Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 9 – Both because the
response to the pandemic has adumbrated what a very different world could be
created and because past pandemics have in fact radically changed the world,
many commentators today are suggesting that with the end of the coronavirus
threat, the world will change quickly and radically.
But while it may ultimately lead to
radical shifts, Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev says, there are
compelling reasons to believe that in the short term, powerful interests will
work to ensure that the old world is restored rather than an entirely new one
created in its place (rbc.ru/opinions/politics/08/05/2020/5eb3cc989a7947f09020c981).
Indeed, one can say, he concludes,
that the pandemic has changed the world “more mentally than materially,” more
in terms of how people see the situation around them and its possibilities than
in terms of how those circumstances can be transformed immediately. And that is
likely to become a focus of politics in the coming months and years.
Inozemtsev points to five ways in
which the world after the pandemic is likely to remain “hostage to the excesses”
which characterized it before the coronavirus arrived. First, the world is and will remain dependent
on natural resources. Those dependent on exports of these like Russia may see
prices fall but they won’t see demand disappear.
Second, the pandemic has shown to
many that they can get along without many of the products that in fact are
unnecessary; but dispensing with these creates a problem few want to face: “hundreds
of millions of people throughout the world … will remain without work” if
others make that choice. There will be powerful efforts to prevent that from
happening.
Third, the service economies of
Europe and the United States have infrastructure that they won’t want to see
idle – hotels, restaurants, and transport just to name three. Some may want to
do video conferencing but many will want to go back to the way in which they
did business before, travelling and meeting face to face.
Fourth, there is an important aspect
of the service economy that will also work in that direction, Inozemtsev says. Only
about 10 percent are traded internationally while 90 percent are produced and consumed
locally within nation states. Governments
won’t want this sector to simply disappear.
That would lead to disaster: they won’t even send migrants home.
And fifth, “one must understand that
the extraordinary consumption [of the recent past] has an important demographic
aspect” that isn’t going to change overnight and thus will act as a constraint
on radical changes in the immediate future.
“The contemporary economy is
oriented toward the possibility of living alone: families have become less stable,
people more mobile, children less numerous, and attention to them in developed
countries has grown,” the economist points out.
Reversing any of that will take decades if it can be done at all, and
hence the economy won’t change that much.
“The
epidemic came to a world which imagined itself not simply as a comfortable
place for life but also as a sufficiently highly organized system,” he says. It could be liquidated and a new world built
but only if people were prepared to destroy far more of its infrastructure and
integuments than they are.
“Therefore,”
Inozemtsev says, “the world of the beginning of the 2020s will be little
different from that of the end of the 2010s.” Of course, “that doesn’t mean
that people will not draw lessons from the crisis,” something that reflects the
fact that “the world is changing but more mentally than materially.”
According
to Inozemtsev, “the pandemic has shown us many aspects of that world which
could be put in place in the distant future.”
But the desire to go back to normalcy and thus the past will continue
and will be supported by the structures and interests that earlier world has on
its side and will use to block radical change in the near future.
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