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SPECIAL FEATURE
PANDEMIC AWARE ECONOMIES,
PUBLIC HEALTH BUSINESS MODELS AND
(IM)POSSIBLE FUTURES: WHAT HAPPENS
TO A CORTISOL COMMUNITY?
By Prof Jamie Morgan
So here we are, months into the Covid-19
pandemic and starting to feel our way
through it. It is extraordinary to think that it
took considerably less than a Walking Dead
scenario to bring the world to a standstill. The
future we now occupy has come as quite a
shock. A ‘new world’ with its new language
and habits of social distancing, lockdown,
phased releases and perpetual background
sense of dread and foreboding. A world in
which friends and family are now fraternal
enemies of good health and peace of mind. A
world in which a handshake is now
weaponized, sanitisation and sanity go hand
in hand and obsessive hygiene is no longer
the preserve of the compulsive. How strange
this new world looks, how unexpected it
seems from a public point of view. It echoes
an old world where pestilence stalked our
societies and periodic plague literally scythed
its way through our populations.
We too have been forced to emulate our
medieval counterparts and hide behind walls
and ring bells. But we do not live in that old
world where faith was mixed with fate and
blame could be attributed to divine
displeasure. Our world has scientific method
and hundreds of years of cumulative scientific
knowledge and practice, it has epidemiology,
virology, vaccines, treatments, an
infrastructure of sophisticated health services,
behavioural science, massive databases,
information networks, computers,
government and governance resource
mobilisation, crisis planning, and the
capability to put aside some of each year’s
capability to put aside some of each year’s
surplus wealth creation to store needed
resources against foreseeable possibilities in an
uncertain world. In this context we can be
confident that our civilization has the capacity
to cope and recover, eventually.
There is, however, a sharp distinction to be
made between how well we have prepared
and how well we have responded or coped
with Covid-19. Short termism, complacency,
and a tendency to ignore ‘low probability high
impact events’ (as though the arrow of time
did not mean the possible will happen
eventually) are recognisable features of our
political economies and austerity politics has
exacerbated this in many countries over the
last decade, including the UK. It is no surprise
then, if only in the useless sense of ‘in
retrospect’, that lack of adequate preparation
has prevailed.
Short termism, complacency, and
a tendency to ignore ‘low
probability high impact events’ (...)
are recognisable features of our
political economies and austerity
politics has exacerbated this in
many countries over the last
decade, including the UK.
P A G E
1
5
We might say the Spanish flu happened a
century ago and is well beyond the living
memory of most of us, so lived experience of
some equivalent to Covid-19 is long in the
past; but no civilization like ours can judge its
conduct only on what has been
experienced, and in any case there have been
many near misses and reminders in recent
decades of what could happen, where
humanity has collectively, if not locally, just
got ‘lucky’ on the mutation, transfer,
contagion and explosion spectrum of viral
possibility. Expertise has not been lacking and
in the UK case a variety of government
solicited reports in the last 20 years flagged
the risk and recommended contingency
plans. We have domestic government
advisory panels and committees, we have
university-located ‘existential threat’
research centres, and whatever its current
travails, we have a ‘World Health
Organization’, whose remit extends to
coordination of pandemic information and
planning advice.
As such, our amazing civilizational potentials
must stand as a rebuke to the pandemic
preparation many (current and recent)
governments around the world, including in
the UK, have actually undertaken. This is
especially so since many features of modern
civilization make our societies more
vulnerable to contagion (even if we have
greater potential to address that contagion).
We live on a full and lively planet with global
supply chains, widespread personal transport,
dense public transport systems, commuter
working practices, and business and holiday
travel by land, sea and air. There are billions of
us taking billions of journeys and engaging in
billions of interactions and many of us live in
mega-cities with populations of 10 million or
more. Globalization has transformed our world
into a planetary petri-dish. A pandemic, then,
rather than this pandemic, was a ‘crisis’ that
was going to happen and whilst the public can
be forgiven for forgetfulness, governments
cannot plead ignorance. They can only offer
apology and suggest they previously had other
pressing priorities.
Some governments, of course, have been better
prepared than others and some have
responded more proficiently than others. Still, it
is inaccurate to suggest this is because some
societies are more authoritarian than others and
thus better able to direct society. Resources,
focus and planning are not beyond democracies
and are not the preserve of dictators and Iran
compares unfavourably with South Korea, just
as one might in the opposite direction also
contrast the USA and (tentatively) China.
In any case, Covid-19 may have some time to run
in this wave and the next (and the next), and
‘pandemic awareness’ may become a
permanent feature of our societies as we go
forward. What our new world will become is not
a given, it depends on what we do now. But it
has a variety of potentials depending on how we
choose and how we act, and some features and
issues are near term and some long term.
C
OVID
-19
may
have
some
time
to
run
in
this
wave
and
the
next
(and
the
next),
and
‘pandemic
awareness’
may
become
a
permanent
feature
of
our
societies
as
we
go
forward.
What
our
new
world
will
become
is
not
a
given,
it
depends
on
what
we
do
now.
P A G E
1
6
St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty during influenz a epidemic
(1918). Original from Library of Congress. @ Rawpixel
First steps into the future
As we are now finding out in the UK, what
happens first depends on data, treatments and
vaccines. Post-lockdown societies and
economies require trust in social interactions
and confidence that social spaces are safe. This
has always been relative, rather than absolute,
but in the wealthy world the need for trust and
confidence has newly been impressed on our
awareness. If we think that information on who
has and who has had Covid-19 is
comprehensive and contemporary then who
we see and how we engage them become less
about ‘maybes and worse cases’. Equally, if
effective treatments become available and the
mortality rate for those contracting Covid-19
falls and the possible suffering involved in
having a severe case of Covid-19 reduces, then
the fear factor of Covid-19 subsides. Fear is
socially contagious and it is not just fear for
oneself - it is fear for significant others (who we
know and those who we are simply aware of in
the abstract who we may affect through chains
of contagion). Lockdown and ‘phased
transitions’ will end sooner or later in different
countries, but what matters is not just formal
changes to government directives, it is the
whole repertoire of socially-directed pandemic
related infrastructures.
And, to be clear, there is no single strategy or
simple solution involved. There are multiple
possibilities, each involving a ‘let’s see how this
works out and then adjust’. Information is
the bedrock of timely response, but there is no
such thing as ‘the science’ or being ‘guided by
the science’. Science is dependent on method,
there are varieties of expertise each bringing a
different perspective or emphasis to a complex
evolving problem, occurring in real time in a
complex evolving world. Each offers more or
less adequate insight into the conjoint causal
mechanisms that structure the ongoing events
that we experience as our social reality.
An epidemiologist, virologist and behavioural
scientist may be pulling in the same direction,
but their points of departure involve different
theories, assumptions and issues. All have
different takes on what is the significant
feature of evolving infection rates and death
rates in terms of what should decisively affect
decision making. The practice of social science
for pandemics seeks to link the past to the
present and to a managed future.
Fear is socially contagious and it
is not just fear for oneself - it is
fear for significant others (...).
Lockdown and ‘phased
transitions’ will end sooner or
later in different countries, but
what matters is not just formal
changes to government directives,
it is the whole repertoire of
socially-directed pandemic
related infrastructures.
P A G E
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7
Models are the standard way to do this. There
are different models and different methods of
modelling. No model can be effective if its
data is deficient, all models have assumptions
(and each may have different core ‘variables
of interest’) and in the end the world is not a
model – the model is at best a simplified
sketch of the world, at worst it can be a
simplistic caricature of it. This is not to
denigrate science, but rather to emphasise
that it is through contingent investigation,
competing explanations and multiple points
of view that science has progressed. At the
heart of progress has been the
acknowledgment that findings are
contingent, and good science acknowledges
this, it acknowledges that science is not
certainty, it is not ‘models’ it is evidence
tested degrees of confidence in an uncertain
world; its appropriate attitude when giving
advice to politicians is prudential; when
advice is given it is on the basis of ‘do a then b
may happen, and this may affect c, d, and e’;
‘do v, then w may happen, and this may affect
x, y, and z’, ‘both a and v have their merits, but
each have their costs and neither may evolve
as we thought’. Since this is repeated across
the many types of available expertise, it is
impossible by virtue of the very nature of
good ‘science’ to suggest ‘guided by the
science’ is meaningful, as though the phrase
passed responsibility for decisions taken by
politicians from politicians to scientists. In the
end, there are choices to make and these are
not just taken by politicians, they are political.
It is impossible by virtue of the
very nature of good ‘science’ to
suggest ‘guided by the science’
is meaningful, as though the
phrase passed responsibility
for decisions taken by
politicians from politicians to
scientists. In the end, there are
choices to make and these are
not just taken by politicians,
they are political.
Trust in the future, trust as the future
Whatever path is chosen it can still be
pursued more or less effectively, and in an
evolving world this matters for how things
turn out. Governments need to project
competence but they need also to translate
this into actual competence; ‘demonstrated
competence’ is an issue of logistics and
practical procedures that follow from
adequate planning at a national and local
level. A government that was initially ill-
prepared can become better if it manages
the situation. It is no use simply suggesting
‘we are trying as hard as we can’. Trust relies
on real consequences and incompetence
has additional consequences. Governments
have their public relations experts too, and
are deeply aware of the pitfalls, but this does
not prevent missteps, as the fractious
relationship between the White House and
the individual states of the USA or that
between Downing Street and the devolved
governments of Wales and Scotland
illustrates.
Demonstrated incompetence, vague,
contradictory or infeasible messaging, and a
contrast between statement and what we
observe, leads to lack of trust, which leads to
the perpetuation of ‘Cortisol communities’
whose anxiety leads to continuous social and
economic dysfunction. Any society can
become trapped in its own ineptitude until a
vaccine rescues it. In the meantime ‘R’ levels
can oscillate, waves of contagion can come
and go, health services may or may not be
overwhelmed, but cumulatively avoidable
deaths rise and this evolves according to
different vulnerabilities – the vulnerability
some of us have to Covid-19 because of our
health and age; the vulnerability some have
because they cannot avoid continual or
repeated exposure to risk of infection
because of the type of work they do, the
conditions they live in and/or their financial
circumstances.
P A G E
1
8
It is, unfortunately, manifestly not the case
that we are all equal in the face of Covid-19
because we are not equal in society and we
are not all the same. A bus driver cannot work
from home, a domiciliary social carer on
minimum wage with no money in the bank
and bills to pay, has dependents and
responsibilities that are in obvious conflict.
Remedial policies can try to mitigate worse
effects, but they cannot turn back time and
create necessary resources and personnel
instantaneously. It is trite to simply state ‘we
are where we are’, and this platitude should
not distract us from the fact that competence
now matters for how trust is restored. ‘We
leave it to you, exercise your common sense’,
seems insufficient as a way to create the
conditions for trust to be given. Creating
conditions for trust to be given starts with
scaling up the production and sourcing of
PPE not just for health workers, but for any
person likely to be exposed through work
(and that is likely to be millions in most
countries in the next few months). It extends
to an adequate distribution (perhaps
rationing) system for PPE. It extends to
pervasive testing to create adequate
information, which can work in tandem with
effective contact tracing and subsequent
isolation. All this is ‘well known’ (we are all
experts now, seemingly) but proper follow-
through, rather than mere rhetoric, is now
basic if the goal is to achieve a pandemic
aware society in which trust can be given. It
is, of course, a different kind of normal than
we are used to and so government officials
have started to talk about a ‘new normal’.
What is our ‘new normal’ likely to be? Well, its
immediate form is likely to vary by the nature
of healthcare provision, demographics,
population density, economic structure and
government willingness to support people (in
economic terms rather than simply support
the ‘economy’ in abstract terms). As many
people have pointed out, it is a false
dichotomy to suggest we can choose the
economy or choose lives; the dead do not
work, save, invest or consume and a reckless
return to work risks eventual economic
dysfunction and social fracture, as cumulative
deaths and illness mount (affecting every
household).
The eventual economic damage of choosing
‘the economy’ can readily be
counterproductive – to say nothing of the
human cost. Human cost, however, cannot be
reduced to just those who die from Covid-19,
there will be those who die because of how we
have responded to Covid-19 (the ‘excess
deaths’ compared to the rolling average
adjusted for population characteristics) and
there will be those who live shorter or lesser
lives in terms of their well-being (life chances,
mental and physical health). The politics, as
any perusal of the recent press makes clear, is
all about choosing possible futures against this
backdrop. Lockdowns flatten curves and buy
time, but the question becomes what happens
later and what is done with the time bought.
And it is not definite that longer lockdowns
must lead to later loss of well-being, this too is
a false dichotomy; longer lockdowns risk worse
outcomes later, but do not lock them in. This
too is about current and future policies and
whilst social scientists talk about ‘path-
dependencies’, the very purpose of explaining
and understanding them is to be able to
influence them, though that too is not simple.
Longer lockdowns risk worse
outcomes later, but do not lock
them in. This too is about
current and future policies and
whilst social scientists talk
about ‘path-dependencies’, the
very purpose of explaining and
understanding them is to be able
to influence them, though that
too is not simple.
P A G E
1
9
‘We leave it to you,
exercise your common
sense’, seems
insufficient as a way to
create the conditions
for trust to be given.
Public health business models
One optimistic point of view hopes our
economies bounce back (a deep sharp ‘v’
shape). But this seems increasingly unlikely
and is now a minority position. This is partly
because of a path-dependency governments
are not well-equipped to quickly or easily
shift. No effective treatments are available
yet for Covid-19 and even as some become
available we will still be living in more or less
fearful societies that require governments to
impose or organizations to voluntarily adopt
‘public health business models’. A socially
distanced economy affects the potential for
work and consumption and this affects
different sectors in different ways.
Distrust radically reduces willingness to use
public transport and social distancing
radically reduces the volume capacity of that
public transport. Costs soar and revenues fall,
and in the UK case, a typical business model
predicated on fewest transport units
(least carriages for trains etc.) cannot easily
respond. The problem is exacerbated in a
privatised system of franchised transport, and
from a profit-loss point of view these entities
become reluctant to respond. So, a system
transporting commuting workers to work
and consumers to places of consumption
faces significant problems in conveying both
when contrasted with past numbers. The
immediate response is to divert traffic
elsewhere (cars, cycles, foot) and stagger
public transport use or access through the
day and on different days. The net effect is to
reduce activity and this problem feeds
through to other sectors.
Once at work, office workers confront office
spaces that require uncluttered ‘deep-clean’
friendly environments, wide berths, spread
out single designation desks, one-way traffic
systems, and different points of entry and
exit, as well as appropriate ventilation, access
to sanitisers, washing facilities, and single
toilets to ensure good hygiene can be
maintained. Modern ‘hot desk’, cramped
office spaces do not look-like this, and
resources for sanitation do not seem likely to
be freely available to all offices in the near
future. So either safety is compromised
(leading to new waves of infection as ‘R’
spikes) or workers work from home or
numbers are radically reduced.
Best practice compliance in ideal office
spaces affects costs most, but all office spaces
change anyway if a public health business
model becomes the goal, and the problems
of office spaces might be magnified in
manufacturing, processing and assembly
organizations, since ‘line’ work cannot
necessarily be spread out if the function
requires materials to be passed from person
to person or the machinery that each works
with cannot be separated without breaking
the system itself. Again, any short term
public health solutions are liable to reduce
output and increase costs.
Fewer people in spaces that previously had
many people means fewer people ordering
from or frequenting the cafes, sandwich bars
and coffee shops that service urban and
industrial park workforces. So, problems
initiated by lockdown do not end with
lockdown for the catering, restaurant and
‘hospitality’ sectors. They too face public
health business model problems of use of
space, compliance, reduced capacity and
increased costs. Moreover, a socially
distanced economy means reduced incentive
to visit restaurants in the evening, less
likelihood of socialising in pubs and clubs,
and reduced capacity in all of these, as well
as, eventually in leisure and fitness sites. All of
these have ‘break-even’ models based on
average revenues related to numbers of
customers and it seems unlikely that most
can respond, even if demand is there initially,
unless prices rise significantly, in turn,
affecting what economists call effective
demand (ability to pay). Then, of course, if
people are more likely to stay at home, they
are less likely to buy as many ‘going out’
outfits. So, the problem feeds through to
online clothing retailers as well as high street
locations (why visit the high street if you can
no longer try on the clothes and no longer
have as much use for them?).
P A G E 2
0
And some barriers are not just psychological,
they are legal. Closed borders, quarantines
and just more tightly controlled borders all
impact tourist and holiday destinations, and
an airport and aviation industry run
according to a socially distanced public
health business model’ surely runs differently
than it did in the past. Again, either safety is
risked (R is affected and fear is augmented) or
prior ‘carrier-load’ business models (that
determined break-even calculations) become
broken business models.
I could go on (having said nothing about major
sectors such as construction or universities) and
most of the above has probably occurred to
you. But collectively and cumulatively the above
is sufficient to illustrate that a public health
business model is different and its initial path-
dependency consequences seem likely to
systematically reduce net economic activity
after any first formal lockdown period. Clearly,
given the ripple effects related to use of space,
some of the greatest impact (in wealthy
economies at least) is likely to be in economies
where final consumption of products and
services is a larger part of the economy and
where some significant part of this is
discretionary spending.
Structural fragility and net effects
An economy that grows through increasing
final consumption is one that evolves with
final consumption and so its reproduction,
stability and growth are specially dependent
on it and on the associated characteristics of
work and financing. It matters how people
are paid, how they are contracted, what levels
of debt they take on in order to work - for
example reliance on a childcare industry -
and what they are willing to do in order to
consume, bearing in mind discretionary
spending does not mean all consumption
is freely chosen or can be foregone without
consequences. If a consumption-focused
economy has higher levels of sub-contracted
employees, zero-hour employees and
‘precariously’ employed people within a
‘‘flexible" employment market, then the very
characteristics that have facilitated a version
of relatively high employment can quickly
lead to high unemployment. Unemployment
feeds back on business and the economy
through insolvency and bankruptcy and this
can lead to a potentially devastating set of
feedback loops, if savings are low, debt is high
and wealth assets are lacking.
Given the decade long debate about the UK’s
productivity puzzle and the evolution of its
workforce before and after the financial crisis,
it is relatively uncontroversial to suggest the
UK has relatively high dependence on final
consumption, a significant proportion of its
population are precariously employed in one
way or another, it has low levels of average
savings, high levels of personal debt (secured
and unsecured), high levels of working poor
and a decade of reductions to local and
P A G E 2
1
national government welfare spending
(based on real measures and prior to the
recent commitment to ‘levelling up’ ). It is,
therefore, for a wealthy country,
especially economically vulnerable to
pandemic, as is the USA. Drawing attention to
this is not an exercise in carping, it is a
necessary recognition that a pandemic can
expose the underlying fragility of a society
and economy with relatively high levels of
inequality and ‘working poverty’. This matters
for realistic planning in the near term. In the
UK case, for example, it matters for how we
address issues like furlough, and small
business loans and grants after the first
period of lockdown. And it matters for
thinking about a more resilient society and
economy in the long term. Public health
business models seem to require a new
public health economics and public health
government context. Without these, the
adoption of public health business models
seems likely to prolong and exacerbate an
uncontrolled economic recession as net
economic activity remains low and/or
continues to fall, and this, clearly, runs
counter to government policy intent. This is
important to emphasise because it implies a
significant shift towards government
intervention in the economy in all senses and
under quite different thinking than has been
the direction of travel in recent years.
Ideologically, of course, talk of ‘levelling up’
notwithstanding, the current UK government
seems peculiarly unsuited to a more
pervasive government role and so any ‘force
of necessity’ style of response, based on more
pragmatic inclinations may be tempered.
This too should be recognised, since it may
lead to more tensions further down the
road (calls for austerity, for example, despite
current statements that there is no ‘appetite’
for this). It is also worth noting that the right
wing of liberal conservativism tend to argue
for a form of social Darwinism for people
and organizations and this assumes long
term outcomes are best left to self-organizing
spontaneous systems – a frame of mind that
leads decisionmakers to be reactive to
problems rather than pro-active of problems;
again, a perspective that sits awkwardly with
our current and near future situation (which
seems to demand a kind of perspective on
planning and foresight that does not come
easily to the current UK government, despite
that it has also exhibited a tendency to
centralise power and limit consultation and
checks and balances). Still, the need for a
strict social distancing compliance version of
a ‘public health business model’ is a
situation of unknown duration (as noted it is
subject to the contact tracing, treatment and
vaccine situation). Strict social distancing may
be short lived and it may be periodically
required as waves come and go. There is,
however, an ‘in the meantime’ and this in the
meantime (as the previous illustrates) has the
potential for temporary effects to become
permanent consequences depending on
duration. There is no reason why this has to
be negative, but it may turn out that way
depending on the road travelled.
Public health business models seem to require a
new public health economics and public health
government context. Without these, the
adoption of public health business models seems
likely to prolong and exacerbate an
uncontrolled economic recession as net
economic activity remains low and/or continues
to fall, and this, clearly, runs
counter to government policy intent.
Image 4]
P A G E 2 2
Speculative futures
It seems likely that businesses that are able
will begin to adopt ‘pandemic prepared’
practices. This seems most readily
conceivable for larger well capitalised
enterprises in the retail/supermarket,
chemicals and manufacturing sectors. The
most obvious variant on this is a shift in the
longer term from long global supply chains
with single source procurement to shorter
and more diversified supply chains, and this is
likely to be combined with a move away from
‘just-in-time’ delivery systems to ‘just in case’
warehousing (a potentially radical change to
the cost based model behind the turn to ‘lean
business’). This involves a different use of
space and a different use of technologies that
are used to track, trace and coordinate. And
pandemic awareness seems likely to also lead
to further responses to the experienced
problems of human occupied working space.
The lessons learned for many businesses may
be that automated systems using artificial
intelligence (AI), machine learning and new
generation mobile reprogrammable robotics
are preferable to their human equivalents.
Technology does not require distancing,
cannot be infected, cannot get sick, does
not face the challenge of commuting,
requires no time off and does not need to
be negotiated with. Covid-19, may, therefore,
accelerate existing trend adoptions of new
technology and encourage new investment
in developing technologies.
more investment in automated transport
systems for goods. At its bleakest this suggests
a new wave of structural unemployment as a
learned response to Covid-19’s current
economic devastation. It is worth noting, of
course, that there were bleak forecasts of
enduring mass unemployment after the global
financial crisis, and whilst unemployment did
rise, in the UK it did not rise as expected or
endure as long as some anticipated. But, as we
have already suggested, the further
flexibilization of the economy and growth
through final consumption etc. occurred in
sectors that have already absorbed labour and
these are the ones already suffering and most
likely to continue to suffer drop-offs in
economic activity because of Covid-19. This
encompasses great swathes of SMEs and the
self-employed that constitute a significant
portion of contemporary employment.
Rationally, of course, pandemic proofing our
health and social care services means greatly
increasing investment in these sectors and
thus potentially employment (as well as in the
UK, wages – if the government is to follow
through on its ‘front-line’ heroes rhetoric).
There is a strong argument for government
investment in infrastructure to offset any
enduring effects of the pandemic on
economic activity (and this could lead to quite
different ownership and incentive
structures around some kinds of new
technology).
A Covid-19 context could thus alter the social
meaning and intent that influences how
technology is adopted and developed. The
very point could be to displace jobs rather
than merely to modify jobs and so
displacement rates might begin to exceed
creation rates: automated freight, automated
warehousing retrieval and packaging
systems (with lonely supervisors), Amazon’s
new generation supermarkets with no
checkout (and no dangers of ‘dirty cash’ use),
ABB robotics resizable production line
systems, more use of drones for delivery,
P A G E 2 3
So, it is an open question quite how Covid
effects and longer term structural effects will
interact. Still retail, tourism, hospitality, and
leisure are all caught in a potential pincer,
and they all involve structurally vulnerable
workers – those with low wages, less savings,
fewer wealth assets and less capacity to cope
with Covid-19 now and structural changes
later. So, the consequences may be severe,
especially in the initial context of a longer
more severe domestic and global recession.
In any case, the longer ‘in the meantime’ lasts
then the more incentive there may be for
businesses who can to begin to think along
displacement lines – and the less scope there
will be for job creation in existing sectors. So,
the worse case may be the situation
governments have to manage and it seems
prudent to be thinking about this. In so far as
we are being speculative, the worse case is
also strong motivation to start to think
differently and this may in turn create quite
new path-dependencies. If we have long
term Covid-19 unemployment and increasing
and persistent structural unemployment
because of technological responses, then
government policy may need to transition
from temporary ‘emergency responses’
(grants, subsidies, furloughs, tax and payment
holidays, loan guarantees etc.) to enduring
real institutional changes – to the financing of
the state and to support for how people are
treated as citizens with economic obligations.
Non-mainstream ideas may become
the mainstream when policymakers are
suitably motivated (war and depression, as
Roosevelt illustrates). And there are already
existing speculations on how the ‘fourth
industrial revolution’ might affect our world
(work emanating from McKinsey, Deloitte,
the World Economic Forum, the TUC etc.).
Covid-19 adds further pressure to a basic
problem: it may be ‘rational’ for an individual
business to automate and displace workers (if
they can and are allowed to) and the
rationale for this may be ‘we want customers
and clients, but no workers’; but every worker
is somebody else’s customer or client, so the
unintended consequence can be a lack of
‘critical mass’ of clients or customers – an
enduring systemic dysfunction. All of which is
to say no more than that pandemic
awareness, pandemic planning, Covid-19
realities and business investment
priorities may profoundly alter how we think
about the relation between work, society and
the state, which may, in turn, bring ideas like
Universal Basic Income (UBI) into the
mainstream. Equally massive increases in
state debt and ongoing needs to address
state financing may profoundly alter how we
think about the sources and scope for
state financing.
We embraced fiscal policy, stabilisers and
‘multipliers’ almost a century ago and may
find ourselves embracing Modern Monetary
Theory (MMT) in the future. MMT argues that
sovereign states with their own currency are
currency ‘issuers’ not just ‘users’ and so
have great scope for financing up to a point
dictated by ‘full use of resources’.
Mainstream opinion is highly sceptical at the
moment (not least because of the – false –
claim that the necessary outcome is
hyperinflation). UBI and MMT may seem
unlikely right now, but a capitalist society of
the kind we live in with its inventions such as
a limited liability joint stock company with
legal personhood, complex technologies,
administration, institutions and conventions,
and massive wealth was unthinkable before it
was thought of (a ridiculous statement, but
significantly so). Our ‘normal’ is not natural
and there is no reason why the future of
normal has to be the familiar and many
reasons why it may need not to be.
Universal Basic Income and Modern
Monetary Theory may seem unlikely
right now, but a capitalist society of the
kind we live in with its inventions such
as a limited liability joint stock
company with legal personhood,
complex technologies, administration,
institutions and conventions, and
massive wealth was unthinkable before
it was thought of (...).
P A G E 2 4
Conclusion: Parochialism and possible
worlds
Talk of ‘our world’ and ‘worse cases’ is, of
course, parochial in three ways and I
conclude with this. First, it is parochial
because the focus has been the wealthy
world and the UK in particular. Covid-19 is a
global problem and whilst it is not
inaccurate to suggest economies like the
UK’s are peculiarly vulnerable to pandemics,
this is not the same as suggesting UK society
is of a type likely to suffer most from
pandemic. It is poorer countries with fewer
health services and more dependent
economies that may suffer most in the long
term. This may rebound on economies and
societies like the UK in that long term - if we
do not offer support (not least through the
effects on agricultural supply lines).
Second, it is also parochial to focus on
economics and economy, since the broader
significance of Covid-19 may be geo-political
in a regional and global sense. Covid-19 has
added an additional dynamic to the tensions
within the EU affecting its unity (Hungary’s
shift towards dictatorship, Italy’s displeasure
over German resistance to pandemic
bond financing etc) and to the UK’s exit from
the EU (Brexit negotiation is one issue,
pressures on other countries’ membership
another). Covid-19 has also added an
additional dynamic to the dysfunctional
relation between American exceptionalism,
the presumption of American global
leadership and ongoing relations with East
Asia and Europe. Covid-19 has exposed
similar fragilities in the US economy as it has
in the UK one (if not more so, since the US
lacks a universal health care system), but it
has also exposed and underscored that the
current President is not interested in global
leadership (symbolically or materially).
Whatever one thinks about the American
President or issues of global ‘leadership’, this
does affect global cooperation at the UN, via
the WHO and through the G20 and G7 – at
least at this highly significant time. It is not
clear yet whether Trump’s erratic behaviour
will have long term effects on isolationism
versus global institutionalism, but the longer
Trump or someone of similar mind (if not
personality) is in power in the USA then the
more the ‘new international normal’ becomes
either chaotic or a power vacuum that China
or others seek to fill and this matters for the
political economy.
Third, whilst political economy is an
important focus and way to view the world
and is often a useful way to think about worse
cases and possibilities. The economy is, in the
end, a means to an end. It is easy to forget we
have to survive long enough to have a future.
As climate scientists have been warning now
for many years, there is a ‘Climate
Emergency’ that has to be addressed: net
zero carbon emissions by 2050, a 45-55%
reduction on current emissions levels by 2030
(within the context of other environmental
problems that need to be addressed). I
started this essay by suggesting that our
civilisation has the capacity to cope with
Covid-19, eventually. For that to be more than
hubris, then Covid-19 needs to be an object
lesson in re-embracing expertise, and that
should not mean just epidemiologists,
virologists etc. Covid-19 and the Climate
Emergency share a common feature: lack of
preparation and early action and these follow
from our civilizational tendency to discount
the future. This is not something we can
continue to do.
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P A G E 2 5