"Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How.

[Galyna]

Morning, found this article last night, thought I would share, guys...

"Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How."

"For many Americans right now, the scale of the coronavirus crisis calls to mind 9/11 or the 2008 financial crisis—events that reshaped society in lasting ways, from how we travel and buy homes, to the level of security and surveillance we’re accustomed to, and even to the language we use."

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/19/coronavirus-effect-economy-life-society-analysis-covid-135579 

 

 

[Apparition of Jack]

I feel this is going to be bigger than both of them.

[Thewritersunion]

The USA does not have great social nets to deal with disease and plague. 

Contemplate this. 

[Milos Uzelac]

This came like a Black Swan event for the global and financial market's response (or better unresponsiveness, business as usual till now), a 23% DOW drop in 23 days while the Great Recession of 2008 witnessed a stock share loss of 56% in the course of 516 days. I watched a video clip on YT two days ago from Feb. 25 by Adam Barrata, a market and financial expert he gave a talk at the Cambridge House International and he there explains and claims how this recession that started formally today with the Bank of America announcement will signal a change, by utter economic unsustainability of the present debt-driven economic growth in conditions of economic productivity and spending freeze, the course of monetary and fiscal economic policy globally for the next decade. 

Key ideas:

1. The Black Swan theory, whose popularization author for the theory of financial market response Nassim Nicholas Taleb, explains is at as from Wikipedia:

''a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.''

'' A black swan, juvenal's phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers. In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent.

However, in 1697, Dutch explorers led by Willem de Vlamingh became the first Europeans to see black swans, in Western Australia. The term subsequently metamorphosed to connote the idea that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. Taleb notes that in the 19th century, John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.

Black swan events were discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book Fooled By Randomness, which concerned financial events. His 2007 book The Black Swan extended the metaphor to events outside of financial markets. Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans"—undirected and unpredicted. He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the September 11, 2001 attacks as examples of black swan events.

Taleb asserts:

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalize it) is an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme 'impact'. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme 'impact', and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explains almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.''

2. Bacteria Petrie dish exponential growth experiment unnoticeable to regular consumers and market actors (due to most people (me included as I became aware of my rationalizing of my past actions in the lead up to this event) being unable to have expectations about the future that go outside the realm of the recently experienced past (that acts in a way as our collective social anchor), outside of expectations of regular consumers in the economy and non-experts and the asymptote curve shoot-up to infinity

3. Saeculum, 90 years time measurement supercycles  -  Etruscan civilization's in an ancient Italy calendar and way of measuring time by marking and the span between social crises which they believed occurred every 90 years, cyclic time perception of upcoming events, repetition of the same mistakes by new generations due to the disappearance of warning from the generation who made mistakes that led to the last social crisis.

4. The Great Devaluation of the 2020s - heading to the steady rise of fiscal dominant economic policy across developed countries with parliamentary democracies and as Barrata prophesizes ''the greatest transfer of wealth in human history'' in the upcoming decades.

Hope this theory and its ideas connect well to this thread's theme. And this all adds to my suspicion that this might the horrible spark that veers some people enough for upcoming future popular movements that put pressure on the current political establishment to go away from utterly trusting market logic runs a lot of mechanisms as dogma akin to '' market fundamentalism'' in our modern society - as a prelude in the necessity of more government Keynesian economics style intervention in economic policy heading to the future decade.

Edited March 21, 2020 by Milos Uzelac

[Galyna]

@Apparition of Jack I am afraid so too

@Thewritersunion yeah....

[Preety_India]

This is going to change the world. 

First of all we'll never look at flu the same way. 

Second, if anything happens in China or anyone, even a small infection, everyone is going to feel the tremors.. 

 

Third. We'll stop taking presidents and prime ministers and governments seriously because we were left alone to fend for ourselves with no masks and no testing kits. Only fake promises. 

Also. We'll know once again that humanity is fickle. Even a small invisible thing like a virus can change our lives within days. It's time to accept our smallness. 

And Lastly... We're never really prepared for anything. We just like to pretend like we do 

And yes...whenever Trump says that something is a hoax, time to take it seriously and not call it a hoax. 

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Preety_India

[Galyna]

@Milos Uzelac  Yes, lots of people are claiming that they are currently trying to change our financial system and gain even more control. I would love to read Taleb's book, I have heard of him a lot from other sources. 

"Inequality for All" is a great film by Robert Reich to ponder about this situation. He maid a lot of great points there.

[Galyna]

@Preety_India I can not comprehend it still, honestly.  But my intuition tells me that it might hit us the hardest. I am afraid that in a week we will have more cases here than in China. 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Galyna

[Preety_India]

@Galyna  it came like a ton of bricks. Never thought that I would need to take infections so seriously. 

Earlier when they used to announce on the news that something broke out in China like Sars or whatever, I used to think "no worries, it only happens in China" I know it sounds selfish but I used to not worry. Now I can't believe I'm worrying about something like a flu. 

Never know what happens in this world. 

 

[Galyna]

@Preety_India Same here, I remember those time when was a teenager, we never took it seriously.

I really wish we all share the valuable info on this forum about our next steps and important things about the virus.

I am not sure, but today I have bought a lot of Vitamin C, Selenium, Magnesium, Zinc, on top of that I take multi vitamins and omega every day. I have bought lots of food and cleaning supplies, went to the bank, got some cash. Not sure what else I can do. The guns are gone in the store, so no luck, I never had one, but amid the changes I am thinking about this over and over again. I am not panicking. I just want to know what should I buy now to protect my family in the future. I got some water filter as well and candles. I have masks and some medicine.

[Galyna]

 

[Milos Uzelac]

1 hour ago, Preety_India said:

 

We'll stop taking presidents and prime ministers and governments seriously because we were left alone to fend for ourselves with no masks and no testing kits. 

 

I would argue that we should start as the governed now to start waking up enough to start taking those governing positions seriously and start to think from the perspective of this global situation if votes, legitimacy  governing status should given to people who got into office by entertaininment and media rating value alone and treating politics like its an arena spectacle, and not position of management of an entire nation-state. That's how Trump and "BoJo", they are even reffered with nicknames as some entertainment celebrities (which yes they to a degree they already were) who run politics like a reality show while the armies anynomous advisors and experts scramble around them with last ounce of strength them to keep things from crumbling in these for our media-entertainment monopoly age unprecedented circumstances. 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Milos Uzelac

[Esoteric]

@Galyna Lol the 2008 financial crisis is childs play compared to the consequences of this. Not even in the same ball park. People seem to have an idea that we will close down society and when it is safe to go out we will carry on business as usual. We will likely see a collapse of the whole economical system. It has happened before and now it is happening again. Old structures are wiped out and better structures will be built. 

Without Order nothing can exist, without Chaos nothing can evolve

Civilization is so frail that it can't handle a lockdown for more than a couple of months. We need something better.

Edited March 21, 2020 by Esoteric

[Galyna]

@Esoteric  Read the whole article that I posted. It was just a preamble to the text that I copied and paste here. 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Galyna

[supremeyingyang]

How will Corona change our Societies?

That is a interesting Question, which you could answer from several perspectives. For example @Preety_India wrote about how we will overall view the flu and think about government. The Article from @Galyna described a big range of possible developments, which honestly are so wide in the future that no one knows. But I imagine to be informed enough to know what will happen this year.
I think Corona Virus is NOT the source of the problem we will see, it is only the catalyst of a economic crisis that was sure to come. I promise I try to go make it as high level as possible and focus on the most important developments I see:

@Milos Uzelac  wrote about a upcoming black swan effect, because Corona is that black swan. Corona won't be that important compared to the crisis that will come, that will look like 2008/2009 * 5. The economy will go down (mark my words). The Politicians and Banks will go (again) the easy route : printing money, lowering the interest-rate. There is a paraphrase from the hagakure and it goes like this :

When you clan is starts to perish, don't fight against it. If you are lucky you can save your family instead.

Meaning: From time to time creative destruction is normal. And if you fight it you will create more destruction.

Wildfire-Theory:

• In the nature wildfires a normal part of the cycle of nature and they are not pleasant for humans (in the short run). So we prevent them. But if humans want to prevent them from happening.. what do you think happens? Instead of 12 little wildfire we get one gigantic wildfire, which is even bigger than the sum of the 12 little fires we prevented - and a lot of wood burns at the same time. That's a Metaphor for the Crisis Management  of 2008/2009. The politicians, ceos and banker prevented banks and bis businesses to go down, which is great short term (and it save lifes). Mid-term a lot of people where homeless and even poorer than before. Sadly it damages societies and costs even more live in the long run. That a double bind: Almost no one has a time horizon of 20 years, people would rip politicians who try apart.

Peace

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by supremeyingyang

[supremeyingyang]

So how will Corona change society? That's my pessimistic Scenario:
People will on a big scale, once again, choose the lie over the truth thus risking the lives of a lot more people to ensure their own prosperity.

To end on a positive note, here is my optimistic Scenario:
People will realize that corruption hurts everyone and set new rules to ensure more global equity.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Whatever the case will be: Conscious Politics will be needed like never before. I think about how I can participate in politics in my local community...

Edited March 22, 2020 by supremeyingyang