Imagine a prehistoric family who lived in a cave, high up a mountain – let’s call them the Cave Family.
They were quite advanced for their time, and perhaps the evolutionary step that led to us humans today.
Having suffered and seen suffering enough, it was common sense for them to keep some survival supplies on hand – basically food and water. Enough for a year or three.
A pandemic came along, they noticed the deaths and figured staying away from sick people would be a good thing. So they did, they hid in their cave until it went away. Life was a bit boring – they missed the thrill of killing beasts, and missed fresh meat – but being alive was all that mattered.
Fast-forward until today and everything is the same except for two things:
- The economy is going to be fucked
- Governments are deciding between the economy and lives
This is the problem with our current version of capitalism. We place importance on greed and winning.
One way of looking at the world is What I Need +. That is, if I have all the food, water, shelter, clothing and security I need, everything else is a wonderful bonus.
What we have during this crisis is a different viewpoint. We will all have all the food, shelter and so on that we need. Yet we are worried about who has more of the bonuses that we don’t actually need. To the point that some people will fight and steal.
We will get depressed (real depression, affecting our health) about our superannuation diminishing, even though it will bounce back to normal in a few years.
Losing our jobs can destroy us for a while, in a capitalist way. Here in Australia, we will still have food, shelter and so on for those without work. Those people just won’t be able to reach their goal of 2 investment properties as quickly as they had planned, during this crisis.
People have literally taken cruise holidays, despite the massively obvious risk, because it is their dream and they spent money on it. Some people like that will die because of capitalism.
A pandemic is a serious, heart-breaking, damaging and potentially species-ending event. But we are suffering worse because of the shape of economics we are using.
We need to start looking at life as bonuses beyond what we need, and model the economy around that mindset.