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Plague management: The state
Mar. 19th, 2020 10:17 am I made a comment to this effect on a friend's FB, but I think it bears repeating as I watch structural failure after structural failure. I'm fascinated by institutions, governments, and economies, and despite being entirely self-taught on these matters, my predictions have a decent track record.*
So here's my take on pandemic handling. You need three things, and you can probably get away with two of the things if the other two are well-developed:
1) A strong state
2) Transparency
3) A civic-minded population
I'll give the anarchists a moment to calm down and we'll continue. Good? Okay.
By "a strong state," I don't mean an authoritarian state. I mean decisiveness at the leadership level. You need this because under the types of political structures we have right now, you need someone to track the science, demand closures, and push money at people (not corporate or bank bailouts). This is the level at which Italy failed, Canada and the US are failing, but China, Taiwan, Denmark, and South Korea have been successful. Theoretically, if you were going to be anarchist about it, you could toss all of your #1 stats into #2 and #3, but we don't have a model of this right now, so decisiveness at the top is critical. Denmark stands out for commendation by compensating workers 75% of their salaries, which kept everyone calm and allowed for social distancing to happen early.
Transparency: This is where China initially failed and one of the places where America is failing even badly. People need to know what's going on and what to do. In our current situation, transparency is limited by testing, and this needs to be a major focus if we're ever going to go back to work and see our grandparents again. South Korea's strategies have been particularly outstanding in this regard in terms of creating apps and using tracking and mapping to show what was going on in real time.
A civic-minded population: I would argue that this is America's #1 point of failure. It's understandable because "fuck you, I got mine" is baked into the national consciousness. It's Canada's point of failure to a lesser degree, hence toilet-paper hoarding in the province that makes all the toilet paper. Decisiveness and transparency are needed at the state and media level, but civic-mindedness is required to actually implement it. People must be willing to help each other, to participate in social distancing, and not to hoard. Companies must be willing to take financial hits in order to keep workers employed. Landlords must forgive rent. A wartime attitude of "we're all in this together" is what actually makes the policies happen. "Fuck you, I got mine" doesn't work when someone who didn't get mine spreads it to you.
Ideally, we'd have a sensible economy and rational leaders who listened to science. Maybe we can emerge from this with some more robust institutions?
* It's not because I think I'm special or particularly smart. I'm at the mercy of just-in-time staffing, which led me to conclude that a just-in-time supply chain also had a predictable failure rate. Smarter people than I should have noticed this.
So here's my take on pandemic handling. You need three things, and you can probably get away with two of the things if the other two are well-developed:
1) A strong state
2) Transparency
3) A civic-minded population
I'll give the anarchists a moment to calm down and we'll continue. Good? Okay.
By "a strong state," I don't mean an authoritarian state. I mean decisiveness at the leadership level. You need this because under the types of political structures we have right now, you need someone to track the science, demand closures, and push money at people (not corporate or bank bailouts). This is the level at which Italy failed, Canada and the US are failing, but China, Taiwan, Denmark, and South Korea have been successful. Theoretically, if you were going to be anarchist about it, you could toss all of your #1 stats into #2 and #3, but we don't have a model of this right now, so decisiveness at the top is critical. Denmark stands out for commendation by compensating workers 75% of their salaries, which kept everyone calm and allowed for social distancing to happen early.
Transparency: This is where China initially failed and one of the places where America is failing even badly. People need to know what's going on and what to do. In our current situation, transparency is limited by testing, and this needs to be a major focus if we're ever going to go back to work and see our grandparents again. South Korea's strategies have been particularly outstanding in this regard in terms of creating apps and using tracking and mapping to show what was going on in real time.
A civic-minded population: I would argue that this is America's #1 point of failure. It's understandable because "fuck you, I got mine" is baked into the national consciousness. It's Canada's point of failure to a lesser degree, hence toilet-paper hoarding in the province that makes all the toilet paper. Decisiveness and transparency are needed at the state and media level, but civic-mindedness is required to actually implement it. People must be willing to help each other, to participate in social distancing, and not to hoard. Companies must be willing to take financial hits in order to keep workers employed. Landlords must forgive rent. A wartime attitude of "we're all in this together" is what actually makes the policies happen. "Fuck you, I got mine" doesn't work when someone who didn't get mine spreads it to you.
Ideally, we'd have a sensible economy and rational leaders who listened to science. Maybe we can emerge from this with some more robust institutions?
* It's not because I think I'm special or particularly smart. I'm at the mercy of just-in-time staffing, which led me to conclude that a just-in-time supply chain also had a predictable failure rate. Smarter people than I should have noticed this.
