PRESENTING THE QUANTUM PANDER Eugene Linden : endangered animals, rapid climate change, global deforestation, fragging

Imagining a Post Pandemic World

How might a post-pandemic world look and feel? Let’s imagine a creative team at a New York City advertising agency pitching a campaign in 2050 for a new perfume (more than most products, perfumes are sold by attaching to the dreams and aspirations of their times). The Big Apple, ...

PRESENTING THE QUANTUM PANDER

Wednesday April 08, 2015

In recent days, Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana has given us a political analogy to Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment in which he posited that there were situations in quantum mechanics where a cat could simultaneously be both alive and dead. In Pence's case, in the course of one week he both attacked as an unjust smear, the criticism that a bill he signed on religious freedom implicitly gave license to individuals and businesses to refuse customers if serving them violated their beliefs, and also demanded that the bill be "fixed" before the end of the week. Thus the bill in question was both perfect as it was, but also in urgent need of fixing. Call it quantum pandering.

These days Pence might prefer to be living in a world of quantum indeterminacy. In 1935, Schrodinger dreamed up his scenario in response to an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which various possible realities remained piled up upon one another -- "super-positioned" is the word physicists use -- until they were observed, at which point these many states would "collapse" into something definite. In Pence's case he was faced with the task of appeasing two core constituencies of the Republican Party: the Christian right who abhor gay marriage, and the business community, which doesn't want to alienate potential customers. The problem for Pence is that neither is a subatomic particle, and both want definite results, not the blurry miasma which politicians prefer to inhabit.

The difference between quantum pandering and the more familiar political syndrome of flip-flopping is the element of time. John Kerry could get away -- sort of -- with the phrase "I was for the war before I was against it" because people are allowed to change their minds. We enter the political equivalent of quantum reality when the two contradictory positions are near simultaneous. Flip-flopping, hardly more noble, usually represents a politician's craven recognition that a pander isn't working. Quantum pandering is not about the times changing, but rather the need to appease two irreconcilable points of view at the same time.

A near-heroic example of flip-flopping took place in 1961 when Robert Wagner ran for his third term for Mayor of New York City as a reform candidate, in essence running as an incumbent on a "throw the bums out platform." The bums in this instance, were the very political machine, the operatives of Tammany Hall, who had put him in office for his first two terms. Mitt Romney came closer to the quantum pander during the 2012 campaign when he both defended the health care plan he championed in Massachusetts and attacked Obamacare, which was based on that very plan.

The Pence drama is but a warm up to the 2016 presidential election, which promises a rich smorgasbord of quantum panders. How will the Democrats tap into anger at wealth inequality and the impunity of the banks without alienating the deep pockets of Wall Street? Will Rand Paul find himself caught between the libertarian abhorrence of foreign adventures and Republican allegiance to defense spending; or rights of privacy and government surveillance? For those planning to keep score at home, a flip flop becomes a quantum pander when it occurs within the same week, as politics works operates slightly longer timescales than quantum mechanics. Do you agree Dr. Schrodinger?

Short Take

Relaxing COVID-19 Restrictions will Kill, not Save, the Economy

[This is a more developed version of the previous Short Take}

Those who want to relax mandates on self-isolation and social distancing to save the economy have got it exactly backwards. Reopen society too soon, and we risk destroying the economy as well as public order and our shaky democratic institutions. The reason comes down to two words: supply lines.

Supply lines for necessities such as food are already under stress. Those going to grocery stories encounter random instances of empty shelves and vegetable bins. Smithfield Farms shut down a South Dakota plant that supplies roughly 4% of the pork in the nation after over 500 of its workers tested positive for the coronavirus. Other giant meat processors such as Tyson have also shut down plants for similar reasons. Farmers in the West are having trouble finding workers to harvest the crops now reaching maturity in the fields. And even if they manage to get the crops picked, farmers are out of luck if the truckers fail to show up, or the flow of packaging for their products get interrupted.

Right now, these disruptions are episodic, but that should be concerning because we haven’t even seen the end of the first wave. What we have seen is that vital front-line workers such as nurses, doctors, EMT’s, and other first responders have had trouble finding protective equipment and maintaining morale. Some have staged walkouts over the dangerous conditions, and these are workers with a sense of mission.

By contrast, for most of the hourly-paid workers who keep supplies made, distributed, and sold, their work is a job that pays the bills. It would be appropriate if society recognized that they played a vital role, but mostly these workers encounter demanding bosses, monotony, and surly customers. If sick, they are not going to work – nor would we want them too. And they are not likely to risk their lives if going to work exposes them to contagion.

Disruption of one link, e.g. the trucker that delivers food the last mile, could halt a supply chain. COVID-19 is a threat to every link. Should a second wave hit before there is a readily available, cheap and effective treatment, it’s a very high probability that many supply lines will be disrupted and filling the gaps could easily overwhelm the nation’s businesses.

Even today, on the evening news, we see images of vast caravans of cars lined up to get supplies from food banks. Imagine two weeks of empty shelves in the stores that feed our cities. How likely is it that civil order could be maintained in that situation? Will people suffer in silence if they realize that they can’t buy food for their kids because our leaders reopened the economy before a treatment was available because they wanted to prop up the stock market (which is how it will be portrayed)? If we want to look analogues for what life is like once supply chains break down, they’re readily available today in cities like Mogadishu, Kinshasa, and Port au Prince.

Thus far, the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic seems to be a mélange of Boss Tweed, Don Corleone and Inspector Clouseau. For the next act, the administration has a choice: Churchill, who bolstered British morale during the London Blitz, or Pol Pot, who sacrificed millions of his countrymen for a bad idea. Let’s hope those around Trump can convince him that the cure for the disease is the cure for the economy.