After basic needs; the final thing money can buy is time. Time to build relationships, create something beautiful, accomplish something. Sometimes you can figure another way out or somehow make time; but often you end up having to choose what you will sacrifice. Will I have a social life or will I paint? Will I work full time and have more money and less time, or work part time and worry about bills?

One thing I appreciated about curie and other curators is their upvotes had given me time I would not have had otherwise to work on my art; and also have a life. I saw a lot of other artists on here experiencing the same thing; a real unsung flowering of creativity was going on due to the gift of time. That seemed to end rather abruptly for many when steem collapsed; but much beautiful work is still being made. Hive breaking off from steem gives me hope; not just for Hive, but also for steem oddly enough. Perhaps they could become two good different places with different philosophies and my favorite artists will come back again.

That's kind of what I was hinting at - I don't think we should need money to buy time. It should be a basic need, and dare I say it - right, that all people of a developed society should have.

I'm sure the Hive/Steem situation will cool down over time. Best to stick around and keep doing what you are doing.

>" I hope once the dust settles on COVID-19, we as a species will look at some cold, hard truths and reorient how our societies function."

I note the Renaissance directly followed the end of the waves of plagues that decimated Europe in the Middle Ages. I expect the agility of the survivors had a lot to do with that, and will after this plague as well.

I certainly agree with you that the reality of the human condition is of deep significance to us, and mere ease cannot meet the needs of our humanity, although it is true that the needs of our humanity cannot be met unless our basic economic needs are first.

Baby steps, I guess.

The Black Death was kind of insane, losing up to half the population of a continent seems impossible to imagine today. With COVID-19, even in its worst case scenario, we are not really thinking of pure survival, as much as its effect on economies and society, so it's a different context. But yes, like the Renaissance, I do hope there'll be some deep introspection into today's societies and systems. I simply cannot imagine the debt-based global economy being sustainable after this. Very interested to see where bitcoin ends up in the years to come.

>"With COVID-19, even in its worst case scenario, we are not really thinking of pure survival, as much as its effect on economies and society, so it's a different context."

Unfortunately, this isn't supported by the research into SARS-CoV-2 I have read. Links on my blog lead to peer reviewed papers published on scientific journals that has not been revealed by enemedia to the public, and remains understood only by folks that have read the papers themselves.

Some examples of effects of SARS2 that refute considering it less deadly than the Black Death are that it attacks all organs that have an ACE2 expression mechanism, including the liver, kidneys, small intestine, and testes. The spread to these organs isn't a symptom in 100% of cases, but it's likely that when the testes are infected, sterilization to an unknown degree is an effect of SARS2.

~15% of infections with SARS2 cause lymphopenia, the destruction of lymphocytes (white blood cells, the basic functional actors of the immune system), which is Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - AIDS. Again, the persistence and severity of this effect remains unknown.

SARS2 has been shown to be able to infect nerve cells, where like herpes it can remain dormant and re-emerge later, just as herpes outbreaks. This may be why sudden collapse and death have been seen, as the infection destroys the autonomic mechanisms controlling breathing, heartbeat, and etc. It's also probably why some people are losing their sense of smell.

Neither is it widely understood that all prior vaccines attempted for SARS have failed to create immunity, and instead caused increased morbidity and mortality upon subsequent infection with SARS virus. Some viruses cause this effect, such as Respiratory Syncytial Virus, in which a human trial of a vaccine caused two infants to die and many to suffer harsher illness.

However, just as catching the measles vaccinates one for life, catching SARS does too. When the virus re-emerges after a period of dormancy in nerve cells to cause a new wave of pandemic, the resulting illnesses will follow the pattern SARS vaccinations produce, and cause far higher morbidity and mortality than the initial infection.

The WHO has caused these symptoms to not be published by centralized social media platforms and the enemedia when it met with them to advocate censorship to prevent the 'infodemic'. The real fake news is coming, as it always has, from official sources, and folks that are only informed of the flu-like symptoms but not these persistent effects do not understand that actual disease SARS2 causes.

The Black Death recurred repeatedly for centuries, and SARS2 might also. In addition to the flu-like symptoms that kill between 1% and 10% of victims, depending on availability of medical care, and whether or not the victims have been previously infected (which may raise the mortality rate much higher), these other effects, AIDS, sterility, and sudden collapse due to nerve damage, in addition to the negative vaccination effect, may accrue over time to cause mortality comparable to the Black Death.

We have no way of knowing now.

For these reasons, the lax prevention measures undertaken by the US, the UK, and other Western countries constitutes a crime against humanity, genocide, and is of extreme concern. Due to this information not being available to the public, many people not at high risk due to the initial flu symptoms inadequately grasp their actual risk of AIDS, sterility, and sudden death.

I have been discovering and posting about these and similar research since January on my blog now, and links to the papers themselves can be found on my blog so that you can read the peer reviewed research and evidence yourself. I strongly recommend you do, so that you have as complete an understanding as possible of this pathogen, and can take rational actions accordingly.

This is not anything like the flu, in terms of it's persistent symptoms. Only the initial response to infection is anything like the flu, and even then it's minimally an order of magnitude more deadly, and if ICU beds aren't available, is probably at least two orders of magnitude higher mortality.

My best advice is to undertake every possible preventive measure to avoid catching it. Don't just listen to enemedia propaganda, and read the scientific research itself. The WHO hasn't made any attempt to censor that - yet.

To be clear, I'm by no means underestimating the severity of the virus, but rather contemplating the socioeconomic effects of it. Global civilization is much more resilient today than it was hundreds of years ago - there's very little probability that COVID-19 results in a billion deaths. Indeed, the progress we have seen in East Asia is ample evidence that with the right measures, this will only affect a very small percentage of the population.

The current financial model and systems fail to factor in the true value, or cost of something, which I have a bit of a hypothesis on.

Cost of Raw Material + Cost of Energy + Cost of Labour + Cost of Logistics + Cost of Eventual Disposal / Upkeep / Replacement = True Cost.

There's probably some logistical elements of that chain I'm missing there.

Items (whether they be food stuff, a video game, or a house) - should be priced appropriately in order to account for quality, sustainable inputs at every element that makes up the true cost of an object.

By outsourcing, the liability, or true cost is simply shifted elsewhere (be that pollutant, labour cost, or other elements) - which as we've seen, is not very sustainable.

I don't know much about economics, but I find the work that actuaries do unreasonably satisfying as they seem to grasp this concept of the "true cost" of things.

That's pretty much how global economies worked till we discovered that irresistible drug - debt.

You're absolutely right that the "hidden costs" are not being accounted for. Things like workers' mental health, pollution implacts etc must need to be priced in. We'll need a new form of economics to achieve this.

Debt too, has a true cost, as we're starting to see as one person can't service it, the chain of events beyond start to unravel in all elements of the economy.

Very true

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