COVID-19 is the climax to this 4T

[pbrower2a]

We are going to see many institutions go under. We can't simply pick the best of rural life (fewer restrictions on life) and urban life if we live in crowded conditions. Americans often act as if they can still live on a farm. To put it as crudely as possible, nobody cares if your dog poops in a ditch by the side of a corn field, but thousands are offended if your dog does such in Times Square. We cannot enjoy the intellectual laziness of proletarian life (OK, plenty of smart people who actually have sophisticated minds do unskilled or semi-skilled work because we have too many well-educated people for the jobs that require sophisticated educations) while enjoying the cornucopia of entertainment that we have; we need to judge its worthiness if we are to control what goes into our minds instead of letting someone manipulate our minds. Don't fool yourself; what goes into your mind will define you as much as what you eat will determine your physical health. We can get full employment if we accept starvation wages and brutal employment or we can have dignity on the job but no certainty of holding a job. We can have economic freedom and real choice only if we are willing to pay high retail to get good service and selection. The ability of Wal*Mart to undercut competitors that include mom-and-pop business has stuck us with Wal*Mart choices that aren't all that good.

I told you that restaurants are likely to go under unless they are above average or go the fast-food route. Many restaurants have been getting away with cooking with microwaves. I can do that too, quickly and without paying a tip because food manufacturers can supply us with easily-cooked entrees. Airlines will need to retrofit their air circulation to ensure that microorganisms don't make people sick before people start flying again.

We don't know how long COVID-19 will last and how many people it will kill. If we do nothing about it it will die off only when it runs out of people to infect. If it kills enough people (it looks like a bigger monstrosity than AIDS already) it will make real estate and commuter costs much lower. It will also devastate companies that rely upon mass markets and communities that depend upon housing nearly fully-occupied. Once-vibrant cities could come to resemble Detroit in having plenty of vacant lots. Most vulnerable will be outlying suburbs that would not exist unless population is as high as it is today and have gotten away with having nothing to do but shop there. Just think what that does to property owners and the tax collector. Just look at Detroit or Youngstown.

But even without such human losses, on-line purchases will become more the norm. Retailers have long depended upon impulse shoppers without which they would go under. If people don't go to the store then they can't see something cute, excite their curiosity, get strokes that suggest "hey, fellow -- buy this and show what an astute shopper you are" and take it to the checkout counter, pull out a card, and leave. I've been taken in in relatively good times with the "show yourself an astute shopper" and much clutter and a depleted bank account to show for it.

We are at the end of the line for material shortages being a cause for making above-average profits for meeting needs. I know enough that being a late-adapter is one way in which to avoid paying too much (but not too late as one ends up with an obsolete technology of little use). We may also be at the end of the line for being smarter than our machines. Thus as capitalism can no longer create greater prosperity for the masses through greater productivity (just think of that: it may be ironic that capitalism has led us faster to Marx' postulated end of economic history as Communism before "socialist" regimes failed to achieve such) So we are approaching both the dreaded Singularity of the technological apocalypse of some science-fiction writers just as we approach the end of the relevance of capitalist command-and-control.

For many the secret of happiness is stupidity. With stupidity one can be perfectly happy doing a mindless job and devouring a great quantity of schlock entertainment. That well fits command-and-control in the workplace that causes smart people to chafe unless they are the commanders and controllers (and I am not talking of the well-paid accounting job) and two hundred channels of cable or satellite TV or streaming video. Folks, you have only so much time in life, and you may be unable to escape a horrible job as a means of survival (although we need do less work to live as materially well as people who thought a forty-hour workweek a godsend), but we need to develop the wisdom with which to decide what is fit for our minds and bodies.

I had a cousin who died five years ago... he weighed 450 pounds after (according to his family members) dropping out of high school before graduating, seemingly never reading a book after his schooling was over, and as a typical trip to a fast-food place supersizing his meal and then doubling it. That's a big hamburger, a big helping of fries, and and an over-sized soft drink. I rarely spoke to him because he had nothing to say and he could never relate to anything that I could talk about. I can talk to people without discussing theories of politics and history, science and technology, art, or classical music. He died at age 48 leaving a widow and two overweight children behind. Yes, he was setting an example. It is clear what was going into his belly, and it was bad for him. What was going into his mind? It's likely not worth discussing.

We will need more formal education just to deal with the reality of a cornucopia of offerings ranging from schlock to sublimity.