It never was all about the economy -stupid

Context Shocks - as Covid19 demonstrates time and again - reveal trends that the system was already aligned to generate.
We have seen it in distributed working, reimagining of the city, targeted education etc.
Another very significant one reveals itself in the level of state intervention required when markets fail in their primary task - to allocate resources vs human need.
This is an interesting challenge to the western political hegemony - in which the tendency is toward 'In The Market We Trust'. It has seemed there is no problem the market couldn't handle.
But rather like a Prime Minister 'taking personal control' of any and everything that appears to be going off the rails, it turns out - somewhat ironically, that the market only has a limited amount of political capital to spend. And it is all spent out.
The massive scale of state intervention around the world (another £100bn of quantitative easing announced in the UK yesterday) reveals a trend to truth - that the role of The economy is subservient to the Government, not the other way around.
The capacity and necessity of massive state involvement illustrates this truth.
And this trend to truth reveals another, just as important. The state intervention is to meet the needs of people. Given our perilously constrained resources - it is also to meet the needs of the planet. There's no people, government or economy without the planet.

So, the content shock of Covid19 gives us a new context in which to experience, and in this new experience we can imagine, and are starting to observe:
The role of Government is to gather insight about the needs of people and planet.
The role of the economy is to gather insight about the needs of Government and the needs of people.
The role of the economy is then to respond to the needs of Government (and people and planet)
The role of Government is then to respond to the needs of People & Planet.

With this we do at least have a simple way of describing the systems goals. Feedback loops flowing between people and planet, between Government and Economy and all combinations thereof will need to be understood and managed in order to steward the right outcomes.
But at least we can establish some clarity about who and what the outcomes are intended to benefit.
It never was about all about the economy - stupid.