Post-Coronavirus Scenarios
What’s Next?
There are a number of scenarios that have been developed about the spread of the coronavirus and its immediate impact, mostly focused on the size and speed of the outbreak and therefore the potential health damage it may cause. Many people have also speculated on the near-term economic impact, most notably warning against a recession. While some of this work has alluded to important second and third-order effects, I wanted to start thinking already about what happens next: about the kind of more fundamental, structural shifts we might see in society, politics and economy that could have more lasting impact on how we not just manage our health and near-term monetary affairs, but re-structure our lives.
As usual with scenario planning, these are just a subset of a wide variety of stories we might tell, depending on what issues we most want to explore, or as a corollary, which strategic decisions we most want to inform. And given the rapid development of these scenarios, there are many improvements and additions that could be made to them. As such, I welcome all feedback and comments, including suggested edits to the core storylines as well as additional implications each one might have on details I have not yet covered. (For example, while I assume some economic downturn in all of them, I don’t try to map out an exact trajectory of a recovery.)
Also, if you have a completely different scenario in your head that you want to add, let me know, as they were developed with an admitted bias towards thinking about this from a U.S. perspective and issues I was most thinking about.
The Draft Scenarios: In Summary
For those who want to cut to the chase, here are the high level outlines for the four scenarios created and the deep contextual causes behind them. Below I provide more detail about the key questions underpinning these different stories.
How I Got to these Scenarios / What the Scenarios Were Exploring
As a shortcut, I used the “deductive approach” to scenario development. Per this method, a couple of “critical uncertainties”—highly impactful issues that could resolve in widely different and currently unknowable directions, with the potential to dramatically shape the context for society, politics, economy, etc.—were selected and crossed with each other to frame up four corners of the possible future. Each quadrant assumed that the uncertainties resolve directionally towards the endpoints closest to it, and used this as the core of the logic. From there, the rest of the story was developed consistent with these endpoints—including the resolution of other important, relevant uncertainties.*
In this case, the two central questions, i.e. critical uncertainties, I started with were:
Will people still maintain their faith and participation in traditional social contracts with national governments or look to strike new arrangements with newly empowered alternative communities?
This question is essentially the mash up of two deeper uncertainties:
First, how frustrated (or not) will people be with the response to the virus and its immediate impact? Will they still see the federal government as a reliable partner in, and steward of, the social contract more generally? Will this cause people to have permanent distrust or will frustration be temporary (or even highlight the need to rebuild the competency of government and related institutions)?
Today, traditional social contracts still hold in powerful ways. However, recent trends have exposed a decline in the strength of this relationship—to the point where we have seen private companies begin to fill gaps and even build outcomes that we used to expect of governments into their purpose. Depending on how the quality of response to the pandemic is perceived, this trend may accelerate, continue at its current pace, or potentially reverse.
Second, how will this change or simply reveal who you really care about in the world, and to what extent will this be defined primarily by communities-of-place (i.e. physically where you live and work) or communities-of-interest (be they shared genetics, religion, hobbies, values or economic aspirations)? For instance, a possible impact of social distancing and having success with remote work might lead people to conclude that their local, geographic based community-of-place is not as much a determinant of their happiness and economic success as they may have thought. And in a world where people already don’t seem to know their neighbors anymore, a prolonged re-orientation to digital communities could change who people think about in time of need and/or in time of creating collective growth and investment. The visible break down of government combined with social distancing could make relationships—and community—at the local level only a secondary loyalty.
One could imagine that in a very short timeframe, even historically physically-based activities such as the management of resources and person-on-person violence could be done remotely and detached from place (for example, drones guarding water supplies, robots mining resources). On the other hand, if community-of-place still has a primary role in forming people’s important relationships, the question is at what level of geography is this most relevant: more local/city, state/province, federal, or global.
2. How do we respond to the economic downturn? To what extent are goals beyond GDP growth addressed, such as level of wealth distribution, climate change adaptation, etc.? Is there a reinvestment in public goods and infrastructure (including investment in resiliency that may not pay off immediately to GDP but could grow other measures of happiness) and even a rethinking of how these systems are designed? Or is there a consolidation of wealth and further bifurcation of economies and access to goods and services—similar to the last recession—brought on either intentionally or via inertia?
This is essentially about power and whose interests get priority coming out of a likely downturn. Will the basic tenets of recent capitalism and free markets continue to thrive, or will the movement to optimize more for equity be seen as justified? It may not matter how long the downturn lasts for these issues to surface quickly, because the decision to be in it together or not will be made early. In fact, some of these decisions are already being made based on where government subsidies, bailouts and tax breaks (i.e. our collective choices for investment) are being targeted and where they are clearly not. Some of the early signals about who has had access to COVID-19 testing and who has not preview a discussion about access and distribution beyond just health. And in the most extreme case, we might see elites break away completely and detach from the public systems and social contracts that have historically kept the rest of the population in balance. (e.g. NBA stars getting tested first, billionaires fleeing to New Zealand bunkers).
Narratives to Further Explore in the Scenarios
My goal is to continue to develop these scenarios with input from readers.
Some initial areas I want to think more about—or would welcome new ideas about—include:
Redistribution of government: For the right side scenarios, how might the traditional federal government role in the social contract be redistributed in pieces versus as a whole? For each one, there is a version of the story where there is a complete disintegration of the federal government. But it may be much more nuanced depending on the role and / or benefit in question. Healthcare policy and management may go somewhere other than economic development. Personal security might go private while natural resource security could remain nationalized. (Though in this latter case, one can imagine powerful private groups or cooperatives taking this on over time.) Need to look at all aspects of social services under each scenario.
System re-design: For all scenarios, it will be interesting to see how much of a complete redesign of basic systems we will see to address demand of both cost reduction and resiliency. This could swing the scenarios into different variations.
Timeframe: In reviewing my draft scenarios, I realized there was a parallel to other scenarios written about the impact of climate change on society, or similar “post-capitalism” stories (including ones published by Peter Frase in his book, Four Futures). Most of those have taken a 20-40 year perspective. Mine were meant to cover a 5-10 year timeframe. I can’t decide if what I eventually came up with is still plausible in this time. Or perhaps, the 5-10 year timeframe will be a battle to see which of these emerges as a dominant archetype over the next 20. (feedback appreciated!).
Necessary tradeoffs and downsides: There are no such things as good scenarios and bad scenarios. There is a mix of good and bad outcomes in all of them, much of which depends on whose perspective you are taking. There are always winners and losers. But, even writers of scenarios are not immune to having some preferences. As such, I may have not fully acknowledged all the tradeoffs or clear downsides in each scenario. Feel free to add.
Economy: What is written about this in each scenario likely depends on your beliefs about how the economy works in the first place. Open to ideas about obvious tensions that would build up that then might lead to divergent sub-scenarios depending on those follow on choices made.
New political alliances: We might see some re-organizing of political groups, or a deepening divide between certain groups, depending on each scenario.
Thanks for reading!
For more about seeing around corners and navigating uncertainty, see my overview of scenario planning.
You can also learn more about my scenario planning and strategy consulting practice by getting in touch.
*Note on method: The idea behind the deductive method is not that these are the only important questions that will shape the future. Rather, they are simply good enough proxies to create four divergent stories. Other questions about the use and capability of technology, continued force of climate change, or even other socio-political and economic questions are still relevant. These have been baked into the specific scenarios (i.e. quadrants) as appropriate depending on how they correlate to the endpoints given or other parts of the story as they are developed.