07-13-2020, 10:23 PM
COVID-19 will come to an end as a menace to life and liberty. This is the Crisis of 2020... OK, it can last into 2021 and even 2022.
This time we do not have a major war. COVID-19 is a killer on the scale of a war. It has cost over 137,000 American deaths alone which is less than the total deaths associated with any war involving America except World War II and the American Civil War. It has been killing at a rate higher than that of American losses in World War II, which was relatively light on America in contrast to other countries (including our then-colony the Philippines) that became war zones or came under occupation.
If plagues lead to violence, it is not international war. It may be bloody persecutions of vulnerable people... in the Middle Ages there was one group of people who could be robbed and killed on the shakiest pretexts. It rhymes with "Hughes". Mercifully we are more sophisticated than that. If some people have a better survival rate, then maybe we can learn a few things and save some lives. But all in all, international wars seem unlikely in a plague. As a writer for Star Trek put into a Klingon mouth as a proverb "Only fools fight in a burning building". Figuring that contracting COVID-19 is about as dangerous as things that I would never think of doing, like drunk driving, texting and driving, driving as I feel myself about to fall asleep, having unprotected sex with a complete stranger, using street drugs, breaking into a dog-infested house, doing violent crime, or failing to heed warning signs about cliffs or waterfalls...
This plague will reshape much of American life... permanently. That is the Crisis at work. So what will change?
1. LAW: emergencies
It will be easier to declare an emergency and make it stick. Business activities that can become conduits for a very nasty disease can be closed down for the duration. Obviously the choices will need to be rational. So bars get shut down but liquor stores are essential. Bookstores close but grocery stores don't. Business by mail or over the web (and web-related marketers use the mail and similar delivery services) will pick up the slack. Governments can impose quarantines against people in afflicted areas. A fourteen-day quarantine is a good reason for someone from Texas (which handled COVID-19 badly) to not visit New York. States can mandate the wearing of masks. A couple days ago I lamented over the Web that people in my part of Michigan were often failing to wear masks. It could be that some state employee tracked down my IP number and honed in on my county. I went to Wal*Mart just today, and practically everyone was in compliance on masks.
Travel restrictions were enforced perhaps as effectively as in WWII not so much by rationing as by the fact that although one could go places, there was nothing to do once one got there. That could take a city such as Chicago, which ordinarily has plenty of things to do, completely out of the question as a destination. One such experience of finding out such was enough to limit my travel to the grocery store, a medical clinic, and drive-in windows of a bank and fast-food places.
Business interests will of course lobby for relaxations of profit-gutting restrictions. In Michigan, the golf and motorboat interests were able to show that they could conduct their business with comparative safety. There remain restrictions on playing certain contact sports.
But on other aspects of law...
2. LAW: SEX. Obergfell v. Hedges sticks. Supreme Court rulings are definitive barring a Constitutional amendment. Support for any Constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage or child custody by same-sex couples is clearly inadequate for getting a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress and three fourths of the states. But this ruling comes as America becomes more sexually repressive.
This may have nothing to do with COVID-19 because the trend already existed. Society has been cracking down on sex between adults and underage children. Just think of what happened to Jeffrey Epstein... he knew what was going to happen despite his wealth and connections. What used to be treated with a wink and a not -- just don't do this again, says the judge, who imposes a fine and probation.
The trucking industry is scared of the prospect of its drivers being busted for patronizing prostitutes who might be underage, trafficked, or both. Trucking companies do not want their rigs or the precious cargoes within them confiscated -- or even delayed. It is conceivable that some crusading DA and sheriff in Tennessee might arrest a trucker for involvement with an underage prostitute from somewhere in eastern Europe and decide that the cargo is thus contraband. (If I were the company that owned the truck or was responsible for the cargo I'd fire the driver for putting my vehicle or its contests at risk for something so unwise, even if I have to fly someone in to complete the task. That cost would come out of that trucker's earnings if I could get away with that). Truckers are the most obvious people, but I can also see traveling salesmen and construction crews getting lonely and horny.
3. LAW: LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS. A few years ago I thought that America might trend to a more feudal style of relationship between management and labor with labor unions destroyed (unless those are the unions that serve a company by exhorting workers to make more sacrifices and work more hours, often off the clock as unpaid overtime so that they can 'deserve' more ... that they never get. Under such a system, government would set wages at abysmal levels and ban strikes... or perhaps even changing jobs without the consent of the employer. (That was Nazi Germany, infamous for far worse... but the Third Reich was a worker's Hell even if one was 'Aryan'). The trend of wages failing to keep up with productivity that has held since the 1970's will come to an end. The Millennial Generation will insist upon fair wages, and Big Business will not succeed to divide workers by ethnic or other such lines. "Right-to-work" laws will erode.
The tendency toward ridiculously high compensation for executives will come to an end about as Boomers fully retire from executive positions. Generation X executives are as rapacious as any, but they will be unable to get away with such gouging as Boomers have done. I expect to discuss that in "economics", as I can already think of multiple themes in economics.
This time we do not have a major war. COVID-19 is a killer on the scale of a war. It has cost over 137,000 American deaths alone which is less than the total deaths associated with any war involving America except World War II and the American Civil War. It has been killing at a rate higher than that of American losses in World War II, which was relatively light on America in contrast to other countries (including our then-colony the Philippines) that became war zones or came under occupation.
If plagues lead to violence, it is not international war. It may be bloody persecutions of vulnerable people... in the Middle Ages there was one group of people who could be robbed and killed on the shakiest pretexts. It rhymes with "Hughes". Mercifully we are more sophisticated than that. If some people have a better survival rate, then maybe we can learn a few things and save some lives. But all in all, international wars seem unlikely in a plague. As a writer for Star Trek put into a Klingon mouth as a proverb "Only fools fight in a burning building". Figuring that contracting COVID-19 is about as dangerous as things that I would never think of doing, like drunk driving, texting and driving, driving as I feel myself about to fall asleep, having unprotected sex with a complete stranger, using street drugs, breaking into a dog-infested house, doing violent crime, or failing to heed warning signs about cliffs or waterfalls...
This plague will reshape much of American life... permanently. That is the Crisis at work. So what will change?
1. LAW: emergencies
It will be easier to declare an emergency and make it stick. Business activities that can become conduits for a very nasty disease can be closed down for the duration. Obviously the choices will need to be rational. So bars get shut down but liquor stores are essential. Bookstores close but grocery stores don't. Business by mail or over the web (and web-related marketers use the mail and similar delivery services) will pick up the slack. Governments can impose quarantines against people in afflicted areas. A fourteen-day quarantine is a good reason for someone from Texas (which handled COVID-19 badly) to not visit New York. States can mandate the wearing of masks. A couple days ago I lamented over the Web that people in my part of Michigan were often failing to wear masks. It could be that some state employee tracked down my IP number and honed in on my county. I went to Wal*Mart just today, and practically everyone was in compliance on masks.
Travel restrictions were enforced perhaps as effectively as in WWII not so much by rationing as by the fact that although one could go places, there was nothing to do once one got there. That could take a city such as Chicago, which ordinarily has plenty of things to do, completely out of the question as a destination. One such experience of finding out such was enough to limit my travel to the grocery store, a medical clinic, and drive-in windows of a bank and fast-food places.
Business interests will of course lobby for relaxations of profit-gutting restrictions. In Michigan, the golf and motorboat interests were able to show that they could conduct their business with comparative safety. There remain restrictions on playing certain contact sports.
But on other aspects of law...
2. LAW: SEX. Obergfell v. Hedges sticks. Supreme Court rulings are definitive barring a Constitutional amendment. Support for any Constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage or child custody by same-sex couples is clearly inadequate for getting a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress and three fourths of the states. But this ruling comes as America becomes more sexually repressive.
This may have nothing to do with COVID-19 because the trend already existed. Society has been cracking down on sex between adults and underage children. Just think of what happened to Jeffrey Epstein... he knew what was going to happen despite his wealth and connections. What used to be treated with a wink and a not -- just don't do this again, says the judge, who imposes a fine and probation.
The trucking industry is scared of the prospect of its drivers being busted for patronizing prostitutes who might be underage, trafficked, or both. Trucking companies do not want their rigs or the precious cargoes within them confiscated -- or even delayed. It is conceivable that some crusading DA and sheriff in Tennessee might arrest a trucker for involvement with an underage prostitute from somewhere in eastern Europe and decide that the cargo is thus contraband. (If I were the company that owned the truck or was responsible for the cargo I'd fire the driver for putting my vehicle or its contests at risk for something so unwise, even if I have to fly someone in to complete the task. That cost would come out of that trucker's earnings if I could get away with that). Truckers are the most obvious people, but I can also see traveling salesmen and construction crews getting lonely and horny.
3. LAW: LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS. A few years ago I thought that America might trend to a more feudal style of relationship between management and labor with labor unions destroyed (unless those are the unions that serve a company by exhorting workers to make more sacrifices and work more hours, often off the clock as unpaid overtime so that they can 'deserve' more ... that they never get. Under such a system, government would set wages at abysmal levels and ban strikes... or perhaps even changing jobs without the consent of the employer. (That was Nazi Germany, infamous for far worse... but the Third Reich was a worker's Hell even if one was 'Aryan'). The trend of wages failing to keep up with productivity that has held since the 1970's will come to an end. The Millennial Generation will insist upon fair wages, and Big Business will not succeed to divide workers by ethnic or other such lines. "Right-to-work" laws will erode.
The tendency toward ridiculously high compensation for executives will come to an end about as Boomers fully retire from executive positions. Generation X executives are as rapacious as any, but they will be unable to get away with such gouging as Boomers have done. I expect to discuss that in "economics", as I can already think of multiple themes in economics.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.