Vice: The World After This (What the World Will Be Like After Coronavirus)

[Nat]

Our lives are being restricted by a virus that is invisible to the naked eye, verging on abstraction, and yet it is terrifyingly real. Compare this to all the ways our lives are restricted by the many brutal rules, payments, and punishments of capitalism, which are now being revealed as actual fabrications that were subject to quick, substantive change all along—in other words, fake as hell.

The difference is: We can't change the fact that a virus is attacking the human species. We can change the fact that capitalists are attacking human life, too.

It is clear that capitalism has failed us when people need support the most. The society we built on the premises of grift, waste, cruelty, and greed, is not one that can survive even a moderate disruption like a nasty virus without mass casualties and wrecked lives and bodies. What we urgently need, now and for the next crisis, is a society built more on resilience, solidarity, foresight, and compassion.

At this critical moment, when anything feels possible for good or for ill, we need to imagine how things can change for the better and to prevent future catastrophes. Almost nothing good comes to pass without mass struggle, and so it would be beyond naive to think that anything will happen "just" because it's plainly fucking obvious that it saves lives. Nobody knows what comes next, but it needs to be better than before. This is what it could look like.

Summary of the article:

• Free and universal healthcare
• Abolish ICE and prisons
• Protect and empower labor
• A healthier climate
• Fast, accessible broadband
• Smash the surveillance state
• Billionaire wealth
• Public transit that works
• The right to repair
• Science for the people

The World After This

We're not going back to "normal" after the coronavirus. Here is exactly how things need to change for good, and for the better.

www.vice.com

 

[Abizaga]

Hopefully this system can survive the virus...