What Will the World Be Like After Coronavirus? Four Possible Futures | Hacker News Reader

What Will the World Be Like After Coronavirus? Four Possible Futures

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66 pointsfreediver42 comments

All these people predicting cataclysmic change because of the Coronavirus are missing the fact that this all happened multiple times already, including barely a century before. The Spanish Flu went and wiped ~4% of the world population, including the young, right after civilization spent the last 4 years shooting at each other in trenches. The result of all this? America and Europe experienced an age of economic prosperity known as the Roaring Twenties, with any radical government changes attributed to war debt over anything the flu did

Also 1968 Flu pandemic killed 1 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu

Different perspective. AIDS was (and still is) definitely much much scarier infection than COVID-19, but yet it did not fundamentally change how our society operates.

You’re right — it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that tuberculosis killed 1.5 million people in 2018 [1].

[1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosi...

It was easy to avoid AIDS (unless you needed a blood transfusion) and, as a result, not many people in the west ever got AIDS as a result. AIDS is nothing like this pandemic, in other words.

That was probably because it freed up a lot of capital of old people. The people inheriting money would spend it and hence a natural cause for an economic boom.

The Spanish flu would have taken both Donald Trump and Joe Bidden.

It's a sad thing to think that a lot of death could really change the world for better. But you should remember that the 1918 flu killed young people more frequently. Covid19 could be killing old people more than young of course, that's a different thing.

People have to vote that's the only way we will get change.

Or revolt. Voting does nothing when the government has financial backers.

100,000 people on the governor's doorstep ready to riot will get bipartisan legislation instilled immediately. The civil rights movement was obviously non violent. However, the unrest, economic effects, and disruption FORCED LBJ, a Democrat who really didn't want it to happen, signing that legislation.

Voting in the US is a joke. No minority opinion survives in politics ever. If you go against the grain, you get forced out by other people.

You are wrong in your characterization of lbj on this. He schemed for years to get his great society stuff passed and he supported the civil rights act. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#Joh...

It doesn't always take riots for great changes, maybe sometimes. Voting different leaders in, over time, that can change things.

> 100,000 people on the governor's doorstep ready to riot will get bipartisan legislation instilled immediately.

That doesn't sound like democracy.

The assumption made here is that democracy is always good.

democracy is better because in extreme situations it works.

the u.s. is not exactly a democracy tho, because it is so hard for a third party to be viable it's practically illegal. fptp doesn't do that - see canada, india, the u.k. it's a deliberate choice by the powerful to prevent them from having to listen to the weak - which is exactly the point of democracy.

I would actually argue that a dictatorship is better in extreme situations than a democracy. Democracies are slow, dictators can produce edicts in a moment. Even the US has tricks to become an approximation if a dictatorship in times of urgency, with marshal law.

You don’t put quarantines to a vote, you quarantine.

Democracies are good because you need a lot of people’s buy-off to do something and in the general case, that’s a good thing. In the extreme case, it’s too slow.

And letting the bourgeoisie make up BS that just benefits the select few at the top is?

This isn’t the French Revolution anymore.

100,000 people are irrelevant, when the governor has machine guns.

And if the people bring guns to the fight, then the governor will bring out the bigger guns: attack helicopters, fighter planes, bombs, etc.

Gun ownership is to just make the individual feel better about himself. But, it doesn’t do anything to change the mind of the leadership.

I'm not sure that you can compare the global economic system of 100 years ago to today. Everything is much more tightly interconnected and we have consistently optimised for efficiency at the expense of resilience. We apparently did not learn from the 2008 financial crisis and are probably even less resilient. We are still represented by Figure 2, graph B of [0].

[0] Options for Managing a Systemic Bank Crisis https://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/747

Financial truth is merely ideology

Past societies have legislated it away, soberly realizing the literal agency of people matters more than conformity to emotional gamesmanship of men with little imagination but “watch me trick people into idolatry with appeals to authoritative knowledge they can’t verify cause we won’t educate them!”

We are really failing at this right now.

Servants as a routine function in society went into a terminal decline after WWI.

Women got the vote as a result of the social change of WWI.

Arguably, public health initiatives worldwide got a massive kick from Spanish Flu.

cataclysmic ? no. But then, 1917-1919 and the russian revolution...

Things are significantly more just in time than they were then. Companies hold debt, minimize cash, and minimize inventory, optimizing for efficiency and not robustness and this is an event well outside the likely operating parameters of even the most conservative and careful finance teams.

My grandparents used to do their shopping monthly, they had a store room, they had a crazy amount of food. Until recently I went shopping a couple times a week.

Companies have been doing a similar thing -- once all the inventory is gone, the cash has paid salaries and you can't get a loan to rebuy (your suppliers are in a similar boat anyway) what do you even do? That's going to be the issue with getting things rolling again if this goes on long enough to kill off a large percentage. Right now, the weakest/newest companies are being culled and people arent really noticing - the BKs will get bigger with each passing week - most companies just aren't set up to run like this and starting back up could be a challenge. (I fully expect another massive stimulus/SBA program to be needed after a solution to this exists, I think they shot their shot on companies too early and should have focused on individual relief and just allowed the normal debt/BK cycle to play out - were just making the bubble a bit bigger in my opinion).

This. It’s hard to understand how devastating going to zero cash flow is for most companies unless you spend a lot of time thinking about balance sheets. It’s way outside the bounds of what virtually any company plans for.

The Spanish Flu is a bad example: a pandemic that infected 500 million people wasn't even the leading story due to everyone being engulfed in an extremely brutal war. The consequences in the aftermath can't be separated out.

This is a lot to take in, especially not coming from any related discipline background.

Since I dont have the prerequisite background, I can only ask questions. I also believe that there are not right answers. Every decision benefits someone at the expense of someone else.

1. This article does not cover the positive sides of an "exchange value" economy. Isn't this type of economy responsible for bringing once 3rd world countries out of poverty?

2. Side note: I think the choice being made here is environment vs present suffering. For every person in a 3rd country on its way to 1st world, they need a fridge, fresh water, oven, more space (thus transportation beyond walking/biking), safety codes (more materials), etc. The environmental impact on providing these modern facilities must be huge, no?

3. If a national-level economy values "exchanging value", wouldn't that culture prioritize making their lives better? Better is subjective, and alludes to the rat race, but at least in the USA, if you're okay not living in the coastal areas, you can live very comfortably for cheap.

4. The international balance of power. If one country focuses on "exchanging value" thus enriching themselves, wouldn't that give that country a lot of international leverage? I personally believe we've had (generally) global peace for so long because there's been only one super power in the world for that time period (the USA). If we shrunk our economy (based on your 4 possible options), how would that impact the military budget? I personally think if there are multiple competing super powers, then war is more likely to happen

Is China not a super power? Europe?

> Is China not a super power?

No. They are a regional power at best.

> Europe?

Given the number of US bases in Europe, I'd says no. A superpower by definition wouldn't need other countries defending it.

If China isn't a superpower I don't know who is. Either 2nd or 3rd by gdp [0], literally building the vast majority of the world tech, leading in renewable energy [1], largest army in the world, in the top 3 of military strength ranking [2]. Economically invading Europe [3]. Playing the smart game in Africa [4], and the list goes on and on.

If anything the US is on the way down while china is on their way up, seeing it from the outside it looks like the US is slowly rotting away and getting soft while china is aggressively expanding and starting to set their own conditions. The thing is that China hasn't peaked yet while the US arguably peaked in the 90s. Don't get me wrong, China is very far from being a nice place, but they know what they're doing.

> Given the number of US bases in Europe, I'd says no. A superpower by definition wouldn't need other countries defending it.

It's more like the US are happy to have a presence in Europe than the other way around. These are leftovers of ww2 and aren't for defense anymore, as it turns out it's very convenient to have presence in europe when you want to go lose a war or two in the middle east.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China [2] https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp [3] https://www.npr.org/2018/10/09/642587456/chinese-firms-now-h... [4] https://qz.com/1550626/chinas-investment-will-allow-africa-t...

China is almost a superpower. They have the beginnings of a blue-water navy, which a primary requirement for projecting force beyond your borders. So far as economics, they are indeed very powerful because they became the low-cost manufacturing center of the world. As seen in the past, those jobs can easily leave a nation for another country/region when it becomes cheaper. As their standard of living increases, this is more and more likely to happen.

> These are leftovers of ww2 and aren't for defense anymore

Ask the residents of Estonia (a NATO member) if they'd like to return to living under the Soviets.

> Either 2nd or 3rd by gdp [0]

Japan was 2nd or 3rd by GDP for longer than china, they were never a superpower.

> literally building the vast majority of the world tech, leading in renewable energy [1]

And?

> largest army in the world

And the 2nd largest army is the indian army. Are they are superpower?

> in the top 3 of military strength ranking

Wasn't iraq in the top 5? There is quite a drop from #1 and the rest.

> Economically invading Europe [3].

Invading a much wealthier region? Using your logic, europe has invaded china even more considering how much investment europe has in china.

> Playing the smart game in Africa [4]

"Smart game"? You mean trading? This is the problem with reading so much news/propaganda. You start parroting them without bothering to think.

> and the list goes on and on.

I bet it does, but nothing on the list will show china to be a superpower.

> If anything the US is on the way down while china is on their way up

Definitely china is on the way up relative to the US. But that doesn't make them a superpower.

>It's more like the US are happy to have a presence in Europe than the other way around.

Whatever the reason, the point is Europe can't be a superpower when it has foreign military/occupation presence.

It's conceivable that china or europe may one day be a superpower, but neither are at the moment.

You're refuting all the points by saying "X country also as Y attribute" but what you fail to grasp is that China is one of the only country that combines all at the same time.

Japan might have a good gdp but you can nuke then out of existence with a few bombs. Iraq might have a good army but they're not anywhere close to an economical power.

> There is quite a drop from #1 and the rest.

Not really https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp

> the point is Europe can't be a superpower when it has foreign military/occupation presence

Maybe, maybe not, if we start making up our own definitions of a superpower it's going to be a long discussion.

> You're refuting all the points by saying "X country also as Y attribute" but what you fail to grasp is that China is one of the only country that combines all at the same time.

The point was that all those non-superpower level attributes don't collectively amount to superpower status. China would have to rise a notch or two on every metric in order to even be considered a superpower. Even then they'd have a lot more work building the global infrastructure that the US built over many decades.

> Not really https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp

Yes really. The fact that your list puts russia anywhere close to the US in anything should make you question the list. I'd love to see how the justification for how russia compares to US in "military might and financials to logistical capability and geography.".

Russia is a joke militarily to the US. What do they have? 1 small carrier? Financials? Is that supposed to be funny. Logistics? Only the US has worldwide logistics capability. Geography? Russia is pretty much tied to northern eurasia and their geography is mostly a liability than an asset. We have territories stretching from the arctic to the pacific to the carribean with no real competitors in our hemisphere.

> Maybe, maybe not, if we start making up our own definitions of a superpower it's going to be a long discussion.

I don't think it is controversial to say that you can't rely on another nation to provide your defense and claim to be a superpower. But then again you think russia is a near equal to the US in power based on a website, so what's the point continuing the discussion. Just another case of agreeing to disagree I'm afraid.

China is on the path to become a super power, maybe you could say they are already there. But they haven't seriously started flexing yet.

They are superpowers, but the US is a hyperpower.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpower

I think it's only likely the US has been losing power past few years. Our long-term potential for the US economy should have been reduced by our lifespans reducing educational and infrastructure spending reducing centralizing wealth in the wealthy, more in the 0.1%.

First we pretend to care about global warming and make bold promises about how in some distant future we'll cut emissions to a more reasonable level. Everybody understands that the emissions come from the growing economy and that the only real solution is to slow down the economy.

So the virus slows down the economy for us. Exactly what we wanted, right? Emissions are down, folks in India can even see Himalayan mountains. Everybody should celebrate this, but no, our only concern is how to restart the economy and get to the new heights of pollution asap.

We're supposed to be celebrating a global pandemic, because (if we weren't forced to shelter in place) we might see the mountains? Hardly.

Hopefully, technology will offer other options to decrease emissions than simply slowing economic growth, because that has real human costs.

I think you illustrate my point well: people are bought into the climate change talk, but when it comes to actions, they do what they really believe in.

Many of us are bought in to actions that don’t include the death of millions of people.

Actions like switching to paper straws?

Yeah, people don't want to be inconvenienced. "Yeah, I've driven several miles today with my gas gurgling vehicle to see some nice view and destress a little, I would do it in electric car, but it's too expensive to buy, I'd rather do some small damage to environment". Avoiding small inconceniences multiplied by millions of people is what gives us the situation we have now. People want change but don't want to change. I see I am part of this problem too, but the big problem is that I'm only a very small part of a problem. If only I change, I make my life worse for negligible benefit of others.

How to change this? I still have no idea, but I believe this is THE source of our problems with environment. Every other problem loops back to tragedy of commons.

Air pollution isn't good for health: cancer, heart diseases are the leading causes of death. The virus kills a few, mostly old and sick and mostly males, but saves many, as people can finally see how clear air looks. So yeah, restarting the dirty economy machine is what going to kill millions, not the virus.

I’ll be happy if we get Medicare for all out of this. Insurance companies are not going to get people who have been laid off for 6mo to pay their crazy bills for Covid treatment.

Url changed from https://singularityhub.com/2020/04/03/what-will-the-world-be..., which points to this.

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