The Psyche of powerful and wealthy
How brilliant it would have been if Science & Mathematics weren't slave of rich and powerful?! The world would have been different place. When and why did we allow wealth to win over knowledge? Oh right, our lust for power did.
It's kinda funny how I ended up on this thread. Was listening to The Radiance by Linkin Park (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-bhfcuvsv8) and found reference to quotes of Prof Oppenheimer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer. Was reading into how he irked politicians and took around a decade for political rehabilitation. A researcher isn't supposed to be looking for application of the knowledge he/she seeks. Well, that's the line of thought theoretical science explorers follow. Application is the Engineer's approach.
Coming to today's world. Science for society took backseat while societal application of maths and physics for achieving capitalistic greed took the driver seat. Who wouldn't be swayed? Earning more for less effort is dream for so many across the world. With wealth being more glamorous than knowledge, the brilliant brains went to work for wall streets or greedy capitalists who fed them with leftover (still larger pie than what their counterparts would get, hence...). How brilliant is covid-19 in putting brakes to the whole thing? Today government's are struggling to define what are essentials and then on providing them. It has forced reverse migration in country like India (temporary, though). People are no longer worried about buying new clothes but about how to maintain stock of their food minimizing external exposure of their family members. None of this is cheap. But if economies collapse and currency of your country gets heavily devalued then all those stockpiles of money in cash or your account won't be worth anything. Still, that's not the worst part. The worst part being losing your elders, your loved ones and then those doctors, those health workers, your caretakers.
If there's any permanent change to human civilization, if it survives the current pandemic, I would hope establishments across world to adopt socialism over capitalism. Governments have to get into science, knowledge, manufacturing, production and equity distribution for betterment of society as a whole. It cannot stay puppet to few power centers bringing imbalance to social welfare.