Review of Joshua Gans (forthcoming 2020). Economics in the Age of Covid-19
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Review of Joshua Gans (forthcoming 2020). Economics in the Age of Covid-19 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI 10.21428/a11c83b7.c48fa91b (E-Book) Benjamin Green 1 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Keywords Covid-19 . Collective intelligence . Pandemic economics . Postdigital . Peer-to-
peer publishing . Public health
Confronting a Grim Discourse Written in an unpretentious conversational style, Economics in the Age of Covid-19 (Gans 2020a) provides an accessible overview of the past, present, and future economic choices confronting nations grappling against the viral pandemic of Covid-19. In highlighting the need to ‘refrain from being judgmental,’ Joshua Gans seeks to cement the significance of this work through a depoliticized evaluation that abstains from politics, neither ‘applauding’ nor ‘disdaining’ specific Covid-19 policies (Gans 2020a: Preface: 2). Within a sociopolitical climate marked by ‘post-truth’ misinformation (Jandrić 2017: 144), a purposeful adherence to Thomas Carlyle’s view of economics as the ‘dismal science’ (Gans 2020a: Chap. 8: 4) highlights the author’s resolute objectivist intent. This intent, however implausible, is well-suited to confronting the false dichotomy currently manifesting within a global US-led ‘grim economics’ discoursal framework (The Economist 2020; Saphir and Mason 2020). As governments around the globe struggle to answer the questions of when and how to ‘reopen’ their societies, US decision-makers continue to position the health of their most vulnerable citizens as impediments to US economic survival, framing Covid-19-related deaths as necessary sacrifices which avert the destruction of the ‘American way of life’ (Kelley 2020). While this book may prove valuable in its contribution to the developing field of peer-to-peer collective intelligence, its immediate and critical contribution is highlighted most clearly within its attempts to deliver a necessarily depoliticized and objective * Benjamin Green [email protected]
1
Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Postdigital Science and Education
economic perspective aimed at dismantling the false dichotomy of health vs. wealth (Frias 2020). Gans’ central thesis holds that it makes the most long-term economic sense for governments to sacrifice the economy in order to save lives and ‘hold the line on public health’ (Gans 2020a: Chap. 1: 6). The central theme of this book can be summarized aptly by the title of the first chapter—Health Before Wealth.
A Methodology In Absentia Within a month’s time, Economics in the Age of Covid-19 (Gans 2020a) was written, peer-reviewed, and published with the support of the Knowledge Futures Group, itself a partnership between MIT Press and MIT Media Labs.1 Specifically, Gans’ manuscript was subjected to a dual-track process of open/peer review within the Knowledge Futures Group’s ‘open-access/open-source community publishing platform’ known as PubPub.2 While MIT Press ensured a ‘1-week’ turnaround within a more traditional peer review process, the manuscript was simultaneously poste
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