Nature takes its toll

Why we won't wake up in a new world after the coronacrisis

One of the favorite slogans of motivational specialists is “Turn a crisis into an opportunity!”. Its essence lies in the fact that any crisis is a breaking of the formed stereotypes, the destruction of the system familiar to everyone and, accordingly, the emergence of new chances for energetic and enterprising citizens.

How many such hopes are associated with any crisis, no one counted. Whenever something falls, collapses and slips from under your feet, whenever people lose income, are left without work and without a clear prospect for the future, rosy-cheeked cheerful optimists immediately arise: “Well, this is an opportunity, let's go ahead , for the cause!

There are several stereotypes that are characteristic of especially underdeveloped countries when they enter another devastating crisis, and at the same time they have no choice but to console themselves with "new opportunities" that no one will actually use.

Hit number one is import substitution. Whenever the national currencies of weak countries fall, and imports rise in price accordingly, a new slogan appears: “Now our producer will have the opportunity to recover, and no one but us will take advantage of it.”

This slogan is based on the notion that a weak currency boosts production. In theory, of course, this is true, and in some cases - in practice. For example, China is slowly weakening the yuan all the time, thereby increasing the competitiveness of its industry.

But in order for the economic crisis to lead to an increase in production, it is necessary, at least, that it is available, on the right scale and with modern technologies.

Great hopes for global changes are always pinned on a crisis. The fact that "from now on the world will never be the same as before." The fact that, having plunged headlong into a barrel of slop, a person will become smarter, more honest, cleaner and even somewhere somehow more beautiful.

Alas, in world history you can find a few crises and cataclysms that have changed the course of human development.

Well, for example, the great epidemic of bubonic plague in Europe in the Middle Ages. Due to the fact that it mowed down almost half of the population of the continent, we got capitalism in its current form. Due to the sharp decline in the population, there was no one to work on the land plots of the surviving rich; accordingly, there was a labor shortage, and after that the surviving commoners refused to work for a piece of bread.

The changes in the economic system that eventually led to the current model of capitalism were made possible only by the epidemic. It is terrifying to think what the world of today could have been like had there not been a great plague in its time.

Undoubtedly, among the same global crises with far-reaching consequences was the collapse after 1989 of the socialist system, which led to the reformatting of a good half of the globe. There are probably a couple of other examples, but they are few and far between.

Whenever another crisis pushed everyone to the wall and gave rise to hopes for a better future, after the end of the acute phase, people again became what they had always been.

The collapse of the Dutch economy due to the tulip bubble did not bury the idea of ​​the financial market, the stock exchange and the stock. Holland recovered and developed these institutions further. In 1929, the US fell into the Great Depression, which was also linked to the financial market, but what are the end results? The storm has subsided, and Wall Street still dictates fashion in the world of finance.

The crisis of 2008 is a crisis that arose 90% precisely due to the financial market, stocks, easy lending, the habit of taking loans without thinking about tomorrow.

How many hopes did the idealists have that finally this total collapse would teach people the mind!

The fact that you can’t rely solely on loans in life, that you need to borrow as much as you can pull, that the banks will subdue their appetites, and that in the end the richest will be those who produce something real, and not just trade air on the exchanges.

But everything returned to its place again - loans, mortgages, stocks, bonds, derivatives.

And oddly enough, millions of people employed in the financial sector are in no hurry to stand in line in the personnel departments of metallurgical concerns.

Now they are talking with enthusiasm about the new world after the epidemic. The value system will change. The way you do business will change. People will change. Everyone will work remotely. Oil prices will fall, Trump will lose, commodity empires will collapse. Alas, as in previous cases, and here the hope will not come true.

No coronavirus will change humanity, unless, of course, it radically mows it down, as in the Middle Ages (and this will not happen). The coronavirus crisis will not bring any global changes. Nothing fundamentally will change.

And the world will be exactly the same filthy/beautiful as it was before the corona.

The shock will pass a maximum of a month or two after the vaccine, and the coronavirus will be spoken of as an unpleasant neighbor on the landing. The virus has already shown how vulnerable humanity is, but this is not its last lesson. Very soon he will show us how stable human nature is.