The Wuhan Flu is amplifying how dumb the "western" world system is.
Most western countries reoriented their economy around financial markets in the past few decades--really the whole time I've been in the work force, the United States economy has been shipping jobs, and outsourcing production to far flung corners of the world to exploit lax regulatory environments and low wage workers. I worked with people who's job was to (reluctantly) dismantle local production lines and ship them abroad to save a little bit on labor costs. This dumb strategy was underwritten by the financial system and by federal government policies. The 90's era GOP and Democrats are really the architects of this system in the United States today.
A second dumb thing that the United States did over the past few decades that's hand in glove with financialization is pushing mothers and fathers into the work force, which makes families less resilient and also undermines stable, multi-generational households. Since the corporations became the main, all-powerful institutions in the United States, they started shaping the family for their ends through propaganda and through policy. Families played into that by accepting the concepts of financialization. Even "successful" families with a sound home life and economic stability have been atomized and split up by these schemes.
The system concentrated "wealth" through creation of a national, and even international market for investment. People plowed all their extra earnings into the markets, rather than into their own community or even their own family. Through several stock market busts, that paper wealth evaporated into smoke.
A simple solution is to just flip priorities around; It's so obvious it's hardly worth outlining it.
People can decentralize the economy by simply not investing in the New York city paper markets. A change in assessment of the worthiness of investment is probably harder to accomplish. The concept of "ROI" is pretty easily manipulated, but improving quality of life for families is not. Many aspects of the system that promote and protect it are harder nuts to crack--like legal protections for corporations and enshrining monopolies and oligopolies in law.
Anyway, I think the tide has already turned against the financialized/globalized system. In a lot of ways the Internet undermines it as much as it promotes institutions like Amazon or Google. The next decade or two is going to be really interesting.
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