“But in this crisis, stimulating the economy is akin to throwing a sale inside a department store that has been emptied by the bomb squad. People are not avoiding malls because they lack money. They are being told to stay away for reasons of public health.”
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Interesting article, I’ve read this point of view from a few different people and I have honestly kind of wondered if just letting it burn wasn’t the plan all along? I mean we really haven’t mobilized things the way we could have-- why? The suspicious part of me wonders if it’s because it’s politically destructive to come out and say the truth, that this just has to rip through the population a bit for us to get it under control, but if that isn’t actually the plan.
I think the reluctance or straight up refusal to accept (in rhetoric and thought and especially among certain groups like politicians and highly educated white collar types) that life involves difficult trade-offs has always been frustrating to me.
I think the point of view represented in this article and others like it will gradually become more popular as the economy becomes more and more impacted. I do think some of this was avoidable, but I earnestly suspect that we didn’t do much* because we didn’t plan to do much. In retrospect I think policy makers hope history says “well they tried to lock down the whole country but it didn’t work!!!” so it seems like measures were taken.
I do think the writer makes some pretty big assumptions though, like about numbers, which I understand he’s getting from reputable sources but there are still a lot of unknowns at this time. It might be a little premature to presume we know exactly the percentage of people who will die.
*Just to avoid confusion, I do not mean that medical professionals aren’t doing their best or working very very hard. I mean policy makers.
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Yeah, we’ve used the Feliway diffusers continually since the day we brought these guys home. I shudder to think how bad they’d be without them.
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The error bars are definitely large. Just like it’s hard to estimate where the tipping point of a liquidity crisis really enters the fray. No envy for the people making the calls. I hope everyone approaches this in enough good faith that this is at best a triage situation. No matter what decision is made lots of people will suffer.
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True, he’s also clearly not a writer so I give him some leeway with his presentation of the facts too. I mean it’s a blog post not an article, so yeah. One thing I would like to ask him, if I were interviewing him, is why he thinks an economic depression in 2020 would go the exact same route (in terms of scope and severity and inability to adapt business) as an economic depression that happened in 1929-1933ish. To me, it does seem like these are very different positions to begin from.
We have so much more flexibility and business resilience now than we did then, and society is so different. Back then, the plant in your town closes, you are now an unemployed man wandering from town-to-town asking for work or food. No one trusts you, you have no marketable skills, and the other plants are going out of business. And that was the reality for most people.
I’m not denying the negative impact to the economy now, in 2020, but…it’s not really the same. If you want to play the weakest link game (like he does with medical results, claiming most people who die will be close to death anyway)…who will be in economic peril? Primarily people who are already close to economic peril, that’s who. There are loooots of industries doing killer business right now, and many businesses that are quickly pivoting to survive. Lots of people are losing jobs, but lots of people aren’t.
I’m not denying that there will be a recession, maybe a super huge one, I totally accept that. Buuuuut, just like equating COVID-19 with plague isn’t really fair…I don’t know if the statements he makes about how our economy will be are accurate either. I mean, if I were to say as a thought experiment, “how would the great depression have been different if everyone had the internet back then?” I mean think of the possibilities. That one transference of modernity would have changed life for a lot of people. And that’s not our only advantage.
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He goes into some detail what he thinks a collapse might look like in the comments. It’s definitely not the deflationary spiral of the Great Depression, that’s for sure. The systemic risks remind me more of 2008 but not confined to only a couple sectors of the economy. He’s normally a very good writer but this was definitely a fairly rushed post, I’ll agree.
Based on the title, too, he’s planning 2 more posts for sure so not sure what he’s saving to address in those.
Edit: left off a “not” in front of the deflationary spiral.
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I’ll check the comments! I wasn’t trying to slam his writing (ok maybe a little 
) it’s more about his tone and assumptions about his readers than like, errors. It reads a little like a sermon, but I think that’s probably part of his appeal. MMM does the same thing. I just think it’s tricky to make that style work when the topic is something really newsworthy and complicated than like, lifestyle stuff. You know?
Maybe I’m just overly sensitive to it because of the topic though. I also question his stats on the types of people he thinks will die, because he seems to equate having co-morbidities with being elderly and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I mean I’m still fine with the premise of letting it burn out, as an idea, I just think he might be ignoring some of the darker aspects of that route by convincing/assuring himself it’ll mostly be like, 90 year olds.
I also think it’s interesting that he doesn’t mention individual emotion/individual experience and how that colors bias. Like it’s funny that he kind of calls out doctors for only focusing on the medical, but he is more afraid of the financial implications…and he works in wealth management or something. So…like of course he’s more scared of that, lol, he has way more exposure and spends more time thinking about that. I’d think it would be important for him to note that! I think politicians probably see the political instability implications of it the most. Teachers probably see the educational implications the most, etc.
(Just adding: I did like reading this! I come across as pissed off sometimes when I’m not, lol, so I’ll just say I’m 100% just interested and engaged with this, I’m not angry! I’ve been reading and researching nothing but covid and business stuff for work so I’m knee-deep in it at the moment and my wheels are really turning. It’s horrific in reality but very interesting intellectually.)
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The wealth management is a relatively new firm that he and his husband began 2-3 years ago IIRC. Before then they were private business owners and investors, and before then Joshua was the primary author of About.com’s investing/finance/economics writing (which I believe was all nuked a while back).
I think it’s just a rushed piece and more passionate and preachy than he normally is. He’s written extensively about mental models and all sorts of behavioral economics stuff. His back catalog has a lot of really good pieces in it.
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I’ve been reading him for years. Discovered him when I discovered MMM because he was a member of the MMM forums very early on, though left relatively soon, maybe a year or so.
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Feel compelled to point out that if individual consumers make the choice to buy what they need from smaller local suppliers rather than going through the behemoths, it will help prevent the behemoths from being our only choices once this all is over.
Along those lines, a small takeout restaurant in the seattle area has started this website where US food businesses can list themselves and generate orders outside of the big delivery services, which take up to 30% of the cost of the order and often screw the delivery people on tips:
https://www.catch22delivery.com/
Please consider sharing this info with your favorite local food places.
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OMD Livestream is kicking off at 2PM Pacific, 5PM Eastern, 9PM GMT, 5AM @LadyDuck time.
I have a vegan creme brûlée donut and a stack of questions to answer about the economy. we’ll be live here:
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Anyone have tips/guidelines for how to be an isolation pod? Do you just have to pick few people with the same risk tolerance as you or are there guidelines about who/how often you should shop, if you’re still going into work, how many people is a good idea?
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I’ve been wondering about this. I’d like to pod with a pair of friends, but… not sure it’s a good idea.
Since the US is still fighting to get a lot of people to take this seriously, I’m not sure there’s any official recs about podding (at least here).
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This is my opinion - I think the only way a pod makes sense is if the pod itself has zero contact outside the pod.
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That’s what I was thinking - and getting groceries here without contact is rough. 
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Yup. Otherwise you’re bringing risk of infection into the pod from your workplace or wherever.
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So the fact that I’m still going into work ~1/week means that I shouldn’t officially have a pod? I watched a movie at a friend’s house last weekend, and we hung out outside today, and we talked about officially becoming a pod. I’m in contact with my husband (who has been home for the last 2 weeks except for errands I was also on), as well as in a non-home environment at work (it’s a BSL2 lab so I honestly think its about the safest place to be, but I do walk through/interact with an office and a parking garage), and we’re both still grocery shopping/running other errands (we’re both getting garden stuff and I’m volunteering with a cat rescue). She’d like to add her sister and BIL once her sister does a 14 day isolation after air travel (sick family member, I probably wouldn’t have made the same choice but I don’t think it was irresponsible). No one in the pod is high risk or that anxious about getting sick, and we have similar risk tolerance with errands so far.
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My take in general is that every household should isolate - literally - as much as possible. Grocery delivery when possible. Taking time off work when possible. Minimizing every possible teeny tiny encounter with other humans or surfaces humans have touched.
Minimizing risk to ourselves isn’t the goal as much as minimizing the total number of potential encounters of ALL people to the virus.
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(cross posted)
I work in a healthcare setting with high risk patients and have had a ton of (virtual) meetings going over the numbers and when we expect spikes in critical illnesses.
What we do RIGHT NOW, this week and next in the US, is going to have the biggest impact on whether we will have resources available at the peak in each region.
From my understanding, what you are describing isn’t a singular pod, as much as accepting that the people you interact with have similar levels of low-risk of complications if you get ill.
We definitely all have to figure out what works best for our individual lives 
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It was a beautiful day so my friend and I took our kids to a park. The kids stayed 6 feet from each other and didn’t touch things, just talked. They were desperate for a social outlet. My friend and I brought lawn chairs and sat 6 feet from each other and talked. We were desperate for a social outlet. The sun shone and it felt so good to be out in the world with friends, albeit with weird no contact rules.
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