In 2015, Bill Gates delivered a TED lecture in which he said that the next crisis to hit humanity would not be military but medical. He explicitly said, five years ago, that the next crisis would probably be a virus pandemic. He based his reasoning on the fact that humanity had invested a lot in preventing wars, but very little in preventing epidemics, possibly pandemics. It turned out he was absolutely right in his prediction.
What baffles me is the missed opportunity all this represents for Malta. If politics were to follow logic, micro-States like Malta should not exist. But the system tolerates little entities because they have a role: to take up thorny issues which the bigger powers cannot. In politics, it is not only what the others know that you can do that matters. There is also the consideration of what you might be presumed to be able to do, but the others are not sure whether you can actually do it or not.
Former US Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld put it like this: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Now, it is clear that in the case of Malta, the whole world knows that Malta does not and could never have a biological warfare arsenal, or even aspire to one. Political flukes like Malta are so tiny that nobody takes them seriously on a military level – including on the biological warfare front. Paradoxically, however, what small countries lack in military power, they have in moral authority, and in abundance to boot. Which is why, small nation-states should be neutral, as their neutrality increases their moral authority and endows them with more credibility. Had Malta raised the issue of virus pandemics, the entire international community would have taken the tiny country seriously and paid attention, because it would have been clear that no national interest was at stake, but only the welfare of all of humanity.
Malta did this skilfully and successfully in the 1960s, with the Common Heritage of Mankind initiative; in the 1970s, during the Helsinki Conference, when Malta insisted that the Mediterranean should be included in all peace formulas being discussed for Europe; in the 1980s, when Malta hosted the Bush-Gorbachev summit that signalled the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s and 2000s, Malta pursued her quest for a meaningful international identity, by debating EU and euro accession (and ultimately joining). Malta entered the 2010s with a pedigree of international relevance and active pursuit of international peace (in all the senses of the word), and with a new identity as EU member.
That wealth was squandered by the shallow Muscat, Ignoramus Extraordinaire, whose ignorance in matters international proved extraordinary and who shifted the focus from the quest for a dynamic definition of a national identity for this small State to identity politics, a political luxury that only big Powers can afford.
Had Malta’s self-important Muscat been keeping his ear to the ground, Malta could have taken up Bill Gates’ hint and done her bit by campaigning in regional and international fora for virus-related research. Being neutral and small, Malta’s voice would have, paradoxically, carried a lot of weight. Instead, because he operated according to the Pete-Buttigieg mindset of mayor rather than Prime Minister, Muscat worked on pushing the ultra-liberal civil-rights agenda while fighting the fire that broke out because of corruption and backroom deals. He wasted his golden years in power thinking about himself and the minority groups that pledged allegiance to him in return for favours, rather than the country, and through the country, the world.
Viruses
We live surrounded by millions of viruses, clusters of genetic material in a protein envelope that cannot reproduce on their own and that have existed for at least 300 million years. Vast quantities of viruses are swept up into one part of the atmosphere (some 2,500-3,000 metres above the surface of the Earth) and then waft around the world, at times even travelling thousands of kilometres before reaching the surface again. At those altitudes, viruses could be up to 461 times more abundant than bacteria. Few viruses can infect people; many infect only bacteria. That said, some 320,000 types of viruses infect mammals alone. In other words, a pandemic was bound to happen, as Bill Gates rightly predicted five years ago.
While it is always important to make sure that a particular virus was not created in some biological warfare laboratory, it is equally important to be sceptical where conspiracy theories are concerned, as the number of viruses is so big that it is easy for just one naturally-occurring virus to wreck the kind of havoc we are experiencing at the moment.
This can’t go on forever
The virus is killing people but also ravaging economies. One headache is loan non-performance. If companies are not functioning, they cannot pay bank loans back. If the banking system collapses, the entire system collapses.
Many governments are relaxing rules related to solvency during crises. In addition, they are forking out money. France has pledged to guarantee as much as €300 billion of bank loans to companies (almost a third of the total) and give repayment support; it is also mobilising €45 billion for the deferral of all tax payments and payroll charges that companies were due to pay in March. Italy approved a package of guarantees and funds that will leverage about €340 billion. Germany has promised €550 billion of aid. Sweden will lend 500 billion kronor to companies to keep them from “being knocked out as a result of the spread of the corona virus”. The UK has put together a £500 million pound hardship fund for local authorities to help people who cannot work. These countries also want to avoid having their debilitated companies snapped up by foreign predatory investors.
Still grappling with the aftershocks of the last crisis, the banking system in Europe is also facing rising competition from Fintechs and US banks. Without a banking system, it seems that there would be no credit lines, stymieing investment.
The United States will offer $1.5 trillion as a stimulus package in treasuries and securities. It has also signed a funding bill devoting $3 billion to research and development of vaccines and $800 million for treatments.
China has released 550 billion yuan to help its economy. The United Arab Emirates announced a $27 billion stimulus package and Saudi Arabia a similar package worth $13 billion. Switzerland has prepared 10 billion Swiss francs to assist businesses hit by the virus. South Korea’s stimulus package is of 11.7 trillion won.
The list of countries taking necessary measures goes on and on – but this whole setup itself cannot. The day will dawn when the bottom is hit. Eventually, the wheels of the economy will have to start turning again, even though the virus would not have been subdued yet. Many people will die, as Boris Johnson predicted. This is a war. And war always leaves victims behind.
Domestic violence
One risk of the lockdown is domestic violence as confinement to small spaces could lead to tensions and pent-up frustrations escalating and overflowing into violence. Both sexes can be violent and the victims can be from both sexes.
The authorities should see to this danger. I am not disputing the decision to cancel outdoor activities. But let us keep in mind that those outdoor activities would usually allow people to give vent to their tensions and frustrations. Alternative channels for the discharge of the pent-up energy of negative emotions should be sought.
A philosophically interesting court judgment
This week, a court judgment was issued in a matter related to the rent laws. It has been reported that the court recognised that the State has wide discretion to enact laws controlling the use of property while keeping in mind the general interest. However, “when exercising that discretion through the setting up of mechanisms to protect one category, [the State] did not have a free hand disproportionately to prejudice the rights of another category”.
I will not enter into the merits of the judgment itself, even though I agree that rents should reflect economic developments and therefore be susceptible to change in order to allow owners a relevant return on their investment. Only the State has a duty to rent at socially-sensitive rates. Considering that Malta offers few real opportunities for investment and that all citizens who earn more than a certain income have to pay Income Tax, it follows that private owners do not have any duty to subsidise other citizens’ living, and no such duty can be imposed on them (unless there is a national calamity, such as during wartime).
But the court judgment is interesting because the judge was making an observation, based on accepted principles, that is very philosophically significant.
If the electorate votes in an ideologically-oriented government that aims to give priority to the interests of one social class over another, it would seem that that government would not have a free hand. I repeat that I am not debating this observation – the court was right to make this observation, as this is how things are.
But from a philosophical point of view, one asks whether this observation is valid for all classes/categories of society.
On a different level, I think that this observation made by the court can be used as a fine example of the difference between philosophy of law and legal theory. To my mind, legal theory is how a philosophy of law is elaborated; philosophy of law depends on who has the dominant position in a society and can thus determine what that philosophy is.
My Personal Library (91)
This week, Asterix illustrator Albert Uderzo died, aged 92. His death was not related to the current pandemic.
Together with writer René Goscinny, Uderzo had created the Asterix comics in 1959. We all know Asterix, the short Gaul who drinks a magic potion and can fight off, almost single-handedly, the invading Roman army in the 1st century BC.
Uderzo met Goscinny in 1951. In 1959, they were recruited to create a magazine that would feature a “typically French hero” and Asterix was born. The first copy of the magazine sold more than 300,000 copies.
When Goscinny died in 1977, Uderzo continued the adventures of Asterix alone, until he retired in 2009 and sold his rights to the character to the French publishing house Hachette.
I have bought a few Asterix comic books, in French, because of their cult pop status. Their humorous satire is intelligently insightful.