Thread by @PerBylund

The #coronavirus #pandemic/#panic has already fundamentally changed our society and #economy. We're already seeing #quarantines along with #unemployment, #bankruptcies, and empty shelves in stores. And we see how entire states are being shut down as government asserts they know

which businesses are 'essential' and thus may operate and which are 'non-essential' and therefore forced closed. Whereas this obviously will cause enormous economic problems, let's take a look at what is actually going on. We are not only in the midst of a virus pandemic, but

also a major economic shift: from industry to information. Such shifts can happen smoothly, but government's actions are forcing the shift and disrupting all industries--uprooting the traditional employment model and creating a gig and work-from-home economy. Part of this is the

change of habit due to the sudden necessity to work remotely and schools and universities going online. Whatever hesitation there was to move online is now gone, and with thousands if not millions learning to work online we should expect fewer jobs to require physical presence

from now on. Many businesses will no longer be needing offices and will move to cut that cost and have employees work from home. This, in turn, abolishes standard work times and weeks for a lot of people whose work was not bound to an office or 9-to-5 work schedule other than by

tradition. This process is now augmented and the change is forced to go much faster. But there's more. Due to the government shut-down of the economy (more so than the actual virus pandemic), people are losing or leaving their jobs en masse. Bloomberg reports over three million

added jobless claims last week. Many of those claims should be from people in 'non-essential' industries. But they should also be in such types of business where it is impossible work remotely: particularly hands-on jobs such as manufacturing and
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

in-person services (such as barbers, clerks). It is probably safe to assume that these are jobs in industry to a much larger degree than information-age style jobs. At the same time, as people stay at home (by choice or coerced), they turn to online and phone ordering. Thus,

we're seeing businesses like Instacart, Amazon, and Dominos advertising that they are hiring in the hundreds of thousands. These are almost exclusively information-age jobs: service, delivery, and logistics. A possible result of the
usatoday.com/story/money/20…

result of the pandemic and, more importantly, governments' take-over of the economy, is that the shift from industrial to information economy is not only speeding up but is forced to take place. This will leave loads of people with skills that suddenly
usatoday.com/story/money/20…

become unwanted and therefore they will remain unemployed (and unemployable) for the foreseeable future. We saw similar things during Industrial Revolution, which was also government-imposed through subsidies, but this pandemic-response based process is far more hands-on. And it

takes place on top of a massive unsustainable bubble (caused by monetary policy). What will come out of this? Very difficult to say, but it doesn't look good. Those saying "we" should do more because lives are at stake are missing what is actually happening and before their very

eyes: this is not just a virus pandemic affecting an otherwise sound economy; it is a brutal, forced economic revolution that could bring about immense suffering forthwith. Tomorrow's economy might not look like anything we're used to.