Common Enemies
Common Enemies
Mar 19, 2020 by Morgan Housel
We are all of us children of earth; grant us that simple knowledge. If our brothers are oppressed, we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away our freedom is not secure. – FDR, 1942
Everyone wants a map. Just a simple guide to what’s going to happen next. In search of a map it’s become common to try to match our current situation to past crises. Is this like 2008? Similar to 9/11? Is this like the 1918 flu pandemic? Or maybe the Great Depression?
But none of those fit today’s ordeal. Today’s halt in economic activity is worse than 2008. The enemy is more invisible than 9/11. Our medical knowledge far exceeds that of 1918. Policy response is now faster and deeper than in the Great Depression.
None of those events offer a map of what might happen to us next. Few historic events ever do. Big events grow big because they’re complex, and complexity never repeats itself in its exact form.
But as Voltaire said, “History never repeats itself; man always does.”
We can’t look at history to tell us what might happen next. We can, though, use history as a guide to predict the kind of behaviors people are susceptible to when faced with a similar event. And that’s where there is a historical map.
It’s World War II. Not the battle or the geopolitics. But World War II united most of the world against a common enemy in a way that’s incredibly rare. Cooperation within, and between, countries surged.
The fight against COVID-19 is nearly identical in that respect. This may be the first time since the 1940s that so much of the world is united so firmly against such a specific foe.
What unity did to people’s behaviors – their abilities, their outlooks, their incentives – surprised many during World War II. If history is any guide, we’re about to be surprised again.
The day after Pearl Harbor the nation gathered around their radios to hear Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan for the war.
He began: We are now in this war. We are all in it, all the way. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories.
This was a new feeling for America because so much of the previous decade was devoted to fighting about the causes of and solutions to the Great Depression.
The depression affected people differently – some were crushed, some were unscathed, others profited. The war united Americans because an enemy attack would not discriminate by income or net worth. The risk was both catastrophic and equal among all Americans. Everyone had to chip in because everyone was at risk.
To win the war, four things needed to happen immediately that would completely upend American life.
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