> Branko Milanovic: “In the current crisis, people who have not become fully specialized enjoy an advantage… Everything that used to be an advantage in a heavily specialized economy now becomes a disadvantage, and the reverse.”[…] “The human toll of the disease will be the most important cost and the one that could lead to societal disintegration… Thus the main (perhaps even the sole) objective of economic policy today should be to prevent social breakdown.” // Recommended read: Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Milanovic 2016)
> Slavoj Žižek: “In the last days, we hear again and again that each of us is personally responsible and has to follow the new rules… Such a focus on individual responsibility, necessary as it is, functions as ideology the moment it serves to obfuscate the big question of how to change our entire economic and social system. The struggle against the coronavirus can only be fought together with the struggle against ideological mystifications, plus as part of a general ecological struggle” […] “I fear barbarism with a human face – ruthless survivalist measures enforced with regret and even sympathy but legitimized by expert opinions.” // Recommended read: Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Humanity (Zizek 2018)
> David Grossman: “For many, the plague might become the fateful and formative event in the continuation of their lives… Many will lose their place of work, their livelihood, their dignity. But when the plague ends, there may also be those who will not wish to return to their former lives. There will be those – the ones who are able to, of course – who will leave the job that for years stifled and suppressed them… Possibly a consciousness of life’s brevity and fragility will spur men and women to set a new order of priorities. To insist far more on distinguishing the wheat from the chaff. To understand that time – not money – is their most precious resource.” // Recommended read: To the End of the Land (2010)
***
Join Economic Sociology and Political Economy community via
Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram / Tumblr / Reddit / Telegram
Economic Sociology & Political Economy 
The ‘risk season’ has changed. Thought Styles which worked once will now fail Thought styles which once failed will now succeed!