What a mess lies ahead of us, right?
Great Economic Crisis, Great Sanitary Crisis.
And worst of all: we have no fucking idea how we're going to get out of this.
In my forty (long) years of life, it is the first time that I feel like a poor spectator of something that I do not control.
In reality, it has always been like this, but we have surrounded ourselves with a false reality that makes us believe that we are the owners of our destiny, despite the fact that there are countless variables that we can never control.
The one that has come upon us is the clear example that this is so. From one day to the next, the rights that we thought were immovable (freedom of movement, assembly, work…) have flown with a stroke of the pen.
It reminds me of an anecdote from Paris in World War II. Just one day before the Hitlerite army entered the capital, the terraces were full of people. The Parisians, despite the fact that the war lasted for a year and that the Germans were at their gates, did not even cross their minds that the city would be invaded.
Sounds familiar, right?
So, what the hell can we do to get out of this mess?
After reading my introduction it seems that little. However, there are some measures that from my vision as a micro-entrepreneur, forced to pull the chestnuts out of the fire without waiting for help of any kind, can work.
Some are out of the box, others more controversial. And as always, I hope you do NOT agree with all of them. What a cloying world if it were like that...
Here, my 9 recipes to get out of the crisis
1 – Education . Or what is the same: mask, clean hands and a safe distance . According to The Lancet Public Health magazine, only with these measures, populations such as Hong Kong (more than 7 million inhabitants and 99% use of masks in the month of March), have had an incidence of Covid below 1%.
Is it possible to achieve this level of education in Spain?
A very controversial idea occurs to me...
2 – Repression. Ugly word, right? I'm going to the data: In the first 5 years of the Carnet por Puntos, road deaths fell by 66.6%. This measure was joined by others considered “repressive”. Breathalyzer controls tripled, radars multiplied... No awareness campaigns, no driver's education, no nothing.
Unfortunately, what in the short term continues to work is "the stick" and "the pocket" more than the awareness that you can go to the other neighborhood for doing things wrong.
The helmet is wearing everything god today and it has not been to see creepy ads.
3- Good government . One of my main concerns has been discerning whether this government was doing things completely right or completely wrong.
In the interval of 2 minutes and just turning the dial of the radio you heard two radically different "realities". Who has the reason?
According to a study published in Nature by 58 scientists from Imperial College London and the universities of Brown (USA), Oxford and Sussex that analyzes the result of non-pharmacological interventions: quarantines, closures of public centers, confinements, etc, etc, Spain does not leave nothing well standing, but, neither does it place it in the catastrophism that some have insisted on proclaiming.
We need a good government (and a good opposition) more than ever, more than ever... and only by getting rid of the forofism that surrounds politics will we be able to move forward.
However, forget it. Politicians are not going to get us out of brown.
4 – In the short term This is only saved by solidarity . My friend Luis told me that he had negotiated with his two landlords a considerable reduction in his income (home and business) one of them had directly forgiven him the payment of 3 monthly payments.
This example can be applied to everything else. Only through the solidarity that each one of us can contribute in our microworlds will we be able to get out of this.
5 – The new technologies , from teleworking (and I'm not talking about the c***** of teleworking that we are practicing now), to ecommerce .
Teleworking was impossible for many companies. In less than a month there were templates of thousands of people doing it.
If schools, universities, dance centers, etc., etc., have adapted in meteoric time, it makes us think that there is highly developed technology in much broader fields than we think: collective intelligence, "useful" apps, artificial intelligence... at the service of society. humanity.
Technology is not bad by nature, it is excellent if you know how to use it.
6- Buy online. A separate chapter is the brutal rise of some ecommerce . Buying over the Internet was a (half) reality. In 4 months the growth has been unstoppable.
It is true that Amazon is the one who has taken almost the entire cake (Minimae, unfortunately, did not fall for many crumbs) but the pandemic has achieved in just days what had not been done in years.
What do you have to compete against Amazon? OK. You just have to discover the aspects in which it fails (which it does, and a lot) and become strong in them.
Notice to boaters. It is the MOMENT of (good) ecommerce .
7- Reinvent yourself . That we little ones have to reinvent ourselves again goes without saying. Now it's up to the greats, who need a good kick there, so that they definitely leave their comfort zone.
I said it before with new technologies. Large corporations keep in their saddlebags a number of resources for which they had not dared to bet (definitely). Whether it was out of fear, risk, or to continue sitting comfortably in their armchairs, the advances were pure posturing. The reality is that they kept doing the same thing.
But now is the moment of truth: more efficient energy, the automotive sector NOW adapted to what is coming our way, technology at the service of the collective, (exquisite) care for tourism... And so on, a long etcetera.
8- Speaking of tourism. Spain is a country of services, of tourism, specifically. That we continue to call our beloved tourists Guiris makes me think. Sometimes I sit on a terrace, I observe and I think that we have a long way to go in terms of forms.
We have believed that, whatever we did, the hordes of tourists would come to our country. We're wrong. My recipe: everything starts with the exquisite treatment of people, whether they are from Dusseldorf or Cuenca.
A note. Travel where you want. If you want to go to Finland, do it. If all countries are committed to not leaving their borders, here in Spain we have The Big Problem, so don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.
9- The hotel industry in general. Restaurants, bars, nightclubs... these are really suffering "the big slap in the face".
It's very easy to say but, if you can, hold on. I am convinced that people will refloat you. Not out of solidarity, but out of desire. This is a "street" country, socializing, having terraces, having an aperitif is in our blood, and we have been accumulating this need for many months.
On Sunday I would drive home at 3 in the afternoon. Temperature: 40 degrees in the shade. ALL the full terraces on the avenue parallel to my house…
And nothing more... the other day I read Oscar Tusquets saying that "we were going to come out of this poorer and dumber." I found the comment unfortunate because it underestimates the power of people in the face of real crises.
I am sure that this crisis (which still has "the least good" left) will be the revulsion for us to move towards a new paradigm. A paradigm that we already sensed but that because of "h" or "b" there was no way to approach it.
We will get out of this for sure, I don't know if with more money but smarter.
And keep this concept "homeostasis" in mind. It is a term used in biology but that is increasingly applied to other fields: all situations tend naturally (not by magic) to the point of equilibrium.
Signed: a prophet.
BONUSES 9+1. Discount Minimae . This recipe will not free you from the crisis, but at least it will make you spend less. Until July 31, 2020 .