As we look forward to the gradual lifting of the restrictions imposed by Governor Baker to contain the spread of COVID-19, many people are talking about "getting back to normal." Many others warn that we will never return to life exactly as it was before the pandemic--any more than traveling by air ever went back to the way it used to be before 9/11.

Still others are asking an important question: do we really want to return to "normal?" Was our way of life--the things we'd learned to put up with and accept as unchangeable--really all that great? Do we really want to go back to exactly the way things were?

It could be that this pandemic, and the disruption it's creating on every level of our lives, is also an opportunity. We realize that we can change our society, and our country, from top to bottom, because we're seeing now that we don't have to put up with the status quo anymore.

We have a chance to create an economy and a society that is human-sized. It won't be built for the billionaires and multi-national corporations who hog all the wealth and scatter a few crumbs to the rest of us. We've been taught--relentlessly, since the 1950s--that we need these "job creators." We've been deluded into thinking that if we give the ultra-rich enormous tax cuts, they'll reward us. We keep on thinking that even though not once in American history has that ever actually happened.

The pandemic is showing all of us who really needs whom. We are the ones are matter--we small fry who do all the actual work, buy the products, and struggle along on pay scales that we can barely live on. But come a crisis, and where are the wealthy? Profiteering, claiming millions of dollars in loans meant for small businesses like ours here in Toy Town, filling their own pockets while they lay off employees, refusing to grant sick time, forcing employees to work without PPE or a place to wash their hands. A few CEOs have made a big show of donating money or taking a salary cut. They don't mention that their salaries are a small percentage of what they earn in stock dividends and bonuses.

In the midst of America's biggest crisis since the Great Depression, Big Corporate and big billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are doing nothing to help. They're just finding every way they can to exploit the situation for profit. We don't need them. They need us. And why should we keep supporting them?

It's time to build an economy that serves us, not the ultra-wealthy. Americans need to give up their obsession for the grandiose: the tallest buildings, the biggest cities, mega-churches, industrial agriculture, the biggest lottery jackpots. Small scale, overlapping, redundant, sustainable local economies are healthier, stronger and better for people.

We need to be manufacturing our own stuff, on a small scale, locally. There is almost nothing we use that can't be manufactured that way except, possibly, steel--which we don't make anymore. One of the reasons we're in so much trouble is that we have a service economy. We don't make things--we just provide services to each other. But when people tighten their budgets, services are the first things they give up. Vacations, eating out, manicures...they're optional expenses. Businesses that produce things--they have to keep going, because they're needed.

We need to stop thinking about what's "efficient." Efficiency is bad for people. Corporations love it because it maximizes profits for the CEOs. But the profits from making stuff should go to the people who make it. There are some 4,000 employee-owned companies in the United States right now. This is not a new or radical idea.

Small businesses can deal much better with situations like the COVID-19 restrictions. They're easier to control, clean, and manage, and they're far more adaptable. An economy based on small units is much safer from terrorist attacks, sabotage or natural disasters.

A lot would have to change to build a human-scale, truly sane society. But a lot is changing now, without our having any control over it. We'll never go back to the way things used to be, but there are options for moving forward. Maybe it's time for us ordinary people to take the reins and decide where we want to go from here.

Inanna Arthen