Covid Journal, April 23, 2020

“Con-sense” – n. abbreviation for ‘Conservative nonsense’. As in ‘trickle down fiscal policies benefit all of us’.

We are at risk of falling prety to Consense over the coming months as people try to rebalance the books with no economy, no food sources and an overwhelming and unprecedented level of debt that’s being created.

Austerity will be the key word that we all need to slough off because it’s central to Consense.

The Guardian proposes reinvention. After the shit everyone has been through over the last few months, why not?

Who would resist a logical re-evaluation of the way things were before Covid? This is our moment. Let’s not fuck it up.

And how about something a little more like neighbourhood-networks? I’m impressed with the city of London, ON for having put something like this together so quickly. Maybe other cities should take a page from their efforts?

Before we risk handing the reigns over to more Consense in the coming weeks, months and even years, let’s consider some more new rules:

1. If you’re going to protest about your body being ‘attacked’ by government foes, then stay the fuck away from any woman on the planet and her uterus. It’s none of your god damn business.
2. We need to think about moving away from an economy focused on aggregate GDP growth and figure out how to differentiate between those sectors that we want to push forward (eg. renewables, local food growing, education, health), those that we want to eliminate (eg. carbon production, over-fishing, industrial foods) and those that have to be kept in a ‘neutral’ state (eg. museums, libraries, other public institutions).
3. We need a better framework for wealth redistribution, including a universal basic income (UBI), a universal social policy system, a strong progressive taxation of income, profits and wealth and reduced working hours and/or benefits for all professions, especially those that are currently deemed ‘essential workers’.
4. We need to transform the way we think of growth and move towards regenerative agriculture based on biodiversity conservation, sustainable and mostly local and vegetarian food production. We need to reconsider any support or even allowance for animals for protein, although I appreciate that would be a ‘hot button’ debate issue. At a minimum, ‘humane’ practices need to be considered and implemented.

At some point, we’re going to have to discuss the concept of DEBT CANCELLATION as this will be the only way the planet will emerge from this mess.

Here are some other thoughts about what ‘normal’ was and what isolation means to the world now (I apologize, as I don’t have a source on this collection of ideas):

• World wide demand for oil has gone so low that we have to pay people to take our oil (american and  oil has gone below 0$ a barrel, West Texas Crude is -37$)
• Air pollution all over the world has gone way down.
• We’ve almost implemented UBI in Canada.
• People are realizing that they can cook their own food.
• Puzzles are sold out and sour dough cultures are being grown.
• A huge percentage of the work force has realised that they can do their job just as well from home.
• The lowest paid workers are being shown to be the most important workers in our society.
• The utter failure of conservative governments have been laid clear for all to see.
• Small companies are starting online ecommerce shops in record numbers. While this is something they should have done 20 years ago, at least they’re doing it nwo.