We could, for instance, start valuing the people who turned out to be really important and rewarding those whose work proved pretty worthless a lot less. It is not enough to simply applaud health care workers in a crisis and then go back to business as normal. We need to ensure they are properly resourced and not subjected to endless politically driven re-organisations and outsourcings. Staff doing those vital frontline jobs deserve to be better paid than the investment bankers and hedge fund managers who were have been commanding an ever-increasing share of societies resources in return for …. Well in return for what exactly? For messing up the economy in 2008 before they were rescued by the state and then needing to be rescued by it again when the stock market collapsed in panic within days of the start of the Corona virus. Whilst they moved their money offshore and told the rest of us how important it is to have a low tax, light touch state that leaves them with the freedom to screw up.
Then we might like to try and explore the question of why the epidemic happened in the first place. We have lost thousands of lives, locked down the movements of billions of people and seen trillions of dollars of jobs and incomes destroyed. Most scientists currently think that the cause of all that pain is the existence of wildlife food markets where the sale of live and dead exotic species provides an ideal transmission ground for the spread of new viruses. In other words, the desire of a few very wealthy people to serve up the flesh of rare wild animals to impress business partners has ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Science also indicates that cutting down rain forests is also a dangerous way to expose people to previously unlikely encounters with rare species and the viruses they host. We are risking our health for the sake of a few pence off the price of biscuits containing palm oil. The way we treat the planet isn’t just a moral concern that some of us crazy environmentalists are concerned about. Get it wrong and you bring the world economy to its knees. Get it right and you build a secure and sustainable economy.
Our current economic system has proved to be incredibly fragile. We relied too heavily on just in time supply chains of great sophistication which brought delicacies from around the world to our supermarkets on a daily basis. Within a couple of days that system couldn’t supply us with toilet rolls, pasta, rice or canned food. We watched health care workers come off shift and cry after they’d visited the shops and discovered how little was left for them to rustle up a quick meal before they slept and went back on shift. It is not a great idea to import half the food that you need to survive if there is any kind of major international crisis. There is a real need to connect farmers and consumers and to involve a much wider section of society in agriculture. It is important to ensure that many more people know how to grow their food and how to produce a healthy meal out of raw ingredients.
When push came to shove it quickly became evident that the most valuable thing we possessed was our community. An incredible army of volunteers has emerged to ensure that food reached people who were shut up behind their front doors. The vast majority of people have been going out of their way to look out for others whilst a few utterly selfish individuals have made it hard for everyone by hoarding toilet rolls that weren’t ever in any danger of running short. It also turned out that the people we needed most were low paid workers like refuge collectors, shop workers, and carers whilst most of us got by without a sudden demand for more hedge fund managers.
On our daily exercise we have discovered the joys of traffic free roads and a more silent environment. Air quality around the world has improved enormously and the cancelation of enormous numbers of flights has provided us with a much needed and highly unexpected decline in one of the prime sources of environmental damage. Some of that gain may prove permanent. It is unlikely that the hugely damaging cruise industry is going to ever get back to anywhere near its previous size after the recent well publicised experiences of those were caught in a floating incubation chamber for deadly disease. Nor is it likely that quite so many business meetings will require hours of flying first class if they have been conducted perfectly efficiently online.
Yet, if we are not careful, all the useful lessons from this bitter experience are going to be lost to a desire to “get back to normal” as quickly as possible. Indeed, things could actually be much worse. During a crisis two very negative tendencies often emerge. The first is that people tend to want to trust their leaders and to believe that we must all unite behind them to get us through the problem. That is fine when leaders are actually easing the problem. It is less fine when the President of the USA utterly misjudges the seriousness of the crisis and spends most of his time tweeting about his ratings. It is less fine when the Prime Minister of the UK lets the Cheltenham race festival go ahead with one in every thousand people in the whole country attending.
There has been a huge failure in the UK to follow international scientific advice. The government hasn’t copied simple techniques that have worked in Germany, China and Singapore of testing, tracing and quarantine. A decade of under investment has failed to equip the NHS with the capacity to test even their own doctors for the disease with the result that one in four doctors are not able to work as I write. Also as I write there are hundreds of people dying every day in New York. 22 planes arrive today at Heathrow from that city and the occupants can get straight onto the tube without any testing.
Yet, instead of voicing their frustration at these major policy failures that have put lives at risk a lot of people have wanted to include the government in the circle of those they huddle around for warmth in difficult times. Many people find it hard enough getting through this without facing up to the reality that we are having to do so without sensible and responsible leadership.
Where half way effective leadership has been in evidence it has involved a far-right government dumping its most core beliefs and implementing policies that look more like Roosevelt’s New Deal than Thatcher’s refusal to accept that society existed and insistence in the cure all properties of markets. The state has had to intervene in the economy to an enormous degree to stop it collapsing. If it has to do that to rescue the free market system at times of crisis why can’t it do that effectively in normal times and harness societies resources to build and fund homes, hospitals, care homes and schools once this is over?
This brings me to the second and the biggest risk post crisis. A return to a narrow nationalist agenda and of the austerity economics that goes with it. We are going to have to listen to an awful lot of pundits telling us that we can only rely on ourselves, Britain must stand alone and that the times require strong leaders to “get the public finances back in order”.
What we actually need is some imaginative economics that recognises it is OK to print and spend money at the depths of a slump. Around £500 billion of Quantitative Easing money was created to rescue the banks in the UK and we will need to do that and more to get the economy back to functioning without imposing decades of misery. What we also need is international collaboration to boost economies at the same time. Indeed this entire crisis has demonstrated that our biggest problems are international and our solutions need to be as well.
Disease doesn’t respect borders. Climate emergencies are global. The world economy is now inextricably interlinked and a shock to one part of it is a problem for everyone. It is not possible to deal with planetary problems effectively without a system of international government. Nor is it possible to make global decisions without constant work to ensure that local communities remain strong and resilient and are not exposed to the worst excesses of uncontrolled global markets.
Somehow humanity has to learn how to manage its business, its society, its epidemics, and its environment across an entire planet. And it has to do so whilst enabling people to take control of their local communities. That is the real challenge of the coming decades. How do we best work together whilst empowering meaningful local control. If we can solve that problem then we really will emerge from this crisis stronger, happier, healthier and massively more secure.