Sunday, April 5, 2020

4-3-20

I've decided to develop a plan

4-4-2020

I had my first zoom meeting with my some of my friends last night, the wife was doing it with her's so I seemed like a good idea. It worked out pretty well, I was able to get 4 people to join, mostly the older guys, i'm sure the young ones were dealing with their kids or having fun with their own lives.

The second week of school was better, this big kids are getting into the rhythm with their teachers and doing their assignment online, I fear my preschooler is getting almost no attention. My wife picked up her proscription opioids for her spine issue. I've extremely worried. She took one, seemed to feel better and worked on the house for a bit, then went to sleep around 3pm and didn't get up again until after 7. She needed the sleep, but when she was up again she was hurting again, so turned back to her normal pain management techniques. I was gonna try and not have a drink last night too, but it was too much fun zooming and I knew the booze would make it more fun, and it did.

This has got to be the largest social experiment ever performed. I'm worried about the outcomes. I suspect people will embrace certain parts of it, delivery, curbside pickup, more online meetings, all will probably stick around, even after the virus is no longer a threat. The impact to business will be long lasting as well, and obviously those whom are no longer employed.

4-5-20

We had a wonderful day today, very little fighting, a decent amount of time spent outside chasing chickens, and playing on the swings. The kids spent way too much time on screens, of course, it seems inevitable. I wonder, should I just embrace it, and I degrading paper and pencil over the virtues of chalk and slate? I don't know, I expect the march of time won't stop suddenly wither and die at this precipice of the digital age. Still, I can feel the disconnect from the natural world growing. We are moving to an online, digital, ephemeral, self. I suspect that's why i'm so obsessed with farming, growing food plants and crops, chickens and survival. I want that connection to the natural world.

I"m not convinced of a V shaped recovery at all. The job losses are going to be very steep, and I expect any move Trump and his administration makes will serve to enrich himself and his supporters at the expense of average citizens like myself. I expect companies will lay off employees, and slowly replace those employees with robots wherever they can using interest free government loans to finance it. I also think the government and big business is going to diverge. The US government is broke, the revenue coming in will quickly plummet and debt to GDP will skyrocket. We've been living on borrowed time anyway. Remember that malaise lingering, in November, December, January? Something monumental is happening in the world and we are witnessing it. I think this is goin to be the shift in global power from the west to the east. The Asian countries will respond faster, their companies will reopen sooner. our only benefit is that because manufacturing has largely left the country already we don't depend as heavily on jobs which require a physical presence.

It's not enough though, and we are doomed to suffer the humiliation, and pitiful gaze of countries we used to influence as China eclipses us. Our Economy, and that of a few, similarly ill managed countries will suffer long term consequences. But the rest of the world will recover quickly, and we will look that much more foolish.

What's so perfect about this crisis, is that because it is natural, it is perfectly solvable. We can model nature, given enough information we can understand and predict its movements. We may not be able to say for sure how many cases are available but we have the technology to find out. Covid-19 is beatable, good leadership has demonstrated that in both extremes of result. It's a mirror to the effectiveness of human leadership in each geography. 

Asian countries will show the superiority of their governments, and economies and strip global control from the west who will be slower to respond. It really only takes two countries. If Korea and Japan decide to ally with China the east is lost.