Buying Time (Now That It's Really Expensive)
Many of us are quarantined at home. Others are doing the essential work, and they have our gratitude for keeping everything going. We’re all learning what it means to “bend the curve,” to slow down the transmission rate of the coronavirus and allow our medical system to stay in front of the demand.
In recent days, our society has begun to discuss the costs of keeping everything shut down. This conversation tends to frame the risks of ending stay-at-home orders with the risks of further economic damage. Some like to speak about this in terms of lives lost and dollars saved. Others point out (correctly) that there is a human cost to isolation (although it’s tempting to question their motives, despite our commitment here to resist that temptation).
I think this framing is wrong. It certainly doesn’t help us learn the lessons that need to be learned.
The proper framing here is about the cost of reacting versus the cost of preparation. It’s the cost of fragility versus the cost of strength.
Suggesting we will have a vaccine soon is dangerously optimistic.
— Charles Marohn (@clmarohn) April 14, 2020
A test is far simpler to create & mass distribute, yet comprehensive testing in the US remains a fantasy.
To develop, test, manufacture & distribute a treatment or vaccine will take time.
We must buy time.
And because we didn't buy time before when it was cheap, because we ran our systems on overload without any slack or spare capacity for hard times, we are now going to have to buy time when it is expensive.
— Charles Marohn (@clmarohn) April 14, 2020
And it's really expensive, but that was our choice.
We didn’t want to be bothered with building up reserves, with having slack in our systems. We always needed just a little more growth.
We didn’t want to be bothered with redundancy or excess capacity. We always needed to squeeze just a little more efficiency out of things.
We didn’t want to try and address the reasons why rent was too high, our entrepreneurs were loaded down with debt, and our local economies lacked dynamism in the face of corporate competition. If was far more convenient to play the top-down game, to let the centralized corporate players have huge advantages then let the centralized government players fight over how to share the spoils (and keep us distracted in the process).
We didn’t want to shut down international travel in the early days of this pandemic. We didn’t want to close large gatherings here when we saw what was happening in Italy. We still don’t want to have this cultural conversation even though acting six weeks earlier on a false alarm would have meant small doses of pain we could recover from instead of a fatal blow that threatens a second Great Depression.
I could go on and on this way. My grandfather, who lived through the (first?) Great Depression, would chastise us for not having any savings, for having too much debt, for wasting food and keeping the lights on when we’re not in the room and for setting the thermostat too high and a whole host of quirky things that most of our ridiculously affluent society would scoff at. That’s not how things work today, gramps.
Well, maybe they do now.
The Ant and the Grasshopper (1919). Image source.
It was only in recent years that I learned of two different interpretations for Aesop’s fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. In the tale, the ant toils preparing for winter while the grasshopper spends his time making music. When winter comes and the grasshopper has no provisions, he goes to the ant for help. The ant turns his back and the grasshopper starves. I was told this tale as a child, my takeaway being that you needed to prepare for what was to come, that having fun was great but not at the risk of your future. That was a life lesson the people of Aesop’s time would have understood more clearly than I ever could. Few had a safety net that wasn’t self-created or self-sustained.
The interpretation I was exposed to recently turned the table on this lesson. When the grasshopper goes to the ant, the ant sees his suffering and helps him out. This new lesson is one of generosity and forgiveness, which is also important, but not what Aesop had in mind.
I’m struck now with the notion that we are the grasshopper. We’ve squandered such wealth — such astounding levels of resources — and now the metaphorical winter has arrived. Where is the ant?
If your answer is the federal government, or perhaps the Federal Reserve and their digital printing press, I think you should look closer. They seem pretty grasshopper-like to me, with a lot of sycophant reasoning to keep us believing in them. They are not the ant. There is no ant in our tale.
The framing we are using should not be “lives today” versus “jobs today.” It should not be a balance between models of public health and models of economic health. These are projections we should never be forced to turn to, choices we never want to be forced into making.
The framing needs to be: Now that we recognize we are the grasshopper of Aesop’s tale, what steps do we take to become the ant?
Together, in our communities, we need to start building Strong Towns.
Top image of the FDR Memorial credit via Sonder Quest.
Now is the time to build a Strong Town. But where to start? We recently created the Strong Towns Academy to help. In addition to a free Strong Towns 101 course, we’re creating eight advanced-level courses for leaders who want to prepare their entire team, department, or organization for action. Topics range from transportation and housing, to economic development and urban design. And much more.
For a limited time, we are offering a subscription to Strong Towns academy that will give you access to all eight courses for just $500. (These eight courses will cost more than $3,000 when purchased separately.) We’re also limiting the number of subscriptions, so we suggest registering now. Check out the course offerings here, then register below.
Charles Marohn—known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues—is the founder and president of Strong Towns. He is a land use planner and civil engineer with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.
Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019) and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (Wiley 2021). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America.