There will be no 'back to normal' | Hacker News Reader

There will be no 'back to normal'

nesta.org.uk

40 pointsyread30 comments

While it does make for an interesting read, most of the conclusions seem too far-fetched to me. In fact, I expect everything to be back to more or less where it was within a year or two, with only a couple of major lasting changes related to: (1) the political dynamics within the EU, (2) the position of China in the world economy, (3) specific industries and regions being disproportionately impacted (cruise ships gone, airlines forced to consolidate further across country borders, tourism-dependent economies heavily affected and slow to recover, etc.).

In particular I don't believe anything like the following will happen:

> We will see moves away from ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing, and major shifts towards practices which reinforce resilience (e.g. stockpiles, redundant capacity, duplicated systems) at the expense of efficiency.

Perhaps, for a year or two, at which point all the "resilience" will be optimized away.

> We anticipate lasting interest in remote working models

> The normalisation of remote working might also slow the trend of people moving from countryside to cities, whilst prompting more interest in distributed organisations

People working remotely will be the first to get fired, at which point they'll have to get another job, and it'll likely be a traditional one again.

> More people will voluntarily surrender personal data (such as medical and genomic data, contact data, location data, etc.) to help the common good.

People already surrender all of their data, most of which happens involuntarily. Governments might attempt to use more of this data but they're unlikely to have the wherewhittal to do so consistently.

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Many of the changes on the list have little to do with the virus and were already underway before, at most the pandemic will have only accelerated them.

Yep.

1) It's against human nature - in aggregate - to prefer working in solitude at home. WFH may increase, but remote won't anywhere be the "mainstream"

2) No, the position of China in world economy will ironically grow. Getting supply chain out of China will introduce unwanted inflation into developed nations in EU and US - that's not what these countries need after printing many trillions of dollars.

There are a lot of baseless claims here. As far as I can see, the authors are just making big claims hoping the readers' prejudices will prevent them from questioning it.

We all yearn for at least some major reform. But this (coronavirus) isn't it. And this definately isn't 101 different major societal changes all wrapped up in one.

I hate to be that person, but I find the use of an accordion collapse for the article sections to be unnecessary and exasperating. I tried a page search for "automation" and the browser showed one hit, but I couldn't find where the word was due to the collapse feature. What does hiding text with an accordion add to the experience? Why not just publish a full article? Ugh.

On my mobile browser, as I open one accordion, the others collapse, but the browser doesn't scroll to the top of the opened section. Pretty annoying.

That presentation plus the IMO shallow insights left me unsatisfied.

It's a _little_ unfair to say that I'm strongly reminded of this very funny tweet, but only a little: https://twitter.com/NicholasDanfort/status/12464658526329569...

"alternative schooling methods (e.g. AI remote teaching, virtual classroom environments)"

My bullshit indicator went far into the red...

Let my try: "alternative schooling methods (e.g. AI remote teaching, blockchain enabled holistic virtual classroom environments)"

We don't tend to change that much after things like this.

Economic and political forces still end up pushing the same wheels.

Yes this may push some things in the direction they were already going. Like more people working from home. But this is not likely going to fundamentally change the world. Not any more so than the twin towers attack or the 2008 crash. Little changes to a massive system.

What about hyperinflation?

Inflation, sure, but hyperinflation mainly happens in countries that have to borrow foreign currencies. That was the case for Weimar Germany, for example. If you can sell bonds in your own currency you're much better off.

I can't believe I'm the only person who sees this.

What would qualify as hyperinflation?

If by hyperinflation you mean "several years of 10-20% inflation" -- something unprecedented in developed economies in recent history -- then sure, that's not unimaginable. It's also not a civilisation-changing problem. Many countries have lived through that kind of experience. I supposed I could be convinced that 1970s-style stagflation could return as a result of the pandemic.

If on the other hand you mean "100% per week inflation", e.g. like Zimbabwe experienced, then that one is harder to defend. You'd need to have the loss of a functioning reserve bank as a starting point (because otherwise the reserve bank would just push interest rates up to the point that inflation was reduced). Generally having a powerless reserve bank can only happen when some other country controls whatever it is that backs the currency that everyone in your country uses for trade. (e.g. being on the gold standard; being part of the Eurozone and not being trusted, large amounts of borrowing and transactions in foreign currencies; an economy based on bitcoin transactions; if any of these apply you have at least the basis for an inability to stop hyperinflation).

What's the trajectory that would get the USA there though?

Could you explain more, or provide a link?

Let's say your currency is marks and you owe dollars to foreign investors. You have trouble paying so you print more marks. The marks devalue relative to your debt, making it even harder to pay off, requiring even more printing.

Now say your currency is dollars and you owe debt in dollars. If you print more dollars, they devalue, but the value of your debt goes down right along with your currency. It's bad for the lenders and you might have to promise more interest to borrow more, but you don't spiral into oblivion just trying to pay off your existing debt.

It's possible but I see that as a short term (< 5 years) problem not a fundamental and permanent shift to life as we know it.

Until foreign demand for the US dollar stops (and there's no sign of this happening) you have nothing to worry about.

I truly don't understand why so many people think it will be a V-shaped recovery. It certainly can happen (everything can), but have they looked at the data? Nobody alive has ever seen this kind of volatility in the "fundamentals", and not just in some of them - in all of them. Literally, doesn't matter what you look at, as long as it has a fresh enough measurement.

Social and political volatility is not here yet, but the potential is huge.

Financial volatility is currently hiding / being suppressed, but again, the potential is massive. I'm not just talking about a normal white swan like a stock market drop - I'm talking about the "true black swans", like a potential collapse of the current iteration of the concept of money.

The argument is that the primary driver of recessions is uncertainty. Some businesses fail, as happens even in good times, but people don't want to expand others or start new ones because they're not sure what the world will look like. Something could always come out of left field, but we have reason to be confident about what the world's going to look like between when lockdowns end and when we have vaccines or strong treatments.

I think it’s hard to understand for a lot of people. I know it is for me. If you’re cooped up at home, working remotely but basically normally and haven’t really been impacted by things so far other than the inconvenience it’s pretty easy to expect things will just go back to normal. All the local indicators aren’t visible and the news slips into this comfortably surreal space where there is a dream like dissonance between life and the reality outside our own homes.

Your comment got me thinking, there must be a lot of anxious people out there, out without a job and/or worried about dying. At least where I live the social system is very robust (here's hoping my judgement is right), so there should be less of said anxiety; in India there are millions of day workers who had zero savings before the crisis and are now jobless and homeless, and unable to travel to their hometowns because the train network is shutdown. A week or two more of the shutdown and there will probably be riots there.

Elsewhere, anxiety will lead to bad behaviors and crimes...

Sure, but markets since 2009 mostly look at how much the Fed is buying (printing, whatever). Yes printing money bad, yes inflation some time in 20 years, yes unwinding their balance sheet will kill us all. None of it matters in the now, which is what markets are, now - with some looking ahead.

So the volatility in the fundamentals is accompanied by a forceful response with QE. Nothing like we’ve ever seen. The QE the Fed is doing today trounces 2008’s QE.

So that’s where we are now. Unemployment numbers come out, market goes up. Why? Same reason it has for the last 10 years - bad data good because Fed will just juice the market at any sign of trouble.

In the end though the stock market doesn’t matter for 90% of people but what it is doing is amplifying inequality. I see this crisis amping up inequality to levels we’ve never seen before. We’ll see the same story eventually with unemployment creeping down from the 20 or 30% high it’ll reach but behind it there’ll be even more people dropping out of the workforce and wages will stay stagnant.

There has been some commentary studying past pandemics where a silver lining could come from worker rights making a comeback so who knows, perhaps the lucky ones keeping/returning to their jobs get a raise in benefits (healthcare, leave) or pay.

Your comment is so characteristic of our times - laser focused on capital markets, as if that was "the real world".

I'm talking about violent protests in the streets. About your cousin graduating and not being able to find a job even at McDonalds, for years. Overthrown governments. People stealing and going on rampages because they have no money to feed their children. People drinking themselves to death because it's the n-th year without a job, or any other social purpose.

On the political front - every day this goes on we're getting higher and higher probability of super redistributive policies (I don't want to use the S word or the C word).

On the geopolitical front - have you seen that China has kicked out most western reporters in the middle of all of this? Or that Japan wants to "repatriate" factories, and their government has already secured funding for that? Or do you still remember the Trump trade war, and perhaps know what happened last time the world was engaged in a serious trade war in the 1930s ?

That too.

Some people have a lot to gain from changes like these and want the changes to be socially accepted through conditioning. In general it's worse for the general population. This can include things like swapping the USD for another money, extreme inflation, travel bans, additional tracking of your actions and movement, new taxes, etc.

See past wars, 9-11, etc.

What's normal changes all the time. The pandemic certainly will accelerate some changes and move other changes in a new direction but modern society doesn't stand still anyway. Normal just doesn't stay normal very long anymore.

The coronavirus crisis seems to be an excuse for pundits to peddle all sorts of wild clickbaity speculation. I hope that after all this is over we go back and tell people look at all the silliness you wrote, look at all the opportunistic political angling you did here on no evidence, look at how contradictory you were under pressure, etc, etc.

See you guys in 2022 July

I don't really believe this. There was a "back to normal" after 20% of the human race died off in the Spanish Flu pandemic, and we're not going to lose 20% this time.

I've thought about this a lot and I think once things are safer (everyone got it, there's a vaccine, whatever), people are going to go back to normal. People are dying to eat at a restaurant. They have watched 100s of hours of travel vlogs and want to visit the places they've learned about while locked inside.

I guess I'll pick apart each "technology" point this article makes:

> Working from home

I think employers are probably seeing a massive drop-off in productivity with everyone at home, and are probably going to want to go back to normal. They have 10 year leases and probably want to get some value out of that.

> Telemedicine and online learning

Telemedicine has been pushed aggressively on me through my insurance plan. I've never used it; I never have those problems where I just need to see a doctor to get drugs. I either have a cold and there's nothing they can do, or I have to go in to get allergy shots. I don't see telemedicine helping me much there. (I suppose if someone mailed me a flu shot, I could do it myself, though.)

> Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall

I think things are going in the opposite direction. See the "EARN IT Act".

> Cyber-crime will increase.

I doubt it. More and more tools are becoming available to make systems easier to secure. You get mTLS for free with GKE, and languages and libraries are getting better. TLS certificates have never been easier to get. Browsers have never been more likely to drop shady CAs. Even governments have a hard time intercepting traffic for criminal investigations. Things are far from perfect, but they're getting better. A bunch of people with the flu doesn't change that.

> VR tools will flourish

Maybe, maybe not. VR tools are expensive, and nobody's going to spend a million dollars on a house after seeing a photoshopped virtual tour. They are going to show up in person before writing the check. It might not be possible to buy a house in person at this exact instant, but someday it will be.

Meanwhile, people seem to be enjoying Beat Saber -- COVID or not.

> Collective intelligence and open science.

No idea whether anything changes here. Arxiv exited before the pandemic, and will exist after the pandemic.

> Interest in digital trust will increase

Yeah probably. This is why people use Facebook Messenger instead of Email. Less spam, because you can ban accounts. Again, I don't see a connection to COVID-19 here.

> The trend towards online shopping has hugely accelerated.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've gone to a store to buy something in the last decade. The trend is already here. (I do love things like B&H and Microcenter for same-day purchases, but I have never walked into B&H just to browse. The only thing I know about that store is where to pick up my online order.)

> Food security concerns will prompt increased interest in AgTech.

Maybe. I went grocery shopping today and everything seemed normal. I managed to get meat, frozen pizzas, and bread that isn't hot dog buns for the first time since the outbreak. Will some computer program improve this situation? Maybe?

> More people will surrender personal data to help the common good.

They already surrender it to help random tech companies. 2020 is a census year and everyone is mailing in their personal information to the government. (They did it in 2010, and 2000, and 1990, and 1980, and...) Don't see a big change here.

> "AI is reinventing the way we invent"

Yes, fund my startup, we use "AI". Totally new idea, all due to the pandemic.

> We are seeing an increase in 'frugal innovation'.

People have been hacking together industrial equipment on the cheap pretty much forever. You can find articles on how to build your own CNC mill, atomic clock, single-board computer... whatever you want. This is nothing new. (Prusa sure did a good job marketing the whole "we printed out some curved pieces of plastic". But people have been making neat things with 3D printers for quite a while.)

TL;DR: I regret reading clicking this link and I regret replying to this drivel. But it's too late, so now I'm clicking "add comment".

> 20% of the human race died off in the Spanish Flu pandemic

The most generous estimate for the 1918 flu death toll is 100 million, which is 5% of the population. Still massive, but not 20%.[1]

Perhaps you're confusing it with the % of the population that contracted it?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Great article. Sums up many of my concerns about the post-COVID19 world.

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