The post-Covid-19 world of pain

Tomorrow, I find out the fate of my short-term working future, as I will discover what my lay-off furlough period will be and at what percentage. A friend of mine at work looks like he will be at a 40% cutback, but he is in a different department. The potions are 20/ 40/ 60 and I am hoping that since I am delivering billable work at least sometimes, it will be more at the 20 level - but I am not hopeful. The trouble with billable work is that while it brings in significantly more than I earn, it isn't the majority of where my time is spent.

While this year was meant to be one of personal growth, it seems that at least financially, it is going to be of a more extreme contraction and the "growth" is going to be in resilience and compromise training. Perhaps it is more valuable. The timing is unfortunate with the purchase of the house, but I am pretty sure that while we are going to have to compromise in some areas, we are also going to be okay at the end of it,as there aren't many options past that.

Even once the Covid-19 panpanic has subsided, this is far from over and the ramifications might be incredibly large for the economy and the subsequent challenges to follow. While the world reacts to "save lives", the potential cost of life could be enormous.

With the crushing of retirement funds, the baby boomers are going to start withdrawing their investments to top up their reserves as they retire, and they are the greatest portion of investors, which means that the stock markets could see a long-term bleed of a great deal of value. When economies struggle, so do societies and communities and the pressure makes things break - and they aren't sturdy at the best of times.

If you look for example at the middle east, the oil prices pre-Corona were not high enough to cover their operating costs, driven by the expansion of the world's largest oil producing nation, the USA, which produces 25% more than Saudi Arabia. The Middle East is relatively peaceful as they can buy stability with the oil money, but take that away, and the tenuous peace falls apart rapidly. There are about 250 million people in the region and it is not an area without armies and experience fighting with them. Once the collapse of regional stability happens, the displaced people fleeing the violence will likely be the largest movement of people at one time in world history and the "migrant crisis" of 2015 will pale in comparison.

Lucky that all these lives are being saved from Corona, they will be able to take part in WWIII

Does this seem alarmist? Perhaps for some, but it isn't as far-fetched as many might want to believe as in general, that is the way economies reset, a term that I have heard being introduced more and more into the public narrative the last few weeks - and I don't watch the news. This is coming from people who do - and they are picking up the vernacular swiftly.

Economies are designed to fail, because it is what they always do without an attempt to redesign - and the "reset" has always been through a massive loss of life via revolution and war. Covid-19 is the trigger and will play scapegoat, but this was the destiny of the current economic climate anyway, as it has been super-heating for years over where it was due to collapse and is now set to implode.

The solution for fixing the economy is to scrap what we have now completely and bring in a far more stable distributed system, one where there are a great deal more players with far less high peaks and consolidated wealth into small fractions of populations. When it comes to the generation of wealth, a great deal of it is done in areas that are "outside" the economy, the corporations that are able to play by their own global rules, while the average person is tied at a local level - but also feeds into the conglomerate structure. The system isn't broken - it is shattered. But - a small group benefit from it just the way it is.

It is a funny conflict, because to talk about better wealth distribution is branded socialist, as if having an economy that is a ridiculous cycle of boom and bust is the capitalist dream. Perhaps it is, because it is in this turmoil that the minority function the best, at the expense of the majority. Maybe many people like the idea that there is the chance for themselves be a billionaire, however unlikely and however much damage the system that allows it inflicts on the global population.

It isn't the fault that the billionaires are such and I do not think at least most of them actually want to cause harm to others - but the system is designed in this way and there is very little that can be done using the same system. It has to be replaced, it has to become more reliant at a lower level on many more people, rather than highly reliant at a very high level on a very few - organizations and institutions.

You would probably consider the rights of humans paramount to the rights of a corporation, but you'd be wrong - they actually have more rights than us and are far superior at handling the ups and downs in the world as they are without feeling. Yes, people run them, but due to the nature of the system of profit above all else, those people can actually only exert a small amount of influence over the direction - with most taking their slice of profit and not thinking much further than that. Just think, a company has property rights - but pays less tax - and it has no physical needs whatsoever, requires no food and has no humanity at all - corporations are the perfect scapegoat for an economy because, other corporations and institutions can throw them under the bus when needed, and they feel no pain in their destruction - while the others "live" on.

I might sound like a crazy person to most and I am okay with that - but one of the words or idea that is going to be gaining traction in the modern vocabulary of the average person is "distributed" and it is going to be used in terms of creating stability and minimizing risk. It isn't a new idea.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket

Unfortunately, we have created an economy with a decreasing number, but increasing size of baskets - and when one falls and the eggs are lost - we will quickly discover that all of their handles were looped together.

Taraz
[ an original ]