The Long-Term Consequences of Covid-19
I know we have a corona virus thread generally - but in this thread I would like to consider the uncomfortable questions that no one seems to be asking at the moment as we try to, on a global scale, weather the storm. My question is once we get past this pandemic, or some countries have managed to eradicate it anyway, what will the shape of society to come look like? Although I was too young to understand the significance of it, I guess I'm framing it in a way we frame 9/11 now, with some of the most fundamental assumptions in relation to how society should work being absolutely shaken and then replaced, for example, airline security.
Ventilator count/ICU facilities: if this crisis gets worse to the point that healthcare infrastructure collapses in some US States or countries, I imagine one of the attempts to rectify it retrospectively when all is said and done is to increase the number of ventilators per capita in order to withstand a crisis on this scale should it happen again. So more money will be pumped into this, maybe even more hospitals will be built as a precaution. (Or hollow hospitals will be built but not used, sort of like building one of those Wuhan overnight hospitals in advance of an actual crisis and only filling it out when needs be).
The aviation industry: anyone reading the news knows that the economy is going into a complete freewill, with the airline industry especially effected. Some of the smaller European airlines are forecasted to declare bankruptcy pretty soon and go into liquidation. Others, such as Boeing, are asking for financial assistance so as to not go broke. The shape of the aviation industry to come, then, seems to look towards a consolidation of powers; a monopoly shared amongst the biggest airlines who can afford to keep going through these stressful times.
Globalisation and society itself: say a European state eradicates the corona virus but none of its neighbours have. How does air commerce and travel operate for the foreseeable? Will all visitors be forced to undergo 14 days of quarantine? (Hardly pragmatic in regards to commercial interests). Will we question the validity of air travel/will it be prohibited entirely until the corona virus is no more?
Societal expectations: working from home may become more popular now that it is evident that many jobs do not require employees to actually be in the office to be productive. The shape of romance and courtship may also be different.
Prevention of Infectious Diseases: expect more money to be funnelled into this, whether it is research, development of vaccines, studies, etc.
Would be curious to hear your thoughts.
Ventilator count/ICU facilities: if this crisis gets worse to the point that healthcare infrastructure collapses in some US States or countries, I imagine one of the attempts to rectify it retrospectively when all is said and done is to increase the number of ventilators per capita in order to withstand a crisis on this scale should it happen again. So more money will be pumped into this, maybe even more hospitals will be built as a precaution. (Or hollow hospitals will be built but not used, sort of like building one of those Wuhan overnight hospitals in advance of an actual crisis and only filling it out when needs be).
The aviation industry: anyone reading the news knows that the economy is going into a complete freewill, with the airline industry especially effected. Some of the smaller European airlines are forecasted to declare bankruptcy pretty soon and go into liquidation. Others, such as Boeing, are asking for financial assistance so as to not go broke. The shape of the aviation industry to come, then, seems to look towards a consolidation of powers; a monopoly shared amongst the biggest airlines who can afford to keep going through these stressful times.
Globalisation and society itself: say a European state eradicates the corona virus but none of its neighbours have. How does air commerce and travel operate for the foreseeable? Will all visitors be forced to undergo 14 days of quarantine? (Hardly pragmatic in regards to commercial interests). Will we question the validity of air travel/will it be prohibited entirely until the corona virus is no more?
Societal expectations: working from home may become more popular now that it is evident that many jobs do not require employees to actually be in the office to be productive. The shape of romance and courtship may also be different.
Prevention of Infectious Diseases: expect more money to be funnelled into this, whether it is research, development of vaccines, studies, etc.
Would be curious to hear your thoughts.
Comments (127)
In France one requires a form to leave the house. In the UK, one can be arbitrarily detained if he is suspected of being infected. Curfews, lockdowns, an economy crippled by our collective absence... It's surprising how quickly people have handed away their hard-fought liberties because of this pandemic. I suppose they were too busy enjoying their liberties to want to protect them, and hopefully an event like this will remind them of the costs of this species of complacency as it did in the wake of WW2.
But for now, authoritarianism is the dominant ideology. I suspect this will be difficult to roll back once we get through this.
I agree with you on that one. Just today or yesterday the DOJ was trying to petition congress to give them emergency powers, threatening habeas corpus. The conditions are ripe for power-seeking.
DOJ Seeks New Emergency Powers During Pandemic
If you could bracket all the deaths and suffering- and you can't, but if you could - in my experience, this whole thing has had a net positive effect on social relations. When I go to the grocery store, or smoke shop, or anywhere, people are talking more, more open. And they're actually interested in what everyone has to say. There's something shared. I finally did my big stock-up today at the supermarket and went to the self-checkout station. The employees overseeing that station have always, as a rule, seemed checked-out and indifferent (which makes sense given that job, I'd be too) but the attendant today was joking and we talked like real people to whom something shared was happening, making conversation. I'd put a scented candle in my cart (for some reason scented candles are one of the few things that actually help calm my nerves, as GOOP-y as that sounds) but when I saw what all my groceries were adding up to, I asked to return it. She casually was just like 'ya I can do that, or if you want, I can just knock ten bucks off the price.' and then did that, laughing.
On a more serious note, I have many friends in the restaurant industry (servers and bartenders) who are indefinitely out of work, and everyone in our friend group is pooling resources together for food and utilities and whatever else for those most affected.We've been having game nights and 'cocktail parties' over video chat. In a lot of ways, these are more socially satisfying than the occasionally desultory nights out we'd had in the past. We're trading information and checking in on one another's situations and meaning it. You can feel the mutual care.
If none of the actual suffering was happening, this would be an almost miraculous improvement in everything social and communal. It's like a surreal, and encouraging, shimmer of how things could be.
It's sad to think it could go back to how it was. I think you're probably right, but I'm going to hold on the foolish hope it won't, even afterward.
And on another positive note, the stupid warmongering giant military exercise "Defend Europe 2020" in Poland has now been reduced to a fraction.... Corona managed what human critics could not. Thanks!
Researchers haven't been sleeping, it's just a difficult problem to solve. Polio is caused by a virus, and research led to the polio vaccine. HIV is a virus, and a number of anti-viral medications came out of that research. Influenza can be caused by a virus, and the anti-viral TAMIFLU was developed in the 1990s.
I realize that but if one goes by "modern standards" of viewing things, a poor show means no cash flow. In short poor funding into viral research could be a significant factor for the current crisis. The problem is compounded by the fact that while antibiotics seem to be broad spectrum, antivirals are specific to a particular species, rendering them ineffective against other virus species.
It's not only the aviation industry. All service sector jobs have severely been effected. Hence what is very likely is that there will be an economic depression, not just a brief recession.
The real question is if we make this permanent: If every time there is an outbreak somewhere in the World, are we ready to hit the breaks if it comes to our continent / country? When will there be an all clear sign given? With 9/11 it didn't happen. Even killing Bin Laden wasn't the end.
For example;
....
Disease prevention
Nuclear war
War
Potential asteroids hitting earth
Yellowstone supervolcano
....
Etc.
Oh yeah...
CLIMATE CHANGE 2!$+#8&
Yeah, but also here's a chance to figure out how to take it, right? If I was speaking with my phil-hat, I'd say something like, idk, we're offloading our responsibility on the subject-who-knows-how-to-take-it, assuming they'll fail. But that's us! We are actually that - we're actually the people this is affecting! This is a window, of sorts, how do we use it? The whole thing of : 'this would be great, if only' supposes someone other than us, equipped in the right way, would make use of it. Well - who is that supposed to be?
We don't have to wish we knew how to take it - we can try to figure it out.
So I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of the consequences is to shift politics generally to the left, in respect of social attitudes towards unemployment benefits and the social safety net. Actually this has already happened in the first US spending package, which extended unemployment benefits far beyond what Republicans would have considered previously. (I noted that one of the libertarian ideologues in the US Senate, Rand Paul, voted against the first stimulus package, before becoming the first US senator to test positive. )
Don't count on it. This isn't the first new disease to come along. If the executive and congress were paying attention to public health, there would be a much better funded public health infrastructure. If the public were paying attention, we would have fewer anti-vaxxers.
Besides, the next pandemic may be very different than this one -- like the HIV, Ebola, Marburg, Zika Virus, or West Nile Virus, or something else--MERS, SARS, Etc. We may be as unprepared for it as we were for this one. One of the functions of public health is "sentinel surveillance" -- keeping a watch around the world for new diseases, or outbreaks of old diseases. We (many countries) are not doing such a hot job at that'd.
There will be a far greater understanding of the importance of borders. Globalization will never be the same. There will be a lot of support for moving drug manufacturing back to the US. When China owns your drug supply that's not a good thing.
One event that struck me was how fast the Schengen agreement was effectively abandoned in Europe. Suddenly all the countries remembered that they have borders. Merkel's liberal Germany closed down its borders You think people will forget once the virus passes? On the contrary. Everyone will understand that the moment there's a crisis, it's nations and borders that matter and not lip-service to free movement. That lesson will not be forgotten.
This is not isolationism, though it will be called that by the globalists. People will come to respect the importance of cooperation among sovereign nations. Global cooperation, not globalism. This could become a movement.
If anything we out to become more science oriented and focused on issues that can be dealt with by science.
Science can't tell you whether to deliberately crash your economy in the expectation that not doing so would be even worse. That decision can never be the output of any rational process.
Right now I think one of the things that can be done is to consistently hammer home some of the obvious points that the pandemic have brought about; one big one that comes to mind is the asymmetry between what we are told is important (during a 'normal' times) and what, with the virus, is blindingly clear is in fact important. This article makes the point really nicely (at least with respect to the US) so I'm just going to quote it:
This is the stuff people need to remember when 'things go back to normal'. Every time someone says 'but we need to do these things for the "economy"' - we now have a reply: utter, total, bullshit. For decades we've been told: you can't have social services because its too expensive - and at the drop of a hat they pump trillions to 'secure' finance markets (which are falling anyway). Another big one that comes to mind is how the bailouts are going to play out, and what we can learn from them: the airlines right now are a good example. Those guys having been living it up with billions in profits that go straight to shareholders, and now they're asking for bailouts? Again, others have put things better than me, so I'm just gonna quote Jodi Dean (a political philosopher) on this one:
(quoting from a FB post of hers which I won't link, although it's publicly accessible)
The other important point to make is to emphasize the utter non-autonomy of the economy from the rest of society. One of the things this is exposing is that the economy doesn't exist. There is no 'the economy' - there is just a fucking fabrication of certain agents to the benefit of certain powers that could afford, for the longest time, to let the 'non-economy' go to shit as they profited off of it: but now we know - now we are reminded - that healthcare, worker protections, affordable housing - are not extra-economic embellishments, they are the fucking core upon which there would be no economy. Every time someone says 'Bbbbut-bututtbut the economy!' from now on they should be treated with nothing but disdain.
It's lessons like these we need to bring out and disseminate in the wake of this. And then there's the question of our agriculture practises and how it was always going to lead to this bullshit. This is something I really need to understand more, but the fact that no one is talking about it makes me utterly mad. This is one of the few places I've seen anyone discussing this and it drives me insane that this kind of thing isn't required reading:
"Contact tracing linked infections back to the Hunan Wholesale Sea Food Market in Wuhan, where wild animals were sold. Environmental sampling does appear to pinpoint the west end of the market where wild animals were held. But how far back and how widely should we investigate? When exactly did the emergency really begin? The focus on the market misses the origins of wild agriculture out in the hinterlands and its increasing capitalization. Globally, and in China, wild food is becoming more formalized as an economic sector. But its relationship with industrial agriculture extends beyond merely sharing the same moneybags. As industrial production–hog, poultry, and the like–expand into primary forest, it places pressure on wild food operators to dredge further into the forest for source populations, increasing the interface with, and spillover of, new pathogens, including Covid-19."
The fact that agriculture is entirely absent from our public conversation about this stuff is utterly crazy. Instead we have fucks talking about the 'Chinese virus' - as if this wasn't a capitalist virus through and through, where we have enjoyed cheap shit from China for years and have active encouraged it to destroy it's environment so we can get that cheap shit. The racism that this virus has dredged up in some quarters if appealing not just because its racism, but because it's an utter misdiagnosis of why this kind of shit happens. There are so many lessons that this thing teaches us, and right now I'm just trying to track them so they can be used later on. I have a whole thing about the elderly and childcare too, but I've written to much already.
I guess: this allows us to recognize the lies of 'normal' society for what they are - fucking lies, and we need to carry that through to whatever happens next. Like I said, not hopeful, but it's all there for anyone who has eyes to see.
One of the reasons Clinton fought hard to get China to be a part of the WTO was that he wanted them to be more like us, liberalized, on the path to freedom, democracy and human rights. As it turns out, such an arraignment is a two-way street. As statism, the suppression of the internet, and censorship become the norm, the arraignment seems to have also made us more like them.
So I think you're right. This pandemic has made apparent our reliance on Chinese manufacturing, even for the most basic of products, and hopefully altering the supply-chain to a better deal will begin shortly after.
Do you think people will accept reducing their standard of living in order to achieve this "deglobalisation"?
Quoting fishfry
The Schengen agreement has specific clauses for this type of event. It wasn't abandoned. It's also weird that you think it happened "quickly". The opposite is true. The European states waited until it was abundantly clear that further waiting was impossible to justify.
Quoting fishfry
A movement for global cooperation you say? Like the UN? Or the Paris accord? Or the ICC?
As long as capitalism exists, this will never happen. It's been a race to the bottom to secure the cheapest labour and manufacturing costs, and the world will continue to rely on China no matter how much anyone pays lip-service to orienting the supply-chain domestically. The one way it could happen of course, is to devastate and immeserate local populations so that others can compete which China at the same level. Which, given what COVID is doing, just might happen.
Nice rant, commendations.
Quoting StreetlightX
So long as people are lining their pockets with unearned income, all's good. But when the flow stops, a bail out is needed to regenerate it.
Quoting StreetlightX
Excellent! That is so true. The economy is the modern God. But it's not the loving God of the New Testament, It's the vengeful, jealous God of the old testament, the God to be feared. Watch your step, or the economy will smite you. That's the religion which Jesus attacked.
The agriculture "industry", and how it relates to human health is a huge can of worms. That one will confront us someday, but not today, because the priority is not there. God (the economy) still rules, and protects it as an industry, and God is far more important than human health. Or...has that turn around already begun?
Quoting StreetlightX
I don't share your pessimism.
What gives you that idea? I can still travel from the Netherlands to other EU countries without problems provided that I meet the requirements of a lock down in any receiving State.
It’s more a race to the top. Ever since China entered the WTO their manufacturing costs have been rising along with their wages and standard of living. There is still rampant poverty, but the rate at which it has been reduced is nothing short of a miracle. As such it gets more and more expensive to do business there. So we look for cheaper manufacturing costs in maybe Vietnam or Bangladesh. Eventually their wages and standard of living will rise as well.
Quoting NOS4A2
lol.
+
Quoting NOS4A2
lol^2
That's the way it goes.
First it was cheap labor, then as the labor gets more expensive, it has to be more productive and the industries change. Then it becomes a service economy. At start the clothing industry was mainly in the First World. Then the clothing industry migrated to Southeast Asia and China. From there it will migrate to Africa, if everything would go as earlier.
Quoting Benkei
Well, it'starting to be really difficult. Air traffic is shutting down and if one your way to your destination is a country that has closed it's borders, it's a bit difficult.
Coronavirus: Travel restrictions, border shutdowns by country
https://www.nederlandwereldwijd.nl/landen/frankrijk/reizen/reisadvies#anker-verkeersveiligheid
The relevant translation:
Whether you meet the "valid reason" criterium is another matter.
Also, can I just express my incredulity for the ingenuity of how nature works at times? One person gets infected somewhere in China, probably in November, and within 5 months it cripples economies across the world, kills over 15,000+ people (and counting) and the little fucker is invisible to the eye. This is just as mind-boggling to me as having a hydrogen star implode into a denser star and continuing to implode until it's fusing iron atoms.
LOL.
I don't think so, especially if you look at this from a different point of view.
I think this will be one of those important collective experiences and a historical event IF there isn't a worse pandemic the next decade. Just as on successful terrorist attack changed things and attitudes, so will this too.
Hopefully higher living standards and reduction in poverty will go with it. I suspect that, if cheap labor ever runs out worldwide, it will become less centralized in this or that country.
Schiphol has become quite familiar to me as that hub and Paris have been the way my family has gone to Mexico (as my wife is Mexican).
Something being "cheap" is quite relative. What has happened is that absolute povetry has truly been reduced. We in the West just whine about our economic recessions, but that (the reduction of absolute povetry) is the good thing that has happened in the World we usually haven't even noticed.
Just look when countries have had famines. My country had in the middle of 19th Century and with Ireland that's about the last great famine in Europe. Last time there's been famine in Europe is during and after WW2. China had it's last famine in 1959-1961, Bangladesh 1974,
No concrete barriers around Xmas markets to protect from sudden jihad syndrome? No forests of CCTV cameras around Jewish schools? No barricades and entry checks around beer gardens? Maybe you don´t have it in your town, but it is certainly spreading in Europe. I am old enough to remember a time before all that.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7701241/Ring-steel-formed-festive-markets-despite-downgraded-UK-terror-threat-substantial.html
Quoting fishfry
Science can't tell us anything. Scientists can, but we should only listen to what they have to say about their relatively narrow areas of specialization. Economists purport to be (social) scientists, but only by assuming that the independent decisions of billions of individual humans are amenable to analysis in a manner analogous to laws of nature.
Quoting fishfry
Exactly. I have been saying for years that science is an especially systematic way of knowing, while engineering is an especially systematic way of willing. There is no one "right" or even "optimized" solution to any given real-world problem, because tradeoffs are unavoidable and require the exercise of practical judgment, not a strict application of technical rationality.
Quoting Benkei
What then does constitutes a change fundamental change for you? Never is there that kind of fundamental change from one year to another.
I bet the Soviet Union collapsing and Germany unifying actually didn't change your life (if you were born) or the life of your family fundamentally either. But Cold War Europe was a bit different. And so if post 9/11 Europe and the US. Just ask any Muslim if they have noticed a difference in the prevailing attitudes. Perhaps only after some decades you really can have a different World: 1913 and 1946 are quite different, just like 1987 is from now (even if much less has changed from 1987 to today). Perhaps true changes happen only in a Century or two, but if those are fundamental, the those changes in degree are also important too.
Nobeernolife told some of the changes, but how about the train wreck that has happened in the Middle East? Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan do have some effect on what has happened here later. Not just that some of my reservist friends have seen war in Afghanistan, which was quite different from the usual Blue Beret missions.
Yes. Past rationality, there is only the will of certain individuals. The will to power. One begins to see why postmodernists distrust rationality. Rationality is so often used through history as a weapon of the uppers against the lowers.
We can't logic our way out of the coronavirus crisis. Prevent the spread and crash the economy? Or perhaps crashing the economy is the point, to undermine Trump. After all 80,000 Americans died of flu in 2018, that's the CDC's official number. Most people never even heard about it. No panic, no hysterical media. Or (a theory I favor) everyone in the know understands that the crash of 2008 never ended. We literally papered it over with the ex nihilo creation of trillions of dollars of funny money in the form of quantitative easing. Everyone knew it would blow up at some point. If if blew up of its own fraudulence the people would burn down the banks when they realized the nature of the swindle. So if it's about to blow up anyway, why not blame a virus? And what's the solution? More Fed printing.
But that's just idle speculation. The main point being that rationality can't answer the big questions; and it's more often a tool used by the powerful against the powerless. Contemporary history makes me suddenly see what the postmodernists are about. Rationality's a fraud.
Yes that was the original idea. Nixon's idea, when he historically opened relations between the US and China. Everyone thought they'd just become another westernized social democracy. Didn't work out quite as planned. Now they have the Uyghur concentration camps and the social credit system and total cybersurveiillance and I for one have some concerns.
I'm all for global cooperation. And borders. Good neighbors make good fences, that's one way to look at it. Of course that doesn't mean we can't be against particular international agreements. The UN and the Paris accords are problematic from a certain point of view. The ICC doesn't ring a bell. All I'm saying is that after the pandemic, people will have a new perspective on borders, national sovereignty, and being able to manufacture the stuff we need to survive. It's a boost to the anti-globalization theme sweeping the planet. I'm not advocating for or against by the way, just noting that the postwar order is coming to an end and a new era of nationalism is arising everywhere. Whether that's good or bad I don't know.
I am weak on the details. I read that Germany closed its borders.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51905129
Also I found this:
BREAKING: EU Decides to Close All Schengen Borders For 30 Days.
Have I got this wrong?
I hope that the spread of corona virus and the existential threat it creates is enough to show nearly everyone in the world the incompetence of our political leaders and impotence of our government in doing that which needs to be done in times of crisis. Constantly putting people in charge who only care about their own stock portfolios and can not act in times of national crisis (when the right actions will cost them money in the short term) is a recipe for our own extinction.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: 'I'm all in' on risking my health to lift social distancing guidelines for economic boost
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/politics/coronavirus-texas-social-distancing-guidelines/index.html
Dollars vs. deaths is the sickening choice created by coronavirus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/politics/what-matters-march-23/index.html
I more or less agree.
The one thing I'm pretty certain of is the worse things get the more likely the cultures and societies around the world will be permanently changed by it, just as the cultures and societies of Europe were changed by the black plague. Something about either seeing your friends and/or family die around you is enough to push certain people with very dogmatic ideals to reconsider their beliefs and/or reevaluate what human life is worth when there isn't as many people around to do work for them or help them out one way or another.
Of course there is also an increased chance for wars and general craziness (such as the formation of cults, toilet paper hoarding,etc.) any time a plague or pandemic happens but often the good social changes outweigh the craziness since the craziness is always happening and the kind where people reevaluate their fundamental beliefs is very rare outside of plagues and similar stuff.
These are all wars to maintain the status quo. They're meaningful to those receiving the bombs of course but for the West they mean very little. Life goes on. I mean structural changes to society.
The last meaningful change was the labour participation of women, which has caused significant changes to the social structure, changing gender roles and dynamics. The light bulb. Washing machine. Industrial revolution. Moving from feudalism to democracies.
So in that respect the fall of the Berlin Wall was a fundamental change for Eastern Germany but not West Germany. Does that make sense to you? So a change in the social or economic constitution of a country?
There has always been a war on infections, viruses, outbreaks, etc since before any of us were born. The only problem is up until now there has never been anything to really threaten the safety and security of enough people until this outbreak. Lately more money has been put into things like solving erection dysfunction then coming up with the cure for widespread diseases (since it is often a problem that people with the former issue have money but not people with the late issue) but with the corona virus this might change a bit.
The diseases that are out there infecting animals (such as SARS and Ebola) in the wild are always going to be out there and as long as we have wet markets, international travel, people living in close proximity, humans encroaching into natural habitats, etc and few safe guards in place for such behavior there will always be threats for some "super bug" to wreck havoc on us much as the corona virus has...so even if we are able to minimize the risk from the corona virus, there will never be a true "all clear sign" from the treat of some other threat without some miracle medicine coming out in the foreseeable future. And since there is more money to be made treat an ailments then find cures for them...expect the likely hood of more super bugs to mutate from benign viruses and whatnot then for any miracle cure to come out to stop them.
Are you talking about liberal hippies in the following articles:
Party Zero: How a Soirée in Connecticut Became a ‘Super Spreader’
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/coronavirus-westport-connecticut-party-zero.html
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: 'I'm all in' on risking my health to lift social distancing guidelines for economic boost
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/politics/coronavirus-texas-social-distancing-guidelines/index.html
..or about non-libertarian type hippies? :D
A lot of poor people are stuck at home with not much to do but be bored, but some wealthier individuals believe this is a good time to go out for social gatherings, vacations, and whatnot instead of being slackers stuck in their house. IMHO the good thing about the corona virus is that it doesn't care whether you or republican, democrat, rich or poor it won't discriminate and will infect anyone that it can and/or those that are stupid enough to allow it.
I more or less agree. However the corona virus has shown us one thing is security risk that comes with our reliance on China for vital supplies and what can happen if China decides not to export such supplies due to a "China first" mentality (or any other reason) during a global crisis.
Up until now it has only been a "theoretical" argument (although it was all but a given it would happen eventually) but from now on people can point to when parts of China was in lock down and when trying to recover from the virus there was either a all out stop or major slow down or various supplies other countries needed in order to help them fight the virus. Whether this point will make a difference in the future remains to be seen. IMHO globalism only helps a few wealthy individuals and really doesn't do hardly anything for the average plebs out there except make life more difficult.
This won't happen. Not because China doesn't have 'nationalist' currents, but because putting China first means precisely expanding China's reach overseas, by way, primarily, of trade. Chinese politicians are also not as utterly fucking stupid as American leaders. The Belt and Road Initiative is China's Marshall Plan, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Capitalists will be - and have been - all too happy to hitch a ride on the expended circuits of logistics and market expansion that it provides - irrespective of the fact that it comes with the price of ceding of sovereignty and local interests to China, all across Asia and Africa.
Gradual changes eventually lead to fundamental changes. It is the old question of how to boil a frog.
It has, Except to illegal migrants who say the magical world asylum. Same as Sweden.
Brilliant, arent they.
They're not illegal if they have a right to asylum. But nice xenophobism.
But why do good neighbors need a fence in the first place? The whole notion seems contradictory to me. The fundamental principle of nationalism is "the nation first". That implies you'd only cooperate with other nations where it benefits you. On the other hand, if your guiding principle is global cooperation, you have to accept compromises that'll make the nation worse off.
Anyhoo, not everything is a revolution of course. And I didn't mean it to be. It's not as if the labour participation of women has fully played out yet. The dinosaurs still need to die out and then probably another 2 or 3 generations. So that change will be more or less complete somewhere around 2050.
Meanwhile, corporate capitalism is the dominant mode of production, which is causing massive social, cultural and ecological damage. And that process is not finished yet. The continued concentration of market power in few hands distorts the markets and unduly influences policy at the expense of broader society. Uber is hemmorrhaging capital in order to acquire a monopoly and undercutting competitors. Once they have the monopoly though, you'll have uninsured and unregulated taxis for the same price as it used to be. This is more or less the anti-thesis of what capitalist thought encouraged.
I'm not against capitalism as Adam Smith proposed it, in the sense that in many markets it is entirely sensible to let the market mechanism set the price. However, that market must operate within the boundaries set by society so that costs aren't unduly externalised and that it ultimately benefits the whole of society (as it did for much of the 20th century). Ethics ought to trump profit and currently it certainly doesn't. Dispassionate, short term and profit driven corporation don't really fit in an ethical framework because they aren't moral actors. And if profit is the raison d'être all other considerations are subordinated. The locusts get fed but the field is ruined.
Finally, on the issue of infringement on privacy rights and increased surveillance the fundamental change allowing for that was the slow movement away from the lived experience of rights and freedoms fought for to something "provided by the State" and therefore something that can be taken away. And since the State is in the thrall of "the economy", it really serves monied interests nowadays. All that is actually a consequence of liberalist (in the European sense) thought and the antidote is the socialist idea of class struggle, eg. workers (civilians) need to take power back from the monied interests (the State). I hope this crisis will bring about some change in that respect but my experience is that people react to crises by doing more of the same as in a time of chaos at least doing the same feels safe and familiar.
Well, that means that in our lifetime and our parents nothing remotely fundamental has happened.
How about this that you spend part of your daily time debating issues with Americans, Brits and a Finn etc. you've never met? A little different from what I recall from the 1980's. No PF back then with people still buying those large dictionary book sets. Or do you still buy phonebooks?
Sure, but the question is what measures do we make after this example. How do we respond to another outbreaks?
Let's say in Thailand there's an outbreak of a new zoonotic disease, an new strain of the corona-virus or a very potent flu-virus. Ten people have been hospitalized and two are in critical condition. What's going to be the response of your country? How will people react? How will the markets react? You see, SARS, MERS and Ebola went with a different kind of media scare than outbreaks will go after this.
This is my point. In the 1970's there was a lot of terrorism in Europe, yet the issue was treated more as a police matter. Now similar attacks would case a different reaction. And likely after this ordeal the way we respond to possible outbreaks is going to change.
(What hasn't gotten better in the last 4 000 years? Even philosophy has made progress in that time.)
The car is again just an implementation that increases speed (communication and travel). The car as a specific application of the combustion engine didn't structurally change much though. The combustion engine itself is a different story, considering how it has influenced the mode of production. The refrigator (storing food meant no longer "just in time" production), washing machine (saved about 5-6 hours a day of work for women) and light bulb (night life here we come!) are all different inventions that changed society.
who does the important work in society;
how interdependent we are;
why bullshitters with fans tend to mess things up;
and the next generation will be known as the virus boomers.
It all might just change peoples' priorities for a while.
Light bulb: the invention of the oil lamp happened earlier and that gave light.
combustion engine: how much more important was the steam engine?
washing machine: how about soap, running water, the stove improve things and all those new inventions to help washing and cooking in the 19th Century? And even so, our food are quite the same actually, than it was in the 19th Century.
Hence this debate about "what long term effects" has something has to be put into some perspective. You can always widen the perspective and come to the conclusion that one thing was just a part of a longer development. If we define "long term" to let's say the decade of 2020's or two decades, then it's more interesting.
It's actually very plausibly argued that it contributed greatly to women's suffrage. Since they had time to do other things than housekeeping they decided more power was due. It also increased productivity very significantly in ways that the internet certainly hasn't. Except for the distribution of porn I suppose.
So yeah, I'm not saying my definition of fundamental structural change needs to be embraced by everyone but I do think it's a pretty defensible classification where I'm more interested in the social and economic changes in how political power is distributed, amplified or structured. As a result increased surveillance and diminishing privacy rights are more of a symptom to me and most reactions by politics to problems makes me either shrug or facepalm when I think "not again".
EDIT: I'd like to add that we're discussing things now but it also involves ideas. I already mentioned liberal political thought in another post. But I think the idea of class struggle and the advent of unions was a very important development. While it has not been to the forefront much, it certainly is gaining interest again and it never left our vocabulary. The Renaissance, of course, but also the scientific method have had major effects.
Really? I assume you haven't lived in a summer cottage where you have to haul the water from a well? It does take time. And soap?
Soap is those long duration things do have had quite an effect on our hygiene. Invented by the Babylonians and in the modern soap form during the golden age of Islam in Syria.
Quoting Benkei
Says Benkei discussing the issue with strangers from another countries using the internet.
During this time of lockdown when both of my children aren't in school and talking to their teachers and doing their schoolwork using the internet and while I'm doing also my work (simultaneously as participating in this forum) through the net, it sounds a pretty dismissive if you see the only productivity increase in the ease to get porn. (But then again, Dutch have been very permissive with porn.)
Perhaps the importance of ought to be proven with a test. Let's say that for one month you would be banned to use following machines personally and you had to choose from the options: A) the internet, any computer and smartphone etc. couldn't be used B) no internet connection, but you could use a PC (and you could use a telephone line, but not connect it to the computer) would be allowed, C) you couldn't use washing machine
Which one would people opt out of? It's easy to guess the option is C. Oh! The time lost when taking dirty clothes to the cleaners and paying for it. What an ordeal.
Quoting Benkei
I think that how people actually live is quite more important. How much time we hang in the net, for work or for leisure time is important. It does make this time different from early and mid 20th Century.
Now the terrorism is pretty much ignore by the politicians and media. Is that what you suggest for corona?
Actually, gas lighting introduced in the late 18th/early 19 century increased the safety of streets at night, and improved interior lighting, leading to increased 'night life'. Baltimore, MD had gas street lighting by 1816.
Granted there were disadvantages (unflattering light, odor, explosions, etc.) but it was a big improvement over candles and oil lamps.
Quoting Benkei
It was a 19th century invention, true enough, but they weren't very available until late in the century; remember it was human powered, Somebody had to spend quite a bit of time standing at the machine, turning the cranks the operated the machine. Hot water wasn't on tap for most of the century for most people, and the clothing still needed to be bleached or blued, hung up outside to dry, and ironed using an iron heated on a stove, even in the hot summer.
Laundry was hard work for women well into the 20th century.
The availability of laundries and washerwomen probably helped the suffrage movement more than washing machines.
9/11 is one good analogy for the present crisis. The 2008 financial meltdown is another.
Discussion of the conditions that produce these crises has some potential to change their long-term consequences, or at least to inform our thoughts about them.
In each case -- 9/11, 2008, and the 2020 pandemic -- the relevant authorities did not take adequate measures to prepare for or to prevent events that were long anticipated. In each case the "crisis" that erupted when the anticipated events finally arrived was an opportunity to promote mass hysteria and force economic, social, and political change. I take it this claim is in keeping with Naomi Klein's talk of a "shock doctrine".
Some long-term trends come to mind: In government there's increasing authoritarianism, militarism, and infringement of traditional and constitutional rights. In economy there's increasing concentration of wealth, oligopoly, and deregulation. In national politics there's increasing divisiveness, extremism, nationalism, anger, hatred, and confusion. In geopolitics there's increasing destabilization of states and economies unwilling or unable to prosper in keeping with the playbook of global capital.
Quoting Dogar
It seems reasonable to expect there will be further consolidation in a range of industries following a similar pattern: In this range, many smaller and weaker businesses will fail, while bigger and healthier businesses increase market share, benefiting from the disruption to the market as well from corporate socialism in the form of government bailouts funded by taxpayers. I expect these effects are likely to be realized not only in travel and tourism but also in food retail and food service, and more broadly in retail and service sectors, and perhaps in distribution that serves smaller retail and service sectors.
Of course the depth and breadth of the shock in these sectors depends in part on the duration of the medical crisis and in part on the character of government response to the crisis. Even in best-case scenarios where stimulus that targets consumers limits the fall in total demand, there may be culling of small businesses most dependent on brick-and-mortar sales .
Quoting NOS4A2
I expect this may be one of the most important and enduring effects of the 2020 pandemic. The way the crisis is being used to promote mass hysteria and force authoritarian policies and precedents is analogous to the way 9/11 was used to promote mass hysteria and pass the Patriot Act.
This indicates the importance of questions about future pandemic-preparedness. Are we on the cusp of a ceaseless "war on microbes", analogous to the ceaseless "war on terror" that began with Operation Enduring Freedom?
In that context, I would emphasize that -- to judge by the information provided by governments and news media, including the focus on "curve flattening" -- the present crisis is not due to the novel coronavirus, but to the failure to prepare for such an outbreak, specifically with emergency plans and stockpiles to ramp up ICU capacity in the healthcare system during a global pandemic of this kind.
A lot of people weren't alive at the time or don't remember IRA bombings, 40+ airplane hijacking, terrorist bombings in the US, European leftist gangs, and so forth. Despite 40 large planes being hijacked, we managed to not militarize airports.
9/11 was the perfect opportunity (never let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emanuel said of another event) to ratchet up police control. In the US, at least, there was a string of interventions by the government (monitoring telephone traffic -- not conversations, just who was calling whom), monitoring internet activity, airport militarization, and so on.
The term "lock down", now applied to everything from kindergarten classes to entire states, originated in the California prison system around 1973.
Other way around. Possible outbreaks, things that earlier would have been in regional news and medical newsoutlets or papers will be headline news. We'll learn from this.
It of course depends in the on the deaths. It's sounds callous, but the death toll will effect how we will remember this.
Deaths in the few thousands, it might be forgotten after some years. But I assume if around 100 000 people die of this pandemic in the US, it won't be something that would be forgotten from the history books or by people and the politicians. In 1968/69 the "Hong Kong"-flu pandemic killed roughly that number yet the pandemic is seldom remembered (my father remembers it, but he is a virologist). It was just a nastier flu season, basically. This time around it won't be.
Rationality is a tool, and like all tools it is only well-suited for certain purposes. It can get you from a set of premisses to necessary conclusions, but it cannot stipulate those initial assumptions. That goes for both theoretical and practical rationality--if you want to achieve X, rationality can help you identify means to that end, but it cannot specify X itself; that requires a deliberate choice on your part.
Yep. This is the point I'm trying to make.
Somehow it was a danger that we could live with. Cartoonists could make fun of it:
I don't think there's this sinister plot to make our countries into police states. It's that politicians will act on our fears and when there's the technology and ability to do something, they will do it.
Hence prevention of pandemics will be one of those measures how our liberties could be de facto restricted to improve our safety. Never let a crisis go to waste, as Rahm Emanuel said of another event, as you said. I'm not saying that this is threat to our freedoms. I would say one can look at it from a different perspective: In the 21st Century we simply don't tolerate people dying from pandemics.
Yeah, the is the globalist mantra. So Europeans are now refused at the borders, but if you mutter the magic word "asylum" it does not matter who you are or where you are from... you are welcomed into the welfare system. And if people complain about that, they are "xenophobic", I know, I know.
No, I'm pretty sure you have to also show that you're in danger if you return home. You can't just claim asylum and that be the end of it.
Also, your post isn't making much sense. Are you arguing about what is or isn't legal or about what is or isn't "right"? Your first post referred to "illegal" migrants, but now you seem to be attacking the laws regarding asylum itself. So even if a migrant is a legal migrant, via asylum, you still have a problem with them. In which Benkei is probably right in accusing you of xenophobia, as your issue isn't just with illegal immigrants but also asylum seekers (who if granted asylum are legal migrants).
...and you know very well that this "proof" simply consists of unverifiable claims, which are simply accepted by an overloaded system. If you do not see that the generous asylum system set up Western Europe is criminally abused for illegal mass immigration, I can not help you. It no wonder that goverments in Eastern Europe call Merkel, Macaron et al crazy.
Sophistry. You know very well that these laws are massively abused. Yes, you can call the hordes storming the Greek border with encouragement from Erdogan now "legal" if they simply mutter the magic word, but if you do not see how that defies common sense, I cant help you.
Precisely. There is nothing conspiratorial about the observation that the State is opportunistic about extending its control
Yep. There's actually no sarcasm in that, because when you have politicians who promise everything for everybody and portray themselves as quite omnipotent, then they simply will act so. Never mind the Republicans portraying themselves as being for "small government" is simply a sham.
We're gonna have another wave of boomers? :groan:
Well we can't do the DIY because the hardware stores are shut, and we can't afford the heating 'coz we got no work, so what do you think we're all going to do all day?
That being said, legislation that would ordinarily provoke an outcry can pass without note right now because of the coronavirus. Politicians can, and will, take advantage of it while it lasts.
Watch old reruns on UK Gold?
I so much hope that this is a wake-up call for the globalists and the start of some de-coupling from the PRC.
I'm not content to smolder in the face of capitalism. how do we use this fuck you energy in a way that isnt a forum fuck you? I mean this. People are really coming together now. How to use it?
The gutenberg printing press and also paper and stone (writing) tablets changes things alot. Shouldn't we think a giant database of good and bad information at our finger tips would change things alot?
It's often been a tool of powerful to suppress the powerless. Lately I'm coming to understand what I take to be this postmodernist point of view. The suspicion of rationality itself. Standards and objectivity as tools of oppression. Too often we see logic and rationality used to justify the worst acts. "We're only following procedures." In a sense rationality is opposed to putting people first. So it's not neutral. It can be judged as sometimes a negative force in the world. Every time a bureaucrat wags his finger at you while picking your pocket, you're being mugged by rationality.
If that's been your personal experience I can't tell you otherwise. I have no idea what to say to someone who doesn't believe in fences or boundaries or whatever you're not believing in. This is my side, this is your side. People learn that in nursery school.
It is not rationality in general that is problematic, but the distinctly modern dominance of technical rationality, which is now widely treated as if it were the only legitimate form. If you are interested, I wrote three one-page columns about this for a structural engineering magazine several years ago: "Knowledge, Rationality, and Judgment" (here); "The Rationality of Practice" (here); and "Rationality and Judgment Revisited" (here). They all include suggestions for further reading.
Good distinction! The technocrats.
Quoting aletheist
I will check those out. Thanks.
What is the end goal of coming together? The ancient Israelites more-or-less adopted Mosaic Law (probably cobbled together from older oral traditions and some possible writings into a five book written Torah), when they reconstructed Judaism during Second Temple period under Ezra-Nehemiah leadership. What is the equivalent here? What is the Kumbaya aim? World peace? Better health care system? More social safety nets? Better environmental protections? The world acknowledging the absurdity of life ala Schopenhauer or Cioran (oh wait, that's my own pet project :lol: )?
You're always asking for personal solutions to transpersonal problems. I don't have any answers for you. I don't have any answers for any particular people, and I am in no position to offer them. Here I just normalize a certain discourse, make it stock standard and create an atmosphere - make the obvious unobvious and the unobvious obvious. You do whatever you want or can.
So it goes. I bet many historians will smile when telling this story.
Of course, it's going to be marketed only as "socialism for the rich". Remember the half trillion slush fund Trump is going to personally administer? That's the way it's going to be marketed by the opposition.
Fair enough, I don't think I disagree with most of what you've said in this thread, factually. I just tire of the viewpoint/approach, which feels like a passive attack on power, a report filed. I don't think it's helpful now, and things about the temporalty of capitalism etc - it seems to be a vestige of pre-all-this. I'll leave it there.
The warning signs were there, but humans being humans didn’t really take them too seriously as they were ‘somewhere else’.
Found a good talk by Bill Gates. Will post in a minute ...
Here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe8fIjxicoo
I don't think the historians will have too long to wait. This ship's going down.
This bailout is 2008 on steroids. It's truly obscene. Bailouts for the banks. Bailouts for the airlines. A bailout for Boeing, which was undergoing a major corporate crisis due entirely to their own greed and incompetence. It's not just bailing out the rich. It's bailing out the stupid, corrupt, and greedy rich. That's not capitalism. Capitalism would be letting every single one of those companies fail. They should have let the banks fail in 2008. That's how capitalism is supposed to work. Stupid, greedy companies that are poor stewards of resources should be allowed to fail so that those resources can flow to more capable (and, one hopes, more decent) hands.
No wonder the kids are angry. This week I'm with Bernie. Except that he voted for the bill. Some socialist hero. He likes to give speeches with his talking points that haven't changed for 40 years but he's no fighter.
We're doomed. $1200 for all the bartenders and waitstaff and the people who run little jewelry shops and everything else. All the wonderful breakfast places in my little town shut down. What are the owners and workers supposed to do with $1200? But if you're Boeing -- you get bailed out.
I'm starting to get angry about this deal. It's really corrupt.
Trump had to sign it, what could he do? A lot of times he gets captured by the forces he was elected to fight. He looks like a hero though. Everyone loves the bill except AOC and me. I'm with AOC this week, she gave a furious speech against it.
Check out this clip. I almost never agree with her but on this deal I do.
https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-takedown-republicans-coronavirus-relief-bill-stimulus-corporate-bailouts-speech-2020-3
My understanding is that Boeing turned the money down, because the string attached was a government stake in the company. It's bad enough for them, I guess, to deal with the FAA without having to deal with Treasury Department. Nationalize the SOBs.
Oh did they? That's good. I don't think it's a good idea for the government to have a direct stake in companies. Bad enough the Fed's buying corporate debt (as I understand it).
Ah but comrade Fishfry, it is capitalism, always has been, always will be. Same thing happened in 2008. Same thing will happen after the next, inevitable financial crisis. This isn't socialism for the rich. This is just how things have always worked in the normal run of capitalism from time dot.
StreetlightX, for you capitalism is simply everything wrong ever in our society.
That they are so stupid that they believe in socialism?
At least it will be trendy now, especially in big cities and crowded places.
And think about the way how people react to someone that coughs out now. If earlier some people coughed to hide their farts, I guess now the fart to hide their coughs.
*Oops, wrong topic.
Make it an app.
Brief report about how the southern hemisphere is preparing:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ru8qsQ9wQs