Silver Linings

I just received a phone call from a friend of mine in the restaurant/deli business, probably the hardest hit of all sectors.  Having a number of friends in this line of work, I can tell you it is not a business I would want to be in under normal circumstances.  The hours are horrific.  It’s hard to get reliable and honest help.  And the tax and regulatory burden is awful.  And now the lockdown threatens to put many out of business.

Ten weeks in and while things look like they are loosening up, it’s hard to be optimistic with 30 million unemployed and many businesses just hanging on.

But on this Memorial Day weekend, I’m going to try to put forward some things to be optimistic about, and some of the positive side effects of COVID19.

China.  As a society, we have been willfully blind to the malevolence of the Chinese Communist Party and its long term designs.   We permitted our manufacturing base to be supplanted by the Chinese.  We assumed that the Chinese government perpetrated the Tiananmen Square massacre miraculously had an epiphany and, while it still evidenced some rough spots in its behavior, it would eventually become more benign.  As several foreign policy scholars have noted, the mask is off now.  The lies and cover up of the outbreak has exposed this regime for what it really is and we have been slapped awake.  We have finally woken up to the fact that many strategic items and pharmaceuticals are manufactured by China and that the regime would not hesitate to hold us hostage.  And in the midst of the pandemic, China continues to assert itself in the South China Sea, has now reneged on its commitment to permit Hong Kong’s autonomy, and is threatening Taiwan.  Better to know this all now.

Supply Chains.  The open belligerence of China will trigger the movement of supply chains, and the benefit of this migration should accrue to us.  As Peter Theil has pointed out, our innovation has occurred mostly in the realm of bits and not of stuff.  Although I think he overstates his case, especially when it comes to energy (think horizontal drilling and fracking), the way to innovate in making stuff is to actually make it.  Bringing much of this back home will allow us to do more of the innovating.

Climate Change.  The COVID19 models that were used to shut down the economy, throw 30 million people out of work and ruin hundreds of thousands of businesses were flawed and many of the “experts” were wrong on a number of counts.   The data inputs were flawed, the death rates were overstated, and hospital have had layoffs.  The temporary treatment centers, like Chicago’s McCormick Place have been shuttered.  One positive development is that the hysteria over climate change and the models predicting where the weather will be in 100 years will be discredited, along with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).  Can you really look at us with a straight face now and tell us that the IPCC will be less biased than WHO?  One positive outcome in all this is that we will likely shrug off the draconian measures that these bodies would impose on us.  We the people, not scientists in the bubble, should decide how we would like to live.

Education.  The positive effects on education will likely come in two layers.  In the K-12 levels, we are learning that for some people, homeschooling is a more viable option, and this will erode the power of union infested, indoctrinating public school system.  This is exactly why the “experts” at Harvard are pushing to bar homeschooling.  In higher education, the financial shakeout is long overdue.  Again, I defer to Peter Theil, who has been talking about the education bubble for a long time and that restructuring is long overdue (https://www.thecollegefix.com/peter-thiel-predicts-reformation-of-higher-education-in-speech-to-student-journalists/).  Universities have gotten fat and happy with foreign students and government subsidized student debt.  Consequently, we now have a layer of administration and disciplines that aren’t disciplines (gender studies) pervading our higher ed system.  Michigan has something like 50 highly paid “diversity officers” doing what exactly, no one knows.  The hit to university budgets will force some tough choices and will wash out some colleges.  Further, we will be less keen on educating Chinese students as our relationship with China gets realigned.  I see a move to more lifelong learning and a migration to community colleges and HBCUs as an alternative to our expensive, bureaucratic university system.  COVID19 will hasten the pop of the education bubble.

Liberty.  I also see a renewed in interest in the genius of the Founders.  Upon the election of Donald Trump, the Left screamed that Trump was a fascist, and compared him to Hitler and Mussolini.  But in the pandemic, Trump has largely deferred to the states in practice.   And in the states, we have seen governors and mayors seizing a little power, and not hesitate to abuse it.  Gretchen Whitmer, Bill De Blasio, Lori Lightfoot, JB Pritzker, Ralph Northam, Andrew Cuomo, among them ran roughshod over the Bill of Rights, while reserving certain privileges for themselves.  Lightfoot got a haircut while others could not.  Whitmer had a graduation party for her kid, while others were barred.  De Blasio went to the park while others were restricted from doing so.  JB Pritzker sent workers from Illinois to work on his home in Wisconsin and sent his family to Florida, violating the stay at home order, causing me to name Pritzker “Maduro Lite,” although there is nothing light about Pritzker.  We now know what our “benevolent leaders” will do with a bit of power.  Sean Penn at a rally, admonished Chicagoans to “trust your leaders” last week.  We learned that if we want to retain our liberty, we should trust none of them and keep a watchful eye on them always.

While we have all suffered greatly under the pandemic, we have learned a number of lessons and if there is good to come out of this, we should make sure that they remain etched in our minds.  For this education has been expensive.