The World After Coronavirus

Here's another thought - I wonder if this will accelerate the timetable for marijuana being legalised in the UK?

Bear with me here.

There was an article I read last year which detailed a trip by a cross-party group of MPs (Labour, Lib Dem, and Tory) to one or two countries where it had been legalised to examine how that policy worked and look at what impact it had had on the society and the economy. The conclusions they came to was that it had more positives than negatives, and that there was increased willingness for it to happen, not just with the general public, but within parliament and the police force too. They each gave a prediction, all of which were that it would be legalised soon, with the timetable ranging from 2 years to 5.

The big confounding factor here is that there's been a Troy landslide, and the Tories are historically the most resistant to this in particular and the most opposed to lenient drug policies in general.

But I wonder if the need for financial stimulation of the economy will help push further in that direction. It'll generate a lot in taxes, which is what will be needed. It'll also take some strain off what will by then be a strained police force. And it may help serve as a way to placate the general public, and give them something to focus on other than scrutiny of recent government actions.

Maybe not (I still think that the "the Tories are very anti-drugs" factor will likely win out over everything else), but I would imagine that it'll be a conversation that is had.
 
rjh01 said:
I wonder if it would encourage the environmental activity in cities where air pollution was bad? People see what their city is like without air pollution then want to keep it that way. So they start to do something about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...lief-air-pollution-falls-lockdown-coronavirus
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Even better, it might encourage more employers and employees to work remotely.

I've been wasting my time promoting it for a decade now, but when the lockdown ends, which will be gradual in NZ at least, it's going to give companies and staff the opportunity to see the benefits of it.

Who wouldn't want to avoid sitting in their car burning money for 2-3 hours a day?

I think the fact things aren't going to snap back to how they were might just help.
 
The Atheist said:
Even better, it might encourage more employers and employees to work remotely.

I've been wasting my time promoting it for a decade now, but when the lockdown ends, which will be gradual in NZ at least, it's going to give companies and staff the opportunity to see the benefits of it.
Who wouldn't want to avoid sitting in their car burning money for 2-3 hours a day?
I think the fact things aren't going to snap back to how they were might just help.
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And think of what that would do for the economy? Imagine an extra 2-3 hours a day to shop? The same reasoning that there are few places to sit and rest at the Disney Lands (except for restaurants, of course.) Keep people out there spending their money!
 
Then setting your own hours. When this becomes common houses would need an extra room or two for the office. Then if a couple have two cars then could sell one and save even more money. It would raise the issue of supervision. How would anyone know what hours a person worked? If this becomes unimportant then this would give a boost to work from home.
 
rjh01 said:
Then setting your own hours. When this becomes common houses would need an extra room or two for the office. Then if a couple have two cars then could sell one and save even more money. It would raise the issue of supervision. How would anyone know what hours a person worked? If this becomes unimportant then this would give a boost to work from home.
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Well, "results" would be the big one for higher level professional jobs. But most people with jobs that can be done from home tend to involve a lot of computer or telephone activity both of which are trivially easy to track (especially since the telephone activity is likely to be voice over IP for future homeworkers).
 
There certainly is something wrong with value being determined by how many hours you work as opposed to what results you get. Someone who is more efficient with their time and better at their job will simply end up doing more work for the same pay for fear of being deemed "lazy" and looked upon less favourably than someone who works at half the speed.

But there is a huge potential pitfall. Work becoming goal-orientated as opposed to time-orientated might mean that some people end up being able to work 5 hour days. But it will almost certainly mean that some people end up working 14 hour days. And that problem will become exacerbated over time and as new people enter the workforce.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
There certainly is something wrong with value being determined by how many hours you work as opposed to what results you get. Someone who is more efficient with their time and better at their job will simply end up doing more work for the same pay for fear of being deemed "lazy" and looked upon less favourably than someone who works at half the speed.

But there is a huge potential pitfall. Work becoming goal-orientated as opposed to time-orientated might mean that some people end up being able to work 5 hour days. But it will almost certainly mean that some people end up working 14 hour days. And that problem will become exacerbated over time and as new people enter the workforce.
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The company I was at instituted a new policy of measurement -- everything had to have concrete numbers. At one point for the IT department they were talking about measuring our productivity by counting the lines of code we were producing. Which is the exact opposite of efficiency.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
There certainly is something wrong with value being determined by how many hours you work as opposed to what results you get. Someone who is more efficient with their time and better at their job will simply end up doing more work for the same pay for fear of being deemed "lazy" and looked upon less favourably than someone who works at half the speed.

But there is a huge potential pitfall. Work becoming goal-orientated as opposed to time-orientated might mean that some people end up being able to work 5 hour days. But it will almost certainly mean that some people end up working 14 hour days. And that problem will become exacerbated over time and as new people enter the workforce.
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You are only thinking about a very small slice of working people. In retail and service industries (for example) these require bodies to be in place for opening hours etc. On a production line you usually have to work to a set minimum rate.
 
alfaniner said:
The company I was at instituted a new policy of measurement -- everything had to have concrete numbers. At one point for the IT department they were talking about measuring our productivity by counting the lines of code we were producing. Which is the exact opposite of efficiency.
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The IT industry has form in this area, such as paying bonuses for fixed bugs, to the same people who wrote the code with the bugs initially.
 
Darat said:
You are only thinking about a very small slice of working people. In retail and service industries (for example) these require bodies to be in place for opening hours etc. On a production line you usually have to work to a set minimum rate.
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I thought that the fact that I was only talking about industries to which it was applicable went without saying.
 
Here in the US, my hope is that universal health care and sick leave will be seen as a true matter of national security. It's seems absurd that most Americans never thought anything of eating in a restaurant or staying in a hotel where the people who handle the food and clean the rooms often have to work sick. Why did we ever think that was okay?
 
Craig4 said:
Here in the US, my hope is that universal health care and sick leave will be seen as a true matter of national security. It's seems absurd that most Americans never thought anything of eating in a restaurant or staying in a hotel where the people who handle the food and clean the rooms often have to work sick. Why did we ever think that was okay?
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Totally this! Or, for that matter, paying sub-minimum wage for personal service.
Selfishly, I also worry that the US will choose to eliminate things like buffets and salad bars rather than providing health care.
 
Changing the subject, news websites are getting more popular. This is for their accuracy. Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...n-advertising-puts-pressure-on-media-industry

Edit. Reason: People want to know information rather than entertainment. This cannot happen by reading random blogs. News outlets with a reputation for accuracy, such as the guardian will be the main beneficiaries. How long this effect will last I have no idea. I hope for a long time.
 
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ChristianProgressive said:
I remain skeptical about that. I suspect that China in particular took a much harder hit than they are admitting.
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They probably had more deaths than they admit to but I don't think that figure is all that high. When they finally implemented a lock down and social distancing they enforced it aggressively. Since we know that social distancing works and they eventually did what works very well, they probably didn't lose too many more people than they reported.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Here's another thought - I wonder if this will accelerate the timetable for marijuana being legalised in the UK?

Bear with me here.

There was an article I read last year which detailed a trip by a cross-party group of MPs (Labour, Lib Dem, and Tory) to one or two countries where it had been legalised to examine how that policy worked and look at what impact it had had on the society and the economy. The conclusions they came to was that it had more positives than negatives, and that there was increased willingness for it to happen, not just with the general public, but within parliament and the police force too. They each gave a prediction, all of which were that it would be legalised soon, with the timetable ranging from 2 years to 5.

The big confounding factor here is that there's been a Troy landslide, and the Tories are historically the most resistant to this in particular and the most opposed to lenient drug policies in general.

But I wonder if the need for financial stimulation of the economy will help push further in that direction. It'll generate a lot in taxes, which is what will be needed. It'll also take some strain off what will by then be a strained police force. And it may help serve as a way to placate the general public, and give them something to focus on other than scrutiny of recent government actions.

Maybe not (I still think that the "the Tories are very anti-drugs" factor will likely win out over everything else), but I would imagine that it'll be a conversation that is had.
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I don't see weed becoming legal or even tolerated in the UK for a while, tbh. Any time this debate is brought up in the UK, the verdict generally tends to be we've got bigger fish to fry...

Channel 4 had a pretty detailed look at the topic a few years ago, the one where Jon Snow famously had a "whitey", and despite the generally positive verdict they reached on their panel of talking heads, too many people are still pig-ignorant to the idea and are put off by it, and most in parliament just don't seem arsed enough to consider it.

No doubt, even by taking the approach of the Netherlands, tolerating the very harmless plant, is obviously something that would be beneficial for the UK society in general, this isn't even debatable, IMO, unless you're an uptight parent from an eternal 1976 world of worry. The positive reasons for legalizing marijuana are many, but sadly, too many people still live in that perpetually worrying world of 1976, still thinking Reefer Madness is a gripping, piece of scientific research that supports the idea that weed is the Devil's drug of choice, lol.
 
I'm thinking of the long history of the East Coast of the U.S. as a short-distance travel destination, and wondering if there will be any long-lasting effects on travel practices that might benefit the coastal towns. It's been a rough 80 years or so for Atlantic City and a hundred other beach destinations, my present town among them. Anyplace that had a "heyday" is almost by definition a rundown dump now. Why? Because for the past half century, a "real" vacation has been to some Caribbean island, or Disney World, or Vegas, or the coast of Mexico, or Europe, or a cruise. Who wants clam shacks and miniature golf and free tribute-band performances in the park and the possibility of rain when there's reef diving and jet-skis and Cirque du Soleil?

So, we'll see. Covid-19 alone won't roll that back, all by itself. But there are other factors in play as well, and in combination, we might see some change.
 
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