The daily political transactions executed in response to the pandemic vary widely by country, but trying to estimate where it all goes, where it takes us is another story. Richard Haass submits that these events won’t reshape history, but rather they will accelerate existing trends. While it is not clear to me what the difference is between acceleration and reshaping, I suspect the intent is to balance the widely promulgated theme that the pandemic changes everything. “Everything” is a wide and unmanageable quantity to look at, so Haass’s submission helps by asking us to focus our attention on to a narrower set of trends.
Yet, it is not clear to me that accelerating each trend is inevitable; the current situation could highlight the failures in current directions and cause a reversal. For example, the long-term trend asserting that the markets drive convergence towards optimum solutions has lead to a widely-held mistrust in government’s ability to execute, which in turn has resulted in defunding of government programs or privatization. However, the market’s optimization algorithm is dominated by economic measures; social measures — education, health care, minimum incomes — lack attention. Markets, businesses, are a component of our society, but they are not all of it. They exist to serve people. If it is people that serve the markets, then what we have is slavery. There needs to be balance between social and economic needs. This is difficult.
With intelligent and creative leadership it should be possible to find win-win solutions; those that balance the economic and social needs; solutions based on trust and abilities. David Frum, of The Atlantic, sees the recent moves by the Trump administration as trading the lives of the poor for economic growth. In a recent Op Ed published in Reddit, the commenter offers a tangible example of how the [US] administration failed to meet the basic needs of people, who have lost their jobs, by failing to find a solution that provides timely payments. The implications made in his comments suggest a government that places their trust in businesses rather than people, and in doing so it is no longer a government for the people, but rather one that is for the business.
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