
Welcome to the 21st Century: How to Plan for the Post-Covid Future - gHeadphone
https://www.oreilly.com/tim/21stcentury/
======
throwaway0a5e
The article's comparison of what's shaping up to be a year or two long disease
outbreak to a 4yr global conflict that massively altered the global balance of
power and spread industrialization across many industries that had thus far
resisted it seems a little premature.

Wall street, shady billionaires pulling strings, governments and normal
everyday people have a massive economic interest in things becoming as normal
as they possibly can post-covid and they are all going to work toward
furthering that goal in their own ways. Sure some of the things that were
trialed during COVID (work from home, mask wearing, etc) may stick around but
they are going to go away and if they come back it will be slowly over
years/decades and on their own merits.

~~~
hatboat
I think an important point the author is trying to make is that we _don 't
know_ how this is going to play out, with "scenario planning" being a central
theme of the article.

We have only experienced a few of the pandemic's direct effects a few months
in, and in many parts of the globe the first wave is still in full swing. The
second- and higher-order effects are largely unknown at this point, and many
will only be fully understood by future historians.

While the direct comparison to WWI/II may be hyperbolic, I think it's a fair
assessment to say that COVID is the biggest, truly global event since. During
each war there were many turning points that may have ended them early,
turning them into smaller, regional conflicts. The people who experienced the
first six months of them weren't to know they would leave tens of millions
dead and society changed forever after. Now I'm not suggesting that COVID will
be on remotely this scale, however I believe the author's argument that it
will likely trigger large societal change, and to try and prepare accordingly,
is a good one.

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buboard
COVID is an accelerator, not an innovator

Travel is the big unraveling. Tourism has ballooned since 2000 but it was no
longer tourism: how many tourists even talk to locals anymore? Look at Youtube
travelogues - how often do you see locals? Tourism degenerated to fodder for
the social media/instagram economy and every holiday is the same packaged
experience , just different background. That makes it easy to virtualize. It's
also fueled by high density urbanization, tiny living spaces in insufferable
cities (urbanites travel more). There are entire countries and world regions
that rely on tourism, and for them this is going to be the most consequential
long-lasting change (also for environmental reasons).

In person entertainment, privacy, work from home, remote schooling, all these
have been slowly eating the world.

There s another one: Biotech. We are now testing things like mRNA drugs and
antibody therapies at an unprecedented pace. If one of them proves safe,
biomedicine will be next to eat the world.

This is not happening at the national level, it's happening at the individual
/ company level and people are noticing. The overfunded US and China army
can't do nothing for the pandemic or the climate, and govt agencies across the
world have proven unreliable. The pandemic has been a shitshow for politics /
governments and a boon for private initiative, and people are noticing.

~~~
iagooar
> There are entire countries and world regions that rely on tourism, and for
> them this is going to be the most consequential long-lasting change (also
> for environmental reasons).

I don't see how people stop traveling once Covid is gone (or at least reduced
to a regular flu level of danger). Why would people ever prefer not to travel?
I agree that some paranoid people won't travel until 5 years after the
pandemic, but the vast majority of people will do.

~~~
buboard
tourism is one part of traveling. people from highly urbanized areas tend to
travel long distances more
([https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aac9d2](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aac9d2))
. If this density drops (due to convenient remote work) tourish would drop as
well

~~~
gspr
> If this density drops (due to convenient remote work) tourish would drop as
> well

I've never understood this one. Do people really think that work is the only
big reason people flock to cities?

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pmorici
This all strikes me as extremely alarmist and far-fetched. The chances of
COVID causing an indefinite pandemic that alters the nature of human behavior
and the course of history forever in my estimation is zero. Business and
economic difficulties for a few years, yes. Total destruction of the travel
industry for all time? Not a chance.

Some of the stuff just makes no sense, for example; "There's already talk of a
race to produce vaccines, where a country that has the vaccine will use the
vaccine for itself in order to gain advantage rather than spreading it around
the world."

I could imagine the country that discovers it giving priority to their
citizens when there is, at first, limited supply but withholding it
indefinitely for advantage seems like it would not happen because of the
incredible profit motive.

~~~
lbeltrame
> I could imagine the country that discovers it giving priority to their
> citizens when there is, at first, limited supply but withholding it
> indefinitely for advantage seems like it would not happen because of the
> incredible profit motive.

Turns out that those doing vaccine trials have actually thought of that, and
most of them are making partnerships in different countries to prevent "bad
side effects" from this (such as forced seizure).

------
hootbootscoot
This is a great article.

~~~
paulkrush
I agree. Long and well though out.

------
mattlondon
Hmm.

I agree in part, but I am not sure if we can compare COVID-19 against the
horrors of two world wars where tens of millions died (15-22,000,000 deaths in
WW1 and 70-85,000,000 deaths in WW2 according to wikipedia) and entire cities
were literally flattened and millions more left homeless and jobless?

The strange thing about COVID-19 is that it is largely _invisible_ (unless you
happen to work in a hospital or morgue or something). Apart from people
wearing masks and Starbucks only doing takeaway and those unlucky enough to
have lost a loved one/friend/colleague (my condolences if so) it is hard for
people to actually "see" the impact. For me, the largest impact is I have to
plan my grocery deliveries a bit more carefully (since I can't do a top-up
shop easily) and I work from home more than I usually did - nothing else has
changed in my life really.

Will Starbucks re-open their doors and be selling double-tall skinny frap
extra-cold within a few days of getting the say-so? You bet - and who can
blame them? Nothing will have changed for them - people will still buy the
coffee just like they are buying them right now _during the pandemic_.

Did Hiroshima/Dresden/Hamburg/Berlin/Tokyo/Stalingrad/others re-open after
VE/VJ day? No - because they were absolutely physically obliterated with the
population killed, maimed or displaced (...and even if they weren't,
physiologically it must have been absolutely crippling to be a survivor).

Were I alive in WW2, would my life only be mildly inconvenienced like it is
today with COVID-19? No way - if I had even survived at all, I'd be happy to
have a home to live in (and no doubt without reliable electricity, gas or
sewage), even luckier to have a job to work at, and even luckier still to have
shops to visit with stock to allow me to even purchase any food. And I'd no
doubt have known friends family and colleagues who died in unspeakably
horrible ways. Whatever happened I'd be psychologically scarred for life.

It just doesn't feel like COVID-19 is in the same league... And this is before
we even mention genocide from WW2.

That said though I am all for fiscal stimulus only going to green companies
though! No government hand-outs to the cruiseline, airline, oil, or shipping
industries please! :)

.

.

.

.

.

Aside: ... I note that COVID-19 is now "worse" than the WW2 Blitz in London in
that it has killed more people (1). I sincerely hope now that the rose-tinted
nostalgia for people citing the "Blitz Spirit" etc in the context of Brexit
can go away. London has now faced worse than the Blitz - and when it did it
was immigrant nurses (one _from the EU_ , one from the Commonwealth) that
literally nursed even our Prime Minister back to health. We are stronger
together.</politics>

1 - [https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/30/covid-19-is-
kil...](https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/30/covid-19-is-killing-
londoners-at-a-faster-rate-than-german-bombs-did)

~~~
JasonFruit
Note the difference between the people killed in WW2 and those killed by
COVID-19: the WW2 deaths were primarily healthy young men in their late teens
and early 20s. The COVID-19 deaths have been primarily among the elderly and
infirm. There are numerous exceptions, sure, but the societal impact of deaths
among the two different demographic groups is pretty different, qualitatively
if not quantitatively.

~~~
maiman
The comparison is not even close in terms of numbers, we can see the huge
difference at a glance if we check the stats: [http://www.world-
war-2.info/statistics/](http://www.world-war-2.info/statistics/)
[https://covidbynumbers.com/](https://covidbynumbers.com/)

------
dugditches
>So too, when we look back, we will understand that the 21st century truly
began this year, when the COVID19 pandemic took hold

Couldn't one argue 9/11 was the 'start' of the 21st century? And all the
effects and tone it caused that last to this day?

~~~
throwaway_USD
>Couldn't one argue 9/11 was the 'start' of the 21st century?

There was one major US political event in the 21st Century before 9/11 and
arguably even lead to 9/11.

People tend to forget the 2000 Presidential Election between Gore/Bush. It
seems common place for a candidate to lose the popular vote but win the
Election, which was the case between Gore/Bush, but we hadn't seen that prior
to Gore/Bush since 1888. Not to mention the shenanigans (electronic votes in
swing states like FL going to the opposite candidate, entire truck loads of
missing ballots)...it ended in a lawsuit and the SCOTUS deciding the election.

Politics/news coverage was set down a path of partisanship we have never
recovered from and has only gotten worse. But to your point there is a chance
9/11 is stopped or never happens under Gore, and if 9/11 happened anyway, the
response for sure would have been different and Iraq/Afghanistan wars likely
never happen (perhaps an entire generation doesn't go off to the longest war
in American history).

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> It seems common place for a candidate to lose the popular vote but win the
> Election, which was the case between Gore/Bush

I know the education of the average HNer is a bit higher than the average
person off of the street. How is the electoral college perceived here? I've
heard a great argument from a conservative friend: it prevents densely
populated cities like LA + NY for speaking on the needs/wants of the entire
country.

~~~
dundarious
What’s the implied harm in that, though? Given it violates the principle of
“one person, one vote”, it needs justification beyond gesturing towards the
idea of “it prevents bigger regions from bullying smaller ones”.

Maybe there is a dark history that has been avoided by the EC, but it seems
incomplete to just just allude to it with a vague David and Goliath analogy.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
The federal government is set up to allow minority positions to roadblock
majority positions unless you have an overwhelming majority (look at basically
every big social issue of the past century and you will see this is how it has
played out). The purpose of this is to prevent people from moving fast and
breaking things at the federal level. This is all fine so long as states have
decent autonomy. CA can have all the weed and abortions they want and KY can
have all the guns and christian values they want and neither has to bother the
other. Unfortunately we've put of a hell of a lot of authority at the federal
level over the last 120yr or so and as a result government's ability to do
things is handicapped because more of the doing things necessarily has to
happen at a level where the system was designed to only allow things to be
done when practically nobody could disagree with them.

~~~
dundarious
I agree there can exist a tyranny of the slight majority. But we’re talking
about the EC, which is used to choose the President. Given the enormous power
of the executive branch (relative to most parliamentary democracies, for
example), this actually causes a minority to gain positive power over the
majority. Positive power here meaning power to direct action through executive
orders and (most importantly) military action, not merely to veto law. But the
executive also enjoys some veto power!

The EC and 2 senators per state system that the US uses seems to lead to a
tyranny of the minority, especially if you consider that senate “rules”
regarding filibustering, simple, absolute majorities are almost all
conventions rather than laws or immutable procedures.

However, I do agree with your line of argument as it relates to constitutional
amendments.

Edit: I said the executive could create law, when I meant to say they can
direct action.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
The people getting shafted by the EC deal should tell their congressmen and
senators to take back some of that legislate authority they've dumped on the
executive bureaucracy.

We're holding a knife by the blade and trying to cut with the handle and
complaining it hurts. Of course it does. We're not using the tool properly.

We could also massively increase the number of states which would make the two
points that all states get just for existing much less relevant (and have
other benefits). Even if you just look at the house the number of people
represented by any given person is massive compared to what it was 100yr ago
let alone when the system was designed.

~~~
dundarious
I agree to a large extent. I think EC should be part of a larger set of
changes, but it is understood by a reasonable amount of the public, so it’s
arguably the best starting point.

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biolurker1
There is a lying madman at the top superpower, none of these words matter as
muchas getting him voted out. The single most important thing in human history
could be to make Americans go and vote in November.

------
shashanoid
Have you not yet realized the futility of planning?

~~~
lihaciudaniel
Failing to plan, is planing to failure.

