But our world has gone beyond them too. I mean, given the beneficial developments unforeseen by those proto-ecologists, we might finally be able to transcend their insights and pressure our politicians to move towards the prospects that futurists described for us in the 1960s and '70s. Remember their speculations about "the leisure society" that computers and "cybernation" would make inevitable? What will we do, they asked, with all that free time?
Now's the time to stop and answer their question. Despite our dear leader's recommendations, it would clearly be insane to return to the suicidal "normal" that seemed inescapable just two weeks ago. We have to make everyone understand that.
New Directions
So, if not in Trump's and our senators' direction, where should we go? How about:
- For sure, nationalizing health care into a single payer system. If nothing else, the present pandemic has revealed the absolute inadequacy and intolerability of the healthcare status quo. Medicare for All needs to be the sine qua non element of effective response.
- Break up any business that's "too big to fail." (Aren't you tired of bailing out the rich?) Breaking up corporate giants makes sense even according to strict free market principles. Adam Smith himself saw monopolies as counterproductive. If businesses make inadvisable decisions, they should be allowed to crash, burn and be replaced by more efficient firms.
- Mimic the success of FDR by implementing a Green New Deal (GND) to absolutely restructure our economy in ways that take seriously the crisis of climate chaos. Besides redirecting production away from carbon and towards green technology, the GND would provide enhanced unemployment insurance, forgiveness of college loans, paid maternity leave, free childcare, higher minimum wages. . .
- Almost as certainly, our country also needs some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI). As we'll see immediately below, the work furloughs forced upon us by COVID-19 have made it clear that many of our jobs are pretty close to busywork. So many of those jobs can be safely eliminated.
Yes, when you think about it, so much of the work we do is unnecessary. Do we really need advertising, health insurance companies, defense contractors, malls and retail outlets, oil giants, and businesses that destroy our health and environment? Do we really need McDonalds and Burger King?
What we're learning now is that we can get along without any of them.
And certainly, we don't have to do all that traveling - the hours upon hours spent in morning and evening rush hour traffic. And then there's all that time that road warriors waste in airports traveling to meetings that might just as well take place via Skype or Zoom.
The same is true for a lot of our schooling. Do we really need to maintain all those expensive campus plants, when present experience teaches us that remote learning is quite effective, inexpensive and time saving?
And above all, worldwide focus on real national security problems like pandemics and lack of adequate medical care has put in perspective those other completely manufactured problems connected with our endless wars. Is our national security really served by them? Or is that make-work - is it busywork too?
So, how about eliminating those 300 foreign military bases and the millions of soldiers, independent contractors, and related jobs as well? Again, it's busywork - make-work that's completely unnecessary and wasteful of taxpayer money.
Additionally, the release of non-violent inmates from Rikers and other prisons brings to light the fact that if we'd legalize drugs and treat addiction as the health problem it is, we wouldn't need all those penal institutions either.
Conclusion
So, the present pandemic, at least in some respects, might be the proverbial blessing in disguise.
It's suggesting that we eliminate all the jobs now revealed as unnecessary. Doing so will suddenly make it possible for us to reduce the time we all spend trying to "look busy." Suddenly, it becomes possible for us to share the decreasing number of jobs that can't be done cybernetically. We could share the remaining jobs working just 4 hours each day, or 3 days a week. We could work 6 months each year and have 6 months off. Or we could spend 1 year on the job and take 2 off.
The list of changes suggested by our current crisis is endless. And I'm sure any of us could add to the list of labor-saving discoveries the current lockdown has brought to light.
In summary, our forced retreat invites us to realize that we're all in the same boat and (and as someone else said) once our basic needs have been met, the best things in life are free.
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