Policing the Police

Although the trigger was tragic, it is great that debate has been rekindled in the US about police brutality and the wider issue of race discrimination. Sadly, I can see it becoming rather like the related question of gun control, which flares up every time there is a tragedy and then goes quiet again without any meaningful change.

I have experienced policing in many countries, though not its toughest functions and usually as one of the privileged. Still, I have seen enough differences and practices to have some opinions about how policing might be reformed.

First, I find it problematic that the issues of police reform and race reform become confused, because potentially it can harm both worthy causes. Racism is evil and prevalent and needs to be addressed, though eventually time will provide most of the cure. Different outcomes for races are damaging and are largely due to historical racism, but the best responses are about equalizing the playing field of opportunity now, or even slanting it in favour of the historically oppressed, rather than debates about history.

There is racism within police forces and it cannot be tolerated, but I suspect it is not the prime cause of different racial outcomes at the hands of the police. The reality is more about poverty and disadvantage. It is correct for police to focus on places of disadvantage where most crime occurs: indeed intelligent targeted policing has a very good track record at reducing crime and even improving neighbourhoods. The fact in the US is that these neighbourhoods happen to be overwhelmingly black. If the police were humane and development focused, the extra attention of police on minorities would actually be good, because the police can play a role in helping communities develop. So it is damaging to consider differential statistics about arrests as about racism, because they are not, at least not primarily.

The police in any society perform a necessary function, or protecting the population from crime. With no police there would be more crime, which would affect disadvantaged areas the most and make inequality worse, not better. We should also not forget the initial success of the Guiliani zero tolerance policy. If crime is uncontrolled, aggressive policing can be effective. Even so, the police in most countries could be improved.

As much as possible, the police should be treated like any other business or public utility. It needs a purpose, goals and KPI’s and regulation, and from that flows recruitment and other policies and a performance appraisal system.

In most cases it is the performance appraisal system which is most flawed. Who polices the police? The customer is society and is represented by local and national governments, and that is where things go wrong.

The NYPD is a good example. The NYPD and its unions form a powerful bloc locally, and their endorsement can get a mayor elected. The rest of the public is not interested enough to care about the details, so around election time the police tend to acquire additional budgets and powers. The NYPD are well paid, have excellent pensions, and, perhaps most important of all, have protection against being sued and are almost impossible to fire. The Fire Department, Corrections Officers and other unionised public servants have secured similar benefits over the years. They are the main reason lazily run cities and states now have unsustainable finances – pension liabilities for public servants have become crippling.

So now there is a public outcry for more accountable policing, and Bill DeBlasio has to play both sides. Still, it is a rare opportunity to redress the balance.

The lack of individual accountability is the biggest problem. Recent NYPD police commissioners have done a good job, but they are powerless to impose discipline. When they are tempted, Pat Lynch, the obnoxious head of the sergeants union, reminds them who is the real boss. There is a rump of violent officers, many no doubt racist, who remain secure in their jobs despite repeatedly breaching all guidelines.

The effects are pernicious. Why should new officers behave well when their peers can get away with anything? Leaders resort to giving the bad apples desk jobs or hiding them on unnecessary assignments, driving up costs. And everyday efficiency goes by the board as well. Next, the jobs become sinecures for the wrong sort of cop, whose sons follow them into the force to perpetuate the unhealthy culture.

So individual accountability must be the core reform. Having secured that, I would take a micro approach and drive efficiency and culture at a precinct level. A police precinct is not so much different to a petrol station or supermarket. I can always tell a well-run business by observing small things. In the case of the 112^thprecinct of the NYPD, I have never had a courteous interaction, I have never witnessed a courteous interaction, and every day I see cars parked lazily, illegally and unsafely.

Apart from anything else, why do they need so many cars? Placard abuse is a topic than comes up in the news once per year and then disappears without meaningful change. I can’t believe all the police placards near us are valid. Even if they are, the vehicle budget must be ripe for a heavy cut. Why can’t the NYPD ride to work on the subway like the rest of us?

I will give one compliment to the NYPD: they don’t take bribes. That puts them way ahead of forces in most developing countries and, sadly, some developed ones too. Whether that has come from management or union, I applaud it, because petty corruption in a police force is the most poisonous thing of all.

Once there is accountability and a locally driven initiative to work on culture and efficiency, the next lever is recruitment. Here there is an opportunity to increase racial and gender diversity, and to remove bias towards alumni families.

There are a couple of specific US issues that should be easy to address. The disposal of excess military equipment to police departments is comically short sighted and counter-productive. Then there is mission creep, prevalent in the NYPD and elsewhere. It is hard to fund good programs to house the homeless or protect the mentally ill, so such things are added to the remit of a place where funds are always plentiful – the NYPD.  

As with much in US society, media and Hollywood have done a lot of damage too. I hate the way that Hollywood movies never rarely involve fat people, always have characters that are either all good or all bad, run away from ambiguity and generally stifle intelligent thought. Portrayal of the police is a good example. In most cop shows violence and disrespect for protocol is idealised. This is just one more factor perpetuating the negative culture.

There is much than can be done to improve policing around the world. Best practice is probably in Scandinavia or the Benelux, as usual. Policing in the US is uniquely handicapped by the gun culture and by its history of racial animus. But treating the police more rigorously as a business can achieve parallel progress. Personal and precinct accountability is a critical first step. Then be good COO’s and hack away at waste and other local failings. And I would be forever grateful is somebody in the 122th precinct sorted out the fleet of cars and how it is parked.  

The Dangerous Months

I remember the day after Trump’s election, wandering the rainy streets of Manhattan in a daze. I went to a Broadway matinée, and it seemed the entire audience was numb like me. It was a dark day, and four years seemed an awful long time to endure.

Well, we are now at three and a half years, and somehow it hasn’t been as bad as I feared. There is not about to be a world war. The EU is still together, apart from recalcitrant Britain, and is somewhat more united. The Paris agreement has held, most of the world’s citizenry want to go further, and even US cities are busy undermining the federal government on climate. The Washington Post and the New York Times are stronger than ever. The Supreme Court has wobbled but is still credible. Congress is as dysfunctional as ever, but the number of Trump style semi-fascist thugs in positions of power is rather small. There is popular anger between ethnicities, but it has remained largely peaceful and even informed. I can still write my blog without much fear of deportation.

Perhaps I am setting the bar too low, but on the dark day in November 2016 I truly wondered what might occur in these four long years. What we must accept is that they have been years of regression and lost opportunities. An enlightened administration might have led a decisive global climate movement, or started to reverse the lurch towards inequality that underpins public distrust. I believe China would have been open to a fair deal with an honest broker, ceding some domestic liberalisation and respect for human rights and fair business practices in return for more of a seat at the table in global affairs. In 2016, despite the stalemate in congress, there was gentle momentum towards a fairer world, but that vanished overnight.

I expected a neutralisation of Trump after the midterms. I thought there would be a grand deal in quiet corridors that would restore some competence to government while allowing Trump his ego and some harmless playing fields. That is what would have happened in the UK, led by the civil service and supported by other institutions like the military and colleges and judges and CEO’s and Bushes and Romneys. Key to that would have been senior Republicans in congress, fed up with holding their nose, aware that the eventual backlash might sweep them away and with the national interest at heart. But the silent establishment coup did not happen.

In the absence of any backbone among Republicans, our saviour has been sheer incompetence. This lot could not organise a piss up in a brewery. There is no inner circle with a strategy, only a rotating cast of lackeys fighting fires and watching their backs, achieving little of import. Most of their attempts to implement madness have been screwed up or abandoned before securing any traction. 

Now we reach the last few months of Trump’s first term and perhaps the most dangerous phase of all. Re-election matters to every politician, but to Trump it is everything, for two basic reasons. Firstly, he clearly has no agenda nor aspiration for the country, only for himself, and power is the only antidote for such an ego. Secondly, as soon as he loses power he becomes vulnerable legally across many fronts, and he knows it. His support is wafer thin and entirely dependent on power, so those silent Republicans will join everybody else in seeking vengeance once his power has gone. Unless there is some grand bargain involving a pardon, he will spend most of the rest of his days in jail if he loses. That is one large motivation to win at all costs.

So we have a leader whose ego needs him to win and whose personal security needs him to win, and one whose absence of probity will stop at nothing in the quest to win. Worse, any semblance of checks on his behaviour has long since disappeared: there will be no more impeachment, his base support is immune to any slur, and the remaining lackeys are locked in as well.

So, anything goes, and the more he looks like losing the more extreme will be the response. Watch out immigrants, and journalists, and Chinese, and health experts, and anybody else that might become fodder for the base. It will be open season between now and November. Watch out also technology companies, and election supervisors, and anyone else with responsibility for election fairness.  Finally watch out for a disputed result and the civil unrest that might unleash. There is no such thing as a gracious loser when the stakes are this high and the morals this absent.

But there is a second reason to fear the coming months. US adversaries know of Trump’s position too, and will exploit it ruthlessly.

It is a well-observed part of the Putin playbook to create facts on the ground when the enemy cannot respond and before any negotiated settlement. We see this time and again in conflicts around the globe, from Syria to Ukraine to Libya. Wait until the other side needs a deal for political purposes, then attack to the limit and negotiate from the newly established position.

We are seeing this already around the world. It is no coincidence that North Korea is being belligerent again. Trump cannot condemn him without undermining his claims, so now is the time to take a risk. Expect Russia to be aggressive in the next few months, also because of domestic weakness. Modi will do the same in India, and Israel will probably choose these months to annex more of the West Bank. In each case, Trump’s hands are tied.

But nowadays the most important adversary is China, and the Chinese are master strategists who will have planned for this moment since Trump’s election. Chaguan has become one of the most interesting pages in The Economist lately, and an article last week posed the question as to whether the Chinese would like Trump or Biden to win in November. They can play Trump like a fiddle, but they also crave recognition and peaceful global development, which can only happen under Biden.

The Chinese will use the next months to be prepared whoever wins. Trump must claim that his bluster has led to success in controlling China, so they can push the limits now without fear of any backlash. We see this already in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, and pessimists might wonder if this could be a decisive moment regarding Taiwan. They are also ready to decouple from the US in technology, though they would rather not have to.

If Trump wins in November, China will bank the gains and prepare for four more adversarial years, with a key goal of separating the US from its allies and creating parallel institutions to those the US currently dominates, such as SWIFT. If Biden wins they will be ready for a sweeping global deal with many dimensions, but will have the best possible starting point for negotiations.

There is not much that most of us can do except watch this play out of the coming months, and pray that the damage continues to be limited. The last three and a half years have been scary enough, but the next six months are likely to make them seem rather mild. Buckle up.

Reimbursement For Care in Practice

Reimbursement for Care is my solution for many of the social and economic problems currently afflicting developed societies.The basic concept is for local authorities to pay citizens for beneficial activities that are currently either performed for free or not carried out. It is better than Universal Basic Income because society gets something in return for its investment and because it is better targeted to those who need it.

Jill is an only child in an affluent mid-western family. She attends college locally and pays tuition fees, and rent to her parents. She takes paid vacation jobs and paid internships, but also tops up her income with RFC, working an average of ten hours per week as a care assistant at a local senior care facility. This way she can graduate without a student loan.

Jill moves to New York to take a job with a major employer. Because her rent is high and her experience low, she agrees a fifty-hour per week annual rolling contract with her employer. She is the vocalist in a band and every fortnight the band spends Saturday’s performing at local senior homes, earning Jill just four hours per week of RFC.

Jill starts living with fellow band member Jack and before long they marry and have twins. For the final month of her pregnancy Jill takes a pause with her employer and self-certifies twenty hours per week self-care RFC. For two years after the birth, the first child entitles Jill’s household to thirty hours per week of RFC and the second child a further ten hours. Jack and Jill split this equally and both reduce their employment contracts to thirty hours. Fortunately, both employers allow a proportion of work from home.

Once the kids are a year old, their parents register them in a local nursery for twenty hours per week. Jack and Jill both become accredited carers at the nursery and each work there ten RFC hours per week. Most of the kids’ RFC entitlement is now transferred to the nursery budget, but they can still claim five hours each of self-certified RFC. The nursery enables both to increase their employment back up to thirty-five hours.

RFC entitlement starts progressively reducing when the kids are two, but the parents initially only sacrifice the self-certified RFC. The kids progress to pre-school and then full school, a blend of classroom, online learning and play-centre. The parents gain accreditation to work ten RFC hours each at the play centre, and stay at thirty-five hours with their employers. Now the band can play again, and it gains approval to start a project teaching music to deprived kids elsewhere in the city each Saturday, paid with RFC.

When the twins reach twelve they no longer need supervision at home and lose their remaining entitlement to RFC. Jack and Jill both increase their employment contracts to forty hours, but now they can expand their band commitments to earn ten hours each of RFC on their project.

Five years later, Jack’s widowed mum Jess has an accident that leaves her disabled and comes to live with Jack and Jill. Soon she needs at home care assessed at ten hours per week, which Jack and Jill share and self-certify as RFC, reducing the band project hours. As Jess requires more specialised help both secure accreditation to higher care levels. The RFC entitlement of Jess becomes twenty and then thirty hours, and Jack and Jill reduce their employment hours accordingly.

Next Jess needs help that can’t be provided at home and so moves to a senior care home. Jack and Jill register as RFC carers at the same home, but can now increase their hours at their regular employment again. After Jess dies, Jack and Jill are in their fifties and only wish to work twenty-five hours per week for their employers. They expand their band project into a second community and continue to care at the senior home, claiming RFC for each.

At sixty-five, Jack and Jill are still healthy and keen to be active. They maintain their RFC activities at the same level but reduce their regular employment to ten hours, giving them more free time to spend with the grandkids and to travel. At seventy they retire from their regular employment but keep up the RFC, until Jack falls sick and Jill must care for him, earning additional ten hours per week RFC entitlement for Jill. Jill continues her other RFC work but scales back the hours.

Jack and Jill have varied their RFC activities and hours as their lives have evolved, and also varied their regular employment hours. Their lifetime income is similar to the time before RFC, but they have been able to look after the mental and physical health of themselves, their family and others in their community.

Another example is Denise, who comes from a deprived part of Cleveland and does not attend college, but becomes a single mother at twenty-one. Her own mother lives with her to help bring up the child, and they share the RFC entitlement as well as hustling with various gig jobs and supporting another RFC funded local community project. The balance of hours varies as the child grows and as the gig work waxes and wanes, but luckily the community project is able to offer unlimited hours so their income is always enough to live on.

All the various RFC projects except the self-certified ones are registered with the local authority and require standards of service. Most of the projects also have paid professionals leading them, qualified at the highest RFC accreditation levels. Each school, nursery and care home need fewer full-time professionals than before RFC, but the pay is better and the total number of projects is much higher because of RFC, so the system efficiency has improved. No longer to mothers have to sacrifice their careers or struggle to find adequate child-care or senior care, and the whole community has become part of the solution.

The RFC incentives also nudges resources towards more deprived neighbourhoods, as well as providing an adequate safety net for those who can’t find sufficient regular employment, either temporarily or permanently.

RFC works best if all regular employment takes a gig like character, because then employees can vary their hours as their lives develop. In most cases, there will be a rolling annual contract specifying an average hours per week, and a rolling weekly sub-contract agreeing hours a week or two in advance, including required particular hours for team activities and location specific activities. Work hours become more spread through the day and the week, so commuting is less of an issue for anybody. With the new concept for schools and child-care, these can also be handled more easily in parallel with regular jobs.

RFC involves a lot of reallocation of budgets but can be self-financing, assuming delayed pensions for most and higher taxes for the highest earners. The effect on national productivity is arguable. Perhaps some firms will be less competitive internationally, especially if corporation taxes increase, but higher staff motivation can be expected, and increased automation can also add competitiveness.

Implementation would be far from simple and there would be transition issues. People currently benefiting from tenured jobs with generous pensions may consider themselves losers. There will be fraud, though mobile communications can reduce that risk.     

Reimbursement for Care

Recent events have laid bare the bankruptcy the extreme capitalist model practised in the western world. Reimbursement for Care (RFC) is my idea for a key component for a successful modification of the model.

A fundamental flaw in our current model lies in the goals we use. While affairs are managed by nation states, some competitive financial metric will remain necessary. But the internal goals are all flawed, and create consequences leading to failure.

I believe there are three key metrics in use. The first is GDP. This has always been an ugly metric, including things like arms sales and financial transfers and excluding much of the informal economy and beneficial activity such as volunteering. GDP is essentially a corporate rather than a human metric. There is no obvious human replacement, but some sort of dashboard of welfare, happiness and development could work.

The second metric is also corporate. It is not a goal but more of an axiom. It is assumed return on capital, and it has converged globally on something like 6% real for no risk assets. This assumption has driven the turbo-charging of capitalism and caused the squeeze on labour. International agreement for series of radical changes could reset 6% at a sounder level such as 3%.

The third metric is the only human one and that is full employment. Less than full employment creates waste and welfare and discontent. Of the metrics, this is the one most dear to the left. Yet I find it the most damaging one.

The underlying assumption behind a full employment goal is that humans should undertake paid work as much as possible, or at least for a defined segment of their week. Humans do need activities to support self-esteem, but why should that be dominated by paid work? What if machines could do all the work and we could just sit back and have fun?

The emphasis on full employment leads to crazy distortions. We are trained to be upset when a factory automates so that robots can replace humans doing grinding, unsafe and mind-numbing activity. How on earth is toiling to an early death in a coalmine a good thing? Surely humanity should maximise automation and embrace technology, and find a better metric to replace full employment and compensating mechanisms to rebalance incomes?

The traditional model is increasingly out of date even for those who can find work. People with families cannot easily balance rearing kids with work, perpetuating gender inequality. The gig economy is growing and sits uncomfortably next to the classic model.

Keynes mooted the concept of the post-work society, and I believe its time has come. It is supported by a number of factors, not just the speed of development in technology and communication. It is not just technology that is squeezing traditional jobs. The most labour-intensive sectors are most stressed, such as retail. During the pandemic and post-pandemic, we can add hospitality and tourism. Worse, the squeezed segments most affect the least well paid, and can kill whole communities.

Next, the pandemic has awakened both the need for and the value of community service. Too many of our old and disabled people live in unfit conditions. Housing in vulnerable communities is detrimental to health. Many of our young lack the critical advantage of pre-school. Local facilities are crumbling. And those who have volunteered have realised that community work makes them feel good as well as the beneficiaries. The right often promote national service: why not national service for all, focused on communities?

Inequality, deprivation and temporary economic pause have moved Universal Basic Income (UBI) from the fringes to the mainstream. UBI is a sticking plaster, but does little to address the more fundamental issues listed above. RFC is a fairer and more sustainable alternative.

RFC envisages payment by local government for a whole slew of beneficial activities that people can enjoy, activities that currently are unpaid or underpaid or not done or done poorly. In an RFC society, people will rebalance towards these activities, with the balance varying depending on phase of life. A young single adult may choose only a few hours of RFC (or even none). Parents of young kids will complete more RFC hours, and older adults will place a higher priority on supporting society than career development or income maximisation. Someone living with a dependent relative will devote many hours per week to RFC (as they do already, but unpaid).

RFC activities should be widely defined. They include childcare, elderly and disabled care, sick and deprived person care, community maintenance and development activities and projects, and even arts and culture. Citizens can self-declare a number of hours per week depending on the make-up of the household, and add additional hours via certified and loosely regulated organisations. Because of the explosion of potential funding, there would be a step-change increase in the number and quality of nursing homes and childcare facilities.

I envisage hourly payments based on defined levels of qualification, with training provided to progress through levels for different types of RFC. The lowest level requires no training, and should be reimbursed at a local minimum wage, set depending on a basic cost of living including housing rental, utilities and food. It should be possible to live a simple life only with RFC income for say forty hours per week at level two or three, but most people will choose more like ten hours of RFC and continue regular employment. Over time, I suggest that all employment follows a gig model, one where the employee defines their availability and the employer cannot discriminate based on the hours per week offered, only on total experience.

I believe this model to be more affordable than might be envisaged. In the US, 200m people might claim an average of 10 hours and a rate of $10, giving an annual budget for RFC of a trillion dollars. But RFC obviates the needs for many existing budgets, including some social security (healthy pensioners undertake RFC), food stamps, welfare and so on. In addition, many public sector jobs could be eliminated, which we should not see as a bad thing in a post-employment world, so long as sufficient RFC is made available (and I propose it can be bottomless).

I see the biggest implementation challenge not in affordability but in equitable distribution. I can see a lot of wealthy white suburban folk embracing RFC with all sorts of fancy playgroups for their own kids and beautification of their own neighbourhoods. Rich faith communities will tend to restrict their efforts to their own kind. That is all well and good, but I believe that incentives will be required to direct a higher share of the effort (and supply) to more deprived populations. Perhaps a share of total RFC hours should be mandated towards higher priority areas and projects. It should be possible, so long as budgets are equalised. Funds should be disbursed locally, but from a national pot.

In an RFC world, corporations may have to lower their expectation for return on capital, partly because taxation will need to fund RFC and partly because labour supply would be reduced. So long as a sufficient number of developed nations choose to implement RFC in some form, this should be seen a benefit rather than a problem.

I find it sad that so few imaginative ideas have come to light in this rare moment of global opportunity. We should cheer UBI and the various support packages implemented by governments, but many seem to be ignoring the signs and planning for a return to normal business after the pandemic. Stock markets seem to agree. In my opinion any return to normal that supports corporations to the level now assumed by the markets would involve catastrophic hardship among communities and whole segments of the population. The time has come for something more radical. It is time for RFC.

If we had Leaders...

The current global pandemic has revealed many truths about the structures and norms governing humanity. This has led to the following aspirational charter, signed by leaders representing 80% of the world’s population, 80% of its financial assets and 80% of its weapon power.

The pandemic has demonstrated the scale of the challenge represented by global heating, and the need for radical solutions implemented quickly under a global remit.

It has also demonstrated the bankruptcy of all current systems of government. The nation state as a dominant unit is revealed as too small a unit for some critical challenges and too large a unit for others. An acceptable set of human rights would be universally achievable within one generation were nation states not to inhibit progress. All human beings should have an adequate nutritious basic diet, affordable basic health care, housing which is secure, heated and not overcrowded and lifetime education.

Specifically, the prevalent western model is susceptible to capture by special interests, inadequate provision for many citizens and breakdown of civic responsibility. The Chinese model systematically oppresses minorities and hoards information and power within an elite. The Russian and African models have yet more glaring defects, starting with endemic corruption. While all current models are bankrupt, ample good practices exist to turbocharge human progress.

The signatories of this charter believe positive drivers for human progress include science, open debate, inclusivity, freedom of expression, property rights, justice, globalisation, trade, competition, technology and automation. Apart from unhealthy competition between nations, two other related factors have undermined human progress. The first factor is the reliance on an out dated employment model. The second is the level of return on capital demanded by unrestrained markets. Correcting these two flaws also requires global agreement.

Humans in developed nations (and within a generation, developing ones too) no longer need to toil for an employer, at least for so many hours per week or years per lifetime. Currently this false assumption dominates corporate practices and welfare policies, squeezing out progress, for example via automation, and limiting the civic potential of citizens. The 6% real return on capital squeezes competition and labour and encourages greed, dishonesty and risk. 

To successfully redirect global resources to this new paradigm requires accepting one further fact. War and its threat are uniquely destructive and almost never an appropriate response to disputes. Weapons should be progressively pooled between nations and gradually eliminated.

Taken together, these aspirations and acceptance of drivers and inhibitors of progress lead us to a series of commitments. The current crisis demands urgency and creates opportunities. Budgets must be redrawn, new revenue sources discovered, new employment models introduced, and renewed communities envisaged.

Firstly, all so-called defence expenditure will would pooled and wound down. National procurement budgets will be reduced by 25% per annum, and 50% of all new assets will be surrendered to international bodies. Personnel and maintenance budgets will be reduced by 10% per annum, and 20% of assets per annum will be surrendered to international bodies.

Secondly, a global carbon tax will be introduced, with 50% of the proceeds pooled globally. Part of the global proceeds will be used to fund renewable infrastructure and decommission existing carbon intensive infrastructure.

Thirdly, a global “Tobin” tax on financial transactions will be introduced, all pooled into a global fund. The goals of the fund will be to achieve the human rights, with a bias towards developing nations, but also to reduce corruption and avoidance. Most fiscal matters will remain national or local concerns, but international harmonisation agreements will eliminate loopholes and devices.

Fourthly, nations and localities are committed to phase in funded Reimbursement For Care (RFC) , as a positive refinement to Universal Basic Income. Reimbursable care includes childcare and elderly or disabled care, and need be policed only lightly. A typical adult will be expected to claim 30 hours per week, and this should be sufficient to fund a minimal lifestyle with all human rights, subsidised where required. Those without family members to care for should support other civic needs such as nursing homes.

Citizens can choose to enhance their incomes via paid employment, investment or entrepreneurship. Sales tax will be eliminated on essentials but increased for discretionary purchases. With this overall monetary regime and appropriate competition-promoting regulation, it is anticipated that corporations can aim for a return of around 3% real or more if GDP growth is higher. Some transitional payments will be required, for example for underfunded pensions.

Fifthly and finally, we will make decisive steps towards the goal of universal freedom of human movement within a generation. This will require phased introduction, and be accompanied by transfer payments between nations and obligations loans for those moving between nations.

These steps will require most nations to both pool sovereignty and to devolve responsibilities downwards. Existing international bodies will require new charters, and new bodies must be created. Governance structures should be equitable based on population and financial contributions, and be set up in ways that are easily adapted over time.

Within nations, the bulk of implementation will lie within communities, since the administration of RFC and associated initiatives should be at a local level. Localities will have discretion as to how to specialise, though a share of funds will also be pooled so that that budgets can be higher for communities of greater historical deprivation. Cities will be supported via national and global funds to accelerate development in required needs such as automated mass transit, provision of affordable housing and repurposing of retail and office spaces towards specialised senior accommodation and to arts and leisure.

Implementation of all these actions will be aggressive, with tracking of targets, but also phased and rapid adaptability based on learning. The elements of the program are self-reinforcing, and failure in one area will jeopardise other target, so transparent program management at all governmental levels will be critical.

As humanity, we have a unique opportunity to effect a step change in human welfare. We can end war, ensure a survival planet, ensure efficient and equitable financial structures, end fixed employment and implement free movement, all within one generation.

Watch those Prices soar

The other day, while standing for two hours in line outside my local Trader Joe’s supermarket, I was reminded of a business trip to Moscow in 1993..

I’d just started one of my favourite jobs with Shell, as retail advisor for central and eastern Europe. I had a big say in deciding which of the newly liberated countries Shell should build petrol stations in, when and how. The job had everything: one huge benefit was that we could attract the very best talent, some of the smartest people I ever worked with. But the best part of all was being one of the first Brits to see the wonders of Prague and Budapest and the other great capitals.

During the trip to Moscow, a frighteningly lawless place at the time, everybody was persuading me to approve a retail business there. Retail would be the flagship for the new entity there, and even the bosses in London wanted the legacy of Shell stations in Moscow. To bolster their case they drove me around the city to see the stations already there, pitifully few, mostly dilapidated, and all with long lines of cars outside waiting to be served.

Back in the office, some rare inspiration enabled me to make a very perceptive remark. Ah, I said, I did see a lot of cars on the way in. But I prefer to count them on their way out. All the sycophants thought I had made a joke and laughed, but I was not joking. Yes, there was massive pent up demand in Moscow. But the real issue were supply bottlenecks. Most of stations only had one pump open, and often ran out of stock even so. On the way in there was indeed a flood, but on the way out a mere trickle. And the income derives from those making their way out. The supply bottlenecks came from the only refinery and the control of the mafia. Why did we as Shell think we could defeat those forces when obviously nobody else could? It was ten years before Shell opened a station in Moscow, and I believe lives as well as money was saved as a result.

Back to Trader Joe’s, we are all tempted to look at the lines, observe higher prices than we are used to, and accuse them of gouging. But look more carefully. The line is because they only allow fifty into the store at once, and various other costly social distancing stipulations. At the cashier and on the way out, there are fewer transactions than before the pandemic. They are not gouging; in fact they are suffering.

Further, fair play to Trader Joe’s, one of the other skills I picked up in my commercial career is to know a well-run store when I see one. Trader Joe’s on Metropolitan Avenue is a very well-run store.

As we emerge from the pandemic, all businesses will have to change. Demand will be sluggish, then surge, then settle, perhaps at a lower level than before because people have less money in their pockets and Amazon will have eaten all the cake. Supply will ramp up slowly, and fixed costs will be higher, at least until commercial rents collapse. What does all this mean for which businesses will survive and for prices?

When social distancing does not fundamentally altered supply, the new equilibrium might arise close to the old one. The sectors that will change the most are those where we all used to pack into tight spaces. Among others, these are restaurants, airplanes, theatres and events.

It is a gross simplification, but it is fair to argue that there are two types of restaurants that used to make money. You have the posh places with the brands and the cachet, where very few clients all pay a small fortune. And there are the places where each client offers only a small margin but the place turns over four sittings per night.

The first group might even thrive after the pandemic. They have plenty of space, and established brands and will have less competition: we won’t treat ourselves as often as earlier, but we’ll go up market when we do. The second group are in trouble, because the basis of the model, packing us through, can’t work when we need more separation. Many will go under. But some will succeed, and they will gravitate towards their posh peers: they will put up their prices. Because there will be less competition, we’ll pay anyway, as long as the quality is good.

We will have to get used a world where those luxuries that we enjoyed tightly packed with us will be less available, less frequent and much more expensive. It will feed inequality, because much of the poor will be completely priced out, and because those same poorer people are the ones who won’t get their jobs back as these sectors consolidate.

What can we do? Not much. Governments will soon realise that there are better things to do with our taxpayer dollars than propping up zombie restaurants. Arts and culture will have to rely even more on wealthy donors. The ugly oligopoly of airlines in the US will get even uglier.

We have one immediate recourse, if we want to keep our favourite local restaurant in business. Uber eats and Doordash are currently pulling the same parasitic trick on restaurants that Ticketmaster and Stubhub did to events. I do everything I can to boycott those bastards, always buying directly at the box office whenever I can. That is easy for restaurants, we can just order directly rather than through the middleman. Restaurants need our help, and that is something we can do.

We can also pause before we condemn Trader Joe’s and their ilk. Some are gouging for sure, and some of our local stores are treating their staff very badly. But we should understand that in many cases, despite appearances, their costs have gone up while their volume has gone down, so increasing prices is not an unreasonable reaction.

Next time you are standing in line at the supermarket, placing a direct order with your local restaurant, remember Moscow. Could the customers on the way out, not the way in.   

The Trend Accelerator

One way to think of the world after Coronavirus is to consider trends that were playing out before. In most cases, I believe the virus will accelerate the trend, because it reduces the forces that used to slow the trend down. Then, depending on whether the trend itself has the full support of society or whether it was just something society tolerated, we will either come out of this with the trend reinforced, or the trend itself will crash into a wall.

An easy example is retail, the way we shop. For years, online retail has been chipping away at bricks and mortar retail. There are solid reasons for that: why go out and queue to park and hack through people to find something that might be out of stock, when a few clicks does the trick. The trend was held back by a couple of factors. Consumers had to build trust in the new method, especially for items like groceries where they liked to observe and feel the goods. Some were slower adopters of anything digital. And the bricks and mortar retailers, despite weakening financial positions, tried anything to keep their loyal customers, via coupons and experiences and pleading to landlords and local authorities to save jobs.

All of this is blown away by Coronavirus. Slow adapters and sceptics have been forced online and like it, even if online providers have struggled to deliver their usual brilliant service. The financial resources offline are being destroyed weekly, and local authorities will also be broke and hardly prioritise keeping moribund institutions open. It is game over. Amazon has won, and the longer this goes on and the further it spreads into the developing world, the win will become global. Amazon would have won anyway, but now they will win more quickly.

Education is another area. The trend to online learning was slow before Coronavirus, held back by habits, poor childcare and entrenched teachers unions. But online learning is wonderful when used in the right places. It has limited use in elementary schools or arts courses, but our son is a civil engineering undergraduate and he has hardly blinked an eye, and nor have his professors. After the virus, courses like his will have a heavy remote component, because everybody wins that way. High schools will also take advantage and improve as a result, because some teachers will have been convinced and authorities will be desperate to save money too.

We might also see a wonderful side effect in the area of childcare provision. Dad’s stuck at home suddenly appreciate the importance of childcare, and those dads include bosses of firms. Those same firms will institute much more home working after the virus, another smart trend that previously had tradition holding it back. So who will look after the young kids? The bosses will finally vote for quality affordable provision by the state, and even insist carers (and teachers) are paid as fairer wage. Working hours and school hours will be better coordinated and staggered to make commutes easier. Scandinavia, here we come.

What about those commutes? This one is more complicated. The clear trend before the virus was towards Uber: more people are living in cities and avoiding the costs of private cars. The special factor here is public mass transit, which will be avoided by many for a while as unsafe. I have heard of people planning to buy cars after the virus precisely to avoid public transit. That will be sad, but some good things may come out of it in the end.

Perhaps the roads will be even more clogged because more people will want to drive. Toll pricing, another trend, will accelerate to dampen this and raise much needed cash. Uber will emerge stronger but will have to raise prices to cover cash shortfalls and maintain investors. So maybe there might be a breakthrough for unmanned vehicles: Uber will want it, authorities will want it and consumers will want it too, and the technology is not far away. We might even see the Holy Grail on this one, unmanned public mass transit, like mini personal taxi pods operating between hubs. That would be wonderful.

In health care, lower ranking staff will be more highly valued, forcing hospitals and the state to stump up higher wages, which may lead to elimination of waste: telemedicine is an obvious opportunity here, and society may also start to question investing thousands in expensive operations for folk in their nineties. In the US, there is sure to be clamour for a state provided health insurance, even if it may still be too early for Medicare for all.

It is likely that climate change might have greater public urgency after the virus, as people feel less invincible and strongman deniers are revealed for what they are. We will still be reluctant to pay, but the energy industry might bail us out. Few politicians will risk coal subsidies and Coronavirus may be Armageddon for oil (I personally hope not for their pension funds though). It will take a while because of the oil glut, but once the dearth of new investments clears that out the energy profile will change.

Gig work will only grow; one sad reason is that employers will be desperate to take back staff on more favourable terms to them, such as contractors. Total employment will also struggle to recover, because firms will bring forward automation and because of the weakness in labour intensive sectors like retail and hospitality. Inequality could get a lot worse, but perhaps governments will fear social unrest and take the chance for radical action. Perhaps the US will create a better safety net, and things like universal basic income may have their day. Might we even see shorter working weeks?

Then we have international trends. One trend before the virus was the collapse of cooperation between nations. So far we have seen no signs of any reversal of that trend, but optimists can hope that it might come, especially if this goes on a long time, a perhaps if there is a triumph of cooperation in finding a vaccine. At least this is one trend that shouldn’t accelerate, though the despots are doing what they can to blame foreigners and consolidate power.

Then we have China versus the USA, a relationship that has been turning ugly for several years but where China has been clearly winning. Again, it looks like the trend will accelerate. First in, first out is always the best option in these situations and China is in a strong position just now. The world will be less willing to toe the line of the US after the pandemic, because practicality will trump ideology, even if US credibility is not totally shot. But the anti-globalisation movement will win for a while at least, because nations will be nervous about fragile supply chains and dependence on others. Sadly, we might even see the acceleration of a bi-polar world, with a US-led and a China-led realm for many sectors. Don’t bet on the US-led one winning very often.

It gives me comfort to note that most of accelerated trends will help humanity, even if there will be losers and bumps in the roads. But the list screams another thought in my head. If we didn’t already think the 2020 presidential election was important, we certainly should now. Most of the good outcomes feel much more credible without the disinfector in chief in office.