A new economy may rise from COVID.

 

 A new economy may rise from COVID.

Spending Christmas without family and friends is new to me, but I thank the stars, or God, for my faithful companion in life, which I am blessed to have. I feel so sad about all the people who lately lost their companions because of the raging pandemic and other causes. I look at my many emails and identify some from people who wish to convince me that there is no problem and we should live life taking no action to slow the microscopic killer beasts off. Rage fills me hearing that the kids will go to school. The government is worried about their mental health or wish to allow their mothers to work. It’s now a contest between the economy and lives, mostly of the elderly, but spread by the young. Well, I didn’t run for any political office so I don’t have a right to complain, or do I?

All the people I know are wishing for the world to return “back to normal.” It upsets me since I don’t think that it will, ever. The last event I remember from before the pandemic was a raging community meeting in which the town people were trying to figure out how to stop the government from chasing away the rural medical staff by cutting their income. Some were worried about losing regional hospitals in the countryside. The world that we wish to go back to is changing and people were ready to fight. And then COVID came.

Our society is obsessed with saving lives. People spend a lot of money on looking for cures and discovering ways to prolong life. Some are very concerned with the lives of the unborn, but much less with those existing already. There is always pressure to save the lives of the rich and pressure to restrict care for the general population. Now, much of the general population is essential workers. Economics is often cited as a reason for the discrepancy. Economics also plays a major role in people’s ability to stay healthy and alive.

I look around and I see us managing to exist while a significant portion of the economy is shut down. That makes me reassess our priorities. I remember the last few elections here and everywhere. Aspiring politicians in our time always play the “jobs card.” Yet how many jobs do we must-have for us to survive?

A year into the pandemic we see that we can do many jobs from home. We can do a large portion of services over the internet and we already see that much of the manufacturing can be performed by robots. It will not be long before most “jobs” from the past will be mechanized. A few people with modern equipment can perform what used to employ thousands of people. We employ a large cheap labour force overseas to produce stuff that is used for a short time and fills up our garbage dumps.

Governments and large corporations employ people for political reasons but many folks do unsatisfying often useless work. You can tell who when they quote repeatedly: TGIF. “Creating” jobs is mostly not very useful. Yet we believe that if you don’t force people to work by impoverishing them, they will only stay intoxicated on the couch.

For as long as we have written records, there are stories of slavery. We used to buy and sell slaves and whip them to make them work, so we don’t believe that there is another way. We used to strap children at schools, yet now the children learn a lot more without corporal punishment. Husbands used to beat wives regularly and now we quit and they willingly do more than their husbands.

The other popular belief is that people will cheat to have free food and shelter instead of working. Some will. Yet from personal experience, I vouch that most will not. Our saving grace in the future, when there will be no more jobs for most people, is that they will develop small businesses and work for pride and to serve others. All we have to do is dig up the history of our great grandparents, and we will have ample examples of people working hard for very little money.

All we need to do is cut off the manufacturing of “build to fail” items, things that are cheaper to buy than to make or fix, and we will see a new economy emerge. My mother knitted my sweaters for free, and I still use some of them. It is the nature of humans to be productive if no one forces them to.

I think that it is completely possible to build an economy around honest work and reasonable pay. People wish to serve each other and make things that others will be happy to use and will last for a lifetime.

I strongly believe that we can build a new economy much different from the one that collapsed when COVID arrived. By maximizing our technology, we will reduce the need for labour. Laws could make it illegal to build things that are designed to fail. Reducing Marketing can eliminate our desires for useless goods and manufactured pleasures such as travelling pointlessly. Less marketing of unhealthy fast foods and needless medications will improve our health and reduce health care expenses. It will also make us spend less on ever-changing fashions of clothing, home “improvements” and vehicles.

Overall, we could build an economy that will provide the most critical needs and wonderful services for a fraction of what we have been paying. Our taxes could be reduced and we can sustain all of us cheaply and see if people will not work when they are not forced to. I bet that most will.

A few will suffer from addictions, a few will not contribute by working, while some will be criminals, but most will find ways to serve. It’s in our human nature. We have a big problem with COVID and another with political systems. It is possible that we will come out of it better than we were before. We will serve instead of win.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.