Three Great Articles for the Moment We're In
Someone, somewhere, recommended three articles to me as a set (might have been on Twitter—I can’t remember). I got around to reading them in sequence and, yes, they do a great job of framing where we are right now. I’m passing them on here so that you can share in the insights.
Please note that I’m not endorsing every single word in all three of these pieces (so don’t flame me about it), but I do think they each express some core understanding on how things are changing and the parameters for the next reality. I welcome your reaction and discussion.
“Why this crisis is a turning point in history,” by John Gray (New Statesman)
Most of us are feeling a little unsure about globalization and long supply chains right about now. The notion of key medications being made only in China, for example, seems obviously problematic in hindsight (and, for many, not in hindsight). It’s important not to stop there but to understand that, while foreign trade might be good, the underlying economic theories emphasizing growth and efficiency obviously should not be taken as the absolutes they have been treated like. This article powerfully states the obvious: the pendulum is going to swing back towards localization and a more resilient economic framework, one that supports more dimensions of prosperity than what can be maximized on a spreadsheet.
With all its talk of freedom and choice, liberalism was in practice the experiment of dissolving traditional sources of social cohesion and political legitimacy and replacing them with the promise of rising material living standards. This experiment has now run its course. Suppressing the virus necessitates an economic shutdown that can only be temporary, but when the economy restarts, it will be in a world where governments act to curb the global market.
“We are Living in a Failed State,” by George Packer (The Atlantic)
As we ponder what comes next, it’s increasingly clear that whatever it is, we shouldn’t expect it to emerge from our national leadership or from some kind of cultural consensus broadly shared by Americans. Coronavirus has laid bare the deep divisions in our society, revealing for all to see just who is “essential” and how deeply undervalued they are. We won’t go back to the old way of imagining reality, and so as the circus goes on in distant centers of power, we’re left as neighbors to pick up the pieces and reassemble them with a new understanding.
We’re faced with a choice that the crisis makes inescapably clear. We can stay hunkered down in self-isolation, fearing and shunning one another, letting our common bond wear away to nothing. Or we can use this pause in our normal lives to pay attention to the hospital workers holding up cellphones so their patients can say goodbye to loved ones; the planeload of medical workers flying from Atlanta to help in New York; the aerospace workers in Massachusetts demanding that their factory be converted to ventilator production; the Floridians standing in long lines because they couldn’t get through by phone to the skeletal unemployment office; the residents of Milwaukee braving endless waits, hail, and contagion to vote in an election forced on them by partisan justices. We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death. After we’ve come out of hiding and taken off our masks, we should not forget what it was like to be alone.
“Bear Stearns and the Narratives of Systemic Risk,” by Ben Hunt (Epsilon Theory)
I’m a big fan of Ben Hunt and the Epsilon Theory website. As always, Ben reminds us that the overriding narrative is so, so fragile. No matter how badly we want to believe it—and even I, at times, want to believe it—seeing beyond the narrative, realizing its inherent falsehoods, is the most important and empowering first step we can take. The way they’ll try and keep us from taking action is to tell us that, if we just continue the course, everything will be restored to normal. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice….
People can get used to ANYTHING in narrative-world. As the COVID-19 narrative becomes that of a chronic and excusably lethal event for the United States, as opposed to an acute and unforgivably lethal event, we WILL get used to it.
I’m not saying this is good or bad. I’m just saying it is. And it’s constructive for things that are driven by narrative. Things like markets. Things like this White House.
And that constructive narrative will last until something acute and unforgivably lethal happens again in real-world, until real-world events give the lie to narrative-world complacency. Which they will. Because of the real-world severity of this virus and the entwining of TRILLIONS of dollars worth of assets in business models that are not just damaged but obliterated by that severity.
Cover image via Unsplash.
Charles Marohn—known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues—is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a land use planner and civil engineer with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.
Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019) and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (Wiley 2021). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America.