The COVID-19 Bottom Line: Some Societies Can Afford To Insure The Elderly. Some Can't.

This will be brief, and I don't want to "bury the story" yesterday about concrete things recyclers in wealthy societies can do to preserve their businesses.

Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter just published a big truth. In some of the 7 billion people world, there is enough stimulus to finance "flattening the curve". In other places, there is not.

Federal Stimulus: Quick Guide to the Payroll Protection Program

Payroll Protection Program - Here. (always be careful and check the https, there are reportedly already fraudulent websites collecting financial information).

"It's Going To Be A Mess" is the headline at Fortune Magazine.

As a recycler / junkyard operator, I'm in a rare position of having experience (as a regulator of 9 years at MA DEP) reading Federal Register rules, and know that this morning the "FINAL" Rule on the PPP - Payroll Protection Program - is not going to change. We started the application early, and had applications ready for submittal by last Thursday. But we've had to redo the application twice already.

But now it's final.

Here's what makes this blogworthy. My company has 30 employees (positions, some are vacant or seasonal). This program will lend my company money to continue payroll, and the portion of the money actually used / documented to be payroll will be eligible in ~6 months for forgiveness.  Even the portion not forgiven will only be 0.5% Changed to 1% APR to the feds plus whatever the Lending Bank adds.

Here is the link to the loan application.  I have been pursuing it NOT JUST FOR MY OWN COMPANY.  I am making calls to any company we carry an A/R or A/P with, as my future income and future required services requires THOSE companies remain in business as well.

Right To Repair During Pandemic

This morning brings an astute opinion page article by Adam Minter of Bloomberg, about how we are more vulnerable today to anti-reuse and anti-repair (planned obsolescence) strategies today than we were a couple of months ago. Apple has closed its "authorized" repair hubs, and the crackdown on trade in Asia during the pandemic has made replacement devices much more difficult and timely to order.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-28/apple-s-rules-make-iphone-repairs-hard-to-get-amid-coronavirus?srnd=opinion

This excellently explained column may give Right To Repair legislation the push that it needs in Vermont. I will certainly be sending it to my legislators in Addison County.

Adam Minter is a swordfish - a reader who is interested in, understands, and re-conveys messages better and more broadly than you can. The meta-blogger should not be interested only in the number of readers (the most widely prescribed blogging strategy) or page rank, but in the ability to draw in a deeper intellectual with the capacity to make change. Of the three books of 1960 which influenced me deeply - To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper), Silent Spring (Carlson), and The Waste Makers (Packard) - the third is perhaps most under threat by big manufacturers. It is getting cut out of school books. More below on why that matters...

Fishing for Swordfish

(This blog is both about a personal history on the subject of interest - right to repair - and also a commentary on "meta-blogging" which is a strategy of writing dense blogs that attract fewer - but more influential - followers)