I am part of the movement currently led by Bernie Sanders. He is still right, this crisis has laid bare many of the problems inherent to our modern system of capitalism.
The healthcare system
For-profit health systems largely shaped by private insurers, entities that provide ZERO healthcare, has created a system run by financial engineers. One of the most alarming consequences exposed by this crisis is the current business practice standard of just in time inventory.
Hospitals are literally making their own personal protective gear out of office supplies likely, at least in part, because of this practice. It makes business sense, space costs money, devoting storage space to normally untapped supplies is viewed as wasteful by a financial engineer.
There are a ton of other problems with the profit-based system I could go into, but this failing is going to end up getting a lot of healthcare professionals killed.
The economic system
Bernie, Warren and many non-friedmanite economists, have been raising alarm bells about a majority of our population not even being able to set aside $400 for a crisis. Now we are all in a crisis, what is going to happen to the most of us without that $400.
No one yet knows how many of these folks have lost jobs in the last week. DEMOCRATIC leadership is mired in a debate about how to “target” relief. We just need a universal disbursement now. We can claw back the $2,000 a month for those well off enough not to require it later. The people without $400 to survive a crisis of this magnitude need help now. Rent is due in a week.
Why $2,000? The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in America two years ago was $1,025. A $500 check, or a $1,000 check won’t come close to hacking it. Not unless you mandate a nationwide moratorium on evictions.
These payments will need to be monthly at least as long as we are in a national state of emergency.
The biggest problem with “targeting” is you create a huge bureaucratic system that WILL LEAVE OUT PEOPLE WHO NEED THE HELP NOW. I don’t know the details of what these Democratic leaders are proposing well enough, so I am going to turn to another example, Obamacare. When I was on it, you got a subsidy if you made $29,000 a year or less. Is the person earning $29,001 in so much a different circumstance than the person earning $28,999? Of course not, but setting up that sort of means-testing leaves millions of people without the help they could really use for the sake of “targeting.”
Trying to respond to a crisis of this scale by picking what fucking line to draw is just madness.
our healthcare system ad our economy combined
This virus has already led to massive layoffs. Most people get their healthcare coverage through their employers. They are now losing their healthcare. Even if congress moves to cover all medical expenses due to coronavirus, these laid-off workers, with no more coverage are still going to have heart attacks, broken bones and all the other myriad of ways people have health problems. basing your access to healthcare to an employer is madness. This proves it.
Our electoral system
Ohio postponed its primary due to this emergency. Illinois, Florida and Arizona did not. Let me say this, I am glad I live in Ohio.
This crisis makes it clear we need to adopt a mail in vote system across the country. It’s easy for voters, it can be done to inform voters of the issues and candidates better and this crisis has demonstrated it is a far more resilient system than what we do now. We must push for automatic voter registration and a vote by mail system modelled on the Oregon system. I voted there for a dozen years. It is by far the best votng experience I have ever had. It’s not even close. This is a no brainer.
Let's not forget the climate
Italy has been on lockdown for two weeks now. The canals of Venice are now crystal clear, dolphins now seen in those canals, swans too. Nature is resilient if we give it even a little space.
That said, we have doing next to nothing before this crisis. That has meant stronger storms with more broad-reaching consequences. I tremble at the thought of a Katrina or Sandy level storm hitting in the middle of this crisis. What do we do, how do w respond? The current shortage of medical equipment at the very BEGINNING of our current crisis is devastating, pile some widespread climate-based disaster on top of that and…well the thought of that alone makes me nauseous.
Complexity
All of these issues are insanely complex, I am just touching a few glaring issues exposed by our current crisis. It will take people at all levels of society to deal with the crisis in front of us right now. I have faith we can get there if we come together. We are hampered by our system. I mean we really have hit the limits of late-stage capitalism and “rugged individualism” when individual doctors have to staple together a part of their surgical gown to a page protector to provide themselves with even inadequate protection.
The movement led by Bernie has been raising the alarm bells about these issues for five years now (the Occupy Movement was the spark as well). One of the challenges of this movement, one I believe in deeply, has been the frame of revolutionary rhetoric. It alienates far too many people that otherwise see the same problems we do. When people agree, but respond negatively to the rhetoric false divisions do arise.
This is not to blame the movement, nor to blame those unwilling to listen to the message of the movement we need to make the changes we need to become a more just and resilient society.
In the face of this crisis, we all need to come together, to begin to do that we need a frame, a sort of rallying cry to mend fences and get us working together. Red, Blue, Corporatist, Socialist, Black, White, Poor, Prosperous, Boomer, Zoomer; we all need to come together.
We need to focus our energies on our common purpose. That’s why I call on the movement led by Bernie to drop the revolutionary rhetoric and adopt a new frame and I call on those not yet a part of the movement, but sympathetic to the issues we all see exposed by this crisis to join us to Recover, Reimagine and Rebuild.
I know coming together around a common frame may not seem like the most critical thing right now, but we must mend the rifts between us in order to confront the magnitude of this crisis and the consequences that are going to be felt for years to come.
This presents an opportunity to dismantle some of our old and failing institutions because of their roots in racial and gender oppression as well. That will be a key component of reimagining and rebuilding our systems and society.