Post Pandemic Lockdown Scenarios

[flyingcrocodile46]

I would like to extend my best wishes and hopes for everyone during and following this global crisis for humanity. I would also like to offer the following thoughts and observations in the hope that they may either help or entertain you in some way and also in the hopes of encouraging others to offer their own observations, thoughts and plans in a helpful open dialogue that we might all benefit from as we seek to understand and plan for our futures.

I have been doing a lot of research and thinking about what is happening, the causes, the short & long term effects and exacerbating factors that have bought us here and what is likely to happen moving forward. I tend to write down important issues and observations as I attempt to get my head around them and continually edit them until I am satisfied that I have. The following is a summary of my observations and thoughts thus far (still a work in progress);

The looming international depression

Given the scale of financial market losses the world experienced in the month before lock down and the Trillion$ upon Trillion$ being poured into the rapidly deflating full spectrum of massively overinflated investment bubbles, one can only shake their heads in bewilderment as all the rules get tossed out the window and we teeter on the precipice of the greatest depression in known history.

Not so sure that it will happen? Then please consider the following. In 2008 (after/during an Initial $1 Trillion govt bail out) the Fed started quantitive easing at a rate of 90 billion a month of magic money to the big banks (a little over 1 Trillion a year) with little respite since. This took the US debt from 8 Trillion to over 23 Trillion at the end of 2020). Now they are announcing multiples of Trillion$ each month with over 1 Trillion required to be made available for the banks in the overnight market to fund their Repo market shortfalls to keep their overnight trading balance sheets propped up.

I dare say none of you noticed the lack of fanfare that accompanied the removal of the previous Bank reserve requirements (to maintain cash holdings no less than 10% of the debt ledger). They can now loan out (manufacture electronic credit) without any limits at all. For those that don't know, the previous limit was to retain $1 cash (actual paper/coin) on hand for every $9 of magic money that they create electronically via loans (debt). Oh! and BTW The Federal reserve (there are 12 of them) are not owned or controlled by the US Federal govt (or the states). They are entirely owned by the banks that they issue magic money to. Don't believe me, Google it for yourselves/.

It appears the only thing preventing the realisation of free-fall is the unprecedented worldwide lockdown that has effectively killed market trading. You can't even get physical gold bullion presently.

Barring a miracle, it appears very likely that many businesses will be unable to fund their continuation/re-start (and/or are likely to suffer many order cancellations that may make their continuation pointless). Many other businesses will seek to downsize following order cancellations and/or greatly diminished market prospects. This will result in large scale loss of employment and income that will see hundreds of thousands divesting themselves of assets and many family homes foreclosed due to unserviceable mortgages on rapidly devaluing properties that in many cases will be sold for less than the money owed on them.

Given the scale of financial market losses the world has experienced since February, Govts and businesses are likely to come out of this pandemic decidedly gun-shy about the just-in-time supply model and globally dispersed production. This will likely result in a retreat from hyper-globalization, as Govts and big businesses seek to reduce future vulnerabilities by bringing supply chains closer to home and incorporating redundancies to protect against future disruption. An added benefit is a potentially more carbon friendly supply chain and (along with big national and city infrastructure projects) will create much needed employment opportunities.

Quantification of the collapse of a lot of businesses/services that are required to re start the economy and provide employment will occur and very (imo) likely be followed by govt legislation that will result in

l* Consolidation and enhancement (via burdensome regulatory requirements for employment and public health security) of big business monopolies and franchising over smaller independent businesses who can't finance pre-start employment and public health compliance requirements for any businesses deemed to be part of essential supplies and services. (Think OSH compliance X 3³).
l* Establishment of Govt/big business partnerships in strategic industries to underwrite otherwise unprofitable redundancies and domestic product supply infrastructure for essential services, Raw materials, products and big infrastructure projects.

l* I'm sure there should be more on this list, but my crystal ball is a bit clouded ad I find it difficult to use logic to recognise and assess possibilities that are subject to political distortions. Open to your thoughts here as it is important that we understand as many of the more probable possibilities as is practical.

Who’s to blame and what to will happen as a result?

There has to be a bad guy to blame and China is widely (if not justifiably) seen to be getting too big for its boots by many partisan and racist (waves to Australia) western countries that are in lock step with the USA. There is also speculation around the way China managed reporting of the Covid 19 outbreak that Duncelot Trump so delicately pointed out was "Made in China". So it’ll likely be China that cops the blame imo.

Going by history, we will very likely see this morphed into a cold war between western countries and China (China being the new Red Technology Terror) in order to justify an arms race to continue the squandering of world wide taxes. Oh yeah! don't you fret about taxes, they ain't going to disappear - more to follow.

We will likely see a pivot from privacy concerns to the logistics of safety and social distancing (which will be milked for all it is worth by governments around the world) to increase control over and decrease freedoms of the masses make us all safe from each other in this deadly new world that we have been so thoroughly scared into being terrified of educated about. Privacy concerns about revealing our whereabouts and activities will give way to how best to service a population with a demand for goods and services while still maintaining social distancing requirements (that our new hyper inflated fear levels will demand). We will likely see the swift introduction of the following measures before the wave of fear subsides.

l* Travel restrictions
l* Immunity passports - Oh yeah, that's already an international governmental talking point
l* Initiation of massive public (control) transport infrastructure growth plans
l* Social Credit/Class (behavior reward/penalty) system underwritten with a new "No Play- No Pay" Social obligations contract.
l* Digital currency. Turn it on if you’re good. Turn it off if you’re not.
l* Social gathering (dissent) restriction/controls.

Chinese style Smart City technology is likely to be implemented to monitor for and control viral outbreaks. This will typically include temperature checks at major travel points using surveillance and thermal scanning camera networks to monitor and prevent viral contagion and a massive digital camera network for tracking and enforcing quarantine zones and supporting hands-free access transit systems etc. (Big brother on steroids).

Other (less insidious) likely follow on effects?

Public gathering places that are already being weakened by the internet (libraries, movie theatres and other entertainment venues) will be further weakened. With public resources shifted into plague control, they will suffer a drop in funding. I suspect that our concerns post-crisis will be more basic: i.e. where can I live affordably and how can I access job and services safely.

There is likely to be Increased interest by individuals and companies in development of in-house pandemic preparations. Bug out bags, quarantine rations, and family/community planning based on emergency situations. Anyone surprised?

There will very likely be abig shift to increase the home-based work population substantially (future proofing Govt agencies, Councils and business services from the effects of future lock downs). The regular, 9 to 5 business days are likely to become flexible working days, and a more significant segment of the workforce is likely to become "night people" and have off-hours and rest during the daytime while others are working. This may see an increase in 24/7 operations for businesses that traditionally did not operate this way, such as for supermarkets, takeout food businesses, and centralized food distribution and preparation centres. All of these will require enabling of enhanced technologies for logistics management to serve a population always awake and in need of goods and services at all times.

We will likely experience a big increase in want/need for remote first technologies. An acceleration in 5G implementation will support a change in societal connectivity demands (NO 5G DID NOT CAUSE COVID 19). This will also support the expedited implementation of VR solutions for remote collaborations and social activities. As a society, we can expect restrictions in social gatherings, but humans are fundamentally social creatures. VR represents a solution to this innate need.

Work Income and Assets

It is likely that a significant number of people currently living in cities will see a lot more appeal in small town living and/or more remote lifestyle blocks for a multitude of reasons including amongst others; More flexible (work from home) employment opportunities, more comfortable/safer/self sufficient Isolation, cheaper cost of living for BUI recipients, unemployment forcing early retirement and need to downsize to a caravan park or country town for an early retirement. This will ease the pressure on city housing stock shortages and further deflate house prices in cities. However, the flip side is that we will likely see an increase in housing demand and construction in select retirement destinations (offering further relocation/employment incentives for trades people to leave cities).

Taxes and Universal Basic Incomes (UBI) or unemployment benefit as we know it. Not so much a revelation to us Kiwis who have been paying taxes to house, clothe, feed, educate and entertain an already sizable percentage of our population (ever notice the similarity between the words population and pollution?). Weeeeell, there's good news and bad news here and it doesn't require a degree in rocket science or even an explanation in order for the worthy to understand the personal and collective impact. The only question is, which camp you and I will be in next month. Google UBI and get your crystal ball out for more info.

Areas I think will provide employment opportunities are as follows;

l* Domestic supply of essential products
l* Massive public (control) transport infrastructure & health care growth - health $ back into small communities
l* Large scale govt investment in housing stock to shelter the newly homeless.
l* Housing construction boom in smaller communities
l* Surveillance and thermal scanning camera networks to monitor and prevent viral contagion and a massive digital camera network for tracking and enforcing quarantine zones and supporting hands-free access transit systems etc (big Brother).
l* Iinterest by individuals and companies in developingin-house pandemic preparations. (specialists)
l* VR solutions for remote collaborations and social activities
l* Recycling plants to produce building materials that put carbon into the ground (though this really just an item on my wish list)

l This section is also very light and I imagine many of you will have some constructive ideas and insights in this area. Please contribute them in following posts.

Prefered but unlikely cure for what ails the world

An international debt Jubilee (the writing off of all debt) is the best way to start fixing the wealth inequality of the world. As I see it, even if the fed (and other central banks) only gets 5 cents on the dollar for their mortgage backed securities and/or govt bonds, they are still ahead of the wealth transfer game, as the electronic money they used to buy the security was magic money that they made out of thin air.

Why is that world leaders can't get it through their thick heads that they can make all of the economic ills of the world go away with a wave of their middle fingers to the banks as they make laws to take back control of their sovereign coin and re-set the playing field by abolishing ALL existing debt. All of a sudden everything is the same but there is no debt. Only the parasitic ticket clippers and leeches at the very top of the magic money-go-round will lose anything. Even then, all they will lose is magic money debt that they shouldn't have had in the first place. No-one need lose any material possessions (not even the leeches at the top).

Keen on hearing your constructive contributions.

Stay home and stay well

[flyingcrocodile46]

Another useful way of looking at the economic situation (courtesy of Simon Mair a Research Fellow in Ecological Economics at the University of Surrey).

As James Meadway wrote “the correct Covid-19 response isn’t a wartime economy – with massive upscaling of production. Rather, we need an “anti-wartime” economy and a massive scaling back of production. And if we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn't mean loss of livelihood. So, what we need is a different economic mindset. We tend to think of the economy as the way we buy and sell things, mainly consumer goods. But this is not what an economy is or needs to be. At its core, the economy is the way we take our resources and turn them into the things we need to live. Looked at this way, we can start to see more opportunities for living differently that allow us to produce less stuff without increasing misery”.


Simon Mair continues ..”The dominant idea of the current system we live in is that “exchange value” is the same thing as “use value”. Basically, people will spend money on the things that they want or need, and this act of spending money tells us something about how much they value its “use”. This is why markets are seen as the best way to run society. They allow you to adapt, and are flexible enough to match up productivity capacity with use value.

What Covid-19 is throwing into sharp relief is just how false our beliefs about markets are. Around the world, governments fear that critical systems will be disrupted or overloaded: supply chains, social care, but principally healthcare. There are lots of contributing factors to this. But let's take two.

First, it is quite hard to make money from many of the most essential societal services. This is in part because a major driver of profits is labour productivity growth: doing more with fewer people. People are a big cost factor in many businesses, especially those that rely on personal interactions, like healthcare. Consequently, productivity growth in the healthcare sector tends to be lower than the rest of the economy, so its costs go up faster than average.

Second, jobs in many critical services aren’t those that tend to be highest valued in society. Many of the best paid jobs only exist to facilitate exchanges: to make money. They serve no wider purpose to society.

Yet because they make lots of money we have lots of consultants, a huge advertising industry and a massive financial sector.

Meanwhile, we have a crisis in health and social care, where people are often forced out of useful jobs they enjoy because these jobs don’t pay them enough to live.

Pointless jobs

The fact that so many people work pointless jobs is partly why we are so ill prepared to respond to Covid-19. The pandemic is highlighting that many jobs are not essential, yet we lack sufficient key workers to respond when things go bad.

People are compelled to work pointless jobs because in a society where exchange value is the guiding principle of the economy, the basic goods of life are mainly available through markets. This means you have to buy them, and to buy them you need an income, which comes from a job.

The other side of this coin is that the most radical (and effective) responses that we are seeing to the Covid-19 outbreak challenge the dominance of markets and exchange value. Around the world governments are taking actions that three months ago looked impossible. In Spain, private hospitals have been nationalised. In the UK, the prospect of nationalising various modes of transport has become very real. And France has stated its readiness to nationalise large businesses.

Likewise, we are seeing the breakdown of labour markets. Countries like Denmark and the UK are providing people with an income in order to stop them from going to work. This is an essential part of a successful lockdown. These measures are far from perfect. Nonetheless, it is a shift from the principle that people have to work in order to earn their income, and a move towards the idea that people deserve to be able to live even if they cannot work.

This reverses the dominant trends of the last 40 years. Over this time, markets and exchange values have been seen as the best way of running an economy. Consequently, public systems have come under increasing pressure to marketise, to be run as though they were businesses who had to make money. Likewise, workers have become more and more exposed to the market – zero-hours contracts and the gig economy have removed the layer of protection from market fluctuations that long term, stable, employment used to offer.“

[flyingcrocodile46]

In strictest confidence, message me and I will give you my phone number.

[Berries]

In strictest confidence, message me and I will give you my phone number.

Do you want to post up your CV so we know who you are?

[mashman]

Another useful way of looking at the economic situation (courtesy[FONT=&quot] of Simon Mair a Research Fellow in Ecological Economics at the University of Surrey). [I]

As James Meadway wrote

This... coz it adds the finite planet into the equation. As for everything else: Where does taxation come from to pay for a UBI when less people are working, especially those high paid highly specialised people whose industries are being degrowified?

[caspernz]

In strictest confidence, message me and I will give you my phone number.

Do you want to post up your CV so we know who you are?

My first thought as well Berries

[MaxPenguin]

It's a perfect time to switch to a resource based economy. Because stuff.

[mashman]

It's a perfect time to switch to a resource based economy. Because stuff.

lol... ya don't switch to an RBE, there's a rather important economic step that needs to be taken to set the stage for whatever, and I do mean whatever and not just RBE, economy comes next. That step destroys things like the employer - employee relationship and deals with people not having to work for a living etc... Then we might accidentally hit an RBE or come up with something even better (if that's possible).

[F5 Dave]

lol... ya don't switch to an RBE, there's a rather important economic step that needs to be taken to set the stage for whatever, and I do mean whatever and not just RBE, economy comes next. That step destroys things like the employer - employee relationship and deals with people not having to work for a living etc... Then we might accidentally hit an RBE or come up with something even better (if that's possible).

I'll fire up the digger, you start throwing the bodies in.

[MaxPenguin]

I'll fire up the digger, you start throwing the bodies in.

Ya need any headstones?

[sidecar bob]

Or we could all just go back to doing whatever the fuck we were doing prior to this temporary hiccup in our lives.
People love to overthink this shit.

[Grumph]

Or we could all just go back to doing whatever the fuck we were doing prior to this temporary hiccup in our lives.
People love to overthink this shit.

And - with respect as he's obviously intelligent - the OP has form on here for starting major shitfights and either walking or being pushed away.
Look at the Vaccination thread.

At this point in time any post pandemic scenario is premature.

[sidecar bob]

And - with respect as he's obviously intelligent - the OP has form on here for starting major shitfights and either walking or being pushed away.
Look at the Vaccination thread.

At this point in time any post pandemic scenario is premature.

Maybe you could call him for some counselling must be tough building a chassis & fixing the mower in these awful times.
I will go back to bike tinkering from the original location & having KFC for lunch once a week.
We don't need to tie ourselves up in knots over returning to normal.
Might even get the RC30 going in the first week back.
Meanwhile, I've had a bunch of great sleep in's with my lovely wife & caught up on my own bikes, well I will have in ten days, more posts to come on the projects at home thread.
We only need to worry about whats going on our own backyards.
Buying into a pile of tripe that the op is pedaling that we can not change is simply scaremongering.

[F5 Dave]

I'll fire up the digger, you start throwing the bodies in.

I was kinda going for the whole inevidibile Stalinesc scenario when new socialist regiemes are adopted. Because humans. Oh we'll all trade onions we've grown for sheep or tractors evemly and there will be no ownership blah blah.
Bang Thud, bang thud.

[husaberg]

I was kinda going for the whole inevidibile Stalinesc scenario when new socialist regiemes are adopted. Because humans. Oh we'll all trade onions we've grown for sheep or tractors evemly and there will be no ownership blah blah.
Bang Thud, bang thud.

Isnt it traditional to pick on a proportion of the population blame them for all ou woes and steal all their goods and boot them out.
I personally think we should start with the poms.