Disruptive Change

Everyone is a little stir crazy. "When will we get back to normal?"

To paraphrase Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction. "We're pretty phreaking far from normal."

Normal will change - it has to. Businesses will look to repair the status quo. We need to get them back and functioning, but not exactly as they were. We need to make this better.

We cannot walk out of this experience and move back to the same unstable, socially insecure for 70% of the country we were at, where employment, a condition for survival, is treated as something that can be ended in minutes. We cannot move back to pretending the world cannot function without everyone congregating in an office building. We cannot go back to a medical system that will drown people without insurance.

Isn’t it time we figure out ways to give each other a pass, to at least live a life that is free from hunger and where anyone can get treatment for injury and disease?

And we have to be robust enough to pause. We cannot be in a situation where our economy collapses when we need to take a break or change slightly. It cannot be dependent upon the will of companies that only have the profit motive - we can harness that engine, but also put safety belts and brakes in, so that we don't die when we have a blip.

Coronavirus is disruptive. In the same way that cell phones have replaced home phones, we have to replace what was the norm with the emergent norm. It has exposed weakness in our current system that we can fix.

A few ideas - none of these are new, but they are appropriate:

The government ensures banks. FDIC. Right? If there are businesses too big to fail then we should insure them. They should PAY PREMIUMS in the forms of taxes to the federal government and then when the Federal government needs to bail them out, it comes out of the insurance pool. This keeps them running, keeps people employed as a condition of the insurance, but keeps ownership private.

Universal health and human care. We pool resources to fund food, shelter and medical safety nets for everyone. It is no longer an employer based "privilege" but a human right.

We invest in technology that transforms us from unsustainable power to solar, wind, water and geothermal. We start heavy investments in both research and production for these. We stop mining coal. We stop fracking and damaging our water table. We put in programs to stop burning oil. (this all takes time). We train fossil workers in manufacturing and deployment of these new technologies.

Why now? Because we are surpassing ecological limits of fossil fuels and we need new markets to drive employment. Like tobacco and smoking, we are killing ourselves with fossil fuels. We need to quit and the new technologies will generate growth - they are untapped markets. Power can become personal in many cases - we can work off of power and technology grids, but not be solely dependent because we can also diversify our power sources, so that we are not reliant on a few companies to provide - it allows us to become more robust.

Seem like some crackpot ideas? 3 weeks ago, so did the idea of 40% of our population working from home. So did the idea that more of us would have to choose between our safety and eating (some of us have been living that already for many years). And like many emergent markets, getting in early is the key to leveraging them.

Many will fight against this change. Typewriter manufacturers fought against computers. It didn't stop people from writing. Republican fought against FDR and the New Deal, even in the face of the Great Depression and World War II. Social security didn't stop businesses from making money. Changing ourselves to be more robust will be represented by the opposition as Socialism, Communism, Totalitarianism - any name they can think to call it, to preserve the status quo were 1% of the people control 90% of the resources. It’s not the end of capitalism. It’s making capitalism robust enough to support our civilization. It’s making it socially responsible.

It has to change. 2 Trillion dollars suddenly appeared because there's an election coming up 3.4 of that is being given to business scot free. Another grab. We need to change that. We need to invest in ourselves now and continually. We need government for this - business is designed to create wealth, not take care of people. Government is designed and needs to be repaired, to take care of people and keep our society robust. It needs to support business in a way that allows the engine to work and produce the great things it produces, while benefiting people - monetarily and safely.

We the people need to press it. It is time for us to invest in ourselves. It starts with your vote.