The stock market shouldn’t be bailed out, precisely so that the risks — and returns — of catastrophes can finally be priced into it.
Another brilliant phrase by Umair! In Economics 101, they call it externalities — where the full costs are not paid by the business.
Umair has some good solutions here . But how should we handle the next pandemic? Or perhaps better said idiomatically: “How do we close the gate before the horse gets out?
Leaving it into the hands of the politicians has proven not to work very well. Neither the strong central control of the Chinese government nor the freedom-loving American government seemed to have done the right thing at the right time.
As many Umair readers know, I am advocating a new way of democratic governance: no political parties or election campaigns. While I provide some general guidance, I more or less leave each TDG to design itself. In this way, we will have some great experimentation in governance.
In Chapter 8, I suggest two new democratic institutions.
First is the Legislators. Rather than have the elected representatives work on the legislation, the elected representatives will appoint people to a board that will work fulltime on a particular piece of legislation. This board will be composed of experts, civil servants, industry people, and common people. They will draft the legislation, then pass their recommendations to the elected representatives who will make the final decision.
Second is a board called The Consultancy. Experts can be a appointed to advise the elected representatives on an as-needed basis. For example: a new virus is showing up, get the Consultancy to investigate and make recommendations to the elected representatives! Because the representatives trust the Consultancy, they immediately make many or all of the recommendations.
I am only offering these ideas as possibilities. As the TDG matures, it will create new institutions. The TDG will also figure out all the constitutional angles to make these new institutions work. Maybe there are some better ideas out there that I can’t see.
The idea is to close the gate before the horse gets out. Both western democracy and communism failed us.
