behavior. But, hey, perhaps you live a carbon neutral lifestyle. I suspect you probably don't though.

Don't be ridiculous. You sound like one of those Daily Mail opinion pieces where they demonise someone like Greta for eating a bag of Walkers crisps.

No, of course I don't live a carbon neutral lifestyle. Nobody does. The system does not allow it.

But I did blow the last of my life savings on an electric car.

[Rippounet]

16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m resistant to this idea.  But I can recognize the need and potential utility.  How do you think others will react if these opportunities are taken from them, calmly, rationally?

Assuming the imperative finally turned into a functioning plan, both flexible and clear enough to be widely accepted... Reactions would likely be eerily similar to the confinement order.

Right now we are confined mostly out of solidarity for the elderly - and others who are weak to the virus.
Confinement has been done differently in different countries, depending on national cultures and ideologies. It has also been accepted more or less well, again, depending on national cultures and ideologies.
However, in most countries so far, the imperative has in fact been widely accepted. People were reluctant at first. In some countries they had to be convinced or coerced. In some countries you even had individuals who made it a point to disobey - but they were always a minority.

It is the reason why, out of this mess, I can't help but find a glimmer of hope.

[Altherion]

11 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is local production of the stuff of modern life even possible?  Aren’t imports of a fair number of raw materials needed to produce the modern electronics and medicines people are concerned over?  Raw materials that are not necessarily available inside the territory of many nations?

Local production of everything is probably only possible for countries with massive amounts of natural resources such as the US, China, Russia and Canada -- and even these may prefer to import some products rather than producing them. However, this is not what what I was talking about. Local production of, say, N95 masks, is not actually that resource intensive -- it's just that most countries are not set up to produce them in quantity. Similarly, high technology products such as ventilators can be made even by countries without large deposits of raw materials (if a country truly lacks all traces of a needed commodity, it's easy enough to stockpile this in non-emergency times).

Of course, these examples are just from this specific emergency situation. Ideally, one would look at other possibilities and plan for them as well.

10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

- You present an increased standard of living as the objective. Is it? Or are we in at a time where we have to pause and think about survival and sustainability first (at least for a time, in order to transition)?

Yes, it is. If your changes lower the standard of living, they won't last long. People are already not happy (hence all of the populists sprouting like mushrooms after a rain), they won't tolerate a focus on sustainability for any meaningful time.

10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

- Even assuming increasing our standard of living is the objective, can we be certain that the politics of offer are in fact doing that? What I mean by that is that while our standard of living has in fact been increasing in the last decades (and centuries), there is a case to be made that this was primarily thanks to the politics of demand, or at the very least to a combination of the politics of demand and the politics of offer. In other words, that the standard of living increases precisely when you give people money.

We can be reasonably certain that the politics of the past half century or so have not made things better for the majority of the population of Western countries. The standard of living did increase, but only because of technological improvements. That said, I don't know that giving people money on a permanent basis is going to improve much either.

10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

- Do we need "extra work" to increase our standard of living? Aren't automation and digitalization already achieving that?
- How do you define this increase of our standard of living anyway? Are we talking mere production of goods and services? Or aren't there ways to raise that standard that require little labor (culture, gaming, social activites... ) or little production (some services, sharing & exchanging...) ?

Yes, technology is naturally making life easier, but this alone is not enough. As it stands, the benefits of technology accrue primarily to a small group of people at the top and, to a lesser extent, to a larger (but still small) group of workers who join certain fields at the right time. It's hard to define the standard of living, but one way to do it is simply to ask people whether they think that they're doing better than their parents at the same age and whether they believe that their children would do better still. The US asks this in exit polls to elections and the results are pretty lousy.

11 hours ago, Rippounet said:

- Why would UBI not be sustainable? Yes, it means states run an important deficit... But as long as inflation doesn't ruin it, deficits are not per se a problem. In fact, assuming production keeps increaseing to meet demand (through automation), why would there be inflation? And anyway, don't we want at least a little bit of inflation to progressively rid ourselves of debt?

UBI is probably worthy of its own thread. Very briefly, the problem with financing it via deficits is that a deficit is, by nature, borrowed money and the moment people catch on that you're never going to repay it without inflation, they will only lend at interest rates that account for this inflation. So you can be rid of your old debt this way, but it will make all new debt much more expensive. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's a complicated idea (and this is not its only complication).

11 hours ago, Rippounet said:

BTW I was agreeing with you that it was unlikely to happen in the US, but you've probably seen the American right-wing media push for "Hawleynomics" lately haven't you?

Yes, I've heard of it. However, I suspect that their main goal is to prevent a long-lasting recession so that they'd have a chance of winning the election in November. They're not going to support this beyond the current emergency.

11 hours ago, Rippounet said:

What are those reasons already?

Basically, Germany does not want to be bailing out Spain (which is what will eventually happen if Spain keeps accumulating debt).

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

m well aware that travel existed before airliners.  It was expensive, slow, and reserved to the wealthy who could take significant time to travel that way.  
 

Are you suggesting that was better?

Yes. Because even for the wealthy prior to very late time steam ships it was as dangerous for them as it was for the people they were going to visit. 

And people actually saw the places and people where they were.  Air travel and cruise ships and the rest only provide more of the same of what they left behind -- purposely! -- to make them feel comfy wumfy where ever they go because it's always Sephora always McDonalds, always Rhianna, etc.  It's gotten thousands of times worse now that it's all about selfies and the Instagram.

I do believe that this goddamn mass tourism going away would be a Very Good Thing.  It's not traveling and getting to know people and places to expand one's mind and understanding of both the larger   universe and one's own small part of it.  It's about people taking worthless photos of themselves in front of what is priceless without experiencing the experience their selfies are pretending they are having.

It's really interesting in the light of all this to consider that most of us would probably have been dead many times over many years ago already without antibiotics and vaccines. This is a new one for all of us in the 'developed worlds', ain't it?

[Rippounet]

I don't have a lot to answer, your points are good, thank you for answering.

21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Yes, it is. If your changes lower the standard of living, they won't last long.

You are probably correct. Though I think you point out yourself that much can be produced locally (and thus with a much smaller carbon footprint).
I think there are many ways to mitigate the unpleasant consequences of the transition. In other words, give up some things, but get more of others.
But I need to read more on the economic side of things. I'm pretty sure there's a way to prevent inflation AND have nice things.

[HexMachina]

2 hours ago, Risto said:

Well, I understand but that is a religious service. Are we really going to look it through scientific eyes? The point is that this is another attempt of Montenegrin government to discredit ArchBishop who is one of the most influential Balkan figures in their pursuit to nationalize Orthodox temples.

Look at the service with scientific eyes? No, of course not. Look at the fact that it endangers people by gathering a large group and ignoring all social distancing practices? Hell yes. Just because its a religious ceremony doesn’t exempt them as some kind of special snowflakes who can ignore what everyone else has to practice. I will take your word regarding the government as i don’t know enough about Montenegrin politics to know whether that is true or false, but i don’t really see the issue in this instance.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m resistant to this idea.  But I can recognize the need and potential utility.  How do you think others will react if these opportunities are taken from them, calmly, rationally?

I'm not asking for no one to ever fly again.  

As to the 'slowness' of boat or car or train travel, maybe in a world where we're not expected to spend half our conscious lives earning someone else money some extra time making a journey wouldn't seem so terrible.  

People travelled plenty before air travel.  In fact, if you talk to people who regularly travel for work one of the biggest complaints is that they're essentially just going from work functions to the hotel to sleep.  It's not like reducing air travel, especially for business trips is going to destroy all these valuable cultural experiences.  

Maybe that trip to Scotland will take a little longer and be a little more epic.  

I have no idea how others will react.  I imagine people who love cheap tourism will be dismayed.  They'll have to drive to Disneyland instead.  Or pay a premium.  

If the way we use air travel is irresponsible, which I think it is, and we're given an opportunity to change it, I take it.  

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I think there are many ways to mitigate the unpleasant consequences of the transition. In other words, give up some things, but get more of others.
But I need to read more on the economic side of things. I'm pretty sure there's a way to prevent inflation AND have nice things.

There might be, but it's hard to be sure. Inflation is tricky: in the past, something like quantitative easing (i.e. zero or negative central bank rates combined with the central bank directly purchasing bonds) would have been assumed to practically guarantee inflation, but when they tried it, this policy barely had any effect on inflation at all. On the other hand, once inflation gets going, it can be hard to stop.

43 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

If the way we use air travel is irresponsible, which I think it is, and we're given an opportunity to change it, I take it.  

You are not given such an opportunity though. What might have done was refrain from bailing out the airlines. There are good arguments for this that pretty much all governments ignored, but even had this happened, it would not have changed air travel. All of the airplanes, airports, pilots and other infrastructure and personnel would still be there. The most that might have happened would have been that the airlines would go bankrupt and somebody would scoop up the assets for pennies on the dollar. There might be a period of severe disruption as things were sorted out (and this the the stated reason for the bailouts), but it would not be the end of air travel as we know it -- eventually, the airlines would simply reopen under new ownership.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

8 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm not asking for no one to ever fly again.  

As to the 'slowness' of boat or car or train travel, maybe in a world where we're not expected to spend half our conscious lives earning someone else money some extra time making a journey wouldn't seem so terrible.  

People travelled plenty before air travel.  In fact, if you talk to people who regularly travel for work one of the biggest complaints is that they're essentially just going from work functions to the hotel to sleep.  It's not like reducing air travel, especially for business trips is going to destroy all these valuable cultural experiences.  

Maybe that trip to Scotland will take a little longer and be a little more epic.  

I have no idea how others will react.  I imagine people who love cheap tourism will be dismayed.  They'll have to drive to Disneyland instead.  Or pay a premium.  

If the way we use air travel is irresponsible, which I think it is, and we're given an opportunity to change it, I take it.  

I turned 49 on Saturday.  I started a new job paying less than half what I made formerly two weeks ago.  If reasonably priced air travel is eliminated I’ll never see Scotland in person.

I can live with that.  I’m not sure everyone will be as calm about that.

[Mladen]

1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Look at the service with scientific eyes? No, of course not. Look at the fact that it endangers people by gathering a large group and ignoring all social distancing practices? Hell yes. Just because its a religious ceremony doesn’t exempt them as some kind of special snowflakes who can ignore what everyone else has to practice. I will take your word regarding the government as i don’t know enough about Montenegrin politics to know whether that is true or false, but i don’t really see the issue in this instance.

Well, the Orthodox Church in Montenegro called its congregation to stay at homes and follow the government's instructions. They informed the public that they will conduct religious services in churches and temples without people and that local priests will conduct communions. Now, the center of Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade now demands the end of state of emergency during Easter, which is truly nonsensical, but the Montenegrin branch has always been somewhat more sensible. I mean, the Pope himself conducted the Easter service in Vatican without believers. 

It's not about them being special snowflake. It is a very legitimate question about double standards. I mean, if you have construction workers working all day long, if you have crowded supermarkets, banks and post offices, what is the problem of having church being opened for clergy to perform sacred rites without congregation? 

[Isalie]

8 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sure they did.  They just never came back most of the time.  Are you saying if you aren’t wealthy you don’t get to take a Scottish holiday if you are from North 

Oh well, shouldve read the rest of the thread first. The idea that we can not give anything up in the present to preserve the future is really galling though.

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Or you do it over zoom?

Or maybe just tape photos of the statue of liberty to the inside of my eyelids?

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The pandemic is doing several things:
- Showing us what a world with reduced economic activity looks like (it's not that bad, we can adapt).

You seem to be living under the impression that this is as bad as it's going to get. That because we are all staying in our lovely homes, watching some Netflix and ordering our food online and doing some funny pub quizzes online then we can just go on doing this forever and the government will foot the bill. Unfortunately that isn't the case. 
My company has maybe 6 more months of reserves before it goes out of business and we all lose our jobs. The same for most of the companies we work with. We work in the online sector, the one place you'd assume would be safe. How many more businesses will be in the same position? 
We are living in a temporary holding pattern, the government is spending enormous amounts to make sure that the entire economy doesn't fall to bits before we can get past this thing. But how long can that even last?  Not long. And believe me, we will be paying for this for years to come even after the virus goes away. You haven't really explained how digging us deeper into that hole is in any way helpful

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

- Showing us what the essential jobs for our societies actually are

This is the standard dogma of a certain type of person because it fits their ideology, but all this is showing us is what jobs are vital during times of an emergency, and we are living under emergency conditions. Nobody wants to actually continue living like this, so go and tell those millions of people losing their jobs that they aren't essential.

 

[Jo498]

10 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The pandemic is doing several things:

- Showing us what a world with reduced economic activity looks like (it's not that bad, we can adapt).
- Putting much of the private sector at the mercy of governments, including the usually all-powerful banks.
- Showing us what the essential jobs for our societies actually are.
We are actually given all the means necessary to act: the data about our minimum needs, a temporary weakening of the neo-liberal dogma, and a temporary weakness of the financial and corporate sectors. In a nutshell, it's going to take about a decade to rebuild the economy anyway, so might as well take that decade to transition.
All it takes is some political will. For the public to seize the opportunity and push hard for action.
Conversely, if we revert to the status quo ante after this crisis there will be no going back. Let's stop kidding ourselves, the numbers and the scientific community are very clear about what's going to happen: the tempratures will rise fast, and without any radical action our civilisation will collapse around 2050.
Most of us will still be around as everything we know crumbles around us. And absent some kind of technological miracle, it'll be bad.

We're being given a chance to save ourselves. All it takes is to be willing to sacrifice a few things, and yes, international travel is one of those things.
And funnily enough, the right and the left do agree that ending globalisation is a good idea (for different reasons), so it might very well happen.

The left/right *fringes* maybe agree on that, but certainly not the mainstream left/right parties in most countries. As I wrote months ago in the climate thread, we don't have to look into 17th-19th century travel, but mid 20th century might be enough. How did US students get to New England colleges in 1950? Did they fly? What about 1930? So a civilized world with most amenities of modernity (trains, indoor plumbing, modern medicine etc.) minus a lot of travel but plus most of the easy communication and electronic entertainment they did not have in the 1930s-50s is certainly technically possible.

But I am also shocked how extremely dependent huge parts of our economy are on "frivolous" consumption. The apparel industry is threatened because most stores had to close for a month or two? I naively would have assumed that most of such losses would be recouped/averaged out after the re-opening, but this seems utterly wrong. And we do have whole regions dependent on both tourism or the production of clothes etc.

There is also a problem that typical (upper) middle class people in "Western" (in the wide sense, incl. Japan, South Corea etc.) countries can do their (often bullshit...) jobs remotely from their (comparably spacious and nice) homes, so they severely underestimate how difficult or impossible this is for many even in our Western societies, not so speak of the developing world. They also underestimate how tough a 10-30% cut in income or in overall standard of living is if one is not in the upper third but in the lower third of a Western society.

[RhaenysBee]

According to BBC there’s a wildfire at Chernobyl. And it’s only April. At this point I’m not even sure I believe there will be a world after the pandemic, or 2020 for that matter. Are we sure we didn’t miscalculate the miscalculation of that Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world? I know it was supposed to in 2000 and we thought it would be 2012 after all, but so far it seems like 2020 is the winning number. I swear to god, I’m not sure I’m joking here. Always hoped the world would end either when I’m too young to comprehend it or too old to be bothered too much. I suppose that kind of selfishness if why I do deserve to go through it at this age. 

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

According to BBC there’s a wildfire at Chernobyl. And it’s only April. At this point I’m not even sure I believe there will be a world after the pandemic, or 2020 for that matter. Are we sure we didn’t miscalculate the miscalculation of that Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world? I know it was supposed to in 2000 and we thought it would be 2012 after all, but so far it seems like 2020 is the winning number. I swear to god, I’m not sure I’m joking here. Always hoped the world would end either when I’m too young to comprehend it or too old to be bothered too much. I suppose that kind of selfishness if why I do deserve to go through it at this age. 

The world is not ending. Not even close.

[RhaenysBee]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The world is not ending. Not even close.

Well of course it’s not ending literally. The world as in the Planet Earth we know outlived the dinosaurs and will outlive us. The world as in human civilization outlived several pandemics, natural disasters, nuclear catastrophes and two world wars, it will likely outlive the 2020s as well and be reborn in a new shape and form the same way it was reborn after the world wars. The world as in the social, economic, cultural, etc context my little life is embedded in is trembling in a way I have never experienced it tremble before and will change in a way, at a pace, to an extent I cannot even theorize. That is frightening even though I have a broader understanding of the situation than what concerns my own life and therefore I am fully aware that the current situation (virus, natural disasters, etc) can and might get much much much worse. Down to either this understanding, or the emotional impact of what has already occurred, I do feel like the world is ending.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 hours ago, Mikael said:

Oh well, shouldve read the rest of the thread first. The idea that we can not give anything up in the present to preserve the future is really galling though.

That is not my point.  I will repeat what I said upthread:

Quote

I’m resistant to this idea.  But I can recognize the need and potential utility.  How do you think others will react if these opportunities are taken from them, calmly, rationally?

[Isalie]

10 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That is not my point.  I will repeat what I said upthread:

Lol, you spent a bunch of posts acting like going on an intercontinental vacation was a human right.

As to your other point, if a decrease in the availability of cheap travel is what finally dooms society as we know it, then maybe it deserves to fail.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Mikael said:

Lol, you spent a bunch of posts acting like going on an intercontinental vacation was a human right.

As to your other point, if a decrease in the availability of cheap travel is what finally dooms society as we know it, then maybe it deserves to fail.

People will not react calmly to limiting international travel to the wealthy now that it has been available to the average person for some time.