Daily Archives: April 9, 2020

This is our latest article on the new coronavirus as it impacts Rio de Janeiros favelas.

Thats whats happening. If you dont create a plan for the peripheries of the whole country, you choose to let the poor die by their own luck. Gilson Rodrigues

As confirmed cases of Covid-19 appear in favelas across Brazil, residents are demanding immediate and specific measures to ensure their right to isolate amid oncoming economic paralysis. Despite President Jair Bolsonaros minimization of the crisis (he has referred to Covid-19 as a little flu and blamed both the media and state governors for creating hysteria), public health professionals are unequivocal on the effectiveness and need for social isolation.

Closer adherence to social isolation measures means a slower infection rate, ensuring the sickness does not overwhelm health care system capacities, a result that has become known globally as flattening the curve. Favela residents, however, both on account of neighborhood density and economic informality, are often unable to exercise their right to isolate and protect their communities.

From Rio de Janeiro Governor Wilson Witzels first recommendations to stay at home, favela activists and residents alike began to raise their voices, pointing out the crucial concern: many workers do not have the luxury of working from home. The solutions presented for many do not fit all, read a Facebook post from longtime community leader Itamar Silva, from Santa Marta, a favela located in Rios South Zone.

Indeed, these measures are aclass privilege, protecting only the portion of the population that can afford to implement them: remote work is not a viable option for those who do not have access to a computer or Internet, not to mention that most favela residents work in operational jobs that can only be performed in person. In a public letter, the #CoronaNasPeriferias coalition, a group of communicators from Brazilian peripheries and favelas, asserted that: [Isolation] is not allowed in our reality! The periphery is the domestic employee, the doorman, the app driver, the delivery man, the informal worker who needs to be in the bus and in the subway selling his products to bring income to the house, or the local merchant who cannot suspend his activities.

These workers find themselves in a dilemma: continue to work or stop eating. This is especially the case for favela residents, 86% of whom declared they would have difficulty buying food within one month if they had to stay at home without income, according to a survey conducted by the Data Favela polling group. For mothers in the favelas, the figure rises to 92%.

Experiences from other countries show that quarantine may last far longer. Wuhan, China, the heart of the epidemic outbreak, is about to lift lockdown after more than two months; Italy, the country with the highest Covid-19 death rate, has spent four weeks with strong social isolation measures with no clear end in sight; and many Latin American countries are already imposing strict, renewable lockdown measures for several weeks at a time.

If you had to stay at home without income, how long would it take for you to have trouble buying basic items like food? Data Favela

Many unprotected workers, therefore, continue to work out of necessity, leaving home and exposing themselves to the virus. Rio de Janeiros initial containment measures did not prevent the virus from entering the favelas. These communities, often dense, now face an uphill battle, as local conditions provide a dangerous breeding ground for the viruss propagation, made worse by unreliable access to water and a lack of basic sanitation.

Workers from outlying areas continue to cross the city, running the risk of infection on public transportation and in the areas they service, often the citys wealthier areas. The first cases in Rio occurred in people who were circulating abroad, which are usually the people with more purchasing power. Now, there are people working in their homes, in the South Zone and in Barra. Babysitters, maids, day laborers, drivers who come from poorer regions and who will take the virus to their homes, warned the infectious diseases specialist Edimilson Migowski in an interview with G1 Globo.

In the first days of the epidemic, one emblematic case spoke to this reality: a Rio de Janeiro maid died after possibly contracting Covid-19 from her boss. Her employer had self-quarantined in her upscale Leblon apartment after returning from a trip to Italy without warning or exempting her maid. Similarly, one of So Paulos first suspected coronavirus deaths was a 25-year old Uber driver.

As schools closed across the state, many favela parents have had little choice but to leave their children in the care of their grandparents, most of whom fall directly into the diseases designated at-risk group.This is even more frequent in the 20% of favela households led by single mothers.

As social isolation measures are strengthened, many foresee a blow to household finances. This is the case for 84% of favela residents, who expect their income to suffer during the crisis. Favelas are particularly vulnerable to the citys paralysis, as the majority of favela residents work in the informal economy. The Data Favela survey shows that 68.75% of favela workers are considered informal (self-employed, freelance, or without any type of contract with their employer) compared to 41.3% nationally, according to the most recent assessment by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Empty beaches, squares, and buses have left street vendors and informal salespeople (camels) without customers. Employers are no longer calling in search of day labor. Many are now left in a precarious situation. As alarming as this sounds, it may indicate a situation of social upheaval in the near future, affirmed Renato Meirelles, founder of Instituto Locomotiva, which produces Data Favela, in the study.

Favela activists have pointed to the need for economically viable containment measures and many have mobilized to implement local emergency solutions to meet the needs of their communities. This was the case of a group of youth from the peripheries who are the children of domestic workers that penned a manifesto for liberation with remuneration for our mothers lives (essentially, temporary paid leave). The group pointed out that their mothers faced the impossible choice of either continuing to work as domestic servants for wealthy families in the citys South Zone or take off and lose their pay.

Brazil has more than 6 million domestic workers, the majority of whom are non-contractual and therefore unprotected, making them dependent on the altruism and generosity of private employers, a remnant of Brazils inequality rooted in its history as the worlds largest slave state. Many activists are calling for solidarity. As William Reis, coordinator of the socio-cultural project AfroReaggae, wrote in Veja Rio: It is time for the union of the State. It is time for those who have the privilege of having a maid at home to put into practice the rhetoric that she is almost family and take care that these women who take care of their children do not have their health affected.

Local organizations have also sent out calls for donations in money, hygiene products, and foodstuffs to respond to the urgent needs of their communities. They started distributions immediately. Residents also activated local solidarity networks to support one another within their communities, with efforts to shop for the elderly, share running water, and circulate health and prevention information.

Hi dear old neighbors, you dont need to leave your house. If you need something from the street (bakery, market, drugstore) you can count on us. Voz das Comunidades

The scale of the crisis, however, requires structural measures, and many citizen networks have united to call for policies targeted at the most precarious workers.On March 20, just days after social isolation measures were taken up in several Brazilian states, including Rio de Janeiro, a group of more than one hundred civil society organizations launched a campaign to demand an emergency basic income of up to R$1500 (US$287) per family for informal workers, and thus for the vast majority of favela residents. In just four days, over 430,000 signatories joined the movement. When Paulo Guedes, Brazils hyper-orthodox Minister of Economics, announced a R$200 (US$38) payment for only 38 million workers, economists and favela thought-leaders erupted. Among these were Nathlia Rodrigues, the YouTuber and low-income financial educator commonly known as Nath Finanas, who tweeted, Its VERY LOW. It doesnt even pay the rent.

The mobilization bore fruit. The government buckled under pressure and approved R$600 (US$115) for individuals or R$1200 [US$230] per family (or this same amount in the case of single mothers), and Congress passed the measure days later. It will apply to some 100 million unassisted informal and low-income workers as well as unemployed over a period of three months. The government has now launched the programs registration website and app, and payments are expected to begin this week.

Though the basic emergency income represents a major victory, the measure is not unlike efforts being adopted elsewhere, as governments launch unprecedented stimulus packages to mitigate the economic impacts of the pandemic and speed recovery. In the US, the Trump administration approved $250 billion in direct payments with values starting at US$1200 to low and middle-income individuals and families; Chile, Argentina, Canada, India, Peru, Portugal, and many others are also creating cash transfer programs for those who have lost their income.

Emergency basic income: pay up, Bolsonaro!

Favela as targets? Anouk Aflalo Dor

Aside from taking last-minute ownership and credit for basic income payments, President Bolsonaros actions have either misfired or, worse, have directly obstructed attempts to protect vulnerable populations.

Bolsonaro issued an executive decree that included an article allowing companies to suspend employee salaries without firing them for a period of up to four months. The measure received immediate backlash from opposition parties and civil society, and the article was withdrawn from the decree within hours.

While governors from around Brazil have acted quickly, some with proposals to postpone utility payments and many acting in support of basic income measures, those who opted to close down non-essential services and limit circulation have seen their efforts contravened by the federal government in both uncoordinated policy and anti-science rhetoric.

Following a televised address in which the president questioned containment measures, favelas reported renewed circulation. The government even attempted to launch an anti-social isolation communication campaign titled Brazil Cannot Stop, featuring video content advocating for commerce to reopen, and depicting and targeting mostly the black, informal, and lower-income segments of the population. Widespread outcry and judicial action from the Supreme Court had the campaign pulled; the government has since retooled it under the name No One Left Behind.

For many activists, this amounts to mass extermination. Thats whats happening. If you dont create a plan for the peripheries of the whole country, you choose to let the poor die by their own luck, said Gilson Rodrigues, a community leader in Paraispolis, So Paulo in an interview for BBC News Brasil.

While solutions are to be taken to ensure that the majority of the population stay at home, many others will have to continue to cross the city, walk the streets, interact with hundreds of people every day, and work to guarantee the quarantine of the rest of the population. They are the employees of essential services, cashiers of supermarkets, garbage collectors, doormen, security guards, delivery workers, day laborers, and pharmacists. For Gizele Martins, a community journalist from the favelas of Mar, we must remember these people, today and at the end of the crisis. In an article for Brasil de Fato, she wrote: Now look at the city, see that without the favela it doesnt work, because we are the ones who make the economy work with our labor. Without us there is no city. So, please governors and society, include us in public policies, in basic services, in bills, in information, in basic sanitation.

The Covid-19 crisis has rendered this shadow army of workers more visible than ever. As hunger begins to set in, the federal government is running out of time to implement physical protection and financial support for the nations most vulnerable populations and most crucial workers.

See the rest here:

Covid-19 Unmasks the Privilege of Isolation in Rio de Janeiro and All Brazil - RioOnWatch

We always have at least some reason to worry about the spread of misinformation, but we worry more about misinformation during a public health crisis. We are generally not well informed on public health issues even in good times, and so the emergence of new disease to which the human race has no natural immunity presents an incredible target for bad actors.

For example, if for whatever reason you are opposed to new 5G cellular networks, you could go on social networks and make a lot of posts suggesting that 5G networks are making the spread of the virus worse. Or you could say that 5G itself is causing COVID-19. Or you could say that the pandemic itself is a hoax, and that talk of a virus is intended to cover up the installation of 5G equipment. And if you said it often enough, and your posts got enough traction, then eventually the fringe press would write up your claims, and the misinformation would rapidly move into the mainstream.

In the United Kingdom last month, in the days after the government ordered citizens to remain in their homes, this is more or less exactly what happened. Some people are setting telephone poles on fire in an utterly misguided effort to fight back against 5G. Jim Waterson and Alex Hern talked to fact-checkers about the situation in the Guardian:

They cite the rapid growth of neighbourhood social media groups, a failure by networks to promote scientific evidence about 5G, and a terrified population looking to make sense of a world turned upside down. [...]

Tom Phillips, the editor of the factchecking organisation Full Fact, said it warned last summer about the growing prevalence of 5G health claims. But in recent weeks debunked claims about 5G had been transformed, potentially aided by the creation of new local Facebook and WhatsApp groups to help support neighbours during the pandemic. Google Trends data suggests British interest in 5G theories exploded in the final days of March, shortly after the lockdown was imposed.

Lets stipulate that fringe theories like these dont exist only on social networks and that, as the piece argues, telecoms should be doing a much better job at explaining to people what 5G is and isnt. (Heres a good overview from my colleague Chaim Gartenberg.)

But its clear that, as usual, social networks are amplifying some of these theories and helping them gain a foothold in the popular imagination. If youre Facebook, you can throw a bunch of fact-checkers and content moderators at the issue to remove viral posts and attempt to deny other fringe voices undue algorithmic promotion. But if the subject is Facebook-owned WhatsApp, the solution is murkier.

WhatsApp, after all, uses end-to-end encryption. In practice, this means WhatsApp itself cant peer into the contents of your message. There are obvious privacy benefits to an app like this, particularly in a world where far-right authoritarianism is on the rise. Will Cathcart, who runs WhatsApp, told me this week that WhatsApps commitment to privacy feels even more urgent in a pandemic-stricken world where nearly all of our communication is mediated digitally. (As an aside, the entire story of the recent Zoom backlash is that the products design enabled far too many strangers to interrupt your call.)

Part of what WhatsApp is trying to do is make what you used to do face to face possible, Cathcart told me. Part of that is privacy.

If we were talking face to face, he told me over Zoom, we probably wouldnt worry too much about someone spying on us. On a digital call, though, spying becomes a much bigger concern.

If all WhatsApp did was enable texts, calls, and chats, that would be the end of the story. But from the beginning, the app has had a feature that in at least some parts of the world transformed it into something that more closely resembles a social network like Facebook. That feature is the forward button, and I wrote about its history today at The Verge:

For much of WhatsApps existence, it was easy for users to forward a single message to as many as 256 people with just a few taps. Initially, these messages were not labeled as forwards, and the end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp could make it almost impossible for authorities to determine who might be using the app to spread hate speech or calls to violence. This triggered a crisis in India, where WhatsApp was linked to mob violence.

In 2018, WhatsApp began experimenting with limits on the number of times a message could be forwarded. It also began labeling forwarded messages for the first time, and adding two arrows to show that a message has been repeatedly forwarded. Last year, the company began limiting the number of people you can forward a single message to to five.

The occasion for my piece was the news that WhatsApp has taken another step down the path to removing the apps broadcast features: as of today, you can forward what the company calls a highly forwarded message one that it is at least five forwards away from its point of origin to just a single person.

As I note in the story, this is a soft limit. You can forward a highly forwarded message more than once just to one person at a time. (You could also just copy and paste it repeatedly.) But the amount of friction is meaningful. It effectively raises the price of using WhatsApp to spread misinformation, at least in terms of time. Misinformation will still spread on WhatsApp, just as it spreads on all messaging services. But it will spread more slowly and give fact-checkers more time to chase down the truth and promote it.

This strikes me as a healthy balance. In fact, Id say its a healthier balance than now exists on Apples iMessage another app that uses end-to-end encryption and enables mass forwarding, and is used by more than 1 billion people. Signal, the upstart messaging app funded by WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, uses the same scheme.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that a group of Democratic senators sent a letter to WhatsApp asking that it do more to curb the spread of misinformation. But I hope the senators recognize that WhatsApp isnt the only popular encrypted messenger on the market and that its making moves that its competitors would do well to copy.

Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.

Trending up: Facebook is giving these 400 local newsrooms grants of $5,000 each to support their coronavirus reporting as part of the Facebook Journalism Project. The company also announced a relief fund for local newsrooms struggling with the pandemic. These relief grants range from $25,000 to $100,000.

Trending up: Jack Dorsey announced he is moving $1 billion of his Square equityroughly 28 percent of his wealth to Startsmall LLC to fund COVID-19 relief and other efforts. Once the pandemic is under control he plans to shift the focus of the donations to girls health and education, as well as universal basic income.

Trending sideways: Amazon is giving partial pay to employees it sends home for showing up with a fever. Amazon is really on a run of doing almost right thing, just a few days after everyone expected they might.

Amazon has started disciplining warehouse workers who violate social distancing rules, which mandate that they stay 6 feet away from their colleagues in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus. If workers are caught twice breaking the rules, they may get fired. Heres Annie Palmer at CNBC:

Its unclear how Amazon is identifying employees who have violated the rules. In a blog post published last week, Dave Clark, who runs Amazons retail operations, said the company would use its top machine learning technologists to detect areas where it can improve social distancing in its facilities by relying on internal camera systems.

Three Amazon warehouse workers who asked to remain anonymous said they were told by site leadership that their facilities would identify individuals as they see them violate the rules, as well as by reviewing camera footage. The workers also expressed concerns that the policy would be unfairly applied to floor associates and not site leadership.

Amazon keeps changing the definition of what it considers an essential product. While the company originally said it would de-prioritize less necessary items, as of April 6th you could still order a bowling ball, a 10-pack of rubber chickens, and a prom dress in the United States, and have them show up at your door within a week. And so now I know what Im doing this weekend! (Maddy Varner / The Markup)

Amazon is postponing its major summer shopping event, Prime Day, until at least August. The company expects a potential $100 million hit from excess devices it might now have to sell at a discount. (Krystal Hu and Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters)

Some teachers are reporting that fewer than half of their students are participating in online learning. The absence rates are particularly high in schools with many low-income students, where access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Dana Goldstein, Adam Popescu and Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times have the story:

The trend is leading to widespread concern among educators, with talk of a potential need for summer sessions, an early start in the fall, or perhaps having some or even all students repeat a grade once Americans are able to return to classrooms.

Students are struggling to connect in districts large and small. Los Angeles said last week that about a third of its high school students were not logging in for classes. And there are daunting challenges for rural communities like Minford, Ohio, where many students live in remote wooded areas unserved by internet providers.

IT contractors at Facebook have been told their physical presence is required to set up laptops for new hires and other remote employees. They have even been given letters to carry on their commutes stating that they are helping to provide essential services amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (Sam Biddle / The Intercept)

New York has 12 times as many coronavirus deaths as California. While it seemed to some that California lawmakers overreacted in early March, the decision to implement a state-wide shelter-in-place order early now seems like a necessary move. (German Lopez / Vox)

Heres what contact tracing, or tracking peoples locations via their smartphones, could look like in the US. The method, while invasive by American standards, is already working in South Korea and Singapore. (Derek Thompson / The Atlantic)

A group of disease experts is exploring using syndromic surveillance tracking aggregated data from emergency rooms to combat COVID-19. The technique was developed after 9/11 amid fears of bioterrorism. (Christina Farr / CNBC)

As government buildings throughout the US shut their doors to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many judges have moved operations online. The result is that custody hearings, bankruptcy proceedings, and abuse charges are being heard in virtual courts hosted on YouTube and Zoom. (Bloomberg)

Coronavirus has created an opportunity for tech companies to quietly lobby for long-held goals in the frantic political and economic environment created by the outbreak. Some of these involve delaying enforcement of Californias new privacy law and not reclassifying contractors as full-time employees. (David McCabe / The New York Times)

This is how coronavirus changed the way we use the internet from the devices we stream on, to the apps we use to connect with loved ones. While Americans are spending more time online, the growth hasnt been universal across all apps and services. (Ella Koeze and Nathaniel Popper / The New York Times)

Total cases in the US: At least 380,749

Total deaths in the US: At least 11,000

Reported cases in California: 16,329

Reported cases in New York: 138,836

Reported cases in New Jersey: 41,090

Reported cases in Michigan: 17,130

Data from The New York Times.

Wisconsin voters are facing a choice between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote after state Republican leaders rebuffed the Democratic governors attempt to postpone in-person voting in the presidential primary. The choice offers a grim foreshadowing of an expected national fight over voting rights in the year of COVID-19. Astead W. Herndon and Jim Rutenberg at The New York Times have the story:

The state stands as a first test case in what both national parties expect to be a protracted fight over changing voter rules to contend with the pandemic potentially the biggest voting rights battle since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Mr. Evers was trying to push Wisconsin still further toward voting by mail.

Since the pandemic first forced stay-at-home orders across the country, many Democrats have advocated a universal vote-by-mail system in November. Republicans in several states and the president himself are pushing for as much in-person voting as possible.

Taiwan banned all government personnel from using Zoom due to security concerns. It recommended that officials use conferencing software provided by Google and Microsoft instead. (Mary Hui / Quartz)

The EU is moving ahead with its artificial intelligence regulations amid coronavirus disruptions. The proposed rules involve mandatory legal requirements for self-driving cars and biometric identification systems which could force companies to test AI prior to deployment and retrain their algorithms in Europe with different datasets to guarantee users rights are upheld. (Natalia Drozdiak / Bloomberg)

Facial recognition company Clearview AI has deep, longstanding ties to right-wing extremists. Some even helped build the app. Luke OBrien at HuffPost reports:

With the coronavirus pandemic increasingly throwing the country into chaos and President Donald Trump moving to expand domestic surveillance powers in theory, to better map disease spread Clearview has sought deeper inroads into government infrastructure and is now in discussions with state agencies to use its technology to track infected people, according to The Wall Street Journal. [...]

What hasnt been reported, however, is even scarier: Exclusive documents obtained by HuffPost reveal that Ton-That, as well as several people who have done work for the company, have deep, longstanding ties to far-right extremists. Some members of this alt-right cabal went on to work for Ton-That.

Facebook quietly released a new messaging app for couples called Tuned. The app lets two people send each other text and voice messages, along with photos and songs, after adding each others phone numbers. People have been building various versions of this app for years, and none has been a hit so far. (Alex Heath / The Information)

Mark Zuckerberg promised Instagram founder Kevin Systrom independence. But an excerpt from Sarah Friers book No Filter shows that once Instagram started to compete with Facebooks products, that independence gradually eroded. Ill have a lot more to say about this very good book, and soon! (Sarah Frier / Bloomberg)

Facebook Gaming launched tournaments for esports amateurs in early access across the globe. The tournament feature has been in the works for a while, but the company decided to release it early to help people cope with social isolation. (Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat)

Stuff to occupy you online during the quarantine.

Watch Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan interview Dr. Don Ganem, a leading infectious disease specialist, about developing treatments for COVID-19.

Read Tom Fords tips for looking good on video chats.

Apply for a grant to aid with coronavirus research. Or tell a scientist about it. Or donate to this effort! Cool project from Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison and some others.

Download yet another virtual Zoom background from this fun collection. Or this fun collection from the Hallmark Channel!

Send us tips, comments, questions, and WhatsApp forwards: casey@theverge.com and zoe@theverge.com.

Continued here:

How WhatsApp is making it more expensive to spread misinformation - The Verge

Toronto drummer Nick Fraser has watched COVID-19 eviscerate the income and opportunity generated by his music career including a scheduled tour in Italy. But for weeks, it seemed unclear whether artists, musicians and gig workers in similar circumstances would qualify for the federal governments new $2,000 job-loss benefit.

Now, that question has been answered at least in part.

Earlier this week, the federal government announced plans to widen access to the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, originally intended for those whose incomes were entirely wiped out by COVID-19. Soon, it will open to those with drastically reduced earnings expected to mean those working 10 hours or less a week, or earning less than $500 a month.

I think its encouraging, Fraser said. Thats how the gig economy works. People have multiple streams of income and theyre going to keep the ones they are able to keep.

While the news is a glimmer of hope for some, Montreal-based musician and photographer Tess Roby says shes still concerned the federal governments response wont be sufficient.

On top of her now-paused music and photography career, Roby works 20 hours a week at a part-time job; as a result, she may not meet CERBs new eligibility criteria criteria she worries will still shut out too many people.

It doesnt surprise me that the government would leave those people out people who are in precarious work, people who live paycheque to paycheque, people who are multidisciplinary, she said.

Its really difficult to think that so many people would be forfeiting work just for a chance to qualify.

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For gig workers and artists, earnings are usually low and unpredictable in the best of times; a recent Statistics Canada study found the average annual income for those in the gig economy is $4,300.

Gig-economy workers are part of a precarious job market their employment is not a guarantee of a livable income. In fact, during this time, many are getting less income than before, said Jan Simpson, president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

The union has called on the government to expand emergency support to both gig workers and those who do not have social insurance numbers, including international students and those who are in the process of getting their permanent residency.

These workers already lack basic protections and almost never have access to benefits like paid sick leave. Their lack of protection forces them to continue working, even when they are unwell, Simpson said.

Many workers now deemed essential, notes Fraser, are also among the lowest paid.

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The system is broken if youve got the most essential workers getting paid the least, getting paid so little that income support is going to be more money than they make in the first place, he said.

For Roby, that reality speaks to the need for something more robust than a means-tested emergency benefit.

I think we are closer than ever before to moving in the direction of a universal basic income, she said. I think that should be seriously considered by our government.

That measure, she adds, would help support people like musicians whose income will be impacted long after the immediate COVID-19 crisis subsides. Spain recently announced it would roll out a universal basic income to deal with the pandemics fallout.

Theres no foreseeable sight of when any of this will resume, Roby said. I think live performance is going to change after this. Even when people are allowed to go back to venues, to concerts, are they going to want to go back?

Roby says shes grateful to have received numerous messages from fans thanking her for her music, offering them a brief escape from global angst.

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But I also cant help but think, if you only knew how difficult this was, she said. This has exposed all of the cracks in our system.

That, says Fraser, should at some point prompt some collective reflection.

I hope at the end of all this theres a little bit of a rethink about the value of peoples work, he said.

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For artists and gig workers, expanded emergency benefit access is encouraging but worries about the post-COVID-19 future remain - Toronto Star

Yesterday,The Daily Devils Dictionaryhighlighted thebattlethat is beginning to shape up in the media and in political circles around whether a return to a real or imaginary pre-pandemic status quo is possible. Most commentators in the West understand that the status quo they refer to embraces two major concepts: a globalized, liberal, free market economy and nations with political regimes based on (or at least paying lip service to) representative democracy.

On March 19, the newspaper The Australian reported this surprising piece ofexpert analysis: Macquarie Wealth Management, the stockbroking arm of the beating heart of Australian capitalism, Macquarie Group, has warned that conventional capitalism is dying and the world is headed for something that will be closer to a version of communism.

The arrival of Podemos and VOX on the Spanish political scene not only meant that voters had new electoral options. It also led to a new, groundbreaking style that was a change from the stereotypical, uncreative and overused rhetoric displayed by other parties for years.

With Podemos, a left-wing party, Spaniards have become accustomed to phrases that are a break from what they considered old and useless ways of doing politics. This is referred to as vieja poltica vs nueva poltica, or old politics vs. new politics.

Words change their definition over time. Until 2020, most people thought they knew what the word communism meant. A firm of capitalist investment advisers tells us we may now need to rethink it.

Todays definition takes into account two moments of history, one in the future (from a dictionary to be published circa 2030) and one that includes the past and present.

Here is todays 3D definition:

Communism (future definition):

An imaginary and idealized form of centralized political and economic organization that for 150 years, beginning in the late 19th century, stirred the imagination of a series of thinkers and political leaders, all of whom, as soon as they tried, were incapable of applying the concept to real human societies but, nevertheless, persisted in promoting it or even claiming to have achieved its realization. This was until, following the devastating implosion of advanced financialized capitalism in the third decade of the 21st century, it suddenly reappeared as the global economic norm, silently replacing the fragile notion of free markets in the space of only a few years.

Communism (present definition):

An imaginary and idealized form of centralized political and economic organization that inspired well-organized revolutionary leaders in several nations to overthrow existing despotic regimes to replace them by new despotic regimes focused on applying principles of social management to entire nations, without the leaders themselves having any understanding of those principles.

Macquarie Wealth Management cites the notion of conventional capitalism, which implies that an unconventional form of it may also exist. The same can be said of communism. In reality, people speak all the time about capitalism and communism without having any clear idea about their definition. Communism at least contains the idea of a group of people, the community, just as socialism contains the idea of society. The word capitalism represents a kind of absurdity because it makes no reference to people. Capital, in the sense of capital goods or the means of production, exists in everyeconomy, whatever its organization and whatever its attitude toward ownership.

What capitalism ended up meaning in most peoples minds for the better part of two centuries was not just the simple fact that industry requires capital investment a given in any economic system but that capital (money and production capacity) has more weight than people in economic decision-making. Financialized capitalism even reaches a point at which people are totally irrelevant. Money (the marketplace) has a mind of its own.Embed from Getty Images

Capitalism as most people understand it means that individuals, groups or institutions that own or control capital have a power of decision-making that is specifically denied to the people merely involved in production and consumption. The only difference would be that in communism, the ownership is said to be collective, meaning all of society has a stake in the ownership of the capital. That may be the distinction Macquarie had in mind when it claimed that capitalism would be replaced by a version of communism.

The Australian explains that Macquarie analysts and researchers said a number of policies announced in recent days, including cash payments to US residents, credit guarantees for businesses in Germany, and a Swedish stimulus worth 6 per cent of the Nordic countrys economy to keep banks lending to companies, were a sign that governments were shifting towards neo-Keynesian andModern Monetary Theorypolicies, including a universal basic income guarantee. That type of communism, if applied permanently rather than provisionally during a crisis, would mean that all of the mechanisms of a market economy would still exist, but high-level decision-making would take into account the welfare of real people the entire community rather than merely shareholders seeking maximum profit.

When journalists espousing the liberal or conventional capitalist point of view react to the reality of the policies being put in place across the globe to counter the economic effects of theCOVID-19 pandemic, they may be tempted to call it war capitalism. That is how Adrian Wooldridge atThe Economistframed it this week. Macquaries communism is Wooldridges war capitalism. The difference lies in the fact that Wooldridge sees it as an ephemeral measure intended to last only for the duration of the threat. And he insists that, just as happened in the US after World War I, the crisis will be followed by a return to normalcy, a term invented or at leastpopularizedby US President Warren G. Harding in the 1920 election.

Other commentators even conservative billionaireMark Cuban(a possible future US presidential candidate) and centrist French PresidentEmmanuel Macron appear to lean in Macquaries direction, despite their own philosophical preferences.They understand that things simply will simply not be the same in a post-pandemic world. There will be no return to normalcy. The nations of the world and the world itself as a global community must work to build a new equilibrium, not seek to reproduce an old one, especially one that has shown itself, through two successive crises, to be fundamentally unstable.

In anarticleon Al Jazeera, the award-winning economic journalist Paul Mason highlightsthe contrast between the top-down crisis in 2007-08 provoked by mad derivative-based logic of the global financial system and the bottom-up collapsing foundations of todays crisis provoked by the reaction to the coronavirus. Mason expects radical change and quotes Macquaries analysis. He cites as historical evidence the dramatic effects of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe that precipitated the dismantling of feudalism. Mason argues that capitalism is unlikely to survive, long term and in the short term it can only survive by adopting features of post-capitalism. Its no longer a question of political will but of social necessity.

Nobody in a position of political responsibility wants chaos, though it would appear that some people in a position of economic responsibility are so focused on their fiduciary duty that chaos outside of their own market would only be an unfortunate byproduct of their short-term decision-making. Politicians fear the pitchforks of history. Mason cites the incredible violence of the Peasants Revolt, the French Jacquerie and other similar events following the outbreak of plague in the 14th century, violence that quickly results in serious destruction and ideological transformation. Even when violently quelled, such revolts provoke lasting change, fatally undermining the power relationships of the normal order that preceded the crisis.

Future historians will look back at the 20th century and wonder why, for a brief space of history, people were so obsessed with isms. Consistent with the reality of the emerging consumer society, political thinking came to be conceived as a kind of catalog of ideological packages that political groups could arrange in a display case from which consumers could choose their preferred brand.

The identities of the brands were singularly confusing, partly because the marketers shifted their branding strategies incomprehensibly, appealing alternatively to the intellect or the emotions. They based some of the appeal on a supposed understanding of the economy (communism, capitalism, socialism), some on political hierarchy (authoritarianism, populism), and some on power relationships (nationalism, fascism). There were other somewhat eccentric isms as well that corresponded to a narrower consumer target audience: communitarianism, libertarianism, religious fundamentalism.

The same was true in the arts, where, after the success of impressionism in the late 19th century, all sorts of isms burst forth to attract the publicas well as the artists themselves, offering them a shared brand to exploit for individual artists who couldnt manage to turn their name into a brand: pointillism, fauvism, cubism, expressionism, surrealism, minimalism, constructivism, naturalism, to name only a few. Commercialism never achieved the status of a movement, but it was constantly present as a central feature of the art market. And, of course, the art market over recent decades has become dominated not by aesthetic principles, but by the factor of capitalistic investment. Just last week, Forbesinformed usthat, in the midst of a pandemic, The Art Market Is Beating The Stock Market.

As the consumer society itself appears to have reached the point of beingconsumed by the pandemic, we shouldnt be surprised if the age of isms itself may be ending. In 2016, the Democratic primary campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders restored some respectabilityto the term socialism, a word vilified in the US for decades as synonymous with un-American. The fact that society will only remain sustainable at the price of transforming many of its institutions means that it will make no difference whether the economic system that emerges from a crisis is described by commentators as post-capitalism, democratic socialism, humanistic communism, unconventional capitalism or a trendy new moniker that doesnt end in ism.

Though many in the public eye are still making a profession of denying it, we already knew that the planet was in peril. Some radical change in our way of life is clearly required to avoid the destruction of humanitys lifeline. Now we can see with our own eyes that what many thought of as the natural order of a free market economy is in a state of provoked collapse. Nobody knows what form it will take, but the new rulebook for the worlds political and economic system will, in the coming years, be very different from what it is today. Will some enterprising marketer invent a new ism to describe it? Or will another Warren G. Harding attempt to impose a normalcy that has been proven unsustainable.

The last time normalcy was imposed, by President Harding and his ilk, the US experienced in quick succession: Prohibition, the Jazz Age, the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism that included the Business Plot, the Spanish Civil War, Adolf Hitler and World War II. That normalcy didnt seem much like a status quo. It may not be the pattern most people would like to see repeated in our immediate future.

This article was first published in Fair Observer

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Qrius editorial policy.

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Will There Be a New Status Quo After COVID-19? - Qrius