The article's comparison of what's shaping up to be a year or two long disease outbreak to a 4yr global conflict that massively altered the global balance of power and spread industrialization across many industries that had thus far resisted it seems a little premature.
Wall street, shady billionaires pulling strings, governments and normal everyday people have a massive economic interest in things becoming as normal as they possibly can post-covid and they are all going to work toward furthering that goal in their own ways. Sure some of the things that were trialed during COVID (work from home, mask wearing, etc) may stick around but they are going to go away and if they come back it will be slowly over years/decades and on their own merits.
I think an important point the author is trying to make is that we don't know how this is going to play out, with "scenario planning" being a central theme of the article.
We have only experienced a few of the pandemic's direct effects a few months in, and in many parts of the globe the first wave is still in full swing. The second- and higher-order effects are largely unknown at this point, and many will only be fully understood by future historians.
While the direct comparison to WWI/II may be hyperbolic, I think it's a fair assessment to say that COVID is the biggest, truly global event since. During each war there were many turning points that may have ended them early, turning them into smaller, regional conflicts. The people who experienced the first six months of them weren't to know they would leave tens of millions dead and society changed forever after. Now I'm not suggesting that COVID will be on remotely this scale, however I believe the author's argument that it will likely trigger large societal change, and to try and prepare accordingly, is a good one.
Travel is the big unraveling. Tourism has ballooned since 2000 but it was no longer tourism: how many tourists even talk to locals anymore? Look at Youtube travelogues - how often do you see locals? Tourism degenerated to fodder for the social media/instagram economy and every holiday is the same packaged experience , just different background. That makes it easy to virtualize. It's also fueled by high density urbanization, tiny living spaces in insufferable cities (urbanites travel more). There are entire countries and world regions that rely on tourism, and for them this is going to be the most consequential long-lasting change (also for environmental reasons).
In person entertainment, privacy, work from home, remote schooling, all these have been slowly eating the world.
There s another one: Biotech. We are now testing things like mRNA drugs and antibody therapies at an unprecedented pace. If one of them proves safe, biomedicine will be next to eat the world.
This is not happening at the national level, it's happening at the individual / company level and people are noticing. The overfunded US and China army can't do nothing for the pandemic or the climate, and govt agencies across the world have proven unreliable. The pandemic has been a shitshow for politics / governments and a boon for private initiative, and people are noticing.
> There are entire countries and world regions that rely on tourism, and for them this is going to be the most consequential long-lasting change (also for environmental reasons).
I don't see how people stop traveling once Covid is gone (or at least reduced to a regular flu level of danger). Why would people ever prefer not to travel? I agree that some paranoid people won't travel until 5 years after the pandemic, but the vast majority of people will do.
Some people would definitely prefer not to travel if their potential destination still had major restrictions on foreigners entering. Forcing arriving travelers to quarantine themselves for two weeks in a hotel would automatically cut out most tourists, because relatively few people have that much holiday and would want to budget for two weeks of accommodation where they can’t go anywhere. Even softer measures like forcing travelers to install the local government’s app like in China might be a turnoff.
tourism is one part of traveling. people from highly urbanized areas tend to travel long distances more (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aac9d2) . If this density drops (due to convenient remote work) tourish would drop as well
Completely agree. Imagine if an mRNA vaccine hits? Every government in the world will be clambering to start their own vaccine defence arm for national security. The technology is so attainable for so cheap, it's going to flip the infections disease paradigm. No longer will we be lamenting so much about the end of antibiotics, we will be lamenting about computational screens for neutralizing targets of surface antigens coming up short. Do you want to put your tech abilities toward this problem? Learn about genomics, structural biochemistry, and genetic alignments. So you have a positive clinical hit for an antigen against some organism? What other organism has a homologous gene? Do you need to try and fold the new one to see if the antigen you hit is still solvent exposed? Join-up with David Baker, or any computational structure prediction group. D.E. Shaw will be a big funder of this stuff. Gates foundation. The golden age of biotech is coming, learn the tools today. Just look at the biotech IPO market this year alone.
Thanks for the reply, it made me think about the book idea. The topic is still too new for a book, but it's a good idea; maybe more of a treatise needs to be written on the subject right now. Regardless, the parents of modern mRNA vaccinology are Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, follow his publications. Here are a couple good reviews to get you started (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 and https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3812). I say modern, because the idea of using modified chemistry is likely going to be key to a successful mRNA vaccine. Without it, the immunogenicty leads to safety concerns and a reduction in transcript expression--it's just too hot. CureVac founder and arguably the first person to really drive the idea of an mRNA vaccine into the clinic is Ingmar Hoerr, but his company started before the idea of modified chemistry. He is a fantastic scientist, but ultimately CureVac came too soon and has triple-downed on canonical uridine. Another issue is they likely can't get FTO so they don't really have a choice. As for blogs/twitter accounts, none of the mRNA people are active on social media likely because the stakes are just too high right now. If you're interested in mRNA beyond vaccines, check out Sek Kathiresan on twitter. He's active. He's the CEO of Verve. Worst kept secret of the gene editing (e.g., CRISPR) world is that everyone is pivoting to using mRNA for expression of the editing enzymes (e.g., CAS9, ADAR, APOBECs).
Where is this coming from? It may be just anecdotal, but "availability of relevant work" is only one of many reasons the people I know choose to live in cities.
This all strikes me as extremely alarmist and far-fetched. The chances of COVID causing an indefinite pandemic that alters the nature of human behavior and the course of history forever in my estimation is zero. Business and economic difficulties for a few years, yes. Total destruction of the travel industry for all time? Not a chance.
Some of the stuff just makes no sense, for example; "There's already talk of a race to produce vaccines, where a country that has the vaccine will use the vaccine for itself in order to gain advantage rather than spreading it around the world."
I could imagine the country that discovers it giving priority to their citizens when there is, at first, limited supply but withholding it indefinitely for advantage seems like it would not happen because of the incredible profit motive.
> I could imagine the country that discovers it giving priority to their citizens when there is, at first, limited supply but withholding it indefinitely for advantage seems like it would not happen because of the incredible profit motive.
Turns out that those doing vaccine trials have actually thought of that, and most of them are making partnerships in different countries to prevent "bad side effects" from this (such as forced seizure).
I agree in part, but I am not sure if we can compare COVID-19 against the horrors of two world wars where tens of millions died (15-22,000,000 deaths in WW1 and 70-85,000,000 deaths in WW2 according to wikipedia) and entire cities were literally flattened and millions more left homeless and jobless?
The strange thing about COVID-19 is that it is largely invisible (unless you happen to work in a hospital or morgue or something). Apart from people wearing masks and Starbucks only doing takeaway and those unlucky enough to have lost a loved one/friend/colleague (my condolences if so) it is hard for people to actually "see" the impact. For me, the largest impact is I have to plan my grocery deliveries a bit more carefully (since I can't do a top-up shop easily) and I work from home more than I usually did - nothing else has changed in my life really.
Will Starbucks re-open their doors and be selling double-tall skinny frap extra-cold within a few days of getting the say-so? You bet - and who can blame them? Nothing will have changed for them - people will still buy the coffee just like they are buying them right now during the pandemic.
Did Hiroshima/Dresden/Hamburg/Berlin/Tokyo/Stalingrad/others re-open after VE/VJ day? No - because they were absolutely physically obliterated with the population killed, maimed or displaced (...and even if they weren't, physiologically it must have been absolutely crippling to be a survivor).
Were I alive in WW2, would my life only be mildly inconvenienced like it is today with COVID-19? No way - if I had even survived at all, I'd be happy to have a home to live in (and no doubt without reliable electricity, gas or sewage), even luckier to have a job to work at, and even luckier still to have shops to visit with stock to allow me to even purchase any food. And I'd no doubt have known friends family and colleagues who died in unspeakably horrible ways. Whatever happened I'd be psychologically scarred for life.
It just doesn't feel like COVID-19 is in the same league... And this is before we even mention genocide from WW2.
That said though I am all for fiscal stimulus only going to green companies though! No government hand-outs to the cruiseline, airline, oil, or shipping industries please! :)
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Aside: ... I note that COVID-19 is now "worse" than the WW2 Blitz in London in that it has killed more people (1). I sincerely hope now that the rose-tinted nostalgia for people citing the "Blitz Spirit" etc in the context of Brexit can go away. London has now faced worse than the Blitz - and when it did it was immigrant nurses (one from the EU, one from the Commonwealth) that literally nursed even our Prime Minister back to health. We are stronger together.</politics>
Note the difference between the people killed in WW2 and those killed by COVID-19: the WW2 deaths were primarily healthy young men in their late teens and early 20s. The COVID-19 deaths have been primarily among the elderly and infirm. There are numerous exceptions, sure, but the societal impact of deaths among the two different demographic groups is pretty different, qualitatively if not quantitatively.
> I am not sure if we can compare COVID-19 against the horrors of two world wars where tens of millions died
People compare COVID-19 with the 1918 epidemic all the time, and that epidemic has killed more people than WW1. COVID-19 is currently off by a factor of 100, but it's not over yet. We don't know what the final death count will be, but it'll likely be (much) smaller.
>Couldn't one argue 9/11 was the 'start' of the 21st century?
There was one major US political event in the 21st Century before 9/11 and arguably even lead to 9/11.
People tend to forget the 2000 Presidential Election between Gore/Bush. It seems common place for a candidate to lose the popular vote but win the Election, which was the case between Gore/Bush, but we hadn't seen that prior to Gore/Bush since 1888. Not to mention the shenanigans (electronic votes in swing states like FL going to the opposite candidate, entire truck loads of missing ballots)...it ended in a lawsuit and the SCOTUS deciding the election.
Politics/news coverage was set down a path of partisanship we have never recovered from and has only gotten worse. But to your point there is a chance 9/11 is stopped or never happens under Gore, and if 9/11 happened anyway, the response for sure would have been different and Iraq/Afghanistan wars likely never happen (perhaps an entire generation doesn't go off to the longest war in American history).
Gore would have also chartered a different course for the US environment wise, which will be a major effect felt in the future. So it will likely influence their thinking of the past.
> It seems common place for a candidate to lose the popular vote but win the Election, which was the case between Gore/Bush
I know the education of the average HNer is a bit higher than the average person off of the street. How is the electoral college perceived here? I've heard a great argument from a conservative friend: it prevents densely populated cities like LA + NY for speaking on the needs/wants of the entire country.
From an outside perspective, 'degressive proportionality' seems to be the term to think about more thoroughly [1]. It's valid that you neither want a minority dictating the terms for the majority nor a majority dominating a minority to such a degree that leaves the minority's voices unheard.
Like with anything on HN the EC is has its detractors and promoters.
The US has changed a lot since its inception and has structurally changed in profound ways. The 12th and 17th amendments, the civil war, and the rise of federal power. I think it's important to contextualize what the electoral college originally was versus what it current is. I think it's also very important to note that no method of self-government can accommodate every citizens's preferences in unison. So whether it's direct democracy or not some portion of the US voters will 'lose'.
Personally I think we're running head long into the consequences of a very strong federal government where the people desire a say in which (singular) person gets to 'run' the country. When a single person represents 50% (+/- a few % depending on EC or popular vote) of a nation of over 300 million I think we have deep systemic issues that neither the electoral college can stem nor can the popular vote fix.
> When a single person represents 50% (+/- a few % depending on EC or popular vote) of a nation of over 300 million I think we have deep systemic issues that neither the electoral college can stem nor can the popular vote fix.
Are you trying to say you wish you saw less political division in America (left vs right)?
I think political division is a symptom. With power concentrated in such a small portion of the population (one person) you end up with two coalitions who vie for power behind the person because no smaller group can affect change at that level.
What’s the implied harm in that, though? Given it violates the principle of “one person, one vote”, it needs justification beyond gesturing towards the idea of “it prevents bigger regions from bullying smaller ones”.
Maybe there is a dark history that has been avoided by the EC, but it seems incomplete to just just allude to it with a vague David and Goliath analogy.
>Given it violates the principle of “one person, one vote”
I believe that the less populated states would not have joined the union without the electoral college.
They may justifiably feel that it's still not in their interests to give it up.
EDIT: Fun fact: technically the states elect the president, the constitution does not specify a popular vote for that office, and there doesn't need to be one.
The federal government is set up to allow minority positions to roadblock majority positions unless you have an overwhelming majority (look at basically every big social issue of the past century and you will see this is how it has played out). The purpose of this is to prevent people from moving fast and breaking things at the federal level. This is all fine so long as states have decent autonomy. CA can have all the weed and abortions they want and KY can have all the guns and christian values they want and neither has to bother the other. Unfortunately we've put of a hell of a lot of authority at the federal level over the last 120yr or so and as a result government's ability to do things is handicapped because more of the doing things necessarily has to happen at a level where the system was designed to only allow things to be done when practically nobody could disagree with them.
I agree there can exist a tyranny of the slight majority. But we’re talking about the EC, which is used to choose the President. Given the enormous power of the executive branch (relative to most parliamentary democracies, for example), this actually causes a minority to gain positive power over the majority. Positive power here meaning power to direct action through executive orders and (most importantly) military action, not merely to veto law. But the executive also enjoys some veto power!
The EC and 2 senators per state system that the US uses seems to lead to a tyranny of the minority, especially if you consider that senate “rules” regarding filibustering, simple, absolute majorities are almost all conventions rather than laws or immutable procedures.
However, I do agree with your line of argument as it relates to constitutional amendments.
Edit: I said the executive could create law, when I meant to say they can direct action.
The people getting shafted by the EC deal should tell their congressmen and senators to take back some of that legislate authority they've dumped on the executive bureaucracy.
We're holding a knife by the blade and trying to cut with the handle and complaining it hurts. Of course it does. We're not using the tool properly.
We could also massively increase the number of states which would make the two points that all states get just for existing much less relevant (and have other benefits). Even if you just look at the house the number of people represented by any given person is massive compared to what it was 100yr ago let alone when the system was designed.
I agree to a large extent. I think EC should be part of a larger set of changes, but it is understood by a reasonable amount of the public, so it’s arguably the best starting point.
Compare with Brazil which does have a presidential system winning by popular vote, and I bet you will see a lot of reasons to not want the federal government with even more power than it already has.
I didn’t explain myself fully. For the US, I think a weaker executive would be good too. I don’t know much about Brazil’s political system. I know enough about Bolsonaro to dislike his positions and actions, but it seems like the coordinated conspiracy against Lula was a huge factor, https://theintercept.com/2019/06/17/brazil-sergio-moro-lula-.... Haven’t heard anything about first-past-the-post being an issue.
The issue is not with "first-past-the-post", the issue is about the huge divide between North/Northeast and Southeast/South of Brazil. I'd dare say is even worse of a problem that what the US has with Coastal States vs flyover country, or North/South.
The southern, richest states complain about the federal government taking out more than what is put in - which is not always true: a lot of the problems from southern states is that they can't manage their finances and are constantly asking the federal government to bail them out. The people in the poorer northern states complain about not getting money and help even though the they are the biggest beneficiaries from the Union - the problem ends up being that most of these resources are diverted and go to the pockets of the powerful families in those states.
And still, every election cycle everyone gets riled up over who is running for president when it would be better for everyone to look first to their cities and states. And while it certainly would be better for everyone if we could just reduce the power concentrated in the federal level, we have no single practical provision to do that. All that people can do is to root for their dog and realize that nothing ever really changes in a positive way.
Aside: Lula is no saint. Worse than that, he is the devil that fools you into believing his kind soul and uses it to rob you blind. He is the one that brought this polarization to 11 with the goal of consolidating more power. He is the one that was making the state ever bigger during a few good boom years. He talked loudly about "working for the poor" but his (and Dilma's) economic policies were favoring always a few exclusive group of an elite that was interested in keeping him in power. Cronyism was rampant. It was under his tenure that the endemic corruption became systemic: every government contract job had a kickback scheme which would fuel his party and his allies.
It was no conspiracy that put Lula in jail. He was the leader of what was essentially a kleptocracy who subverted all institutions to work in his favor. And none of that would be so easy to do if the people in the states had more control over what happens in Brasilia.
Going back in history, you wouldn't have one without the other. You can have "one man, one vote" and restrict the vote hypocritically to white landowning guys, but if you want to start weighting the votes of guys who own some of their fellow human beings higher than ordinary people, you need some kind of proxy.
That's the point. Otherwise highly populous states would steamroll smaller states, causing tremendous political tension and long-term could trigger a war.
The Senate is part of Congress, so “Congress and the Senate” is redundant and equivalent to just “Congress”.
And representation in both the House of Representatives and the Senate (moreso in the latter case) is not equal by population, so that just explains one of the way the voices are unequal rather than contradicting that claim.
Right. I just wanted to point out there is no direct proportionality between votes and amount of representatives in Congress, so it makes no sense to talk about EC violating any principle.
"One person, one vote" never meant "one vote, one equal share of representation" would be a better way of saying it perhaps.
> One person, one vote" never meant "one vote, one equal share of representation"
That's exactly what “one person, one vote” means, but the only place in the US system that “one person, one vote” is applied is to the states as a consequence of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, on which basis state level structures very similar to the way the two Houses of Congress are set up under the federal Constitution have been struck down as violations of the principle, and, thereby, the Constitution.
Yes, not only I am fine with it, I am trying really hard to find a place where the amount of votes linearly translates to the amount of power a representative has.
Every parliamentary system with barrier clauses are out. Every district-based election is out, etc, etc. Swiss' cantons, maybe?
It may also translate into: representatives grouping into parties. Which parties get the more votes globally, get to have proportionally as many seats, which they distribute to the elected members of the group.
I am failing to understand the point you are trying to make.
You just described most parliamentary systems. There is still one PM that concentrates the executive power.
Also, most parliamentary elections (that I know of) have some form of barrier clause. This is explicitly done to avoid pulverization of power. In Germany, your vote needs to be along with a minimum of 5% of the population to actually count. There is no "one vote, one share of power" as well.
So what gives? You asked me if I was "fine with it". I am saying that I am fine with it because I don't know of any alternative that has implemented anything better. If you know of any place with a functional government, as big as the USA and with a "one vote, one share of power", by all means do share.
In a democracy, rules to elect an executive power (where you need one decisive direction within a framework) are obviously not the same as those to elect the controlling powers of this executive power -- among which parliaments, where you need a fair representation of all the citizens. That is ok.
I'm fine with a low barrier clause for keeping unorganized/low stakes ones out; that does not prevent proportionality in the final representation distribution though.
My point is that a system where a representative college does not reflect the full vote across the country has a deep design issue. See an earlier comment from someone: "it's a different kind of equality".
> I'm fine with a low barrier clause for keeping unorganized/low stakes ones out; that does not prevent proportionality in the final representation distribution though.
I wouldn't say that 5% is a "low barrier clause", actually quite the opposite. That means, e.g, in a room of 20 people, every lone/dissenting voice gets completely shut out of the conversation.
> My point is that a system where a representative college does not reflect the full vote across the country has a deep design issue.
For you, it's an issue. For me it is a feature. The USA is too big, too diverse and too uneven of a country to try to apply universal policies and expect good results everywhere. It makes sense to balance this by bringing more power to the states and not push it away to the federal level.
It's an issue to me, probably my French background. :)
The USA didn't look so... indeed, uneven or fractured, before Trump's appearance in politics. I guess I should have travelled across there several years ago. I sincerely hope you can collectively get out well of this mess.
Also, hopefully not the point here, but the "this country is too big/different to try..." reminds me of several conversations I've had with people from certain countries, justifying their authoritarian regime.
Also, in a room of 20, if one person cannot bring and share into their voice at least a second person among the 19 other ones, they won't get any result either by being part of the assembly.
That's were you build friends and teams before elections to propose your platform. Alone, you can't act much.
If you think Trump has anything to do with USA's current social fabric, you either are too young or not really paying attention. Terms like "Deep South", "coastal elites", "flyover country", "Rust Belt" and many others were not invented in 2016 or 2008.
> authoritarian regime
There is nothing authoritarian about the system. It is just different in the sense that it was designed to put more weight to the states instead of the union in the balance of power.
In my view, much more authoritarian/totalitarian was Napoleon's obsession with centralization and uniformity, to which I guess you take no issue? ;)
> Alone, you can't act much
You are moving the goal posts. We were talking about representation according to one's votes, not about the efficiency of its parliament.
With current districting and gerrymandering frameworks a minority of rural voters have many, many times the electoral weight of someone in a metropolitan area so I have trouble coming up with something that is fair without overweighting one group over another. I see the problem with giving small parts of the country a monopoly practically, but when I see far more in common among constituents between Eastern WA and upstate NY than I see between Seattle and NYC I can’t help but feel that rural areas are far more united than cities are.
>but when I see far more in common among constituents between Eastern WA and upstate NY than I see between Seattle and NYC I can’t help but feel that rural areas are far more united than cities are.
Do they actually have that much in common or is it out-group homogeneity?[1]. They would probably say all city dwellers are the same but obviously people from NYC don't have that much in common with people from SF beside some lifestyle commonality.
I’ve lived in various states all around the US and traveled for work often and honestly when I’m in most cities now I can’t tell them apart too terribly much besides native accents, weather, architecture, and some landmarks - the chain and corporate restaurants homogenized each place so much it’s a blur of random logos for myself. I can say the same for various rural areas I’ve visited though in a different way except there’s different chains (Dollar General being the one common logo) and naming conventions for run down local places that seem like Madlibs.
I see the need for systems like the electoral college, but I think it needs some tweaks. Between both the Senate and the Presidency tilting quite hard towards rural state concerns, it seems unbalanced to me.
I am not pro abolishment of the EC, I think the system has some merit but that we could tweak it in any number of ways to let urban states have a bit more say. I'm a bit sick of feeling unheard by politicians 30 odd years into my life.
I don't know about perception, but in practice the electoral college has decided 2 elections in the past 20 years in favor of the Republican candidate when the Democratic candidate won the popular vote.
I think generally people want to do away with it (my guess is the would be reflected slightly higher in HN than the general population).
It makes land more important than people, which shows the heritage of power in landowners. I personally think that is a bad thing now - landowners get enough power from the value of their land. However, landowners, ie the ones with the power advantage, see differently. Funny how that works.
Densely populated states, but that is exactly the main point for keeping it.
To compare with the EU, imagine if elections for the EU parliament were proportional to the populations of the member countries and how much that would favor the larger ones
> The allocation of seats to each member state is based on the principle of degressive proportionality, so that, while the size of the population of each country is taken into account, smaller states elect more MEPs than is proportional to their populations.
Anyway, it's not a direct comparison; MEP elections correspond to the House of Representatives, and there's no figure with the same centrality as the US President.
Most importantly, parties in the EU are primarily local and campaign on a local basis. There are trans-party coalitions like the EPP, but identification with them is weak. Whereas you can sample random Americans from across the country and find they identify as (and even are publicly registered as??) Democrat and Republican, and with a strong consistency across the country as to what those stand for.
The flip side, though, is that it allows a few people in MO to tell large swathes of people on the coasts what to do.
Personally, I wish we could do two things:
1. Remove electoral college. 1 vote = 1 say no matter where you live. The fact the the senate is 2-per-state already gives plenty of weight to lower-pop states.
2. De-emphasize the role of the president. In particular, curtail the power of executive orders and the unfettered ability to use the military. It's 2020, the age of kings is over, and we don't need anyone trying to act like one.
I think this would not have, for instance, curtailed a lot of the positive things Obama had done, but would have definitely stopped Trump from doing a lot of the bad stuff.
Incidentally, I think over the next 50 years we're going to see the huge cities spread out a bit. Cities will still be where most people live, but I think we'll see more mid-sized cities (more places in the 250k-500k-ish pop range) having attractive employment options and good amenities.
You do realize that (1) and (2) are at odds, right?
Yes, the increase reliance on federal government and increasing grab of power from any president is a problem. But if you remove the EC you'll get the bigger states pushing for their interests and use the federal government even more as a proxy, consequently giving even more power and responsibilities to it.
Well, one can certainly debate that. There are discussions among historians about "the long 19th century" (1789-1914) [1] and the "short 20th century" (1914-1991) [2]. Maybe in the far future, people will talk about our times as part of a "short" or a "long" century as well.
Does it really matter in the end though? I would just take these statements with a grain of salt. It's symbolism to create a feeling of urgency, a common spirit to take action or just a way to form identity.
It has been argued that the 20th century ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, and that the 19th century before it ended with WWI. The 20th century was a "short" century.
9/11 was a spectacular event but did not change anything fundamental and was neither the first nor the last Islamic terrorist attack in the West or on the West/US. In fact, the lid had been removed on Islamic extremism in the 90s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, even if it had been brewing for quite some time before that: Soviet withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 (leading to the Talibans seizing power), Algerian Civil War started in 1991, highjacking of Air France flight by Algerian terrorists in 1994 (said to be the blueprint for 9/11), attack on US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998, attack on USS Cole in 2000, etc. I think what 9/11 did is to make the American public catch up with the world they were living in because many of them had not realised yet.
I'm not sure whether Covid-19 will change anything in the long term. It's too early to say. At the moment the main effect seems to be a significant economic downturn, which could have long term consequences, or not.
9/11 resulted in a 20 year war. That's a big deal.
9/11 resulted in a generation of soldiers returning into civic life with serious physical and mental scars from that 20 years.
Equality is worse, two nations have been destroyed. There are multiple failed states all over the middle east and north Africa.
9/11 was a really big deal. Everything did change that day.
If we're discussing events significant enough to be considered in a historical context as having changed things enough to warrant the claim that "the 20th century ended then" then no, 9/11 is not fundamentally significant in my view.
Soldiers sent to war and suffering happen. In itself it is not historically significant, neither is an invasion in itself.
You could argue that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was more significant because it fueled islamist extremism and the US backing of Al Qeada... While the US's invasion of Iraq has its root in the 80s and 90s, with 9/11 being only a convenient pretext, and does not seem to be hugely significant historically.
Everything changed when the Berlin Wall fell/the Soviet Union collapsed. The reality is that nothing really changed on 9/11. An emotional perspective is not a historical perspective.
9/11 was significant because of things done in the name of it: endless wars, growth in the surveillance state, militarization of police. Those seem fundamental, and it all happened as a result of 9/11.
None of what you mention really started with 9/11 or is really significant in a global historical context, and especially if you want to debate when the 20th century ended, which ought to be based on global, key changes.
Edit: Arguing that the 21st century started with 9/11 seems both superficial and American-centric to me, like your reply to this comment below. It misses the big picture, the global context.
The PATRIOT Act was justified with the intelligence failures that led to 9/11. The militarized police get much of their gear from surpluses sold off from the endless wars justified by people no one would challenge because of "with us or against us" rhetoric following 9/11. Their funding comes from bills justified with "terrorism!" cries from people who feared a stranger with a bomb more than a cop with an armored personnel carrier following 9/11.
I think 2001-2019 will be like 1900-1914, a prelude to the real story. 9/11 represented the first challenge to America’s post Cold War dominance and leadership. IMO, 2020 marks the beginning of the end of US leadership and a new path.
Any history is best understood by those who lived it, and best contextualized by their great-grandchildren. I don't think we're capable of answering the question you pose for another hundred years or more.
Nah, I agree with Hobsbawm in "The Short Twentieth Century" that the previous century ended in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin wall. Since then we've been observing the heyday of neoliberalism, fueled by a lack of a serious contender.
Neoliberalism effectively stopped any history. We are living in a Neoliberal Atemporality. Or more precisely: we have lived through it and are now about to leave it. Not sure what will follow next, but one thing is certain: the history is about to reboot itself.
There is a lying madman at the top superpower, none of these words matter as muchas getting him voted out. The single most important thing in human history could be to make Americans go and vote in November.
I think this thread is, in general, engaging in a bit too much name-calling and snark, but I think your point is important. Maybe a little under-developed, but certainly not worth flagging.
+1 to this comment; and raspberries at the boob who flagged it.
The greatest opponents to neoliberalism are generally considered pretty right wing: Orban, Putin, Brexit, religious groups and tendencies, and lately "incels" and nativist "radical right wing" groupings. That's why they're so consistently demonized by all of neoliberalism's propaganda outlets. Soft socialism and cultural leftism, by contrast, is generally supported by neoliberal power centers like large corporations and your HR department.
There are certainly leftists who oppose neoliberalism as well, but the borg cube is better optimized to absorb them. Remember Occupy Wall Street? I miss those guys.
and, apparently, a persecution complex.
To be fair, when education and information become more universal it may really be that old obsolete conservative precepts are 'under attack', in that, they don't work very well any more.
Not trying to be mean; just to rationalize why the theme of being 'under attack' is pervasive.
Criticizing education, advances in theory and social science, are indeed irrational. Wishing that the world of 7B people could be the same as a 50-year-gone world of 2B is not the same as 'evidence-based criticism'.
Lots of folks say lots of things. Not defending rabid idealists of any stripe. But there is a better way to operate and work, than an old one based on a situation long gone. There sure better be, because things really sucked 50 years ago in lots of ways.
I can't remember ever written to go back in time. Again, typical neoliberal newspeak. Either you are irrational or reactionary.
And your glorified advances in theory and science were...mostly financed with public money.
Just look at your smartphone. Try to find something that wasn't financed by the state (in this case the USA, that is, their taxpayers). And I don't mean the design but the most important parts: LCD, Touchscreen, the operating system (Unix came from...where?...Bell Labs), and all the many sensors.
Another neoliberal illusion is the "visionary entrepreneur".
Of your several comments, this is the only one that appears to have any actual content to discuss, and it’s still wrapped in argumentative name-calling.
Could you start over with a new thread describing what you think is wrong with the article, how you disagree, but without the use of “neoliberal” and related labels?
Sorry, was talking about my digression - the persecution complex. Which is real and very evident. And must have a reason (beyond everyone being irrational or reactionary).
Sure public money is tangentially involved in everything sciencey, because private industry has a terrible time financing science. But one reason the public finances science, is so industry can grow and thrive and remain competitive. Imagine the other approach: the government 'owns' every innovation and controls industry. Not a pretty situation.
Btw Bell Labs, not strictly funded by the public. And no phone runs on Unix today. Never mind 'linux' is spelled sort of the same, they are different animals.
Bell Labs was highly regulated, a state-owned monopoly. You can read more about it in "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" from Brian Kernighan.
And of course would Linus Thorvalds have created Linux without having known anything about Unix. LOL.
Regarding "innovation" in the industry: it's just another neoliberal fairy tale. An industry that doesn't risk their money in funding research (especially basic research) is neither an industry nor innovative.
We need another term for (yet another) neoliberal illusion.
Wall street, shady billionaires pulling strings, governments and normal everyday people have a massive economic interest in things becoming as normal as they possibly can post-covid and they are all going to work toward furthering that goal in their own ways. Sure some of the things that were trialed during COVID (work from home, mask wearing, etc) may stick around but they are going to go away and if they come back it will be slowly over years/decades and on their own merits.