INVESTING INNOVATION JOBS SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020
3 WORK FRIEND
Sometimes, in ensuring everyone pulls their weight,
women get stuck with the ‘difficult’ label. BY ROXANE GAY
4 LIKE A BOSSHistory doesn’t have to be boring if it’s presented the
right way. As ‘edutainment.’ BY LEIGH-ANN JACKSON
5 RETIRINGYou can get bleary-eyed sorting through Medicare
plans, so people don’t shop around. BY MARK MILLER
The bananas news cycle of November 2020
included a fascinating public spat that is es-
sential for understanding modern capital-
ism.
After Pfizer announced highly successful
preliminary results for its coronavirus vac-
cine, Trump administration officials said
the good news reflected the success of their
Operation Warp Speed program to acceler-
ate vaccine development. Pfizer executives
stressed the opposite, noting the company
had developed the vaccine with its own re-
sources, not government grants.
That was true, but not the whole story.
Over the summer, Pfizer had reached a
$1.95 billion “advance purchase” agree-
ment with the United States government,
ensuring it would be well compensated foreventually delivering 100 million doses of
vaccine. In other words, though the govern-
ment did not directly fund the drug develop-
ment, it created the groundwork in which
the pharmaceutical company could spend
research dollars with abandon, knowing
that success would be financially rewarded.
It may seem like a trivial case of a com-
pany and an administration each claiming
credit for some happy news. But it speaks toa deeper reality the pandemic has revealed
— both what is amazing about capitalism,
and how the free market alone comes up
short in solving enormous problems.
The nine months of the pandemic have
shown that in a modern state, capitalism
can save the day — but only when the gov-
ernment exercises its power to guide the
economy and act as the ultimate absorberCapitalism Is Amazing! (It’s Also Inadequate)
By NEIL IRWIN Why big business
needs biggovernment, and
vice versa.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5LONDON — One morning in early November,
a tailor on Savile Row took the meas-
urements of a client 5,500 miles away with
the help of a robot. The tailor, Dario Car-
nera, sat on the second floor of Huntsman,
one of the street’s most venerable houses,
and used the trackpad on his laptop to guide
the robot around a client who stood before
mirrors in a clothing store in Seoul, South
Korea. Mr. Carnera was visible and audibleto the client through an iPad-like panel that
doubled as the robot’s face.
“I’m just going to come a little bit for-
ward,” said Mr. Carnera, moving the robot a
few feet to the left.
He was collecting the roughly 20 meas-
urements that are standard in a first Savile
Row fitting, the initial step in the fabrication
of a made-from-scratch suit that starts at
about $8,000 and can reach as high as
$40,000 for the priciest material.
“Twenty seven and a quarter,” said an as-
sistant in Seoul, through a translator, hold-
ing a measuring tape.
This system, up and running since Sep-
tember, wouldn’t work without a pair of liv-
ing, trained hands on the client. As robots
go, Huntsman’s is primitive — essentially acamera and intercom on wheels. It doesn’t
have arms, let alone the fingertips to find an
inseam. The point of the gizmo isn’t to elimi-
nate the need for the human touch. It’s to
eliminate the need for Mr. Carnera to travel,
which, because of the pandemic, he can’t.
This grounding is a fiasco for Savile Row
tailors. They typically spend nearly as
much time flying around the world, fitting
clients, as they do cutting and sewing. For
many houses, 70 percent of revenue comes
from these overseas trunk shows. With tai-
lors stuck in their shops, and London tour-
ism in free-fall, the most famous men’s
clothing street in the world is gasping for
life.
“Our company lived through the BoerDario Carnera, the head cutter
at Huntsman on Savile Row in
London, with Mr. Hammick, a
wheeled robot that can be sent
abroad to help measure clients
during the pandemic.TOM JAMIESON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESLondon’s finest tailors, constrained by
Covid-19, pin their hopes on technology
and the patience of their landlords.
The Unraveling of Savile Row
By DAVID SEGALCONTINUED ON PAGE 6