What do we need to overcome the next pandemic?

The current COVID-19 pandemic harvested hundreds of thousands of lives and ruins economies. The authorities and societies are not prepared at all.  Some "smart" countries like Sweden, USA, UK, Brazil, Belorussia first decided not to react and consider the pandemic as a regular seasonal virus attack. This approach led to huge losses that will be scrutinized in the legal process later on. So, what did we miss when we have been not preparing for the pandemic? I have my own list and some simple remedies not to allow this situation again.

1.    When something unknown happens the reaction has to be the most conservative. Experiments on the whole population are prohibited before we understand how to mitigate the risks. Politicians have to make people’s lives the highest priority.  I would not vote for a politician who says that GDP is more important than lives, especially the lives of vulnerable people.

2.    The medical authority first. The reaction to the pandemic has to be similar to the reaction to war. Politicians may declare war but then strategy and tactics are controlled by militaries. However, medical strategy and tactics were not ready this time. The threat was underestimated and the reaction was inadequate on average. This is the bottleneck for developed countries that presented a full variety of stupid responses.

3.    State resources. To successfully fight against this and the next pandemic one needs resources for mid-term measures: medical army of doctors, nurses and other crucial personal – with extensive reserves, and medical facilities to treat sick people, medicine, teams, and tools to create vaccines,  etc.

4.    Comprehensive measures to protect people involved in essential jobs: police, firemen, post, food supply, water supply, army, delivery, etc. These people suffered the most after medical personal during this pandemic. These measures have to cover the whole cycle of their job and also cover the way to and from work to home. This is crucial since there is no way to make these jobs remote.

5.    A set of tools and measures of individual protection. This was the weakest point during the COVID-19 pandemic. People lost their jobs and the global economy returned to the earlier 2000s because people had not enough masks, gloves, protect costumes, measures, and places of decontamination. This is relatively cheap. At least it is cheaper than the GDP loss we suffer.

6. The social response was adequate and the overwhelming majority followed all protective measures. However, there are a not-negligible amount of people whose behavior endangered all others. I do not know legal ways to protect people from this psychopathic threat, but it seems to be one of the most dangerous channels of virus distribution.    

7.    Children. This is the problem that one cannot resolve. Children are likely the most effective and uncontrolled way of virus progress in society.

I am sure that people react to incentives and there is R&D activity around which is aimed at all challenges including those in my shortlist. The next pandemic has to be less painful if we are able to react in a rational way. However, the reaction of the Federal Reserve System and the stock market reveals a rather psychopathic reaction to save capital not lives.

Western civilization = genocide, murder, slavery, torture, suppression, robbery, and ... hypocrisy

The current discussion related to Floyd's case unwinds and opens new horizons for the assessment of the basic morality of western civilization. The title of this post gathers some major features of western countries and their people, who excused themselves for that they were doing. I have no intention to describe what they have done during the last 500 years. Just a list of countries hiding their history in the hypocrisy of elites and subordinates. I am sure that France knows exactly the crimes and has much to say about the UK and this is mutual as for any country from the list.

- the USA
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Canada
- Japan
- Portugal
- Spain
- the Kingdom of the Netherlands
- the United Kingdom
- France
- Germany
- Belgium
- Italy
- Denmark

Forgive me if I missed someone.

Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years ( link to Deutsche Welle paper)

I am not able to find any words to comment - just provide a link to the paper in Deutsche Welle.
Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for 30 years

Can socio-capitalism be an alternative to socialism and capitalism?

There were two competing ideologies since the 19th century - capitalism and socialism. Capitalism is all about money and it is the most effective mechanism to increase ... capital. No people is mentioned in capitalism as an ideology. People serve to capital. Socialism is all about people as equal social actors and is aimed at social progress like resource equality to maximize  personal growth. No money is mentioned in socialism as ideology. Money serve to people.

The USSR failed as a system because it was economically less effective than the countries professing capitalism. Almost all resources in the USSR were divided between people to enhance human progress except those aimed at defense and protection.

The USA is an example of capitalism success - capital reins. The US people does not matter, however. The median real personal income has not been growing since the late 1980s. Capital seeks only the rate of own growth. Proportional share of resources for personal growth (education, health, sports, arts, etc.) is not available for increasing share of population. People are slaves of capital and this makes them angry. It makes angry the Rust Belt, the victims of slavery, and highly likely in the near future the Latinos invited to occupy the worst job positions. This is because people is not a part of capitalism.  

Western Europe is not a good example as well. It's wealth basement was also built during  the centuries of colonial robbery. Now these countries have to invite people from the former colonies to serve as ... servants. Nobody is happy for long time in such positions.

Finally, China has been chasing the pink unicorn merging both ideologies in one big pot: socio-capitalism. The Communist Party rules the society (distributes resources for personal growth) and also allows the capitalism to do its inhuman job. Currently, the human progress in China is as tremendous as economic. This makes the Chinese socio-capitalism a temporary alternative to both pure ideologies and this situation infuriates the capitalism ideology.  The USA and China compete on the brink of war. In the USA, the interest of capital prevents the hot war  phase so far. 

I am not sure about the stability of this socialism-capitalism symbiosis. Is it mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. (I guess that inhuman always wins.) But I am sure that the competition between the global capital and this new socio-economic formation in China (likely some other countries with average economic development may follow this path as well)  has many reasons for various wars, including the civil ones. I do believe the mankind can win in this war against the global capital ... when kills itself. Instructively, no human beings - no capital.  

Race and gender income inequality in the USA: black women vs. white men

I wrote this paper five years ago and forgot about it because of the priority to work with the DPRK nuclear tests in 2016. Now it looks like an appropriate time to make it available for a broader audience and I published it on SSRN.  A larger part of this paper is devoted to modeling based on a mechanical model of income distribution and this part can be omitted by the reader as extremely specialized. There are important policy recommendations based on the facts of dramatic income inequality between white men and black women. The principal result - all people have the same capabilities, and the observed income disparity comes from the inadequate "frozen" socioeconomic structure of the US society. 

Abstract

Income inequality between different races in the U.S. is especially large. This difference is even larger when gender is involved. In a complementary study, we have developed a dynamic microeconomic model accurately describing the evolution of male and female incomes since 1930. Here, we extend our analysis and model the disparity between black and white populations in the U.S., separately for males and females. Unfortunately, income microdata provided by the U.S. Census Bureau for other races and ethnic groups are not time compatible or too short for modeling purposes. We are forced to constrain our analysis to the black and white population, but all principal results can be extrapolated to other races and ethnicities. Our analysis shows that black females and white males are two poles of the overall income inequality. The prediction of income distribution for two extreme cases with one model is the main challenge of this study. 

Link to the full (pdf) paper at SSRN 

Some policy recommendations

As a principal result of this study, we propose to develop a responsible social policy aimed at the acceleration of real economic growth. Equal opportunity for genders and races to use the largest instruments of working capital will bring an immediate increase in real Gross Domestic Income, i.e. in Gross Domestic Product. The effect of this social policy will be also observed in the long-run before the distribution of instrument sizes over genders and race becomes even. Here we do not even say about the resulting social equality which will be the outcome of income equality between races and genders. This does not imply income equality between people, however.

People respond to incentives - new reality leads to breakage of fine social tissue

This is what I've got from the Internet on this phrase:

·       Incentive is something that induces a person to act [by offering rewards to people who change their behavior].

·       Because rational people make decisions by comparing costs and benefits, they respond to incentives.

·       Incentives may possess a negative or positive intention.

When the unrest in the USA and western countries fades away rational people will have to respond to numerous negative and positive intentions and to make many existential decisions:

- to reduce the risk of degraded personal and family safety;

- to reassess the short and long-term forecast of property the price due to geographical location and neighbors;

- to reassess the risks to business/job market;

- to reduce the risk to savings;

-  to provide conditions for better education and communication to children;

- many others

Considering the fact that the new unrest and related negative incentives are highly likely in the months and years to come I would not be so sure that the social stratification and self- and group-isolation due to racial/political reasons (which is the main driving force of the current unrest) will fade away.

Time of financial marauders

At the beginning of June 2020, the total US market capitalization was around 150% of the nominal US GDP. This level is close to the top 160% in February 2020. And it is a big surprise to almost all laypeople and professionals considering the pandemic and sudden drop in employment and GDP.  One clear explanation is that the Federal Reserve money may go only into the stock market because the real economic segment did not ask for such a tremendous amount of credits since 2008. The Fed's monies found their liquid way to the stock market - the only working mechanism of formal profit. The whole ocean of liquid assets brings some profit as the stock market grows. The Fed's money is credit money, however, which the debtors have to pay back at some point. When this time comes, the stocks have to be sold and ... Well, is it actually possible to sell stocks for 6-10 trillion dollars? When someone starts to sell the first portion of, say, one trillion, the stock market falls.

This market fall will be enhanced by the worldwide spreading COVID-19 pandemic wave, growing problems in the real economy (the USA and global), the LBM protests also conquering the US and other western societies, and the US presidential elections in November. All in all, this looks like a perfect storm approaching. All the stresses cumulate and create conditions most expected by financial marauders - the whole bulk of extra Fed money will disappear (as a soap bubble) and the first who start to sell stocks will get the largest part of cash. The bank will get extra money from the Feds - too large to fall. The poor small investors will lose everything. As always.

And as always, the marauders are the largest investors and banks (Long live to BlackRock!) 
I am in cash and worry about the risks for the banks where the electric signals representing my money  reside.