The crisis teaches: We can do it!

The current corona crisis is shaping news coverage, daily life and of course the economy. But we can learn lessons from the corona crisis. Our expert Thomas Müller explains what these are from his perspective. A comment!

Entrepreneurs are slowed down in a jungle of rules, permits and regulations. Banks are more likely to wave good ideas away than to push them through. We leave future technologies like artificial intelligence, electro mobility or sustainable energy supply to others.

We got used to too much

Instead, we have become accustomed to the idea that after ten fat years, we are now facing a downturn again. We have become accustomed to the danger that we ourselves, through institutional prudence, are putting our future prosperity at risk with Germany as a European industrial location.

We can do it after all!

The economic development is proceeding at a rapid pace. Therefore, suddenly much is possible that seemed hopeless weeks ago. Just the speed with which aid and support programmes have been set up, implemented and also readjusted in the past three weeks is impressive. Of course, no government in the world can simply open the money floodgates without a crisis scenario. But we can still be fast, pragmatic and unbureaucratic if we have to.

So please be silent, you eternal critics, naggers and principled opponents. We have more important things to do right now, we have to save our country. Right now, discipline and understanding of the people meet with cross-party unity in politics.

Even authorities and institutions are involved. Even the tax authorities are becoming more digital, answering via e-mail or the Elster portal. The film industry concludes a new short-time work collective agreement in record time. We are seeing the appreciation of nurses and healthcare staff who had a lobby that was far too small before the crisis. All this must become the new standard and not just tax-free help in the crisis.

Can we keep that spirit?

We develop creative business ideas in the shortest possible time and implement them. We convert production lines and produce new, urgently needed products. Banks organise the suspension of loan instalments via their homepages. Even though detailed questions are still unanswered, federal and state governments have implemented a new procedure for emergency aid in no time at all. And as if it were a matter of course, access for every entrepreneur is available online.

The Corona crisis has made the world of work more flexible within the last three weeks than in the ten years before. We use digital technologies for communication and for working from home. In our clients we experience a constructive cohesion between employees and employers, between tenants and landlords, between borrowers and lenders.

If we manage to take this spirit of factual orientation, will and determination on the one hand, and courage, empathy and solidarity on the other, into the time after Corona, we can soon get used to a better future. We can learn lessons from the Corona crisis!