– in which good investments are examined.
With all the shifts in the economy all over the world caused by the coronavirus, many companies are struggling, but some must be experiencing a windfall. Kathleen and I were talking about what would have been good investments, if we had made them months ago before we knew the virus was coming. Hand sanitizer manufacturers, obviously, medical face mask makers, toilet paper companies for some reason.
Service industries too have winners and losers. Big winners, that might have been good to invest in, are companies that can provide goods or services (their own or others’) with a minimum of human contact. Instacart, GrubHub and such, restaurants that are set up to deliver, grocery store shopping services.
I thought that the software companies that make the apps that put a pirate eyepatch or a tiara on your face when you videochat should also be able to make a killing, if they just modify the apps slightly to cater to the new work-at-home crowd—have it automatically blank out all the mess in the room behind you, and make it look like you are wearing a business suit instead of your pajamas, or nothing.
Something else that it would have been smart (in retrospect) to invest in would have been some of the video-entertainment companies, as home-bound people all over the world look for new ways on the internet to entertain themselves, now that they can’t just go to a game, hear a concert, or play board games with friends. The online gaming platform Steam would have been a good investment, I imagine, or Twitch (which, if I understand it right, is a thing that lets you live-stream a video of yourself playing a videogame to other self-isolaters).
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Speaking of gaming, a random article popped up today about a really fun board game I played once with my work friend Jon E—, who is a real game aficionado. He brought this game to a business conference years ago, and we all played after-hours. The game is called Pandemic (you can see why someone might write an article about it just now).
The game board is a map of the world. Each player had a specific, movable location, and a different set of resources (medical, logistical, financial, I forget exactly what). The object, as you might have guessed, is to prevent a newly emerging disease from turning into a Pandemic and devastating the world.
What I really liked about this game, and what made it unique in my experience, was that the players were not playing against each other. All the players worked together to defeat the disease. If the disease was contained or cured before it had spread through the entire world, everybody won. If the disease managed to spread everywhere and wipe out mankind, well, obviously then the disease won, and all the human players lost.
It’s a cooperative concept that I think would be a good framework for all sorts of games, but I’ve never seen another quite like it. (though I’m no game expert).
Although the game was a lot of fun, I don’t think I’d enjoy playing it as much right now, because (a) it was hard! and (b) if any of the players weren’t in top form, the disease usually won. And I worry about that scenario enough in real life that I don’t also need to be experiencing it in my play time as well.
But I thought then that the noncompetitive play meshed well with the we’re-all-in-this-together premise of the game, and I think so even more strongly now. We all have to fight the common enemy in order to defeat it, we all have to be top form in whatever our role is, and we can’t be wasting energy sniping at each other. Now that we’re in the middle of an actual pandemic, the message of common cause in the game Pandemic is even more obvious, and more urgent. If the game sounds intriguing, here’s the article I saw:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/opinion/pandemic-game-covid.html)
Jon tells me that the makers came out with a followup board game in 2015 called Pandemic: Legacy. He tells me the game added a second unique twist: irreversible changes can happen as the game is played. Institutions or resources that were once available can be lost, and never recovered. Not ever, even if you play the game a second time a year later! Like the cooperative angle, this concept of things never going back to how they were before also seems to predict our current predicament rather spookily.
An article about Pandemic: Legacy, which according is considered by some “the best board game of all time”, is [here].
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But back to what I was talking about originally, economic winners and losers in the pandemic. There are a lot of losers—companies that just can’t operate in this lockdown environment, and who might not be able to last long enough to ever open their doors again. Workers who have to choose every day between staying home and keeping themselves and their families safe, or bringing in a salary to keep their families solvent. And workers who don’t even have that choice, who have been laid off or furloughed.
Op-ed pieces sometimes forecast that for many, many people, the economic damage done by the pandemic will far outweigh the medical damage.
Kathleen and I are at higher risk than many from the coronavirus medically, but fortunately we are both retired, and our pensions will come in whether we stay at home or not. When we think of how to help, we usually think of helping with financial hardships people may be having.
Governments have a big role in helping people and businesses, of course, but we who are able can help too. It’s a good investment in your community.
Shop local. Patronize businesses that are still open, if you can. If you have a contract or subscription to a product or service that the virus has stopped, consider letting the company keep your money until they can start again, rather than pulling it back. We’ve told the Washington Post that we don’t want our paper subscription delivered throughout April, but we would like to keep paying our carrier at the same rate as if they were still delivering it.
Remember, there are more ways to be vulnerable to the coronavirus than just being elderly or having medical conditions!
As always, thanks for listening,
Dorn
4/1/2020