A discussion of China and WeChat — how China has gained surveillance of nearly all activity simply by making people pay for many vital things via WeChat or Alipay.

Covid-19 is temporary, but if it acts as an excuse to impose surveillance, the surveillance is likely to be forever. The time to resist is now.

One way to resist is to join me in always paying cash when you purchase goods, publications (textual or not), and ground transport. If a store declines to take my cash, I say politely that cash is the only way I can pay. If the store refuses to make an accommodation, I say "Too bad," and leave.

It is useful to tell your local and state politicians that you want laws to require retail businesses to accept cash. New York City passed one last year.

Above all, don't be defeatist: don't give in to the attempted self-fulfilling prophesy that Covid-19 will terrify us into paying only through surveilled systems.

*Unless a vaccine is made available to every country Covid-19 will turn into a global threat without end.*

We hope to develop a vaccine, or a treatment, but the way to get rid of Covid-19 that we already know can work is that of testing, tracing and isolation. If that is our only way to do it, that too must be implemented globally.

Testing, tracing and isolation does not require tracking everyone's movements with a digital device. China does that because repression is its goal.

Republicans have proposed funds to support farmers — but watch out: they will give all the money to big agribusiness unless the system is designed very carefully.

Indeed, even if they don't directly give all the money to giant agribusiness corporations, those will grab most of it because of their domination of the market. Smaller farms typically sell to giant monopsonies, which effectively set the price farms receive for their production. These prices keep farmers right on the edge of going under.

To support actual farm prices would require different systems. The US had such systems in the past, but plutocratists won't be in favor of bringing them back.

Common Cause's list of urgent recommendations for Congress to support democracy.

I agree with them aside from one: funding to extend broadband internet.

In order for "digital inclusion" to be an advance, it has to respect freedom. The internet today, used as people normally use it, devours freedom. When society as a whole depends on such use of the internet, it becomes a trap that keeps people under the thumb of surveillance capitalism and state repression. Making that sort of internet faster is a mistaken goal.

Farms are letting fresh fruits and vegetables rot, while millions of Americans can't get food.

This is what results from devout worship of the Invisible Hand, whose cult demands human sacrifice.