Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity

by Scott Galloway

Yet over the course of my lifetime, it has become fashionable to denigrate government, to deny its contributions to the commonwealth. At first, during the Reagan revolution, it was an enemy, a repressive

force to be beaten. Then we stopped giving it even the respect of a worthy adversary. In 2016, the election of a reality television star as president was the fulfillment of a long-term trend. We equate government to an entertainment product. Like the NFL, but more dangerous, and year-round. We join either Team Red or Team Blue, and then we watch our teams give each other Parkinson’s.

Think about this. Only big tech is arrogant enough to assure investors its biggest customer will buy more because it’s just so damn incompetent.

Amazon has more full-time lobbyists in DC than there are sitting U.S. senators.

There are many reasons for this. One is that business teaches us to always look for the advantage, not to give anything away without getting more in return. That’s the antithesis of government (and government service), whose purpose is to contribute to the commonwealth without recompense. We should not rely on billionaires to save us. When your house is on fire and the wealthy guy from down the block shows up with a better hose to put out your fire, that doesn’t mean we need more rich people on the block. It means we need to fund the fire department. Philanthropy is less reliable and less accountable, and it doesn’t scale well. Yet in the pandemic we look to Bill Gates to tell us what to do, as Dr. Fauci has been diminished. We wait for Tim Cook to get us masks, Elon Musk to supply ventilators, and Jeff Bezos to vaccinate us, because FEMA and the CDC aren’t doing it. But predicating society on the unaccountable goodwill of billionaires is not a recipe for long-term prosperity. It’s asking Pablo Escobar to fund the police.

The priorities are these: Protect people, not jobs. Protect jobs, not corporations. Protect corporations, not shareholders. End of list.

Corps, and future national service programs, could reanimate our superpower, cooperation.

permanent national service organization.

Where is that shared purpose today?

A step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction. —Kurt Vonnegut

Might we be maturing a generation that will embrace our species’ superpower: cooperation? If the British, Russians, and Americans could partner to fight a common enemy 80 years ago, can’t we partner to eradicate an enemy that threatens all 7.7 billion of us?