The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of digital capitalism

　　Text/Daniel Cohen

　　The outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has made face-to-face communication a burden and even a terrible behavior.

In order to keep people away from the risk of infection and prevent the health system from being overwhelmed by large-scale infections, in many countries, restaurants, cafes, concert halls and other cultural facilities essential to a prosperous urban civilization have been closed. As long as a year.

Life returns to the family and staying at home becomes the norm.

　　The state of lockdown during the epidemic, relying on the online work scene of the Internet, and the online shopping experience without entering a physical store, and entertaining yourself without risking going out. The biggest winners are companies such as Amazon, Apple and Netflix. Their market value It continued to soar during the COVID-19 crisis.

　　In fact, this so-called digital capitalism relies precisely on reducing physical interaction and eliminating the real need for face-to-face meetings.

The new crown epidemic has shifted many activities to online activities on the Internet. For example, remote online services have been implemented for medical consultations.

Therefore, the pandemic has given the digital giants an opportunity to conduct an all-round experiment on how the virtual world affects the real world.

　　To understand why the digital economy and the need to protect people from face-to-face interaction go hand in hand, reread French economist Jean Fourastié's 1948 seminal book The Great Hope of the Twentieth Century. of the Twentieth Century) will help.

Forrestier has an optimistic outlook on the future world: after the agricultural society that cultivates the soil and the industrial society that deals with materials, the human beings in the service society will eventually cultivate themselves, and education, health and leisure will become the core of the new world. .

　　"The tertiary industry civilization will be brilliant, and half or three-quarters of the population will enjoy the advantages of higher education." Forrestier wrote, "Within a few generations, even the initiative of low-skilled jobs, As well as the diversity of transportation and leisure activities, it will be conducive to human individualism."

　　Therefore, he concluded that “the era is coming: history has advanced enough for human beings to make reasonable efforts to articulate the philosophy of the new era, and strive to achieve a dramatic birth in a less oppressive darkness. The machine will have to Human beings are liberated from the work that can be done autonomously by'non-living bodies', leading us to tasks that only humans can accomplish: intellectual cultivation and moral improvement."

　　The view of transforming into a "humanized" society has been criticized by many people.

One of them was Léon Blum, who became the first French Prime Minister of the Socialist Party in the 1930s. He wrote a wonderful comment on the core issue when this book was published.

This book predicts a world without economic growth.

Forrestier is convinced that a service-oriented society will not be controlled by technology, and technology will eventually make economic growth disappear.

If the goods a person can sell are the time he spends with others, then economic growth is theoretically limited by the time that a person has.

　　This led to what economists call "Baumol Cost Disease", an economic term coined by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s .

Whether it’s the medical, education or performance industry, it is equivalent to the stagnant sector in the two-sector unbalanced growth model proposed by Baumol. This is a distinctive feature of the service industry. It is difficult to improve efficiency.

　　Without digital technology, employees in all service industries will lack economies of scale, which will prevent a certain supplier from reaching more and more customers.

The concept of economies of scale, that is, companies can increase output while keeping costs unchanged or only a little more cost, is the basis of economic analysis.

It allows a company to enter a virtuous circle: the larger the customer base, the more prosperous its business.

Otherwise, beyond a certain size, the company will stagnate.

　　In order to obtain the greatest economic benefits, the service industry needs emerging technologies that can increase the product audience by orders of magnitude.

For example, film and television technology allows more audiences than ever to see the performances of actors.

　　It took us a long time, after a lot of trial and error, to find a way to solve the cost problem.

This is also the emerging digital society: when we transform individual human health and desires and other physical and spiritual information into data sets, humans can become part of the digital world, where we can be managed by algorithms in order to achieve "efficiency" ", everyone must become a data bit that can be processed by other data bits.

　　Artificial intelligence software will provide treatment, consultation and entertainment to an unlimited number of customers, as long as the relevant information has been digitized in advance.

When the watch on my wrist analyzes my vital signs, the algorithm can develop customized solutions for my health problems.

The 2013 prophecy film "She" portrays an artificial intelligence with emotional abilities. "She" has the charming voice of actress Scarlett Johansson and has a romantic relationship with millions of people at the same time.

This is the vision of Homo digitalis: a world liberated from the limits of the human body.

　　As Frestier predicted, human beings are at the core of serving society, but in order to satisfy today’s inexhaustible desire for growth, humans must first achieve digitalization.

The COVID-19 pandemic clearly shows that once people get rid of the need for face-to-face contact, online growth is entirely possible.

　　Obviously, the biggest question is whether digital therapy will be worse than the disease itself.

Will robots replace humans and cause humans to fall into poverty?

Will industrial assembly line work give way to the Taylorism of thought through Facebook and Netflix?

Let human beings fall into a kind of ideological "standard operating method"?

　　Through the continuous cycle of historical time, the digital world is replacing the industrial world, and the old problems of the industrial world are resurfaced in the digital world.

Therefore, do we have to repeat every stage of the old world, including moral bankruptcy, financial crisis, and economic insecurity, or can we do better?

　　By 2022, we may have the answer.

　　(The author is the president of the Paris School of Economics and the chairman of the board of directors. The author recently wrote "The Disgraceful Age". This article is adapted from this book)

　　China News Weekly, Issue 1, 2022

Statement: The publication of the "China News Weekly" manuscript is authorized in writing