Ask HN: How will the world change post pandemic?
What do HN members think will be the major short, medium and long term changes coming out of this? What are some good essays on the matter?
I'm really not that keen of living in a future where a majority of people stay at home or use InstaCart to order groceries. That is just lame, and frankly I don't want that. We are social animals and we need to get back asap.
Long term I think that we will shift more towards self-sustenance. For the most part, people are listening to the authorities and I'm wondering if this will lead to a rise in CIVIC nationalism. This is the first time in my life that I've seen people actually work together for the greater good. I live in California and yeah it is a bubble here, but that's my experience.
There's another place where people are packed ever closer together: air travel. I think there will be a significant long-term decline in at least vacation air travel, and possibly a somewhat lesser decline in business travel. As a result of this, the hotel and tourism industries will also take a bit hit (including Airbnb). The cruise ship industry may take even longer to recover.
NYC will be particularly badly hit by this, since we get a huge percentage of our income from tourism.
Maybe one result will be to increase the seat pitch, then. (Hey, a guy can dream...)
Remote Delivery is the new paradigm. Instacart and Doordash delivery services to your door is the new normal. If you can afford it, why take a chance going to the grocery store only to get infected?
Political division and tribalism will accelerate. As more people are being cocooned in their homes and reading/listening only to their partisan news channel of choice, identity politics will become even more vicious.
We'll boost stockpiles of medical gear. In the US the Federal Government will hand out long-term contracts to gear makers, to maintain far higher mandatory domestic supply levels (for items such as ventilators, N95 masks, and so on). States, to the extent they can do it, will boost their stockpiles.
But, short term we will realise RL is better than digital life. There will be a backlash to digital while at the same time having integrated it into our lives even more. So a mixed model will come out.
Medium term: Nationalism has been accelerated and developing countries are 5 years poorer.
IE: China hate has now been legitimized, they are the new Russia along with Russia is the new Russia as we realise they also hurt us in this crisis. Elections might be funny to mess with, pandemics is more war like.
C19 doesn't allow us to see the future anymore than before. So long term is unknown as always.
1. The Cat's Out of the Bag
- So many things can't really be taken back. The myth of "you need to be in the office" is destroyed. There are benefits to being in the office, but many people are continuing their jobs as normal -- and perhaps even performing better! We'll see a shift in the workforce as remote working becomes more palatable and almost a necessity going forward. This will have more subtle ramifications on the global economy as jobs no longer need to be local to be acquired. (To be clear, most businesses will force their employees to come into the office, but the WFH option is going to be much more attractive after this, and successful businesses will have to adjust.) Because of this, we may see companies eliminate physical offices altogether, and there might be a small decline in corporate real estate. I don't really think this last bit will happen, but it will be interesting to find out.
- Movie distributors have started to allow "in-theater" movies to be streamed via Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Google Play. It's 20 bucks for a movie, which is expensive for a digital rental, but it's far cheaper than going to a theater. Those of us who only went to theaters for big releases might still go, but we'll see a shift in people staying home with their families and friends watch a $20 movie and free(ish) popcorn and candy on a giant TV screen, rather than spending $50+ just to see a movie in theaters. The physical movie theater experience will have to shift to something more special, like Alamo Drafthouse or something along those lines.
- In the education space, most parts of the United States have the concept of "snow days", which are days in the calendar that are provided in case of weather-related emergencies such as hurricanes or snow, where schools have to be shut down or are otherwise inaccessible. The cat's out of the bag on this one. No more snow days. Your classes will be taught virtually. If your local schools don't do virtual classes now, you can bet they'll be preparing those for the 2021-2022 school year and beyond. This may or may not have ramifications for the idea of "school districts" as well. Private schools may go virtual. Homeschooling rates may skyrocket. Not sure what exactly to expect here, but at the very least, snow days are over.
2. Industries and Businesses
- Whoever cracks the code on virtual socialization will make billions. Zoom and Skype are designed for businesses: 1 person talks and the rest listen. They don't work for groups socializing or party atmospheres. Whoever can figure out how to make that work... well, let's just say I wish I were them.
- Along those lines, virtual entertainment will skyrocket. Virtual board games, "pub crawls", movie nights, you name it.
- Just as a lot of companies in the software development industry have pivoted to "mobile first" development, we'll see businesses and restaurants rethink their business models to be "delivery prepared". Gourmet restaurants will have to come up with cheaper delivery menus. Who's going to pay $40 for three pieces of ravioli with caviar on top to be delivered to their house? Nobody. But we will pay $40 for a good pizza, some garlic bread, and maybe some wings. BYOB, of course. Bookstores, shoe stores, board game stores, vinyl record stores, Gap, West Elm, IKEA, and any other store that relies on foot traffic will have to come up with backup plans in case foot traffic disappears. If they can't do this, they'll go out of business. Worse than that, many of those kinds of businesses will just never have newcomers because it may be too difficult or expensive to have a backup plan. (Gamestop, for example.)
- Just because we can start going back to work in July doesn't mean this is all over. We'll still need to social distance on some level, wash our hands constantly, wear masks, and be careful. Concerts, airplanes, bars, gyms, and other places where people get tightly packed in will have to have alternative business models to survive in that new reality. Not only that, but for the near term there will still be fear of those places. How do they cope when people are afraid to come to a concert? How many people can you fit into a bar on Super Bowl Sunday and still maintain some semblance of social distance? Long term? They'll probably go back to normal. But for the short-to-medium term, there will be a number of changes there.
3. Social, Economic, and Legal Change
- It is highly likely that we will lose protections out of fear, just like we did post-9/11 with the PATRIOT Act. Things that seem innocuous and necessary on the surface, but over the long term have devastating consequences. States, counties, cities, and other municipalities now have precedent for ordering everyone to stay at home. Not quite martial law, but close enough that the slippery slope has started. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I can see governments shutting down businesses or venues for "reasons" that may or may not be true.
- Divorces and breakups will go up in the short term, as people are cooped up together in ways that they never had been before. There will be a ton of babies in 7-10 months. Population demographics will change.
- The recession will have longer lasting financial impacts in certain sectors. I'm not an economist, so I can't go into much detail here, but housing prices, imports/exports, transportation, and hospitality downturns will have ripple effects across everything else. We might see investments diversify even further into new sectors, or maybe double down on tech. Who knows?
- Hospitals will (hopefully) be better staffed, especially with emergency equipment like ventilators. On the flip side, ERs will be overwhelmed for the short-to-midterm future, with patients flooding it out of fear that their cough might be coronavirus or whatever the next big pandemic will be. This will have an impact on city budgets, tax revenues, and more.
- The FDA, OSHA, and other health and safety organizations will introduce new regulations designed to prevent the spread of another pandemic. More red tape. Maybe it's worth it, maybe not, but it will almost certainly happen.
- The unemployment numbers will cause a shift in the country's economy. A lot of these people won't have jobs to go back to, so entire sectors of industry might disappear overnight, and others might shoot up out of nowhere. The gig economy will see a boost in the short-term.
- Social programs like unemployment insurance, universal basic income, and some flavor of Medicare for All will become immensely popular, even more so than now. I'm not confident that anything progressive will come out of it in our current political climate, but we'll almost certain see public support for these things increase to new levels.
- Not a prediction, but I'm a little curious as to how (or if!) the anti-vaxx movement changes as we emerge from this pandemic.
I can think of a few others, but I'll leave it there for now. To sum it up: in the short term, the changes will be drastic, medium-term things will be rocky, and long term things will largely return to normal but the fundamentals shifted with long-lasting but subtle (or not) implications. Most Americans' day-to-day life won't appear to be that different in a year.
Disagree on WFH change though. Many of us have had WFH power for a long time. A huge percent of tech workers use laptops and have the raw tech to WFH. A lot of developers (like me) still enjoy having an office to collaborate in. A lot of business owners (like me) will continue to require in office employees when this is over.
This isn’t like some shock that proved to us how good WFH is. I have worked years of my life remote. I know the pros and I know the cons. I will continue to have a local office and hire local developers.
Yes, there are very good reasons that people can and should work in an office. Absolutely. I 100% agree with you. But I think that businesses will start to realize that there are just as good alternatives to a lot of those reasons -- and especially if, as I mentioned, someone can crack the virtual social problem. If it's as easy to hop on a video call and sort something out (virtual whiteboarding?!) in a minute or two, then that's just as, if not more, efficient than being in an office. If we can virtually socialize similarly to how we do in an office, have water cooler moments similarly, hold meetings similarly... then a lot of those reasons fall away.
To be clear, I'm not saying that businesses will move to 100% remote. That's obviously not going to happen no matter what for 99% of companies. But I think the idea of WFH is going to become much, much, much more palatable and desirable to both companies and employees out of this.
Of course some jobs are a hybrid, where you only come to the office a couple times a week (which then limits the savings to the business anyway) but for the genuine 100‰ work from home expect serious job insecurity.
Live in LA? Wfh to beat the traffic? Well someone living in Ohio,or elsewhere can do the same work for less money. Live in Ohio? There's someone in Canada that can do it for less...
I think a more interesting dynamic that would arise out of this is how compensation works. Right now, someone in San Francisco makes a bajillion times what someone doing the same work in Kalamazoo makes. If businesses can seamlessly hire someone in Kalamazoo for a fraction of the price, why wouldn't they? They would! and should! But then what happens to the person in the San Francisco Bay Area? Not just the person, but what happens to the entire area?
Will all the techies in SF start moving to cheaper places to live? Or will they try and stay in SF? What will happen to housing prices or food prices? Will gentrification start reversing itself?
This sort of leads into an off-topic conversation, but I'll mention it because I'm personally fascinated by it. Right now, I get paid X dollars per year because the business has decided that I generate more than that in revenue somehow, and some value of that $X is due to my geographic location (San Francisco). If I were able to work remotely and then decide I don't want to live in SF any longer and move to, say, Jackson, Mississippi, then what would happen to my pay? The company would likely try and cut my pay as a "cost of living" adjustment. But that's absurd, right? I was worth X dollars/yr in SF, and I'm still worth X dollars/yr regardless of whether I'm in an office in SF or in a cabin in Alaska or a coffeeshop in Vietnam.
I have counterparts in an office on the other side of the country that make half what I make for the same work, all because they live in a particular geographic area. But that's dumb. We generate the same amount of revenue from the company (theoretically) regardless of our geographic area. But because they live in a place with a lower COL, they get paid less and the company makes more off of them. The whole idea is absurd in a number of levels.
I digress, but to turn this back to your point: if this suddenly does happen, what happens to "COL adjustments"? Are they still a thing?
Wouldn't I be able to say that I'm worth X dollars whether I'm based in Iowa City vs NYC? Wouldn't everyone be able to do that? Is it a foregone conclusion that it's a race to the bottom, or would wages and jobs stabilize into some sort of equilibrium? Maybe $500k salaries go away, but they wouldn't necessarily fall down to $50k salaries, and in fact might stabilize somewhere closer to $150k, and that's more than enough for most people in the USA to live decently. (I made up those numbers totally out of my ass, but it's the point that matters, not the numbers.)
Anyway... interesting things to think about.
For example, when the next James Bond movie comes out, I fully expect it to be released in theaters and streaming services within two weeks of each other, if not simultaneously. It's going to be very hard for them to take back the immediate streaming they're doing now without a backlash, either PR-wise or financially.
I also think they're about to discover that they can make $20 per household at much much higher rates than they can get people to spend $50+ per household to go to a brick-and-mortar theater, and if I were a betting person, I'd say it's more profitable to distributors to do it that way, anyway...
even if most people don't stick to it, the important step is that every company in the world is now remote-ready when needed, so it can accomodate hybrid schemes and people will learn to make the transition seamless over time. It's now the office that becomes optional. Cities are defined by work, so this is a major shift
> Private schools may go virtual. Homeschooling rates may skyrocket.
There is an understanding that virtual schooling does not work well. maybe schooling in small groups or home does though.
> Whoever cracks the code on virtual socialization will make billions.
It's already cracked: second life does it and it's already trending up https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=second%20life (and its open source clone, opensimulator). Open world gaming should take advantage of it. Video chat alone is boring, and "normal" gaming is too much work for 90% of people.
> have pivoted to "mobile first" development
PC sales are already going up. There will inevitably be a trend towards better desktop apps, games will benefit
> I'm a little curious as to how (or if!) the anti-vaxx movement changes
haha yes i m curious to see that reaction, especially considering how multiple vaccines have been found to be beneficial for covid
Tourism is seeing a major earthquake. There are entire countries dependent on it. I think they will switch to interim solutions, like long-term stays, advertising their covid-safety etc.
Yes, exactly.
> It's already cracked: second life does it
Maybe, but Second Life has been around forever and the percentage of the population that uses it is really, really tiny. And it doesn't make billions.
I'm talking more about Facebook levels or Zoom levels of popularity, the kind of thing that everyone in the world would use. Something that my grandmother or mother or my neighbors and non-technical friends would actually download and install, use from their phones every single day, and be afraid that they're missing out on something if they don't use it.
I'm explicitly not talking about a game (or game-like "virtual world").
Put another way, right now everyone is on Google Hangouts, Zoom, or FaceTime to spend time socially with one another. You're right. It's boring and not a great way to interact. But face-to-face is better than avatar-to-avatar for the general public, for people like my mother and friends and teens, and once someone can figure out to have a party atmosphere with friends via video at scale, they'll make billions.
> PC sales are already going up. There will inevitably be a trend towards better desktop apps, games will benefit
You misread that section. When I said "mobile first", I was talking about tech but that section was not about tech. That section was about how, like tech went "mobile first", other industries will have to start thinking "delivery first" or perhaps more accurately "no foot traffic first". In the last decade, tech companies have had to be prepared for 90% of their customers being mobile, and now brick-and-mortar stores must start preparing for 90% of their customers not ever setting foot in their store.
In other words: How will a shoe store stay in business if nobody goes in to try shoes? How will a comic book store stay in business if people don't come in to browse comics? What's their strategy? Will they beef up their online presence? If you're going to open an art gallery, how do you share it online and get people to buy expensive art online?
Can you compete with Amazon or Etsy or eBay?
> Tourism is seeing a major earthquake. There are entire countries dependent on it. I think they will switch to interim solutions, like long-term stays, advertising their covid-safety etc.
I agree with the last bit. Being COVID-19 or "pandemic safe" is going to be a big thing. I'm less sold on long-term stays, but who knows, really?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Very interesting to hear others' perspectives.
* A significant amount of individuals will demand WFH options for their current/future companies
* Companies will view the strategic vulnerability that is centralized manufacturing in China, and a large portion of companies will diversify, even at higher cost
* Assuming we get a vaccine in 12 months, vaccine development will likely take a higher percentage of medical research funding. Previous iterations of vaccines took 5+ years to make, so if the cost and effectiveness of mapping the genome so quickly have really had such a large impact, this will be a more utilized tool in our toolbelt.
* (US) Some portion of individuals will spend a long time out of the work force intentionally, due to the increase in unemployment benefits. This will drive up the effective minimum wage, and may well pave the way to a true minimum wage increase depending on how the next election goes.
* (JP) We might see a shift in work/life balance amongst the Japanese
* (Globally) I think there is a good chance that, on the other end of the, the WHO has large scale changes following investigations.
* (US) There seems to be an increasingly likely chance that the president loses support come election time, but there is also an increasingly likely chance that our elections have some degree of fraudulence to them (voter suppression for instance).
* (US) The president has already taken many large power grabs in the wake of this pandemic, removing the oversights for the 2 Trillion stimulus bill, removing supplies from states that are blue and giving them to states that are red, etc. You can argue whatever you like about this, but whatever your politics are it's abuse of power in the open. Get out and vote.