Before the pandemic ends is when we need to debate how the
world should look afterwards. Many "build back better" proposals are
in circulation. In studying them, we need to focus on two ideas: first,
resilience; second, social cohesion.
As argued in The Resilient Society, a wonderful book
launched at this month's Singapore Fintech Festival, resilience is the ability
to bounce back. It is a feature of systems that show elasticity.
Resilience is, therefore, distinct from being strong and
robust, and different again from being aware of or capable of dealing with
risk.
When a society is only robust, it confronts any external
force with its internal strength. The Covid-19 pandemic is such an external
force, but one that quickly showed it could overwhelm even the strongest of
nations; robustness here did not help.
Even combining robustness and risk aversion, and seeking to
guard against rare black-swan events, would not have helped. Through mutation,
the coronavirus showed how it could overcome even the most closely constructed
and far-ranging of avoidance measures. Everyone, no matter how risk averse in
minimising his own exposure, was quickly drawn into the pandemic's circle of
effect.
By most expert accounts, Covid-19 is just one of a sequence
of large threats to humanity. This coronavirus got through. Others are already
on the way. The message from this experience should be: "You can run, but
you cannot hide. Resistance is futile."
RESILIENCE TO SHOCKS
Resilience, however, can help. Let known and unknown shocks
hit - we will bounce back.
In economics, we think of a pandemic shock as an exogenous
disturbance: It emerged from outside the normal operation of the system.
In today's world, however, other large recent shocks have
emerged from within; that is, they are endogenous. The global climate crisis
today powerfully affects business operations, livelihoods and relations across
nations.
But the climate crisis is not an exogenous disturbance.
Instead, it emerged from everyday human activity normalised since the
Industrial Revolution.
Geopolitical rivalry now profoundly affects technological
advance, trade relations and the global supply chain, cultural and
people-to-people ties, and education and scholarship.
Geopolitical rivalry is a large disturbance but an
endogenous one: Today's US-China tensions come from a potent combination of
China's economic success in the era of hyper-globalisation together with a
growing musculature in its dealings with the rest of the world, and America's
perception of the challenge to its hegemonic position from a fast-rising
challenger great power.
SOCIAL COHESION
The breakdown of social cohesion is real all around the
world. By the 2010s, global unrest - whether measured in strikes and
demonstrations or in media accounts of social discord - had exploded to four
times what it had been just 30 years earlier.
In the historical arc, this increase is concentrated in
sporadic short bursts, but when it occurs, there is rarely fall-back to earlier
levels.
Social cohesion is when people in society do not undermine
or cheat but instead work with and help one another.
One possible way to achieve social cohesion might be through
providing a sense of trust and community to the group. But trust can also lead
to moral hazard and free-riding: "If you really trusted me, you would not
be looking over my shoulder all the time."
Thus, a sense of belonging in the group is neither necessary
nor sufficient for individual members to cooperate and help one another.
In research by the Social Mobility Foundation at the Lee
Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, we are exploring if what matters instead is
that everyone sees they are engaged in a positive-sum game, where raising
others lifts oneself.
When social cohesion deteriorates and populists agitate on
nationalistic, racist or xenophobic agendas, this impacts domestic politics and
distracts policymakers from taking on important global challenges.
Such domestic unrest is almost never due to an exogenous
disturbance, but emerges endogenously from shortcomings within that society
itself. Deterioration of social cohesion too, therefore, is an endogenous
disturbance.
The consequential effects of social cohesion cannot be
over-estimated. The United States is the world's largest economy, has the
world's strongest military and runs excellent hospitals. Yet, in early 2020 as
its divisive leader Donald Trump degraded America's ability to have its people
come together, the country's responses to the pandemic resulted in death rates
exceeding 1,500 per million, even as Singapore, China, New Zealand and other
countries kept Covid-19 fatalities to under five per million.
Today, despite its far greater access to vaccines than many
poorer nations, America remains the polity with the world's highest cumulative
number of infections and deaths from Covid-19, ahead even of India, which has a
larger population, or Indonesia, which has far lower per capita income, than
the US.
BOUNCING BACK
Looking ahead for possible post-pandemic social models, resilience and cohesion need to be central. Systems need to show elasticity. To that end, I suggest a metaphor for how we can build back better: the trampoline.
The Resilient Society mentions "trampoline" once in passing; the word does not appear in the index. Singaporeans will remember that moment at the 2015 St Gallen Symposium when then Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was asked if Singapore believed in a social safety net, and he replied: "I believe in the notion of a trampoline." The metaphor has been used since to evaluate specific policy proposals in Singapore.
More than just specifics, however, the trampoline provides the best conceptual model for both resilience and social cohesion, while simultaneously capturing both exogenous and endogenous disturbances.
Resilience is the elasticity and springiness in society that allows bouncing back from a shock. The trampoline is all about bounce-back.
Social cohesion is when different sections of the community cooperate and collaborate. So, too, the trampoline's different components - the taut fabric, the steel frame, and the edge rings and coiled springs holding together support and bounce mat - all have to work together, or the entire structure fails.
If a micro-tear appears in the fabric and is not quickly repaired, the entire bounce mat can rend apart as shocks continue to test the system. So too with social cohesion: Small misunderstandings must not be allowed to fester or they will grow.
Next, you cannot draw a trampoline too tight or it will break, and you cannot draw it too loose or the user will break. Society cannot operate when it is stretched to hyper-efficiency or pounded into robustness, as it will not withstand an external shock. But at the same time, society cannot be flabby as it will not hold together and advance.
Third, as with global supply chains or ordinary physical chains, the part that is least strong for trampolines needs the greatest support. The entire national or global system is only as strong as the weakest link.
Fourth, a trampoline needs to be kept in regular use. Having societies unchallenged for too long ossifies the O-rings around the edges of the trampoline. A string of small crises is to be welcomed, and provides valuable stress-testing. Successfully dealing with small shocks prepares society for the big disturbances.
Fifth, modelling ourselves on a trampoline changes how societies perceive inequality. Rigid egalitarianism demands high maintenance, and is not resilient.
Instead, what is resilient is the dynamic fluidity when every part of society is able to bounce back after being hit by bad shocks, such as disease or employment dislocation.
To go higher, one needs to take chances, and not be risk averse and sit quietly. Social mobility is what gives people hope so that on that upward trajectory, they see their children and their children's children continuing to experience improvement in well-being. Even those currently deprived feel society continues to have space for them and they are not permanently excluded. Hope powers the positive-sum game.
Finally, a trampoline is not a Formula One race car. The resilient structure is not built for speed. Do not expect societies to operate at frenetic, breakneck pace if what you want is something that is going to bounce back better when it hits a bump on the road.
As the world seeks its post-pandemic equilibrium and tries to build back better, the model of a trampoline can help provide both resilience and social cohesion.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on 17 November 2021
(Photo credit: Berita Harian)