Capitalism goes Nuts

Capitalism, Democracy, Epidemics/Pandemics

 

I know not every one likes Bill Maher as much as I do. They are entitled to be wrong. I listened to a fascinating discussion on capitalism on his show with 2 very interesting guests–Scott Galloway and Larry Wilmore. I have been blogging about Galloway’s appearance on another show. He stole the show again.

 

Scott Galloway is a Professor at NYU and the author of Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity i is an internal critic of capitalism. By internal critic I I mean that he is a critic of capitalism from the inside as a believer in capitalism, but who hates what capitalism has become. Galloway is a Marketing Professor at NYU and an unabashed proponent of capitalism, but capitalism has become sclerotic, in his opinion.

He used some very interesting examples. First, Jeff Bezos lost 38 billion dollars in his divorce. And he made it all back in 1 month! That simple statistic tells you a lot. Bill Maher asked a wonderful question: what does this tell you about America?  Galloway said something shocking to that. He said, “Its worse than that. We’ve had 1person add the GDP of Hungary to his own personal net worth during the 1 year of the pandemic and that is Elon Musk.”

 

Capitalism has gone crazy. It is nuts. And then Musk moved to Texas so he doesn’t have to pay taxes. During the pandemic, “Billionaires have gone from 1.9 trillion dollars to $4 trillion. The dirty secret of this pandemic is that the top 10% not just the top 1% are living their best lives.”

Some businesses have gone out of businesses. They have suffered catastrophically during the pandemic. Others have flourished. Why is that?

Bill Maher describes this phenomenon this way: “If you’re in the sit on your ass and look at a screen business–Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook “If you’re in the sit on your ass and look at a screen business–Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook–they are now worth 21% of the whole US economy!” 

Scott Galloway put it this way:

“We used to talk about the S& P 500. Now it’s the S & P 7. 7 companies now have 51% of the market capital in the US. Amazon since March 2020 has added more market capitalization than all of European retail. We effectively have 4 companies that are so dominant that we’ve been overrun. There are more full-time lobbyists in Washington working for Amazon than there are Senators. There are more people working for Facebook manicuring Mark and Cheryl’s image than there are journalists working for the Washington Post. We are so beyond any sense of balance in our economy that the ecosystem is out of control. We absolutely need to break these companies up.”

 

People in the west have forgotten how corrosive market dominance can be to democracy and freedom. As these corporations grow, democracy and freedom shrivel in lock step. Concentration of wealth in modern capitalistic society, particularly when there is a conservative dominated Supreme Court in the US is “a freedom shredder” according to Galloway.

The amazing thing is that it seems inevitable. Too many people–the vast majority–believe there is nothing that can be done about it. There is a lot that can be done about it.  But the people must assert their power to do it. As Larry Wilmore, the Executive Producer of Amend: The Fight For America, said, “No matter what happens in the economy it all flows one way.”  That is what happens when power is concentrated.

 

As Galloway asked,

“Do we want that one company to say when we type in “overthrow government” should we be sent to ‘how to build a dirty bomb’ or to “voter registration.” Should one company control those decisions 93% of the time? Should one person control the algorithms that decide the content of what of the southern hemisphere plus India see? Should one company effectively control 97% of all increase in value of all retail?”

Is that what freedom is all about? And we should never think they are satisfied with what they have. That is because they are never satisfied with what they’ve got. They want it all. They want totalitarian control of the entire economy. Is that an exaggeration? Who is being the Pollyanna here?

Amazon started out as a company that sold books. A commodity. Easy. Right Wrong? Some like Galloway think they will try to control health care next. As Bill Maher said, “Of course why wouldn’t they want that? They own everything else. Where is all the money going? Sick people. Because that’s what America does best–make sick people.”

As Galloway pointed out,

“The largest business in the world is US health care. It’s 17% of GDP. Its prices keep going up. MPS is going down. That spells ‘here comes Amazon’. But not only is it bad or morally corrupt for these companies to have so much power, it’s dangerous. The equivalent to Nasdaq in Israel is down, not up, they are vaccinating at 7 times the rate. When the most powerful and wealthiest people in the world are living their best lives, if we don’t show this virus the full-throated capitalist response we are capable of [we’re done]. If Amazon stock had declined 70% instead of risen 70% in the last 10 months, when a van with a Smile shows up on my driveway tomorrow someone in a lab coat would have jumped out and vaccinated us. ‘We are living our best lives.’ This virus has not seen what the US is capable of because ‘Stop. Stop. It hurts so good, if you’re the shareholder class.

 This virus has been allowed to flourish because the S&P 7 likes it that way! It they were losing money during the pandemic they would have stopped it by using the full power of market capitalism. They chose not to do so.”

 

The shareholder class and the big 7 have enjoyed this pandemic ride because it is the best thing that could have happened as far as they are concerned. Why stop what puts money in my pocket? If I have the power to stop it why would I do it while my bank account keeps growing exponentially? That is why concentration of wealth and power is so dangerous.

Of course, as we all know, the S & P are delivering things we want. During a pandemic they deliver food to our doorstep so I can avoid those dangerous grocery stores. What is wrong with that? Capitalism is very efficient at fulfilling our needs. Of course, it can do that because it has manufactured many of those needs in the first place! Did you think you decided you needed Twinkies delivered to your door in one day? They have positioned themselves to bring to you what you want.

But in the process, as Wilmore said, “It’s amazing how they have Pac-manned every company that is out there.”

 

Restaurants or Kids

Capitalism, Climate change, Epidemics/Pandemics

 

Scott Galloway said,

“We seem to be obsessed with keeping restaurants open. You know what’s probably the biggest long-term scarring here, outside of the health issues is we’re losing a generation of kids. Pre-pandemic lower income kids largely tracked with higher and middle-income kids with school on math. Since the pandemic hit, they have fallen off the map. Regardless of the moral corruption there, we’re going to lose half our scientists, half our military leaders, half our civic leaders, and half our social leaders when 50% of kids don’t have the skills to enter college. So, we’re losing an entire generation of leaders and scientists because we have decided it’s more important to keep businesses open than keep our schools open. So, if it comes down one theme it’s to protect people not jobs and also capitalism doesn’t work, it’s not an organic state, unless it rests on a groundswell, a tide pool of empathy.”

I want restaurants open as much as anyone. But, I think Galloway is absolutely right. Capitalism needs to be rescued from the capitalists. Again. Just as it was in the 1930s when Roosevelt realized that and saved it.

I would just add that we that we are facing another crisis that has been shoved aside during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that is the environmental crisis. As we ignore it, we keeping digging ourselves deeper into a hole from which it will get increasingly difficult to dig our way out. We have been passing the buck for decades now. We keeping making it more and more expensive to solve that problem. But that problem is not going away. I know things have been made much more difficult and much more expensive by the people of wealth who have been spending fortunes to keep the rest of us in the dark and submissive. They have done that with remarkable success. They have bought political leaders and scared the rest. So, nothing has been done.

We need a new green deal together (or some smarter version of it) with a smart response to the Covid-19 pandemic and we have to do that at the same time. This is going to cost a lot of money, but ignoring it some more will once more just make it more costly later. Like it or not, we have to do it.  I don’t know if the Green New Deal is the right one. But at least those who proposed it did not ignore the problem like everyone else. If a better plan is possible, by all means, let’s go for that. Sadly, we now have at least 2 crises to deal with at the same time. It sucks to be us. But it could suck even more if we choose to do nothing.

Should we tackle  2 problems at once. Or ignore 2 problems at once?

 

*

Inequities in capitalism that must be eliminated

Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy

The pandemic has exacerbated some tendencies in capitalism that have had a negative effect. For example, working from home in some sense is a good thing. It’s mostly a good thing. People don’t waste so much time commuting. They can spend more time with their loved ones. But there are problems. As Professor Scott Galloway said,

If they can move your job to Denver they can move it to Bangalore. So be careful for what you ask. I think you are gong to see continued pressure on the working class as we get better and better at outsourcing jobs.

 

I am a subscriber to Photoshop and Lightroom two photographic programs.  A few years ago, I had to subscribe to them. I could no longer just buy them; I had to rent them. I hated paying $12 a month. Now it’s more of course. Then I realized there was a benefit. They had a help line. I am not an expert in the program. I often need help. So now I can phone them 24 hours a day during the week and get my questions answered by very knowledgeable people without extra charges. I love that.

And, of course, these helpers are always in India. At first, I had a little trouble understanding what they said because of their accent, but in time I got to know them and like them. They were very helpful. They taught me a lot. But they are Indians and they answer questions for all the people in North America. These are skilled jobs. They know their stuff and the programs in my opinion are complicated. Far too hard for me to do without expert help. It’s too bad they can’t hire North Americans to do it, but the company I suppose figures they can’t hire North Americans to do it at the money they offer. But this is outsourcing technical expertise. These are not laborers.

Being near the headquarters is a valuable thing for workers in a corporation. It allows people to network and rub shoulders with executives. That proximity is very valuable for a worker trying to build a career. Because women still spend more time typically than men building relationships with their family, they will tend to gravitate toward working at home. And this of course is a good thing, but it will be a drag on their careers because they will lose the benefits of proximity if they work from home instead. As a result, this will be a drag on their march toward greater equality. And that is not a good thing. Currently,  about 7% or less of CEOs for the S & P 500 are women. If women lose this proximity to power this unfortunate situation will get worse not better. As a result, Galloway asked,

“Are we building an infrastructure at HQ that is just filled with white guys? There is just no getting around it. Proximity to headquarters puts you on a different path in terms of advancement within the organization. So, I think there’ll be some positives and some negatives that we will have to adjust for and recognize that people who serve and have the money or don’t have the kids or have the ability to live close to work. As a tribal species that loves affinity and proximity, we will have to adjust for people who aren’t capable of being at headquarters every day.”

 

For these reasons stimulus from the government should be focused on protecting people and the environment. If we took 2 or 3 trillion dollars of stimulus and divided it among the most vulnerable households, the effect on society would be remarkable. Stimulating big corporations just doesn’t do as much. People who are in the top 10% are living a great life in this pandemic.  I admit I am. Life for me is great. I spend a lot of time with my wife. We read a lot. We watch some excellent TV shows together. We miss our family and friends terribly, but we are certainly not suffering. The key is how can we protect the bottom 90%? Stimulus should be shaped to do that. If you took the bottom third of American households and divided $3 trillion among them each household would get $100,000. That could be deeply transformative. Society would be very different. And those people would spend that money inside our economies. They would not stash it away in Swiss accounts.

Or let’s say it’s even less money. It would allow those people to make better decisions. Studies have shown how poverty makes it very difficult for poor people to make good decisions. People would not have to choose between paying for their insulin or their rent. They would not have to choose between paying for food or education for their children. Imagine that.  They could actually do what’s best for their families. Life in our society could be transformed. As it is now, many people have to get part time jobs with Uber to pay for food or rent or clothing for their families. So instead of staying now with their kids and helping them learn remotely they are out working at 2 or 3 jobs. This is not good for society. There is a better way.

We do need  to reset. Only the extremely comfortable think things are perfect right now. People like my member of Parliament.

Cronyism: Degenerate Capitalism

Capitalism

 

I have been blogging about things I learned from listening to Scott Galloway on a couple of television shows.  I have not read his book. As a cheap Mennonite I must wait for the paperback.

I always want to remind people, that Galloway was talking as a big fan of capitalism. He wants to improve capitalism. But he does not like the current version of capitalism which he considers a degenerate form of capital. Many of modern capitalists rely on monopolies. They love nothing better than to squeeze out competition. That is not capitalism. Galloway called it cronyism.  This is what he said:

“I am a full-throated capitalist. I don’t like this weird form of socialism we are in now which I describe as cronyism. Part of capitalism is that you want to oxygenate the marketplace. When we look back at breakups, not only typically has everybody done better but the companies themselves are worth a whole lot more than the original company. So I think this is an exercise in capitalism. We have to have a robust ecosystem. We have to have opportunities for other companies to get a seat at the table. And we also find that innovation is buried inside these companies. When we broke up AT&T we found out that cell, data, wireless, optics were all lying dormant. This is the capitalist handbook. Break companies up when they become so powerful that they are performing infanticide on small companies and prematurely euthanizing big companies which tend to be great employers and great taxpayers. We don’t break them up because they’re bad people. We don’t break them up because we’re angry. We break them up because we’re capitalists. It’s absolutely a capitalist thing to do.”

 

When companies get too big to fail, we must break them up before their breakdown creates problems for the economy. That is classic liberalism.

Monopolies are the worst thing for capitalism. The problem with corporate giants is that they don’t have to compete anymore. They get fat and lazy. They do that because they have it too easy.

So the first rule is that market concentration of power has to be kept in check. To do that we need regulations. Smart regulations.  We are not doing that now.

Stock Markets like Monopolies; People don’t

Capitalism, Economics, Social democracy

 

Some people have been surprised that I have been critical of capitalism. I deny that I have been critical of capitalism.   First, let me say, I have been critical of what has happened to capitalism, not capitalism itself. It is appalling what has happened to it. Monopolies are not capitalism. They are predators of capitalism. They destroy capitalism. Subsidies for capitalists are not capitalism either. What we need is capitalism!

 Hari Sreenivasan pointed out to Scott Galloway, “One of the interesting things about the pandemic is that it has been exceptional for the big 4–Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon.”

Scott Galloway, a defender of capitalism, and Professor of Marketing, not socialism, agreed, and added this,

“If you owned shares in those 4 companies they have risen 47% so far in the pandemic. And it might be just the middle of the pandemic…Markets have spoken. They have said monopolies are good.”

Galloway also said,

“If you think of the market as an organism that absorbs millions of data points and then spits back a verdict, the market is saying those unregulated monopolies and these are fantastic companies, but let’s be honest, they’re monopolies, they are able to extract rents like other companies can’t, and also companies that are too big to fail like airlines that have reinvested 93% of their free cash back into stock buy-backs which juices the equity based compensation of their CEOs and then on the way down they wrap themselves in the American flag and say ‘we’re all in this together’ and look for bailouts.”

 

As Galloway said,

“One the way the up in the markets, capitalists love to be rugged individualists. On the way down they want to be coddled and entitled socialists.”

That is modern capitalism. It is sickly capitalism, good for only a few corporations. According to Galloway,

“The Big 4 have come out of the pandemic stronger. So far at least. The Pandemic has treated monopolists kindly like the child of a rich man. Which of course is what they are.

60 cents of the digital marketing dollar pre-pandemic went to Facebook and Google. Coming out of the pandemic it will be 80 cents, because there’s a culling of the herd right now in business. And the biggest elephants will come out of this with more foliage to feed fewer elephants. ”

 

And monopoly power is never a good thing. It is not good for capitalism. It is bad for capitalism, but some monopolists benefit enormously. And all of this is very bad for the economy. As Galloway said,

“We’ve had a very scary trend towards more and more consolidation of power across fewer and fewer companies. It’s bad for the economy because typically the companies that generate jobs are small and medium-sized companies. There are half as many companies being formed today as there were during the Carter administration! The consolidation of power, the tyrannical march of big tech taking shares from everybody else continues unabated.”

 

Massive stimulus is good for the economy. We’ve had that. Galloway said, what capitalism needs to oxygenate the economy would be to drastically increase the funding of regulators like the Department of Justice. They have to restore their historic role of reigning in big companies that are destroying the economy. As Galloway said, a company like Amazon can become so big that it can make an announcement that scares the crap out  of the entire “free” market. For example, he mentioned how Amazon announced that it would start delivering prescriptions to home and immediately retail pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies shed billions of dollars of market capitalization.  As he said,

“we need to go to these companies, and not only big tech, but also big Pharma and big Ag. and break them up and restore and oxygenate the marketplace. If you go back to the AT&T breakup all 7 companies were more valuable than the original one. So, you have more jobs, more acquisitions, more funding, broader tax base. Typically, everybody wins in such a breakup except for one stakeholder the CEO.”

 

Capitalism needs regulation. Monopolies don’t want it. Real capitalists know that they need it.

 

Economics writer, Will Hutton, agrees with this. He  believes what American capitalism needs is more, not less regulation. Regulation can often be good for business. Business needs good government. A government like that led by Trump is not the answer. He tried his best to eliminate all regulations. There are many on the right who think that is the right approach. It isn’t. It would have been disastrous. According to Hutton, that is why European companies are in many cases doing better than American companies. They are regulated better. So they can’t get fat and lazy.

When these giants are broken up you have more robust and vigorous corporations and it is better for everyone, in particular the public but also the organizations. They all benefit. So, the United States needs a strong President, unlike Trump, who can do this. Is Biden the one? I doubt it, but I hope I am wrong. He certainly will be better than Trump, no matter what he does or does not do.

Capitalism needs smart regulation. Without it, capitalism starves.

Flattening the Curve for Rich People: Wall Street, Main Street, or Willow Place?

Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

Once again Wall Street is doing much better than Main Street. Th at should not surprise anyone.  And Wall Street is doing even much better than Willow Place. This is always an interesting phenomenon. In my view this will always happen in a system that permits plutocracy, and even worse in a system that encourages plutocracy. If we left the rich rule they would do what is in their best interests. It really is that simple.

As Scott Galloway said,

“As a nation we suffer from an idolatry of innovators. And we personify companies and believe that it all starts with the shareholders. The shareholder class is the premier class and as long as the economy is strong everything will fall into place. And we measure the economy’s health by these dangerous indices called the Nasdaq where 90% of the stock are owned by the top 10%. The Nasdaq and the Dow are not indicators of the health of our economy; they are proxies for how well the wealthy are doing. And–spoiler alert–they’re killing it.”

Again no one should be surprised by this. We have a system that is designed by the wealthy for the wealthy and inevitably such a system will deliver the goods to the wealthy. Our system does that well.

Another problem Galloway draws to our attention is that private power has been unleashed as a result deregulation. As he said, as a result of regulators doing nothing,

“… we end up with a lot of private power that has now overrun government. There are now more full-time lobbyists from Amazon that are living in Washington D.C. than there are sitting US Senators. There are more people manicuring Sheryl Sandburg and Mark Zuckerberg’s image in the communications department of Facebook than there are journalists at the Washington Post. So, we now have a situation where if you look across the market at the S&P 500, the 50 biggest companies are up for the year, the companies in the middle are down in the high single digits and the smallest 15 companies are down in double digits. We have decided that companies are either big tech monopolies, or too big to fail. That is our priority. And the wealthiest cohort in America small business owners have received one of the largest bail-outs. There will be very well publicized examples of the owners of a cupcake bakery that made it through the other end, but mostly what PPT has done is two things. Not giving  bridges to small business but giving  them piers where they are still going to go out of business, but we have just kicked the can down the road. This economy is reshaping. It’s coming down differently. And two, we have flattened the curve for rich people. Small business owners are millionaires typically, and there was no reason they needed a bailout. The big mistake here, looking back, will be we should have protected people not companies. We should have put money in the hands of people and then let them decide  what businesses survive and what perish. Capitalism and rugged individualism on the way up and cronyism and bailouts on the way down is just cronyism. It doesn’t help the economy. And money is nothing but the transfer of time and work and all we’ve decided is that we want our kids and grand kids to spend less time with their loved ones such that wealthy people now can stay wealthy.”

 

Keep the wealthy being wealthy. That is what is happening with cronyism. Is this what modern capitalism is all about?

Lessons from e-commerce

Capitalism, Decline of the west, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social democracy, Social Justice

 

 

In e-commerce it took years for the kind of growth we have seen lately. It is astonishing. I hate what Amazon is doing to small businesses around the world. I hate the thought of giving any more money to the richest man in the world (or second richest) whose employees have to wear diapers to work because they are not given enough time to go to the washroom.

Before the pandemic Jeff Bezos was earning $1 million every 50 minutes now he is doing much better than that and I have helped him out, as have millions of others. We have done that because we came to realize how convenient it was to shop from Amazon. For many things we don’t really have to go to a store to look them over. Ordering them from our homes for some of us is just easier, simpler, and cheaper.  Other businesses will have to learn that we have learned something during this pandemic and if they don’t change, we will change where and how we shop. Not for everything but for many things. Capitalists had better innovate or they will be left on the dust heap. Capitalist always say that is what they are good at. Let’s see if that’s true.

That does not mean all has been rosy. As Hari Sreenivasan pointed out to,

“It has been a boon for those who could afford it. There has been a blue collar pandemic and a white collar pandemic. For the white collar people it was great.  I can get everything from Instacard and Amazon. But if you’re an essential worker that doesn’t really apply to you.’

For others not so much. And some of us still care a little bit about fairness. Fairness and competition.

Scott Galloway is a professor Marketing who was interviewed by Sreenivasan on Amanpour & Company and he agreed completely:

“If you’re in the top 10% of income earners there is no change in employment. It means you’re no more vulnerable than you were before the pandemic. There’s a 60% likelihood you can work from home. You can spend more time with your family. You maybe got 10 hours back a week. If you make less than $40,000 a year, 40% of those people have lost their jobs and less than 10% can work from home. You don’t like to say this out loud, but if you’re in the top 10% and you’re blessed with good health you’re most likely spending more time with Netflix, your kids, and less time commuting, and by the way your stocks are probably up and I would argue that a lot of the stimulus unfortunately hasn’t been about arresting the pandemic, and helping our neediest, it’s been about flattening the curve for rich people. The savings rate in American has never been higher. The Nasdaq has never been higher. If you do a google search for covid and markets you’ll find more articles than if you do covid and mortality. It’s as if as a nation our priorities are reflected in our spending. The velocity of death is unprecedented. More people are dying every day from this than any crisis in history! And that’s meaningful. But what would be profoundly tragic would be if the Nasdaq declines! At least that’s what our spending seems to indicate. We want to save restaurants but not keep schools open. We seem to want to ensure that the markets are washed in liquidity and people are wanting stimulus, but we aren’t protecting people. We see infection rates rise. And we see our health professionals wanting for PPE equipment. It does definitely seem that we have decided that corporations are people and they are the ones that we have to save.”

 

And remember all of this is not coming from some crazy leftwing extremist. This is coming from a self-described enthusiast for capitalism. He is an insider. He likes the system. Perhaps not as much as Zwaagstra does, but he is no bleeding socialist. He just thinks the current system sucks. It sucks because the rich people are swimming in cash while those who are not are taking their chances serving the rich people. They are called essential workers, but they are not paid like it.

Capitalism in the time of Pandemic

Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics

On television I  recently heard Scott Galloway, a Professor of Marketing  at New York University Stern School of Business who also wrote a book called Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity. I heard him interviewed on a few different television shows recently flogging his book.

He is very interesting. Scott Galloway is an enthusiast for capitalism, just like Michael Zwaagstra a local counsellor. But that is where the resemblance ends. Zwaagstra recently wrote an article in our local Carillon News and said capitalism was doing just fine and he could hardly wait to get right back to it without any changes. Our member of Parliament, Ted Falk, thinks the same way. Why change what’s pretty  close to perfect? Zwaagstra and Falk both dismissed any suggestion that anything should change, he liked it exactly the way it was. Of course, those most comfortable with things as they are tend to feel that way.

Scott Galloway is different. He is enthusiastic about capitalism, but he believes changes are needed. Badly.

Hari Sreenivasan on Amanpour & Company interviewed Galloway and pointed out that in the US more than 250,000 people have already died from Covid-19. Of course, since then many more have died.  Sreenivasan pointed out that the disease has exposed some serious weaknesses in the American economy, but has also provided an opportunity to fix some of those weaknesses. Someone once said, we should never waste a crisis. Zwaagstra and the other Panglosses want to do exactly that. Why fix something that is not broken?

Galloway pointed out that before the pandemic there were a lot of people who were optimistic to the point of arrogance. The system was working well for many people, but for others it was disastrous. The pandemic made clear to all that many of the governmental institutions had been woefully underfunded. Galloway is a capitalist, but he recognized the importance of government. The crisis has allowed us to spend more time with our families, it has allowed us to look closely at our educational system. Our health care system needs a close examination in the light of what we have learned from the pandemic. It has shown how e-commerce can work. To him, unlike Zwaagstra, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

In health care Galloway believes the greatest shift in stakeholder value is about to occur in the business history of the US. In the US 17% of the GDP is heath care.

Here is what he said,

 

“It is arguably the largest business in the world clocking in at 3 or 4 trillion dollars a year, but the outcomes have been decreasing. Life expectancy has been going down and mortality is stuck at a certain level. Customer satisfaction is pretty anemic. The medical profession as retail is probably the second worst retail in America behind gas stations. Imagine going to a store for a sunblock and someone sides a plexi-glass gives you a form and says to you ‘Here fill out this paperwork and we’ll see you in 30 minutes! It’s a fairly uninspiring experience. The exciting thing is that 99% of the people who have contracted, endured, and developed anti-bodies for the coronavirus did it without entering a doctor’s office let alone a hospital.”

 

Professor Galloway said  he got his Covid-19 test in his kitchen. Things are changing rapidly and sometimes for the better.

“Just as e-commerce took the store to your living room, just as the movie theater moved into your living room, the doctor’s office, hospitals, and diagnostics moved to your house.”

These things are a sea change. I had a doctor’s examination from my cottage at the lake while the doctor was in his office. I had a blemish or spot on my head that worried me. My wife took a photo and emailed it to the doctor who looked at it and said, “I think it’s benign.”  While I wished he could have said that with a little more confidence it was a shockingly good experience with my physician.

As Galloway said,

“This might give us not just an opportunity to reduce costs but to take us off our heels as a nation being reactive and defensive about our health and get on our toes and talk more about primary care. It made people more comfortable with their relationship with their health care provider. Amazon just announced that they would have 24/7 pharmacists available and 2-hour delivery. So, we could see an explosion of innovation in health care. You could arguably say it is the most exciting place to be in our economy post-covid. Regulations have come crashing down. Consumers are now comfortable receiving health care over their hand held in their home.”

I admit that describes me. I want to see my doctor from time to time, but often I don’t need to go his or her office. By phone or ipad often is good enough and saves me a lot of time. My time is valuable too.

Galloway had some less complementary things to say about capitalism. I will explore those next.