Thanos was right...

"...but the economy..."

A bit of a thought experiment. I should note that what follows is not a belief structure that I adhere to or one that anyone should adhere to for that matter. It is simply allowing my mind to wander down a road that it wouldn't normally travel.

The thesis statement that I would develop looks something like this:

The cultural and economic benefits of allowing COVID-19 in the long term would far outweigh the short term disruption it would cause.

A wretched and horrible thought for those of us who hold to values of God, family and honour but let's set those aside for a moment and frame our morality from a utilitarian ethic and our deity on the invisible hand of the market. We'll assume that capitalism is the producer of the greatest common good and should thus be held as the most essential of values for the flourishing of human life.

Let us also understand the effect of COVID-19 on the human population. Data is still relatively young and not complete but what we see as a certain trend is that the effects of the virus are disproportionate.

The challenge of the Thanos solution is that the results are unpredictable. 50% of the universe's population removed at random. One would assume an even distribution among all available populations with some outlying statistical variance but for the most part the fundamental makeup of the remaining population would be the same across demographics. There would be roughly the same ratio of men and women, similar effects on diversity, economic status and the like.

The resulting economic effect of simply snapping one's fingers and removing half the population would be a question of scaling resource consumption while still maintaining status quo on the social order. The economy would be cut neatly in half but the fundamental needs of that economy would still be the same.

Think of it this way: the percentage population that eats kale would remain the same thus there would continue to be a market for kale at the same share of the market. Thus the market, though reduced by half, would continue to produce kale along supply and demand curves.

Prices would look the same and the patterns of work, distribution, and societal value would still exist around it.

COVID-19, however, is not an evenly distributed exercise in population disruption. It is targeted along some very specific demographic measures thus creating a potentially disruptive force for change within the world.

The most significant of these is the disruption caused by a significant population reduction among seniors. COVID-19 is a significant threat for those in retirement age against the rest of the population. As of writing the mortality rate for those over the age of 65 averages to somewhere between 8 and 12 percent.

For those below that age the average drops significantly from one in ten to something more like one in a thousand. (Source)

If this virus were to spread through the whole of the population then we would see a fundamental redistribution of ages and a lowering of the average age of the population.

With that would come sweeping changes to economic and social dynamics that we can explore.

Such a reduction in population would be one of the largest generational transfers of wealth and capital. There is a profound economic reality that a large reservoir of capital resides in the retirement funds of seniors, trapped value in owned property, and other economic reserves. (Source)

To put it simply: those over the age of 65 hold the greatest percentage of wealth. There is no doubt that that wealth has been earned over a lifetime of work and investment but with that comes a particular societal deficit: that wealth is directed in a fundamentally disproportionate way impacting the due course of society.

To put it even more simply: old people have more money than young people and spend it on old people things. If the population was more evenly distributed the effect of this would still exist but it would be lessened. As it stands, however, with the Baby Boom skewing the distribution it means that what we are experiencing is an economy that is overproducing old people things over the economic short term.

Society is bent towards health care for the most expensive generation to treat. Entertainment for those who are wired toward nostalgia. Infrastructure for those who are the hardest to move and in locations that become locked out for those who are young.

This crowds out innovation. Directs our younger population towards some of the most stressful social service work contributing to a catering economy and a class war that is both rich and poor and old and young at the same time.

Funding for the arts and new ideas are removed for those who provide little to the economy, invest with the least interest in world changing risk, and who politically continue to influence a system to their collective advantage at the detriment of the next generation coming.

Imagine the finger snapping, however, and the generational imbalance was shifted.

Health care spending that is directed towards extending the care of those bearing the most complicated, labour and resource intensive conditions would be reallocated to education, infrastructure, and the arts.

Housing markets that are locking out young families would be opened and greater neighbourhood diversity would be created.

Racist structures of a generation bent on protecting its own would be deconstructed in favour of a more profound and inclusive structure.

The economy would shift to a more natural balance that would still include care for seniors but would return to a state of growth and focus on all generations.

The labour market would shift away from the culturally suffocating obsession with keeping old people happy and then less cranky and then simply not dying even though there isn't much point to living past a certain point.

Would there be a short term economic impact? Of course. Not on the spending side - as that existing wealth would simply transfer to younger generations who would spend it on more interesting things and to governments who would build schools, roads, and playgrounds. The reality of COVID-19, however, is that retraining for a vast swath of the population is already at hand and that the disruptions align with those that are already going to occur.

There is, of course, a nostalgic counter argument that it could be your grandmother who would succumb to illness. While sad it is still a statistical improbability with a 90% chance that she would be fine. It is also a sadness with a silver lining that you would be remembered in her will.

Wikky's take: She-Ra Sucks...

...and not for the reasons that the show's PR folks want you to notice.

It's interesting to me that since the debut of the rebooted Netflix series that the attention is being directed at 3 or 4 neo-bronies who don't think that the animation is "adult" or "sexy" enough.

Fuck that noise. It's a distraction being offered up to lump anyone who would criticize the show with the Trump voting, Jodie Whitaker Doctor-hating, sweaty uncels living in their mother's basement.

They exist. They're stupid. They're not the point.

I'm an older guy who thinks the reboot sucks.

I binged the series both out of a sense of nostalgia and to discern whether it was appropriate for my kids. I could give a rats ass about whether She-Ra has boobs and frankly I think it's better that she doesn't. The animation is mostly fine (the stupid shading under the eyes notwithstanding).

The problem with She-Ra isn't the animation - it's that it's not She-Ra.

It's Totally Spies.

A plastic, toy selling, and loosely based commercial vehicle that reduces the characters to vapid and bumbling shells of their original incarnations. This is what happens when Caillou grows up and stumbles into real world problems.

The original series wasn't without its problems as we find often in the He-Man She-Ra universe but at least the characters were imbued with some sense of depth and greatness. They struggled with problems of life and yet retained the gravitas of the situations they found themselves in.

In this incarnation you have a bunch of kids dropped into a civil war that threatens devastation to the environment and enslavement of people to a monolithic worldview and rather than creating an opportunity for younger viewers and parents to find a point of connect for difficult subjects - the severity of the world is dropped for Bow fawning over a shanty-singing flake of a pirate.

"My moustache is naturally shiny."

What. The. Fuck.

Everything is lost in the candy coating.

Adora's quest for self understanding.
Catra's sense of betrayal.
Glimmer's coming of age.

None of the stories have any substance or depth because mature and well-defined characters are replaced with 80s stereotypical valley girls.

The dialogue is atrocious. The mythos of the show barely acknowledged. Character development would be great were there characters to develop.

Even the mystery of She-Ra is removed. Everyone knows that Adora and She-Ra are one in the same. Except Shadowweaver and Hordak apparently - because...I don't know. I've given the fuck up at this point.

There is no feminism in She-Ra. There is no example for our daughters or contra-narrative for our sons that shows the depth, intelligence and strength of women in the face of a grave and difficult world.

There is only the empty ego of thoughtless mall-rats stumbling away from greatness and into the warm embrace of the nearest Wal-Mart toy aisle.

She-Ra sucks not because it isn't "Adult" enough.

She-Ra sucks because it isn't even "Kid" enough.

- W.

#fearandsmallpenises #2