Fighting Yesterday's Battles

 It would be an interesting experiment to dig out newspapers from five or ten years ago and look at the headlines. Apart from the trivial and the ever-present, my guess is that there would be much discussion about some issues that seemed highly consequential at the time but humdrum now. It is not easy to put present anxieties into a wider context.

 

As examples, think of all the military escapades of the USA since 1945. The Korean war started seventy years ago this week and the cause seemed strong enough at the time to justify deploying thousands of soldiers into a highly hostile environment and to accept that many would perish. The Bay of Pigs still holds some intensity, but Vietnam and Iraq less.

 

It is the same about more mundane domestic issues. How can we forget the discussions about toilets and changing rooms for people of rare genders? In that case, much of the excitement was generated for political ends. A cynic might claim that the same could be true of all the warmongering.

 

One of the most heartening articles I read this year was in The Economist about abortion. I find abortion to be a tough subject. I attend Catholic Mass in the USA and observe the passion that it generates. Even in 2020, our local priest came close to suggesting a vote for Trump, with abortion the deciding factor. W were asked to look beyond crime, misogyny, racism, arrogance, bullying and the rest, an antithesis of the gospel teachings, all in the cause of reducing abortion.

 

For the most passionate, the key argument is that all life is sacred. What I find hard to reconcile is that it is often these same people who accept people starving in the streets for a want of societal support, or capital punishment, or even extra-judicial killing of foreign scientists. Can we really judge those lives to be expendable whereas a creature with an undeveloped brain is not?

 

On the other hand, it should never be a trivial thing to abort a child, beyond some point where a scientist might classify it as a human being, so I have some sympathy for the anti-abortion cause.

 

The article in question did not explore these well-worn avenues, but instead pointed out how the science of having an abortion has changed. What used to be a risky operation can now be reliably undertaken at home via cheap and readily available medication, which is becoming available to more and more people in different parts of the world.

 

Over time the result will be that the harrumphing of the anti-abortion evangelicals will have less and less effect. They can close all the clinics and squeeze the professionals, but that will be of little avail if a simple prescription from the Internet will do the trick. Banning the pills would even be difficult if they are available in other countries.

 

We can hope that the upshot of all this will be a reduction in political heat. The new pills is only safe in the first trimester, but hopefully their easy availability will mean women can make a decision and act on it quickly enough. The abortion pill is little more than an extension of the morning after pill. People can still debate the point at which abortion becomes unethical, but once the discussion becomes theoretical rather than consequential it should become less intense. Continuous improvement in sex education, availability of contraceptives and male responsibilities should extend the trend of women’s agency.

 

This is a surprisingly common phenomenon: an issue enflames passions but then quickly becomes old news thanks to societal trends and some game-changing innovation. In the developed world, matters relating to LGBT people have gone this way over one generation. Prejudice still exists and other parts of the world have some catching up to do, but nowadays the diehards emit a sense of having missed the bus.

 

The challenge for activists and policy makers is to discern which issues will vanish of their own accord, which ones need only a nudge and which ones need an almighty heave. An example from a less ethically sensitive area is competition law. Twenty years ago legislators became concerned about the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft, but the problem vanished before they could do much about it. Now the same dilemma exists concerning other tech giants. Most likely that will solve itself over time as well.

 

More difficult is the whole area of populism being fed by conspiracy theories and anger and misinformation, all turbocharged by social media. It is tempting to take an evangelical approach and seek to banish the scourge via prohibitions. But it is very hard to know what to do, partly because any restrictive action risks firing up resentments even more and creating martyrs. As an optimist, I like to hope that this issue will reduce over time too. Successive generations are better educated and less digitally naïve, and platforms will develop to drive more discerning segmentation of content. It could still be a bumpy ride for a while, especially if elites continue to ignore the challenges of inequality and deprivation.

 

Climate change is clearly an issue demanding the almighty heave. But I suspect we are reaching a tipping point, a good one in which humanity does what it needs to rather than a bad one where nature wreaks havoc. Now that the moneymen have started seriously downgrading dirty investments and worrying about insurance, momentum for necessary change will snowball. This example is also salutary, because the temptation ten years ago was to mandate all sorts of solutions, most of which would have been the wrong ones. Even an almighty heave should not be too specific.

 

The same is true for all the challenges of racism. Again, this warrants an almighty heave, but success will come more from changing minds than implementing draconian policies, though some police reform is surely in order. Rioting and tearing down statues and demanding reparations all help to make activists feel empowered, but may often be counter-productive.

 

The Economist has also been mounting a subtle campaign in the area of transsexual rights and policies. Rightly feeling guilty about past persecution of gay people, the magazine fears that society has overreacted and used an almighty heave where a nudge might be more effective. It is such an immature area, and young kids risk taking drastic changes to their bodies that they later regret. Over time things will become clearer as evidence builds up, science innovates and professionals improve their skills. If we are cautious, then some kids will surely suffer from being unjustly forced to live with the body they were born with. But is that a bigger risk than creating a cohort of kids regretting drastic changes that cannot be easily reversed?

 

I know little of the subject, but I lean towards the side of The Economist. Patience and caution should not be mistaken for conservative obstructionism. And, as the other examples show, the passage of time can have wonderful benefits. At work, prevarication and inaction can be a good strategy, when the result is a problem disappearing of its own accord. Such miracles can occur in public policy too. 

The Perils of Execution

 I have always been pretty hot at strategy. I can read a big picture, have good imagination for idea generation, can weigh up pros and cons and even produce some sort of plan. Where I failed it was usually in execution, and in most cases that was due to its human aspects.

 

You can’t achieve all that much alone. Your power comes from finding ways to multiply your own abilities by utilizing others. And that is a secret I never really mastered. I recall one humbling example, at a workshop given by some guru or other. There were six of us divided into two groups of three, the three bosses and the three workers. I was the senior worker at the time and was appointed their leader.

 

The whole point of the exercise was that we were supposed to win. My two team members were a Japanese guy who did everything for the group, never lacking energy or willingness, and the secretary, immersed with practical and human skills. The three bosses all talked a good game and were engineers so had some practical skills, but they were supposed to over-theorise and argue about roles while our team got on with the task at hand. Except we didn’t, and I think the reason was my terrible execution leadership. We had the smarter idea, better plan and the more diligent workers, but somehow we lost. I think the fundamental cause was that I did not care enough, and that communicated itself to my teammates.

 

I learned a lot about execution during my short spell in Major Project Management for Shell, but actually not as much as I should have, because I suspect many of the group had the same weaknesses as me. They were wonderful at process, so they made beautiful plans. Major parts of those plans involved stakeholder management and communication. But somehow things often went wrong. Just like in that workshop, this might have had something to do with passion.

 

I recall a couple of other Shell stories with lessons about execution. At one point I was somehow put in charge of building new networks of petrol stations in newly open Eastern Europe. It was a wonderful job and I think I did it quite well. We built strong models, good practices, and attracted excellent talent. We made some good decisions and left a lasting legacy. But the real success went to my successor, a Hungarian man of monumental energy and passion. He took our framework and brought it alive. It helped him that he was local and could relate to his team more authentically. He did a brilliant job.

 

Another example was in Scandinavia, where we had a failing business and I developed a strategy to turn it around. By happenstance, at a perfect moment for us Shell fell in love with a consultant who was peddling a particular method. As it turns out, the method was not especially good strategically and in most countries it failed dismally. But a team of us was able to hitch my strategy to the method and the results were spectacular. The method was the perfect vehicle for a passionate execution.

 

My last example goes against the theme, because it was a success and I was in charge. We had to integrate an acquired company into a running business before closing down the former operation. There was little guidance available, and I did a good job, I think, at defining the issue and forming a plan. Somehow my team also managed to execute it well, despite me being in charge. Perhaps by that stage I had learned a few tricks. Perhaps my team was exceptional. Perhaps the passion for the task somehow created itself. I don’t really know, but the results were certainly satisfying.

 

This discourse on execution is prompted by a series of experiences in 2020. Major Project Management has had a unique role this year because of the pandemic. Most governments have failed dismally. I think I know some reasons why.

 

First, here are some examples. In April, congress showed a rare burst of brilliance and passed a bill allocating $1200 to all citizens. The challenge was always going to be executing this and, true to form, rich people with bank accounts got their money easily whereas the people who really needed it did not. I assumed we would not qualify, but, in September, we received a general letter that led me to believe that our son actually did, so we filled out the forms and made an application. We were told that the application was valid, but three months later he still has not received the money. The funny part was what happened when he called the helpline to ask when he might receive his cash. The clerk, perhaps with a straight face, explained that it might take months because everything was moving slowly – because of the pandemic! Of course the pandemic was the solitary reason for the programme in the first place.

 

We had a similar experience this month when trying to obtain covid PCR tests.  We will be flying tomorrow and our airline demanded a PCR test carried out within 72 hours of the flight, which in practice meant yesterday. Our challenge was that most commercial providers, except the most exorbitant ones, have a turnaround time for getting results of up to week. I really wonder what the value of such a test is to anybody, since within a week we can infect most of our neighbourhood. Still, in their wisdom NYC had a particular scheme that was perfect for us, offering rapid turnaround lab tests at specific locations. The appointment could only be made two days before the test, and that led to the challenge, because the website was such that most of the time no appointments were on offer. Luckily by getting up at 4am on the relevant day I managed to game the system.

 

Since arriving in the US, we have been willing to donate blood. But at first we were told that our foreign blood wouldn’t be on any use to them, first for five years and then for seven or ten. Seemingly they believe most European blood in contaminated by mad cow disease, which would be a scary thought if I trusted the US professionals who reached that conclusion. Now, almost every week, the NYC blood service issues a call for more people to donate because the pandemic has increased demand. So I tried again, calling the helpline a couple of times, but they either failed to call back or lacked key information, so we have still been stymied.

 

All of these are execution failings. I could add many more. The NYC plan to reopen schools has lurched from problem to problem, though on that one I have sympathy for the mayor, who took a brave position and is constrained by teacher’s unions with dubious motives. Cuomo’s late intervention to a subway tunnel repair was hardly exemplary, though the outcome seems to have been good. Every encounter with the DMV has given me plenty of evidence of poor execution.

 

I can draw a few general lessons. Firstly, execution is difficult. We can all complain about the school reopening but that is a tough, multi-dimensional challenge. It should make us appreciate those organisations that seem to pull off tough execution challenges as a core competence: Amazon and IKEA come to mind. Public sector examples are harder to find, especially military ones. The Chinese seem to have acquired this competence recently, and it may be why they are progressively eating our lunch. 

 

Second, execution and politicians don’t mix. The mayor’s office doubtless had great intentions with his rapid covid testing idea, but the Major Project execution was probably a terrible process with mixed motives, little attention to motivation, and too many last-minute interventions. Politicians love to overpromise, and also hate to compromise until the very last minute, which is poison to project execution. Just ask the poor mandarins currently trying to find a Brexit path forward.

 

Lastly, passion can overcome a multitude of sins. 2020 has seen many miracles of execution along with the failings, and the key ingredient has been humans with passion. I can only admire such people, recalling that humiliating workshop when I let down my fellow workers and lost to the bosses.     

Against Covert Activity

 Our latest pandemic binge watch is The Americans. We are lucky to have so much good TV to pass evenings at home. This series alone offers something like sixty hours of viewing. We are nearly half way through. I expect we will take a break soon, watch something else before coming back for the second half in a few months. You can have too much of a good thing.

 

The Americans is cleverly conceived and written and well acted. The lead couple are a Welshman and an American woman, partners in real life, playing a pair of KGB agents deeply embedded into Washington society. It is set in the 1980’s, in the Reagan era, as the cold war was raging but Russia was starting to implode.

 

The choice of the 1980’s is very clever. It allows the writers to be somewhat more balanced in their scripts. Anything more recent would surely feel forced to be more jingoistic to retain mass US appeal. It is just about acceptable to provoke thoughts about equivalence between Reagan’s CIA and Andropov’s KGB, in both moral and practical terms. In that sense the show is quite courageous.

 

To my taste, the show is improving as we progress through its series. In series one, a chase for ratings and funds led to fast-moving, sensational storylines that stretched credulity too far. The lead couple live with their kids in American suburbia, and happen to have a senior FBI agent as a neighbour. In the very first episode the neighbour is suspicious, because of course the lead couple are gallivanting around in their mainly nocturnal double lives.

 

But once the show became established, and the writers could plot many series, priorities changed and that led the pace to slow. An intriguing element is how the KGB insists on recruiting the teenage children of the protagonists, something that could only be developed at a cautious pace. Other storylines become stretched over multiple episodes as well and become more credible as a result, and a slow build up of tension replaces most of the adrenaline rush of violent resolutions. A covert life is surely a very patient and tense one, and the series is does an excellent job of exploring the human side of this sort of existence.

 

The longer I watch the show, the more one primary message becomes obvious. Apart from being cruel, covert operations must be stunningly wasteful and often doomed. Much happens in our name, but we little about it and there is unlikely to be much scrutiny of activities.

 

The Americans does an excellent job of portraying how tough it is to keep activities restricted. Because nobody can be trusted, there need to be many levels of security clearance and a huge number of audits and checks carried out, all of which must make progress next to impossible. It is not just the scientists who must be vetted, but the maintenance engineers, janitors, door staff, administrators and everybody else, and a determined adversary will inevitably target the weakest link in the chain.

 

A neat example is how the male star infiltrates a senior FBI office by wooing a secretary. His entry point is to convince her that he is secretly auditing the department of her boss. The story is credible because surely that must happen, and relatively easy to pull off with some accreditation that the secretary cannot seek to check because the supposed department of her suitor is so confidential that nobody is supposed to know about it. The web of departments and clearances and verifications must surely be almost impossible to disentangle.

 

It may be a little sensationalised, but an extension of this concept means that many characters are somehow playing both sides as double agents or triple agents. When everybody knows something embarrassing about everybody else, this must be a likely outcome.

 

Ultimately, the secret activity becomes largely for its own purpose and otherwise futile, because true technological advantage will usually be fleeting. The value for money must surely be terrible. In our cyber age, this must be even more true now than in the 1980's of The Americans.

 

But the worst part of covert activity is how it must be sold so the population accepts it. Within a state, corporations and individuals are accountable under law. States themselves have few such limitations. International law is flimsy and routinely ignored, including by states claiming moral high ground. And somehow we are supposed to think this is a good thing.

 

So we have a retiring MI6 officer giving an interview to Time in which the interviewer asks how we are supposed to trust the ethics of his organisation, and all he can say is that they are good chaps who police themselves. We have semi-official state propaganda that aims to make us feel happy that Mossad and/or the CIA have taken out an Iranian nuclear scientist. Even Saint Barack timed the extra-judicial assassination of Bin Laden for electoral gain.

 

We only swallow it because we are constantly fed jingoistic messages, about axes of evil, about national security interests, about the unique heroism of our armed forces and about the evil intentions of our adversaries. There is not much detail: Americans are not asked to ponder why a Saudi war should be supported while an Iranian one should be countered. A neat episode in The Americans has the KGB trying to expose Reagan for his overt support of apartheid South Africa. Good luck with that one: such nuanced thinking is not encouraged, and sadly beyond the wit or interest of most citizens anyway.

 

It is the jingoistic propaganda which is the source material for the worst forms of populism, and the cynical practices of so-called civilised nations which give succour to autocrats elsewhere. If the true goal is uprisings leading to regime change, why do we make our own side seem so unattractive and offer such a barrage of propaganda opportunities? How can we pretend to promote cooperation between nations when we brazenly act in ways that undermine it?

 

One of the saddest legacies of Hitler was the belief in the west that he was defeated by war and that appeasement was by its nature a bad thing. Another word for appeasement is diplomacy. In the same way, perhaps the saddest legacy of the Reagan era is that the CIA defeated Russian communism. In truth, Russian communism imploded under its own contradictions, steered by a rare statesman in Gorbachev. Indeed, Russian communism appears to be making a comeback.

 

No, covert activity is part of the problem and never the solution. A well-led world would strive to systemically reduce covert activity. It tends to mushroom otherwise, because of the lack of scrutiny and the impossibility of its goals. The US and China appear to be in the process of making the same mistakes once again and ratcheting up a new cold war. We will all be losers.

 

The Americans is an excellent show. It makes me sad that its main message, so powerfully demonstrated, is not a routine part of discourse in society. Of all the things we should be marching about, I believe it is covert activity by our own side that should be the top target. One day this will happen, but humanity has to find a way of unwrapping itself from its national flags and their jingoistic messages before it happens.

The Americans did revive one more thought in my head. Might Donald Trump somehow be a Russian asset? Even if the idea is a little farfetched, the show suggests it is feasible, and it would certainly explain a lot of his behaviour. If so, the last month has played out as an absolute dream for Russia: by extension, it would now have tens of millions of assets. What a frightening thought that is. 

Spotting Zombies

There have been a few articles in The Economist lately about so-called Zombie companies. They refer to businesses which are kept alive on some form of life support system, but which are doomed to die. It is generally healthy that such firms are killed off quickly, so that subsidies are not wasted and so the staff can start the task of finding other jobs in more productive enterprises.

 

One of the disadvantages of furlough schemes is that they can freeze this healthy churn in economies by keeping Zombies alive. If these dying firms had to pay their staff they would go under, and they will have to give up once the furlough is ended, it is healthier that this happen sooner rather than later. Compared with Europe, the US has followed a balance of supporting its economy by paying citizens more than firms, and The Economist credits this for allowing fewer Zombies and a faster resumption of growth.

 

There seems to me to be some merit in this argument, although there must be many other factors involved in selecting the best policy, for example targeting the most needy, speed and avoiding abuse. Furloughs were lauded in the early weeks of the pandemic for being efficient in all these areas.

 

The concept of Zombie firms made me wonder just how many firms might be considered Zombies, even in normal times, and how to spot them. I can argue that I’ve worked in a few Zombie firms in my time and that large chunks of economies might be classed that way.

 

There are various ways to grow profits in businesses. The purest are to put new or improved products into the market in order to acquire new customers or earn more from existing customers. Firms can also grow revenue by charging more for existing products from existing customers. There are also many ways to reduce costs or to alter cash flow profiles by managing working capital or investment.

 

Growth is more imperative than it used to be, at least in publicly traded companies, because investors today demand a consistent high return on capital. The other important trend is the radical lowering of prevailing interest rates. This makes the future relatively more important than the present. With a 10% discount rate, the first ten years or so dominate a net present value calculation, but with a 5% rate, projections out to twenty-five years or more are relevant. In a high discount rate world, firms with legacy assets can squeeze the lemon for a long time to eke out an attractive value, via costs or incremental revenue gains. In a low discount rate world, it is hard to create a competitive value profile without pure growth. Mature sectors facing demographic headwinds are especially vulnerable.

 

This is the essence of there being so many Zombies now. Pure growth is hard to come by, especially with Amazon and China hovering up most of what is available. So firms have to resort to more and more desperate measures to be able to project a cash flow profile that keeps investors invested. These firms can be argued as disguising their death spiral, or Zombies.

 

 There are many Zombie survival moves available, even when governments aren’t distributing pandemic subsidies. My favourites are the retail ones, because that is my background. When marketing becomes all about promotion, it is a total giveaway. Look out for retailers who rely more and more on stamps and offers. These are the last resort to hold on to existing customers and to drag extra sales from them, even low margin sales, in order to bolster the short-term and delay defections. In the US, Marshalls, Bed Bath and Beyond and JC Penney are examples. Once a retailer has started down this road, there is no escape.

 

Linked to this are heavy promotional advertisers and channel stuffers. Why to car companies throw so much money down the toilet on TV adverts? It is because it is all they have. It brings sales forwards from existing customers, and stuffs their dealers with stock, but it is a slow death spiral. Financing plans fall into the same category.

 

Then there are business model tricks, much beloved by private equity. Moving from direct operation to franchises and then brand licenses effectively sells future upsides and dilutes brand value, but does generate cash. Lease and lease back deals on property are similar. Selling off parts of a portfolio does the same, as does restructuring pensions. This sort of financial and business model engineering nearly always spells doom next times there is a downturn.

 

Outsourcing, offshoring and cost cutting are at least more structural than the tricks above, but the problem is that they are one-off tricks. They can boost profitability for a while, but reduce upside and tend to lose impact once competitors have copied. These are a staple of private equity too: look at ABInBev, and its recent struggles now the playbook is becoming exhausted.

 

Other cost cutting is even more insidious. Zombie firms will often reduce R&D and defer maintenance investments. It can be argues that the entire US economy can be classified as this sort of zombie – just look at the state of the infrastructure. Share buy backs are a good acid test of this type of activity.

 

Other tricks involve mergers and regulation. A Zombie industry can extend its life by firms buying each other out and milking margins for a time. This can work even longer if the sector has barriers to entry or regulatory advantages. US pharmacies are good examples. One acid test is to compare prices with those in other markets. In the US, pharmacies telecoms and realtors have pulled these tricks for a long time, but Amazon and others will ensure an eventual comeuppance.

 

This is an extensive playbook. In the days of lazy investors and competitors, high interest rates, possible windfalls and one-off opportunities, firms could survive more or less forever using these moves. They can still last a long time. Banks hate bad debts and have a bias to existing clients, so they will keep lending long past the time they should. Passive investors stay in the game too long too, especially when dividends are high and when a stock lingers in an index (so must be retained by tracking investors).

 

I looked at the thirty firms currently in the Dow Jones index, and I think as many as half might be zombies if I am a tough judge. The department stores, car companies and industrial generalists like GE departed the Dow a while ago. But where do you see true growth in Boeing, or Caterpillar, IBM, Exxon, Dow Chemical, Amex or Walgreens? I can argue that even P&G, Coke, Nike or MacDonald’s might be vulnerable to Zombiefication in the medium term. Verizon and Disney have some strengths but are in dangerous sectors. Outside of healthcare and technology, there might be zombies everywhere.

 

The other side of this coin are the winners, notably Amazon. Zombies are perfect for winners. They prop up sector prices and margins and can be picked off gradually without ever posing any sort of threat. Facebook and Google will also hoover up the excessive desperation advertising of Zombie sectors for many years yet. There are also Chinese upstarts in many sectors that will be salivating at the prospects for taking business in the west, without having to resort to state subsidies or intellectual property theft.    

Thinking Outside of a Bigger Box

 During the pandemic, there have been attempts by some of the publications to which I subscribe to think outside of the box. The pandemic has acted as an accelerator and made it possible to envision a radically changed society and a fleeting opportunity to take actions to bring this about. Both Time and The Guardian Weekly sponsored a series of articles on the subject. I found them both highly disappointing.

 

The overriding approach of these articles was to take a current gripe and to wish it away. Corporations would suddenly be more socially conscious, and would take a longer-term approach. Everybody would have somewhere decent to live, especially the historically downtrodden such as people of colour and immigrants. Education would embrace technology and become more enlightened. A green revolution would miraculously solve climate change. Racism would no longer exist.

 

There were various recurring themes in the articles. One was the portrayal of a leftist utopia that signally failed to recognise the benefits that markets have reaped for humanity. Another was the assumption of unlimited government money for investment, without any consideration of where this money might come from or the unintended consequences of spending it. A third was a lack of any coherent pathway towards the utopia: often a tiny example project was quoted with the lazy assumption that it could be easily scaled.

 

Most of my takeaways from this were rather depressing. Many on the left appear to be terrible managers, and even their good ideas can be easily swatted away by conservative forces. But I also found it depressing how limited their ambitions were.

 

There were a couple of glorious exceptions. Rich territory included reimagining cities. I love the idea of the mayor of Paris of working towards the fifteen-minute city, in which all citizens should be able to find most of what they need within fifteen minutes on foot, bike or public transit. This has legs. The vision is clear and appealing. It starts with current reality, and incremental steps can easily be identified and ranked according to cost and benefit.

 

The idea has potential even in the home of the SUV, the USA, though probably only in the bigger cities for the time being. The pandemic has opened up some possibilities, and I think our leaders could be braver in their experiments. In New York we have an Open Streets initiative, but it mainly seems to take very easy wins such as quiet residential streets next door to a park.

 

Why not be bolder? Where I live in Forest Hills we have a rather traditional high street – it can have a European feel and was one of the attractions leading us to choose the area. But the street would be so much more pleasant if it was pedestrianized, and that is quite feasible. One bus route would have to be marginally rerouted but the street is not important for any commuter routes. Take away the cars and Austin Street could become a permanent home for outdoor dining, café culture, markets and small businesses and simply walking. There must be hundreds of such opportunities within New York City, yet the mayor’s office seems to lack the vision or courage to implement them, even now. Habit and lobbyists run deep in the USA.

 

Still, practicality is not my main gripe with most of the articles. The primary purpose of such pieces should be courageous re-envisioning, yet most were rather incremental. I would have preferred it if some had challenged more fundamental assumptions. Here are two that are ripe for a challenge: the nation state and work.

 

Imagine a world where the role of the nation state was radically reduced. My model is of a world where nations were a bit like US states. Some powers would remain at that level, but many would become regional or global and others devolved to cities. A passport would become more like a driving license.

 

Global free movement, with only bridgeable financial restrictions rather than ideological or racial ones, would unlock the ultimate human right and plenty of innovation. We could get rid of most of the military jingoism on the planet, and its destruction and waste too. Nasty populism would lose most of its oxygen. Global challenges such as climate change could be addressed globally. Trade could be global, with a single currency and a monetary policy designed for humanity not rich elites within rich nations.

 

Most of the crap in the world today can be laid at the door of the nation state. Watch the news for the next few nights and note when a story makes you angry, and then note how many of those stories involve calumnies in the name of one or more nation states.

 

I am not advocating big brother here. Much can be devolved to cities and other smaller units. The nation state stops that too. The nation state is the toxic level, the level that is broken and destructive. If somebody visited from another planet, the nation state would be the aspect of human governance that they would first be confused by, then deride, and then eliminate.

 

By wonderful happenstance, we have an example to build upon, called the European Union. It is not perfect, but it sure gets many things right. And it would be even better if nation states didn’t constrain it so much.

 

My second out of the box idea is to eliminate most paid work. I’ll start with an example from today’s news. The MTA is the body running the NYC subway, and, not surprisingly, it has current financial difficulties. It is bleating for taxpayer help and threatening self-destruction by massively curtailing service levels. But it has a simple fix available. Trains run with a driver and a conductor. With no technological investment, the conductor could vanish today. Within a year and for a minimal investment the driver could go too.

 

Does this thought make me an evil capitalist bastard? Of course the reason it does not happen is that the MTA is answerable to the city and the state and various trade unions, all with political agendas in which protecting jobs is central.

 

Now think of it this way. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers get up early every morning to sir in a lonely carriage and do something they hate and that has no human value, since it can be easily mechanised. Those people could be freed to do something productive, or simply enjoy some leisure, or care for old or young or infirm family members. If the last option was paid for then nobody need go poor and lots of societal good would be achieved.

 

So let us envisage a world where maximising jobs is no longer the goal. How did we get into a situation where we all strive to slog our guts out doing unpleasant stuff, and call that progress? Reimbursement for Care could change that attitude in an instant, as well as building communities, kindness, culture and gender equality. A generation would need to learn how to feel fulfilled without their MTA uniform and pointless pressing of buttons, but I don’t think that would take too long, if our education were overhauled.

 

I am not advocating a hippie society where everybody is always high and nothing gets done. Paid non-caring work is still an option, and most people will choose to take it up, for several years at least, in order to give life balance and earn a few luxuries and develop something for humanity. There would be plenty of progress; my guess is more than today. All such work would be gig work, much more flexible and adaptable and fitted to needs.

 

Now I have to concede that both of these ideas suffer from a dose of leftist utopianism. Implementation paths would be tricky. Global outlooks are hardly fashionable among voters just now, and those MTA drivers and conductors could garner plenty of sympathy too. But surely the purpose of these exercises is a radical reframing of what might be possible? For without that first step, nothing can ever happen.

 

I predict that in one hundred years time, our successors will consider our use of nationality and passports rather like we now consider slave owners. It is not so different when you think about it. They will also look at how we structured our economic model around everybody doing forty years of usually unproductive and unfulfilling slog, and laugh at how backward we used to be.    

What Happens Next

 I am not even a citizen, and will probably not be living in the USA by the next time a presidential election comes along, but I lost a considerable amount of sleep over the last two weeks. I can only imagine how much anxiety has been afflicting people with more at stake.

 

After all the bluster and recounts and lawsuits and runoffs, it seems fairly certain that we will have a Biden presidency, a Republican senate, a marginally Democratic house and a staunchly conservative judiciary for the next two years. How is this likely to pan out?

 

First, we can all breathe a massive sigh of relief, because the Biden presidency is the key element for humanity as a whole. In global affairs four more years of Trump would certainly have put a brake on climate action, made nuclear escalation with Russia and China more likely, made countless world conflicts more dangerous, and entrenched a bi-polar economic world to stymie development for a generation. NATO might not have survived either, though I not sure how many tears I would have shed over that outcome.

 

With Biden at the helm, he will join all significant world leaders in stepping up efforts to mitigate climate change. The courts in the US will try to slow him down, but symbolism matters in these things and I predict a decisive shift over the next four years. Within the last six months, the EU and China have taken significant actions and Japan and South Korea have made aggressive pledges. With a positive USA, the momentum will be unstoppable, and not before time.

 

The China relationship is interesting. I believe a grand bargain between the USA and China is available, but I fear the window may already be closing and Biden’s flimsy political capital will not allow him to take the opportunity. A brave USA would put trade, global institutions, military balance, human rights festering disputes on the table together, and China would have the ability and foresight to come to a deal. Domestic US politics will get in the way, and, while at least things will not get worse under Biden, the opportunity for a unified world will slip away. The irony is that the world that will emerge will cement the decline of the USA for the rest of the century. Recent Economistarticles about universities, technology and finance confirm to me that the key battles are already lost.

 

So we can all celebrate a return to common sense in world affairs. There is also cause to celebrate that Trump’s ouster will halt the erosion of US institutions like the Justice Department. But when it comes to the domestic outlook, I am not optimistic. The most influential person in the USA over the next four years will be the same as the last four: Donald Trump.

 

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the US election is how close it was. Trump made it into a referendum on himself, and then proceeded to take action after action to alienate everyone but his base. Four years in office have laid bare the manifest flaws in what pass for his policy platforms. The Democrats managed to unite behind a senile but otherwise unobjectionable candidate and to run a disciplined campaign. The Republicans are demonstrability a nasty, greedy and cynical crowd without any coherent platform. And Coronavirus was a curveball provided by fate at the perfect moment to undermine Trump’s electability. It is hard to imagine a more propitious set of circumstances for the Democrats, yet all they could achieve was a winning tie.

 

Democrats can justifiably moan about the unbalanced system, the gerrymandering and voter suppression of the other side and Trump’s abuse of the levers of incumbency, but a tie is still pretty shocking. How did this happen?

 

The answer is the Trump brand. Trump has been building his brand for ten years or so. At one point on the journey Trump took over the Republican brand. Trump’s brand is not driven by ideology or outcomes or even power. It craves respect, loyalty and adulation, and requires humiliation for those showing disrespect.

 

Like all good brands, this one is all about values. Values drive perceptions, which drive behaviour and build loyalty among target groups. Among the values of this brand are liberty and defending the American way of life. It is easier to list what it is against, including tax, the swamp, elites, wokeness and rules. Somehow the brand has managed to become associated with jobs and economic growth. During the takeover, the brand accepted some additional values such as extreme Judeo-Christianity and pro-lifeness.

 

The brand has been built via a relentless stream of communication, often flying in the face of objective truth. Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds have been the perfect vehicles, building upon what was already present, namely Fox News, conservative talk radio and certain churches.

 

The result of all this has been a division of the USA into bubbles that nowadays barely intersect. While those of us who follow mainstream media can barely understand how anybody could vote for Trump, just as many others, fed the unrelenting diet of the brand, have just as much trouble understanding us. They are captured; it is self-reinforcing and likely to grow further. QAnon and Pizzagate and the Proud Boys are sort of associated franchises.

 

We should be careful to accept that building brands is not illegal or even unethical and has been the core of politics forever. It is also not the first time that a political brand has come to be focused on an individual.

 

For me one of the most enduring images of Trump came almost exactly four years ago, the night of the 2016 election, when he suddenly realised he might win. I don’t think he wanted to win. Building the brand did not require winning – it would have been easier to build after losing. I have to admire how the brand has survived the scrutiny of four years in government.

 

Once he gets over his petulance, I think Trump will be rather happy he has lost this time. He has been preparing the ground four the next four years already. Now loyal supporters have a new sense of grievance, and spinning out the legal challenges will only grow it. This is dangerous territory: the USA is a land of many guns.

 

What does this mean? I think it is rather frightening. The Trump twitter feed will be the national agenda for the next four years. Republicans cannot escape and must continue to toe the line or be jettisoned into oblivion. Without the handicap of actually having to do anything or be judged by any outcomes, the twitter feed can become more extreme.

 

Biden has a wafer thin mandate. He faces a pandemic about to explode. 2021-2022 will be years of economic hardship. McConnell will block anything worthwhile, so Biden will be limited to pandemic stimulus and more short-term fixes to healthcare and not much else. Few will see any benefits. The twitter feed will blame him for everything. Going after Trump legally will only feed a narrative of Trump as martyr. The house may well flip in 2022, and, wait for it, Trump could easily win again in 2024. The circumstances will certainly be propitious and I fear the brand supporters will only become more loyal. All he has to do is expand his base incrementally – a few conservative Spanish-speaking memes in Miami have already showed the way. Biden will be eighty-two in 2024 and the Democratic ticket will be highly vulnerable with him or without him.

 

I hope I am wrong. I usually am. Plenty can change. Trump himself will be seventy-eight and I don’t think his movement will not survive him. In the longer term the next generation will be less gullible and more educated and more aware of wider issues, and we will all learn to turn social media into a force for good. But most of this will take longer than four years to have a measurable impact.

 

Humanity can celebrate dodging a bullet this week. I am sleeping better already. But the scenarios for 2024 feel very frightening to me.    

Small Mercies

 It is dawning on many of us that the coronavirus will disrupt our lives for many more months. We are bracing ourselves now for wave of infections, and the winter has not started yet. Surely there will be at least one further wave in the new year, though the exact timing will vary by region. After that we can be a bit more optimistic, from the possible combination of a widely available vaccine, the convenience of a do-it-yourself instant test, the return of warmer weather and further improvements to treatments.

 

In most countries we will have to live with the existing diet of restrictions. We will have to wear masks in public, avoid large gatherings, work from home where possible, accept constraints on schooling and live without any live culture. The only places where the restrictions can be less are where a combination of isolation and effective testing and tracing can eliminate the virus and stamp it out immediately whenever it reappears.

 

It is unfashionable to praise China, and of course the Chinese erred at the very start of the pandemic and in maintaining food practices that made it more likely in the first place. But it is wonderful how compliance and technology have enabled China to remove most restrictions. China is not an isolated island like New Zealand or even Taiwan, but a huge landmass with porous borders and high levels of internal travel. Yet they have suppressed the virus. Last week a Chinese city with the population of New York City was tested en masse. We tend to scoff at such things, saying we would not like to live in a country of such strict requirements to comply with state instructions. But when I think about it, just now I’d much rather live in China than in the shambles of the USA.

 

It reminds me of when I was growing up in the UK and we scoffed at the USA for its perfect teeth and two car families and its air conditioning and suburban mansions. We told ourselves we would not like to live in such a place, but we were lying to cover our envy and our shame. I suspect that over the next thirty years we, especially Americans, will have ever-increasing cause to create similar lies about China.

 

As we are forced to accept the reality of continuing restrictions, virus fatigue is becoming more prevalent, and I fear that many people will slide into depression. As humans we can endure a lot, but endurance is much easier when it is time limited. We will all have to work even harder to keep ourselves cheerful and to help those around us who are vulnerable.

 

We are especially at risk here in the USA, because we have a second reason to become depressed, namely the shameful politics. I predict that this too will have a dawning reality, soon after November third. If Trump should somehow win that dawning reality will be truly horrific, but we also will have to face up to consequences if he loses. Trump won’t just go away. Indeed, I see in his recent tactics that he is less interested in winning and more interesting in creating a loyal base to maintain a lucrative celebrity brand as a former president. He is stoking up his base more than ever, and doing so by casting suspicions and hate and conspiracy. He can use all this after a defeat, to the continuing cost of all of us.

 

So how can we avoid depression? One immediate remedy is to turn off twitter and facebook for a few weeks. I watched the first presidential debate but have decided to avoid the second one – why should I condemn myself to another night of lost sleep?

 

Part of the wider answer lies in counting our blessings. Firstly, most of us can recognise that our own hardships pale into insignificance compared with many others. I cannot sing or go to concerts, poor me. But I do still have an income and a bank balance and a home and a family and robust health. Perhaps sacrificing a few restaurant meals is not too bad when we think of what others are going through.

 

Then there are all the small blessings we can enjoy. Recently, I’ve paid special attention to relishing those things that were unavailable in April but possible now. I find it especially important to do this, because I fear the next move is more likely to take us back towards April than forwards into more possibilities.

 

One blessing is the return of live sports. Stuck indoors, we need some distractions, and live sports are important for me. I have got used to the absence of crowd noise. I especially applaud the organisers of those sports that have managed to return relatively safely. 

 

Three weeks ago the indoor pool at my local gym reopened, and I have resumed swimming. In truth I never enjoyed it much, swimming was always little more than the least painful way to avoid getting fatter, but now I am making sure I am thankful that I can swim.

 

A couple of months ago we started going to regular mass. We attend the church where I sang before the pandemic, and of course I miss that terribly, and it would even be preferable if others were singing beyond a lone cantor. But mass is still calming and beautiful and a purpose to leave the house and a source of community, with friendly faces even if we cannot see smiles. I also volunteer cantor myself now at another church, so can perform at least once a week.

 

Then last week I went back for the first time to the old folks home where we volunteer, to drive a resident to a medical appointment. This involved two long commutes there on public transport, the first of them in pouring rain to take a coronavirus test – three hours arduous travel for one minute of unpleasant activity. But wow, did I appreciate the opportunity to serve there again, even if I had to stay in the reception area and met very few old friends.

 

I can add in many other blessings, from increased family time to walking and reading and digital choirs. But there is some extra magic from being able to experience something that had been taken away for a while, especially when there is a risk that it might be taken away again. These are things to cherish.

 

I noticed one rather sad feature when I visited the home. I had expected a warm and exuberant welcome. Usually the place is full of kind outgoing human energy, from residents, staff and nuns alike. This time people were courteous, but some of the energy was not there.

 

It reminded me very strongly of the time in my life when I associated with addicts and their friends and families. I noticed that these people had learned behaviour to help them endure hardship and prepare for likely setbacks. They tended to be rather introverted and stoic. They celebrated small successes and constantly seemed to expect problems and used some of their energy internally as a reserve for when things would go wrong.

 

I found it an intensely sad way to live but also an impressive one. A life without colour or optimism or exuberance is a limited one, but somebody prepared to sacrifice such things deserves congratulation. Many of the teachings and sayings of the twelve step processes encouraged this sort of attitude.

 

This was exactly the attitude I encountered at the home. Of course enduring the pandemic there is tougher than it is for most of us. Residents are largely confined to their rooms and the fear of the virus is everywhere. Masks are also a bigger hardship for the hard of hearing.

 

So, unless we are lucky enough to live in China or New Zealand, we need to knuckle down for many more months of restrictions punctuated by setbacks. We can cope if we look after each other and if we look after ourselves. Counting our blessings is perhaps our most powerful tool.      

The Economist Misses the Point

This has been a tough year in many ways, and many familiar solaces have had to be discarded for the duration of the pandemic. That has made the pleasurable things that we can still enjoy all the more important, and one of those is reading. My weekly periodicals have assumed an even greater role in my health and sanity, not least because of their honest and detailed coverage of the pandemic itself.

 

The Economist is the best. For me it is the Amazon of journalism. It follows a relentless pursuit of clear and worthwhile goals, and as a result steadily builds competitive advantage to trample rivals in a self-reinforcing loop. As quality local newspapers, then national newspapers, then TV news channels have retreated towards celebrity flimflam on the way to obsolescence, The Economist strides forward vacuuming up market share. The BBC is clinging on, and a few quality papers are still strong, but the depth of their coverage compared with ten years ago has declined. Who now have people on the ground in many African countries? Who can give a thoughtful and content-sourced article on Nagorno Karabakh? Who can write beyond the propaganda to document how China is truly developing? Increasingly, there is only one player in town.

 

The Economist can still be annoying, notably their persistence in retaining some MI5 jerk to contribute cold war rubbish once per month or so. The review of Scott Anderson’s CIA exposé The Quiet Americans plainly required much iteration with internal censors.

 

The weekly feature writers are generally excellent, most notably Chaguan in China. Bartleby is plainly a cynical old fart like me and I am in awe of his self-deprecating humour. Lexington manages to retain some decorum and distance amidst the chaos of current US politics.

 

For me the weakest of the regular features tends to be Free Exchange. These contributors give a sense of intellectual snobbery and orthodoxy. Most of the others seem to be curious and to a more diverse range of inputs. Having said that, this week’s Free Exchange challenging conventional wisdom comparing policies to respond to climate change was excellent.

 

But the Free Exchange article Which Market Model is Best from a couple of weeks ago to me typifies the former less curious Economist. The article started well by describing emerging models of capitalist economies, describing LME’s, CME’s and PME’s, the initial letter referring to limbering, coordinated and political. Think the US, Germany and China as archetypal examples.

 

The article then compared the performance of the archetypes during the pandemic, finding much evidence to support the guiding principles behind the various models. LME’s rely more on individuals and markets rather than institutions, so initial responses were often haphazard, while on the other hand most of the game-changing innovation is coming out of LME’s, with the UK given a particular shout out. CME’s appear more organised in the face of a challenge like the pandemic, able to forge a more coherent strategy to keep ahead of a crisis, while their innovation is more likely to be incremental. PME’s can mobilise radical actions quickly with compliance, as China’s ruthless suppression of the pandemic exemplifies, but it was in China that corruption and fear allowed the pandemic to take hold in the first place.

 

These are all good arguments, but the article completely loses its way when it decides it should issue awards, declaring which of the models is the best within the context of the pandemic. Old dogmas kicked in. Whereas many Economist contributors have started to regularly challenge LME orthodoxy, such enlightenment has yet to reach the Free Exchange office. Incredibly, first prize in the pandemic was awarded to LME’s.

 

This is stretch worthy of a Trump campaign advert. Surely we have to start with the figures. Where are the most preventable deaths occurring? Where is civil society most under strain? LME’s remain an unholy mess, even six months or more after initial outbreaks. Compare the US and Canada, the UK and Germany, Brazil and Uruguay and The Philippines and China. True, raw competence, context and luck play a part, but it is hard to argue that many LME’s are relatively safe, calm or fair places just now.

 

If Free Exchange had not started from intellectual categories like innovation, and not felt constrained by seeking arguments to justify a pre-determined first prize, it might have provided more useful insight. An examination of why more people are dying and suffering in LME’s might have been more effective.

 

LME’s tend to lead to high and growing inequality, which is an important root cause of pandemic failure in a number of ways. An unequal society often has a large minority living in cramped conditions with no savings and restricted access to medical care. These communities as a vulnerable economically as there are from a health perspective, and have less opportunity to comply with guidelines to restrict virus spread.

 

Then there is the looser concept of a coherent society. LME’s emphasise individual agency and downplay the role of government and institutions. It is no surprise that “we are all in this together” rings less true and that trust in government guidelines is low, leading to low compliance. Empathy for those of different tribes can vanish.

 

Arguably, simple competence becomes an issue in LME’s over time. At least I could argue that while marketing might become stronger, patient project management can suffer. It is more likely in LME’s that medical and other technical competences are allocated towards capital accumulation of citizen’s welfare.

 

I also trust an economic recovery more in a CME than an LME, although that has yet to be proven. LME’s crave growth driven by consumption, and that requires everybody to spend. Even before the pandemic, this could only be sustained by ever-increasing personal debt, and a sudden shock has seen the edifice crashing down. It will take more than a few stimulus checks to rebuild; indeed arguably it will not be possible to rebuild at all without discarding some LME shibboleths.

 

The most damning argument that Free Exchange could make against PME’s was that corruption and nepotism would make any innovation untrustworthy. It is a fair point, and I certainly won’t rush to take a vaccine only approved in China or Russia. But, as Kamala Harris said on Wednesday night, if Fauci tells me a vaccine is safe then I’ll be first in line, but if the recommendation comes from Trump, count me out. It is not only PME’s where trust becomes fatally eroded.

 

I like the model classifications, and Free Exchange is right that they can produce insights. Like all models it is incomplete and has fuzzy edges: an incompetent PME or one without civic goals will always perform worse than a CME or LME with competence. Many economies will be hybrids and evolve over time.

 

Still, the method of taking an important issue and using it to compare outcomes between models and analyse root causes can be powerful. The Economist generally does this well, but not when the winner is declared before the analysis starts. Free Exchange, you can do better. Get out more.   

A Word in Your Ear

 For as long as I can remember, I have been somewhat deaf. My right ear performs well, but my left one significantly less so. I can’t remember what first triggered me to realize this, because it is possible to live with partial deafness without being aware of it, a bit like living with a weakened sense of smell: the only gauge I have really is myself, so as long as there is no change, how can I tell of any disability?

 

One of my favourite books is Deaf Sentence by David Lodge. Funny and touching, the book chronicles exploits of a character of about my age, and I can empathise with all of it. I recommend it as reading for anybody who might be deaf or who interacts with somebody who is – I suppose that encompasses most of us.

 

More men have hearing impairment than women, and for most it is correlated with ageing. I suppose I am rather lucky that my hearing appears very stable.

 

The clearest symptom of deafness is in some ways the opposite of what we might assume. True, it can be revealing when somebody struggles to make out what you are saying. But I find that usually deaf people talk more loudly than others.

 

Have you noticed how you always shout into your mobile phone, especially when outdoors? We all do, and on a subway carriage it can be both annoying and funny to witness people screaming into a device. Our bodies are reacting to a difficulty in hearing the other end of a conversation. Somehow we assume that the other side is talking too quietly, so we react by talking louder ourselves as a signal to them. In my experience, most of the deaf people I meet are the ones who habitually talk louder. I include myself on this list.

 

One sad effect of the pandemic has been to exclude us from the old people’s home where we volunteer. There nearly everybody is deaf, simply because they are so old. They can’t hear, so they shout. Often I will serve a table of residents with their dinner and walk away but continue to hear their conversation clearly. They might not be so candid if they knew I could hear them. It may be true that I have no idea how to serve a sandwich, but most of them would be ashamed to tell me to my face, yet that is what they are effectively doing.

 

Hearing is a poor relation among the senses, at least compared with sight. We are all encouraged to test our eyes regularly through our lives, and technology has evolved to offer effective, though overpriced, remedies. I took Lasik eye surgery about fifteen years ago and would also recommend that. By contrast, most deaf people don’t even know they are deaf, and until recently hearing aids were awkward, ineffective and very expensive.

 

I am happy to report that this is changing, and I’m delighted that eighteen months ago I checked what was available, something I’ve done from time to time for a while. The diagnostic process was efficient and my doctor was kind enough to whisper that I should visit Costco, of all places, to buy a hearing aid. Specialists are still charging thousands, but Costco has the same or better technology and better service for a tiny fraction of the price. My single hearing aid was $800, not trivial but perhaps my best investment of the last few years considering the benefits to everyday living. I love it, and it is so unobtrusive that the only people who ever notice I am wearing it are other people who use hearing aids.

 

For me, a singer, the biggest benefit was in how I was able to hear music in a choral setting. I had always experienced that I could hear the singer on my right loud and clear, sometimes too loud and too clear, might sound from the one on my left was barely audible. I expected the hearing aid to remedy this but it did far more. The actual effect was a bit like the difference between listening in mono and stereo. The whole sound came to life for me thanks to my hearing aid, and I am convinced it has made me a much better singer.

 

All of this is preamble. The pandemic has been tough for all of us, but spare a thought for those of us who are hard of hearing.

 

The pandemic will have made it obvious to most of us how much we listen with our eyes. But listening has become so much harder lately with everybody wearing masks. Firstly, the mask itself obscures the sound of the talker, especially clarity of consonants. Next, we often have additional hurdles such as standing farther apart and Perspex screens. But the worst part is that we can’t read the lips of our interlocutor, but have only our ears to rely on.

 

For the most part I suppose I am no worse off than anybody else because my hearing aid corrects most of the deficiency. But the correction is not total, and in the summer I sometimes did not wear my hearing aid, because the one thing it does not like at all is moisture, and humid weather makes ears and everything else more moist. None of this helps outdoor dining, with all its ambient noise. Furthermore, I suspect I am a better lip reader than most people, simply because I have had more recourse to using it than people with perfect ears, so my disadvantage in not seeing somebody else’s mouth may be greater.

 

I have noticed one other disadvantage. I’m sure anybody who wears glasses have noticed how masks make them fall off more, simply because there is more clutter on the face and around the ears. Now imagine adding a hearing aid to that equation! I’m so happy to be singing again, with a mask on, as volunteer cantor at a local church. But I’m sure the congregation are taking much amusement from the sight of me trying to stop my glasses falling off, as my left ear is completely overloaded with devices and objects.

 

I concede this has been a very convoluted way to relate a modest anecdote. But there may be a few other takeaways available.

 

Firstly, now may be a very good time to establish if you are a bit deaf. Understanding through a mask is a handicap for everybody, but do you find you are really struggling? If so check your experience with others and test out different things, such as standing to favour one ear then the other. Ask people if you shout down your phone more than most people.

 

If you come away with some doubts then get a hearing test. In most developed countries the costs have come down and the remedies have improved.

 

Next, try to be tolerant of people who are struggling to understand what you are saying. And try to annunciate consonants more clearly than usual. I promise you we are doing our best and it is not easy.

 

Next, I wonder if there is an opportunity here for producers of masks and of spectacles. Asia’s experience suggests that masks are here to stay in our lives. I see people putting effort into fashion, but not yet into design.

 

Finally I wonder if deafness is part of the cause of some other things we are witnessing. I watched the gruelling and depressing Presidential debate on Tuesday. True, they were not wearing masks, but here were three old dudes standing farther apart than they usually would. I wonder how many of them are a bit deaf? I wonder how many even know? Certainly they were shouting enough. Biden in particular seemed a little slow to pick up what was being said in the cacophony.