EMAIL #68 - 27th, April, 2020 - IT'S TIME TO BUILD
Hi Team,
This week several of the blogs and podcasts that I follow have started to talk about the recovery process following the COVID-19 crisis and the consensus seems to be that "It's time to build".
The Australian government, the health care workers and the general public have done an incredible job so far to control the spread of the virus and we are all so lucky that we live in the most sparsely populated country on Earth. But no country or state was well prepared for this pandemic and there is no specific agency or political faction that is to blame. This virus has spread rapidly across the globe because of a lack of foresight and has killed an horrific number of people because of a lack of capacity in health care systems.
It would seem that this pandemic is indicative of a lack of capacity in almost every level of industry, infrastructure and most importantly education. It has become obvious what countries and societies don't have (some New York hospitals have been forced to use rain ponchos as medical gowns). Internationally the capacity of tertiary education supply has fallen way behind the demand and the need in most countries. The statistics around the lack of tertiary education are eye opening. "Each year there are worldwide 120 million new 18-year-old but only a very small percentage actually get the opportunity to go to university", Marc Andreessen. Universal access to quality education is the foundation of modern society and these foundations have not been built properly for some time.
Australia's education and health care systems are recognised as some of the best in the world, but our public transport, road systems and specialty manufacturing capacity are not so well regarded. So, our capacity to build infrastructure and the size of our land mass would seem to be our main challenges moving forward. The current global health and economic crisis may well be the turning point and the catalyst for change that would ordinarily take decades and several changes in government to achieve? Whatever happens in the next year or so as we recover from this pandemic, I am absolutely sure that building will play a major role and we will all need to be up for the challenge.
Only one quote this week, but it's a good one!
"Whatever good things we build end up building us", Jim Rohn.
Thanks for reading,
Stay safe and soldier on.
David
