Coronavirus Proves We Can Have Socialism Whenever And Also It's Good

I'm really trying hard not to celebrate the coronavirus, because honestly there's a dark part of me who just wants to watch the world burn and she becomes more powerful with each passing day and I don't know if the chains will hold, but anyway, there is perhaps at least one silver lining to the pandemic.

Suddenly, because viruses don't distinguish between the rich and the poor, all those things that the rich and powerful told us were impossible are happening all around us like they just flipped a switch.

Combating climate change by shutting down industry and reducing air travel? Done. Universal basic income? Done. Stopping mortgage payments? Done. Free medicine? Done. Work and school from home via technology that's been around for a while now? Done.

There's a whole thread on Twitter outlining how these very socialist things are popping up all over the world, even in the red-hating U.S., and that was from five days ago. Every day, governments roll out new forms of socialism in order to slow the spread of the virus.

A thread of things which were supposedly impossible or impractical, which have magically become trivially easy now that #COVIDー19 is a reality.

1. Reducing airline travel. https://t.co/NbFoVcUhjO

— Chad PRACTICE SOCIAL DISTANCING NOW Loder (@chadloder) March 6, 2020

Now if only we had these things to begin with, maybe the entire global economy wouldn't be teetering closer to collapse every day that new cases appear. But now that we do, we could, you know, just keep them. In case there are more novel virus outbreaks in the future. Which there absolutely will be.

Socialism is good actually.