"PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING...":

This piece from Philosophy Now (UK) argues that a post-COVID world requires something better than a return to normal.

"The pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing inequalities and iniquities. Now, if ever, is the time for radical reflection on how we got to the terrible state we’re in; and, indeed, to look beyond our parish boundaries to a global world order that at present seems to be designed to further enrich the rich and impoverish the poor, and think of post-pandemic reconstruction. As Benjamin Tallis and Neil Renic argue in ‘Building a Post-Coronial World: Lessons from Germany’ (Open Democracy, April 22nd 2020), we should not aim for a return to ‘business as usual’, “instead we should learn from social transformations ushered in by past pandemics and man-made disasters. The provision of public health, socialized medicine, the New Deal, the welfare state, and the Marshall Plan, were all radical responses to radically changing circumstances. Today, the unprecedented challenge of Covid-19 offers a similar opportunity to remake our world for the better.” 

"What changes are needed? An obvious target is what Sheila Smith has called ‘termite capitalism’. The ‘termites’ are a sub-group of the wealth extractors, posing as wealth creators, who make money out of moving money around. Their activities have resulted in the global phenomenon of private equity destroying businesses that once provided real services and manufactured real goods. There are also the modern slave-owners who build nine figure fortunes while exploiting their employees. Hiding their ill-gotten gains from the taxman, they’re free riders on the civilization built and maintained by others. And in a globalised economy, the inequity within nations is replicated in the inequity between nations."
philosophynow.org/issues/139/Philosophy_in_the_Time_of_Plague_Part_2