Business Failure

The New Zealand government has enforced a shutdown on all non-essential businesses to stop the spread of covid19. This shutdown has been applied for four weeks, but there are suggestions that the health experts would like it to go much longer. This will make it really hard for many businesses to keep going.

Agriculture is considered to be an essential business, so that sector is still operating. That is good, because agriculture is a really important part of our economy.

New Zealand probably has too many retail and restaurant businesses, so although it will be painful for the staff and owners of those that cannot keep going, it will not be a problem for the economy as a whole. The same applies to many types of personal services.

The close of tourism sector will be painful for many people, but is inevitable given the long-term decline of international travel. This will be a hit on the economy.

Those aside, many businesses in New Zealand that produce things are currently closed down. If they are shut down for too long, many will not be able to keep going, because they cannot do their work from home. As well as being painful for the owners and staff of these businesses, this will be a serious long-term cost for the economy.

The problem is that most of our current government are academics or professional politicians. They have never been involved in running a business, apart from speculating in property, so they have no idea how difficult it is to start a business and keep it going. Few of their advisors have ever been responsible for a real business. Their salaries come in each fortnight, regardless of how many mistakes they may have made. Many people who are smarter than our leaders have tried to start a business, but have failed despite their best efforts. It is an incredibly hard task.

I hope that as soon as possible, the government will relax the constraints on these businesses that make an important contribution to our economy to allow them to start operating again. Business owners are smart, so they will work out clever ways of continuing some of their production, while keeping people with symptoms at home, and ensuring social separation of those who do come to work. If they can keep some of their production going, it might be the difference between survival and failure.

Living in Lockdown

We have now been locked down at home by government decree for the last week. At least three weeks to go. We can only go out for a walk close to our home.

Many people are finding it hard, but it does not seem as bad as the situation during the Christchurch earthquake in 2010. At that time, we could go out a little, but there were very places to go to. We mostly went to the milk tanker parked a couple of blocks away to get fresh water and occasionally to the supermarket for food. We were without electricity, running water and sewerage for 16 days. Water and sewerage were only restored when electricity came back on.

Landline telephones did not work, but we did have cellphones (not smartphones). However, we had difficulty charging our phones, so we had to use them sparingly.

The time did not drag back then, because everything was slow to do. Meals were cooked on the gas barbecue and on a small gas cooker. Boiling and cooling water to drink was an ongoing task. To have a shower, we had to boil water and put it in the solar shower that I had hung in the shower cabinet in our bathroom. So, most of the day was taken up with doing the essentials.

The difficulty in the current lockdown situation is that we have all our normal facilities, so cooking and washing does not take any longer. Many things that we usually do cannot be done, so everyone has lots of time on their hands.

I have a stack of library books, and a kindle with an endless supply of books, so I am not having any difficulty with filling in time. And being a bit of an introvert, the lack of social interaction is not a problem. I realise that it is much tougher for people with children to keep amused, although highspeed fibre internet makes life a little easier.

The people that I really feel sympathy are the people who are working in essential services dealing with the public. The ones that I respect most are the checkout operators (mostly female) who have close contact with dozens of unknown people each day, which puts them at considerable risk of infection. They are really poorly paid, but they have to take a lot of flak when the groceries people want are not available. I am sure many of them would prefer to be at home, but they have to go to work, because their families cannot survive without the income.

The other group that I respect are the nurses who are caring for the people who are infected with Covid19. Doctors often get the publicity, but they do not have to stay for long periods of time with the same infected patients. It is the nurses who provide the hour by hour care and monitoring for people who are highly infectious. They are well trained and have good equipment, but their work is still risky.

Last year, when the nurses were striking for better pay, commentators joked that they were not worth as much as engineers. The fact that the work of nurses involves “life risk” was discounted. Now that the “life risk” has arrived in force, I presume the engineers will not be lining up to care for infected people. They will be hoping they don't have to go in and fix incubators that need repairs.