Maggie's Farm

I dunno.....it seems to me this writer is simply visualizing what might happen rather taking the trouble to look at what's actually happening. The only thing I notice that COVID public policy seems to have done is shutter people inside with mandates and try to stifle their urge to interact and move about freely within the economy - and then, to perpetuate that to varying degrees across the globe. Nobody seems to be troubling themselves with defensible comparisons about the efficacy of these ideas, or their net cost to the human experience, except in partisan political theater.

People have been complaining about being replaced by automation and technology advances for longer than I've been around, and so far it looks like opportunity is still mostly outstripping the supply of humans, at least those with something to offer. My chief concern is that one side effect of the shutdowns is to teach people that they can sit at home and collect pretty good money, the equivalent of a mid-low wage job, and that is the most perverse and damaging incentive I've ever seen our government advance. I can see how it might well have stripped any notions of self-worth from millions of individuals that have never been properly educated in the value of their character and ability, because they've never been meaningfully challenged in a way they could respond to.