The lockdown is the “neutron bomb” for the economy
Writing on his blog Interconnected, Matt Webb reminisces about growing up during the Cold War…
One of the things we’d talk about was the neutron bomb. This type of bomb would leave cities buildings intact, and it had very little fallout so the city would be safe to occupy after it was dropped, but the people would all go. Not die, that wasn’t the myth of it, but somehow vapourised — raptured up to heaven, really. It was called the “clean” bomb. The mental image was of an urban Mary Celeste.12
Moving to the present day Webb make a connection between COVID-19, the lockdown (i.e. shelter in place) and the economy.
Amongst the misery of Covid-19, this horrifically unfair disease, which is too big for me to think about and so I’m feeling my way around it bit by bit, there is the the lockdown.
The lockdown is a neutron bomb for the economy. What if the buildings stay, and the people stay, but the economy vanishes?3
The economic infrastructure is still there (here?), but “the lockdown” may have killed off something vital.
If this metaphor holds true the question is, who/what moves in after this neutron bomb has gone off? Or, as Webb puts it in the title of the post, what happens to all the empty office (and retail) space?
