| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a corporatocracy of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Today's Agenda  Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who may or may not be the president now. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America Coronavirus Spawns a Corporatocracy Dystopian fiction often imagines futures in which companies run the government, which is bad because companies care about profits more than people. Our own reality's drift toward corporatocracy is certainly nothing to celebrate. And yet! When the only alternative is chaos, corporatocracy suddenly looks less horrible. Take Google. As Tae Kim discusses below, it should probably not be as powerful as it is. Remember "Don't be evil"? That was cute. And yet! Its parent company is also letting employees work from home until July 2021, so they can safely ride out the pandemic. This is unarguably a good thing, particularly for working parents, writes Sarah Green Carmichael. Now most of Alphabet's 200,000 or so employees and contract workers don't have to sweat the stigma of staying home with school-age kids or having health conditions that keep them indoors. This is a blow for workplace equality. And it was necessitated, Sarah notes, by the U.S. government's utter failure to contain the coronavirus or provide guidance or funding for safely reopening schools. We get the government we deserve, and that apparently is Google? And while the Standard Oil of Search is at it, maybe it could put some of its data-scraping expertise to work compiling better data on the spread of coronavirus. Because what we're getting right now isn't good enough, Bloomberg's editorial board writes. President Donald Trump has tried to obscure federal numbers, under the principle that if you put your hands over your eyes, things go bye-bye. And too many states aren't exactly filling in the gaps. Trump's efforts to undermine the CDC and discredit his own top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, doesn't make it easier for those officials to fight Covid-19. Now almost half the country isn't listening to them. Think about how this lack of trust will affect the uptake of any vaccine we get, warns Therese Raphael. And it's not just a U.S. problem; people all over the world are skeptical of vaccines and the health officials pushing them. We'll need a really strong sales campaign. Maybe Apple can handle it. The Outlook for Never-Trump Republicans The coronavirus may become Joe Biden's problem in 174 days, thanks to Trump's mishandling of it. Also helping Biden has been a relentless stream of anti-Trump advertising and rhetoric from never-Trump Republicans at the Lincoln Project and elsewhere. But if their wish comes true, then these estranged Republicans will face some hard choices, writes Ramesh Ponnuru. They may want to purify their party of Trumpism, but they'll probably find its roots are too deep. They could become Democrats, but Jonathan Bernstein writes they probably won't find much hospitality in that party either. They may end up in political limbo instead. Working hard to keep Trump in office is his personal lawyer (not really), Attorney General Bill Barr, who yesterday expressed disturbing ambivalence about foreign interference in U.S. elections, notes Francis Wilkinson. He's either trying to paper over Russia's meddling to help Trump in 2016 or preparing a defense of Russia's meddling to help Trump in 2020, or both. Either way, it's clear Barr doesn't care about the rule of law unless it applies to Trump's opponents, writes Timothy L. O'Brien. That may be more than enough to counter the never-Trumpers. Are Retail Investors Crazy … Like a Fox? Dear retail stock investors: If you want to stop being called "dumb money," then maybe stop doing dumb things. For example, day traders helped boost the market value of Eastman Kodak by up to 1,000% today after it announced it was getting into the drugmaking business with some help from the government. Now, sure, it apparently will be making ingredients for hydroxychloroquine, which one out of one demon-sperm doctors recommend as a Covid-19 treatment. But Max Nisen reminds us that one does not simply shift gears from making film and similar stuff to making effective coronavirus treatments overnight. Ah, but these same retail investors, including the devil-may-care day traders at Robinhood, have actually been smarter during this crisis than the so-called "smart money" at BlackRock and other staid institutions, notes John Authers. They bought the highly indebted companies the BlackRocks dumped and have reaped the rewards so far. How long their luck lasts is a different story. Telltale Charts America is chasing away skilled immigrants just when it most needs them to fight the pandemic and drive future economic growth, writes Noah Smith.  Even if search ads aren't doing great these days, Google should be questioned about its dominance of the business, writes Tae Kim.  Further Reading The U.S. and China may be stumbling into war just as Britain and Germany did in the early 20th century. — Andreas Kluth Universal's deal with AMC to shorten the time films are in theaters before they're available on demand will reshape the movie business. — Tara Lachapelle Boeing and General Electric just revealed how much the pandemic is hurting their tunaround plans. — Brooke Sutherland Gold miners can't let the metal's sudden popularity trick them into splurging on huge deals. — Clara Ferreira Marques Police body cameras don't seem to have any effect on police behavior. — Jennifer Doleac Auf Wiedersehen Update The U.S. today finally made good on Trump's threat to pull troops out of Germany, apparently to punish that country for not ponying up enough to NATO. Bloomberg Opinion writers have warned this would be a bad idea, both for NATO and for American credibility with allies around the world. ICYMI Mark Zuckerberg blasted other tech companies as being bigger than his. The next U.S. GDP report could be the worst on record. Americans aren't making enough babies. Kickers The "everything is cake" fad reminds us that fondant is terrible. (h/t Ellen Kominers) Why is Bob Ross still so popular? (h/t Mike Smedley) Airbus will build the first interplanetary cargo ship. A clue to Van Gogh's last day is found in his last painting. Note: Please send happy little trees and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. | 
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