*That's quite intense. Clearly the "Motherboard staff" have had some quarantine time to think this over.
*I'm not a "democratic socialist," or whatever ideological term describes their social-reform pitch here, but I wouldn't mind of a world of the kind they're describing; it sounds attractive to me.
The post-epidemic political wish-list
By Motherboard Staff
Mar 20 2020, 8:01pm...
Today, there are no clues as to the danger lurking outside my front door except for the eerie absence of people. Our lives are being restricted by a virus that is invisible to the naked eye, verging on abstraction, and yet it is terrifyingly real. Compare this to all the ways our lives are restricted by the many brutal rules, payments, and punishments of capitalism, which are now being revealed as actual fabrications that were subject to quick, substantive change all along—in other words, fake as hell.
The difference is: We can't change the fact that a virus is attacking the human species. We can change the fact that capitalists are attacking human life, too.
From arbitrary data caps being suspended by internet providers, to eviction bans, to suddenly-implemented protections for some workers, we are seeing that things we have long been told are impossible or unfeasible are suddenly OK. And as the estimates for how long our new world of "social distancing" will last stretch from weeks, to months, to a year, it's becoming more likely that when this is all over, we might not be able to return to "normal" even if we wanted to. But why would we want to?
It is clear that capitalism has failed us when people need support the most. The society we built on the premises of grift, waste, cruelty, and greed, is not one that can survive even a moderate disruption like a nasty virus without mass casualties and wrecked lives and bodies. What we urgently need, now and for the next crisis, is a society built more on resilience, solidarity, foresight, and compassion.
At this critical moment, when anything feels possible for good or for ill, we need to imagine how things can change for the better and to prevent future catastrophes....
