This Post is translated by DeepL Translator. The original Version in German can be found here.

While we are inundated daily with new, mostly bad, news, the steadily increasing number of deaths in our southern neighboring countries or the daily increasing number of infected almost worldwide, a small plant is beginning to sprout.

This small plant is the free market and brings amazing things to light.

There we see yoga teachers who get familiar with the streaming within a very short time and carry out their yoga classes online. Various music teachers have also switched to streaming their lessons to secure their income.
We hear from booksellers who personally deliver their book orders, which they receive via e-mail, by bicycle.
In Vienna, two clever entrepreneurs have developed an app where vouchers can be bought from registered companies. By selling vouchers, restaurants, hairdressers and other businesses that are currently closed can generate income to cover their running costs.
Even the normally somewhat cumbersome Austrian Federal Economic Chamber has launched a platform within a few days on which volunteers, job seekers and companies that urgently need employees can register. Farmers, for example, have the problem that the required harvest workers cannot enter the country, on the other hand there are a lot of potential harvest workers who are bored at home.
Local communities coordinate through social media to organize shopping for frail people or other urgently needed help.
These are just a few examples of many that show that the free market, if left to its own devices, can react to external circumstances in a very short time and generate products and services that solve a problem depending on the situation.
It is also clearly evident that these solutions to problems tend to be local in scale and operate on a decentralised basis. It is precisely this decentralisation that makes it possible to react quickly and effectively to challenges.

To come back to the vouchers in more detail. This app has only been on the market for a few days and is very popular with both buyers and companies.

Surprisingly, a consumer protector and politician warns against buying vouchers. Since the voucher buyer could lose his money in case of an insolvency of the issuing company.
This is of course basically correct and for example with tour operators, who prefer to issue travel vouchers instead of refunding cancelled trips, this is quite justified, as the sums involved are much higher.
With a voucher for a lunch worth perhaps 30 euros, the loss would probably be bearable, but on the other hand it has the potential to help the issuing company over the rounds.
It should also be obvious that the vouchers postpone the financial problems of the issuing companies into the future.
But these companies will have more leeway to cope with the crisis in the future. Be this through longer opening hours or no closing days. Of course a part of the future services will be subject to the payment of the voucher debts and during this time, as less new turnover is generated, the total turnover figures will also be lower.
A well-running and so far profitable business should be able to cope with this and was able to secure its survival with this voucher app during the prescribed closure.
There will certainly be companies that will not survive the financial challenges, but these companies were not doing well even before Covid 19 and would have left the market anyway.

But now back to the real issue.
I believe that this crisis also shows something very good and will influence the way we act in the future.
It is becoming obvious that lean, decentralised structures can react much more quickly and effectively to changing circumstances.
It is also becoming apparent that the free market can and does provide rapid solutions to new challenges.
The crisis also shows that if a large number of companies and groups rely on an on-demand supply chain to save storage costs, supply is seriously threatened.
I do not want to give the impression of being an opponent of globalisation, international division of labour is still a good thing, but we have overstretched it and thus manoeuvred ourselves into an unfavourable situation. I am sure, however, that there will be a rethink on this point too, and that stockpiling, at least of the essential components, for a few months will take place.
Due to the restrictions in daily life we rediscover what really matters. Be it the relationship with our neighbours or the supply of toilet paper :-), everything is reduced to the essential and sometimes questions some of the behaviour patterns of the past.

I would also like to talk briefly about all the people who keep the system running in the current situation. From the farmer to the employees in the supermarkets to the employees of the various health care facilities and infrastructure.

A hearty THANK YOU from my side!

In this sense

Tschüss Euch





Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)