The world after the pandemic

[Altherion]

9 hours ago, Rippounet said:

There is a lot of discussion about capitalism and socialism suddenly (by that I mean, not just here, but in mainstream media as well).

The current form of capitalism has several well known flaws that are very well illustrated by this crisis. For example, between the inequality of individuals and the short-term outlook of corporations, a shock like this one would be enough to utterly trash the economy and possibly even incite widespread unrest if it wasn't for massive government intervention. And while this is the widest bailout in recent times, it's far from the only one. All sorts of calamities can cause a bailout and it becomes hard to pretend that there is a free market system when its continued existence is predicated on periodic injections of government cash.

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, Altherion said:

it becomes hard to pretend that there is a free market system when its continued existence is predicated on periodic injections of government cash.

I wonder if and how this will affect politics in the next few years. This isn't a simple replay of 2008 at all, because the virus has also shown the necessity of efficient healthcare. At some point people might seriously wonder whether there is something worth saving, or at least pay closer attention to where the cash is going.
Given that political polarization was already getting really bad throughout the West that sounds like a volatile situation. Which is weird to consider when you're confined. But I just don't see the pandemic not reinforcing various extremisms.

[Winterfell is Burning]

Should be noticed that this idea that we don't need a public, free healthcare system is an almost exclusively American idea. I don't see even the most radical right-winger in most places defending the abolishment of the already existent system.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Should be noticed that this idea that we don't need a public, free healthcare system is an almost exclusively American idea. I don't see even the most radical right-winger in most places defending the abolishment of the already existent system.  

US citizens place a lot of value in the de facto caste system here.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Just now, Triskele said:

No one can tread on my God-given right to be an undesirable.  

Pal, the world is your oyster

[Altherion]

In the first post of the thread, I linked Harari's article that argued for strengthening international institutions. I wanted to also link the opposite point of view -- that the current version of globalization is a bad idea -- but at the time, I couldn't find articles arguing this point. Fortunately, it appears the anti-globalization people have caught up: here is an article with a UK-centric perspective:

Quote

The era of peak globalisation is over. An economic system that relied on worldwide production and long supply chains is morphing into one that will be less interconnected. A way of life driven by unceasing mobility is shuddering to a stop. Our lives are going to be more physically constrained and more virtual than they were. A more fragmented world is coming into being that in some ways may be more resilient. 

Here is another, US-centric one:

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In 2020, it is even more evident that global institutions are not to be trusted. During times of actual crisis, they are not just incompetent and negligent, but also downright indifferent to tragedy. A distant and detached transnational bureaucracy only cares about one thing: perpetuating their elite rule and survival. Human lives do not matter to them much, as Italians are now finding out the hard way. And the disbelief is now starting to boil into rage.

[Rippounet]

32 minutes ago, Altherion said:

In the first post of the thread, I linked Harari's article that argued for strengthening international institutions. I wanted to also link the opposite point of view -- that the current version of globalization is a bad idea -- but at the time, I couldn't find articles arguing this point. Fortunately, it appears the anti-globalization people have caught up: here is an article with a UK-centric perspective:

Here is another, US-centric one:

Oh, I can help with that, though needless to say I prefer my attacks on neoliberalism from the left.

Lordon wrote an interesting piece in French that definitely packs some punches ("Those assholes who govern us" ).

https://blog.mondediplo.net/les-connards-qui-nous-gouvernent

From the same source you have one in English by Halimi (the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique):

https://mondediplo.com/2020/04/01edito

Quote

 

Contrary to Macron’s suggestion, it is no longer a matter of ‘re-examin[ing] the development model our world has followed’. We already know it needs changing. Right away. And since ‘delegating our protection to others is folly’, let us end strategic dependencies that exist only to preserve ‘free and undistorted competition’. Macron has said that France must make a break, but he will never make the crucial one. We should not just provisionally suspend, but condemn outright the European treaties and free trade agreements that have sacrificed national sovereignty and made competition the supreme objective. Right away.

Everyone now understands the cost of delegating the provision of millions of face masks and pharmaceuticals, which hospital patients and staff, and distribution and supermarket workers, depend on for their lives, to supply chains that stretch around the world and operate on zero inventory. Everyone understands the cost to the planet of deforestation, offshoring, waste accumulation and mass travel. Paris welcomes 38 million tourists a year, more than 17 times its population, and boasts of it.

Protectionism, environmentalism, social justice and public health have come together. They are key elements of an anticapitalist political coalition that is powerful enough to impose a programme of breaks. Right away.

 

I've read half-a-dozen comparable pieces (those are just some of the better ones). They don't offer much as of yet though, obviously.

For once the left and the right seem to agree on something. But both sides still want something very different for "the day after."

 

[Zorral]

 

[Rippounet]

So since we have a bit of time (while being confined) I couldn't help but think about Harari's two points:

Quote

 

First, it implies that you cannot protect yourself by permanently closing your borders. Remember that epidemics spread rapidly even in the Middle Ages, long before the age of globalization. So even if you reduce your global connections to the level of England in 1348 – that still would not be enough. To really protect yourself through isolation, going medieval won’t do. You would have to go full Stone Age. Can you do that?

Secondly, history indicates that real protection comes from the sharing of reliable scientific information, and from global solidarity. When one country is struck by an epidemic, it should be willing to honestly share information about the outbreak without fear of economic catastrophe – while other countries should be able to trust that information, and should be willing to extend a helping hand rather than ostracize the victim. Today, China can teach countries all over the world many important lessons about coronavirus, but this demands a high level of international trust and cooperation.

 

I don't think the right-wing attack on global neo-liberalism addresses these points satisfyingly. In fact, there is absolutely no reason to think that a world of nation-states would deal with a pandemic better than the world we have today. A different way to put it that in itself nationalism solves none of the problems we see today and might very well create additional ones.

Though of course as a eurocommie I definitely can't claim to be objective here.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Post pandemic-

Just out of curiosity am wondering whether companies are going to conclude they do not need as many of the office workers who are now working remotely?

Everyone agrees more people will be working from home and less from offices, but will the aggregate number of (home + remote) workers be more or less in future trends? Am wondering if technology will pare down bureaucracy similarly to the ways we've see automation lessen manpower needs in production facilities?

Or is this something that has already been in transition, what will the overall workforce effects be with more at home workers and will it result in less workers macro wise?

Am not an office worker, I'm a builder, so am genuinely curious about this area of the economy that I have a limited exposure to?

The IMF is claiming the global recession will be far worse than the 2008-9 downturn.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/global-recession-will-be-way-worse-than-2008-crisis-imf/videoshow/74977578.cms

[Winterfell is Burning]

The process of more people working from home didn't start with COVID-19, that's for sure. It's just most people feel this tendency will increase considerably after it, due to the fact that there's simply no need for most office workers to actually be in the office nowdays.

[Altherion]

On 4/4/2020 at 3:51 PM, Rippounet said:

For once the left and the right seem to agree on something. But both sides still want something very different for "the day after."

I think there is broad agreement on the fact that it is madness to have supply chains that are half the world long for stuff that may quickly become critical worldwide. Beyond that, I agree with you -- we can all see the problems, but there is a variety of solutions.

7 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I don't think the right-wing attack on global neo-liberalism addresses these points satisfyingly. In fact, there is absolutely no reason to think that a world of nation-states would deal with a pandemic better than the world we have today. A different way to put it that in itself nationalism solves none of the problems we see today and might very well create additional ones.

The first point is not difficult to address. There's no doubt that tighter border control alone will not stop a pandemic. However, tighter border control makes testing contact tracing and limited quarantines much more feasible. Part of the problem with the current pandemic is that by the time most countries started closing borders, there was no hope at all of tracing everyone who might have had the virus. Of course, the counterpoint to this is that tourism is a major contributor to the economies of many places all over the world. It's going to be really, really tough to limit it in a way that makes a meaningful difference.

The second point is irrefutable, but it's irrefutable in the same way as any "If we all worked together..." statement. One of the things that this pandemic has shown us is that the level of international trust and collaboration is in fact quite a bit lower than it was previously believed. Furthermore, it appears that even the level of internal collaboration within nations is not as high as desired. Thus, the response to the second point is yes, international trust and collaboration would be nice, but since we don't see any way to make it happen, we need to plan for what happens when it isn't there.

2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Just out of curiosity am wondering whether companies are going to conclude they do not need as many of the office workers who are now working remotely?

Everyone agrees more people will be working from home and less from offices, but will the aggregate number of (home + remote) workers be more or less in future trends? Am wondering if technology will pare down bureaucracy similarly to the ways we've see automation lessen manpower needs in production facilities?

I don't see whether this will have much impact on the aggregate number of office workers. The people who are currently working from home really are working (or at least, as far as I can tell, the people at my company are working). It might be that working from home will become more acceptable, but there is no impact on the aggregate from this alone. Of course, there might be layoffs because of the nearly inevitable recession and some fraction of the jobs lost this way may be replaced by technology, but it won't be because people are currently working from home.

[The Sunland Lord]

Human greed won't stop until destroyes everything. No one will learn anything from this. Don't expect any changes.

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, Altherion said:

I think there is broad agreement on the fact that it is madness to have supply chains that are half the world long for stuff that may quickly become critical worldwide. Beyond that, I agree with you -- we can all see the problems, but there is a variety of solutions.

The first point is not difficult to address. There's no doubt that tighter border control alone will not stop a pandemic. However, tighter border control makes testing contact tracing and limited quarantines much more feasible. Part of the problem with the current pandemic is that by the time most countries started closing borders, there was no hope at all of tracing everyone who might have had the virus. Of course, the counterpoint to this is that tourism is a major contributor to the economies of many places all over the world. It's going to be really, really tough to limit it in a way that makes a meaningful difference.

The second point is irrefutable, but it's irrefutable in the same way as any "If we all worked together..." statement. One of the things that this pandemic has shown us is that the level of international trust and collaboration is in fact quite a bit lower than it was previously believed. Furthermore, it appears that even the level of internal collaboration within nations is not as high as desired. Thus, the response to the second point is yes, international trust and collaboration would be nice, but since we don't see any way to make it happen, we need to plan for what happens when it isn't there.

I don't see whether this will have much impact on the aggregate number of office workers. The people who are currently working from home really are working (or at least, as far as I can tell, the people at my company are working). It might be that working from home will become more acceptable, but there is no impact on the aggregate from this alone. Of course, there might be layoffs because of the nearly inevitable recession and some fraction of the jobs lost this way may be replaced by technology, but it won't be because people are currently working from home.

It's so much cheaper to have the workers work from home -- the worker pays for the work space, electricity, toilet paper, cleaning -- all that overhead -- the employer doesn't, and etc.  And now they got it!

 

[Rippounet]

17 hours ago, Altherion said:

There's no doubt that tighter border control alone will not stop a pandemic. However, tighter border control makes testing contact tracing and limited quarantines much more feasible. Part of the problem with the current pandemic is that by the time most countries started closing borders, there was no hope at all of tracing everyone who might have had the virus.

The point is, I don't see why nationalism would make states much more efficient at border control.

Intuitively, one might think that states having a strong nationalistic ideology would be better at it, but I see no empirical proof that this is actually the case.

17 hours ago, Altherion said:

The second point is irrefutable, but it's irrefutable in the same way as any "If we all worked together..." statement. One of the things that this pandemic has shown us is that the level of international trust and collaboration is in fact quite a bit lower than it was previously believed.

I dunno. There are some serious problems when it comes to medical equipement (the fight for masks, the unreliability of Chinese tests... etc), some of which at least were rather easy to predict.

However, this is relatively minor compared to the sharing of information, which has been, and still is, crucial to fight the pandemic. Chinese studies are easily accessible, and this helps a great deal.

[Zorral]

Speaking of masks, another no-sew mask, recommended by a nurse professional -- who says one could even want to wear it over the other kind of mask too, if one has one, and is particularly compromised in way or the other.

 

 

 

[Zorral]

BTW -- power vacuums opening already across the globe, as the 'leaders' get infected and die, or are incapacitated for so long they lose their power and are replaced, or if recover still so damaged, they can't come back.

[mcbigski]

19 hours ago, Triskele said:

"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times."

Stupid monkey!

[maarsen]

"it was the best of time, it was the wurst of times."

[Altherion]

On 4/6/2020 at 2:25 PM, Rippounet said:

The point is, I don't see why nationalism would make states much more efficient at border control.

Intuitively, one might think that states having a strong nationalistic ideology would be better at it, but I see no empirical proof that this is actually the case.

I don't think the late 19th to early 20th century nationalism is going to be all that useful (or even realistic), but tighter control of borders and more local production (of at least critical goods, but possibly more than that) would almost certainly have helped here. There is no empirical proof because there are no states that behave like this right now except ones which are radically different in other ways and aren't likely to share any data at all.

On 4/6/2020 at 2:25 PM, Rippounet said:

I dunno. There are some serious problems when it comes to medical equipement (the fight for masks, the unreliability of Chinese tests... etc), some of which at least were rather easy to predict.

However, this is relatively minor compared to the sharing of information, which has been, and still is, crucial to fight the pandemic. Chinese studies are easily accessible, and this helps a great deal.

I'm not seeing it. There are only a few bits of actionable information: the virus is new, it can spread between human beings via droplets, the fatality rate is of order 1% (due to either pneumonia or a cytokine storm or both) and its basic reproductive rate is substantially greater than 1. All of these are fairly easy to come by once the virus is out in multiple nations. Some of them would have been really useful to know early on, but this is not what happened: the WHO was downplaying the rapidity of the spread and recommending against closing borders as late as January.

All of the rest is either easily repeatable, worthless or outright harmful. It's been almost half a year since this thing first appeared and there is neither a treatment nor a vaccine -- and we're told there won't be for another year or more. The whole world being focused on it does not appear to translate into making this faster. Instead, we have a whole lot of ideas (the anti-malaria drug, the BCG vaccine, etc.) which are shared internationally and gain a surprising amount of traction... but often with negative consequences.

------

On a completely different note, there's been some discussion about how quickly businesses will come back, but there are some that might not come back at all -- or at least not in the same form. For example, consider event production:

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The number of moving parts in our economic engine is vast; one among many grinding to a complete halt is event production, in a world where people just aren't meeting anymore. You know, the people who make sure all the equipment and chairs and tables and poster boards and lights and sound equipment and displays all show up and work properly at the same time they are needed.

...

Egan isn't optimistic that trade shows, corporate events, concerts, or "any large groups of folks," will come back soon. "Things might be back to normal in a couple of months maybe for trucking or manufacturing where [workers] can stand 6 feet apart," he suspects, but "I don't see meetings, trade shows, concerts coming back until there's a vaccine."

Even if there is a vaccine though, it's not obvious that as many people will be doing events as before. After all, the events and associated travel are quite expensive, we've already proven that we can do most of this stuff online and the vaccine would only be for this virus -- there's always a next one.

Here's a very different example: the cruise industry.

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Some have compared the current plight of the cruise industry to that of the airlines, when the government closed airports following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. Travel demand tanked, and several major American airlines declared bankruptcy, despite receiving federal aid. 

For the moment, it doesn't look as though the U.S. government will be coming to the rescue of any of the major cruise lines. The $2 trillion relief package excludes companies which are not incorporated in the U.S. and don't have significant operations in and a majority of its employees based in the U.S. 

Carnival, for example, is headquartered in Miami, its shares trade on the NYSE, but it is actually incorporated in Panama. Cruise lines also tend to hire foreign workers who don't always fall under the protection of American minimum wage requirements.

 

It's kind of hilarious that their evasion of American tax law and worker regulations has finally come to bite these companies (good luck asking Panama, Bermuda or Liberia for a multi-billion dollar bailout). Again, this industry is inherently crowded, totally non-essential and the ships distress whales and other marine life. There's a good chance that when it comes back, it will be in a significantly reduced form.