Call me naive, but if the economy can't handle people staying at home to avoid a plague (a problem older than history), then there's a bug in the economy. I wouldn't even blame the plague, let alone excessive caution in the public. If the economy can't handle this, it is quite literally a problem with the economic paradigm. The sky doesn't fall in when people don't go to work. Plants don't stop growing. The sun doesn't stop shining. Buildings don't topple. Books don't evaporate. Inventions don't lose their designs or patents. Even most non-essential computer servers will happily keep on running, especially if they're drawing wind or solar or geothermal energy. If the economy caves in now, it's predicated on a lie.

If you have a garden and you leave town for ten years, and it's abandoned, it'll take some work to make it how it was. But that isn't a calamity. It isn't the ruination of anything.

If the economy cannot behave similarly, I say let's fix it.

Maybe the analogy is all wrong. Maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe it can't be done.

But I bet you it can.

(Wrote 2 years ago today.)