Before-after diffs of previous western crises
Black Death: High Middle Ages (1000-1300) to age of exploration (1400-1500)
30 years war: Holy Roman Empire to enlightenment
WW1: Victorian-Georgian to Modernist-Progressive
WW2: Modernist to post
Covid19? Place your bets now.
Conversation
The one bright spot: more modern crises seem to last less long. So I’d say 3-5 years for this one to pass. Of course you may not like the new world, but that’s your problem, not a crisis.
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Why so long? What effects from this are really gonna take 5 years? Again, as with all this stuff, I'm probably naive but I can't picture the illness lasting that long and I can't picture the economic effects lasting so long. 2 years maybe
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I don’t think you’re appreciating the sheer magnitude of the economic devastation. It’s an order of magnitude more than 2008. A fragile house of cards has collapsed. It’s not, like Trump claims, a blow to a healthy system that will bounce back fast.
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Okay I see that, but there seems to be a qualitative difference between this and 2008. 2008 was about a problem within the financial system itself. It made employers and individuals warier of that system.
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This is an external threat that's happening very quickly and seems like we should be able to go back to similar-ish to what we were doing before since it's not a problem with the fin system per se.
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Businesses will close their doors for sure, but if there were to be a true bailout of those businesses, wouldn't that allow them to go back to quasi-normal?
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You sound like you think someone sane and compassionate is in charge and there’s an existing playbook for this. Trump is in charge and there’s no playbook anyway even if someone better were in charge.
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Yeah it's not good. Trump for sure isn't helping and there is no playbook. But there are actions that could be taken where there's at least some reason to think they'd help, no? I realize at this moment those actions may not be being taken and may not be taken.

