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Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

This crisis sure is exposing a whole lot of things as quite possible that people keep saying is 'impossible'.

If someone says sprinting cross-country is impossible; seeing them sprinting away from a beach when a tsunami hits does not undo their claim.

Nearly any arrangement is economically possible for 6 months. The government can implement price controls, enforce unlimited paid vacation and give everyone a million dollars; even that might hold together for a month before people start starving.

Holding together over the medium-long term is a completely different story.

then they would use a different word than "impossible"

Hyperbole is a feature of political discourse in the US, let's not get semantic.

What word? In normal discourse everyone knows you're talking about long term policies so unsustainable equals impossible.

Are you sure people commonly used the term impossible for things like m4a or cancellation of student loans, and do so literally?

I think the idea is the cost outweighs the benefit in non emergency situations.

Anecdote time: I have been told numerous times, by US physicians and nurses, that m4a is impossible. That it literally is not achievable in the US. These weren't even hardcore republicans. Centrists for the most part.

And I have been told the opposite. Even professionals are human. They have political views, just like the rest of us, and they don’t always agree.

ChuckMcM had an interesting observation elsewhere that times of such crisis are perfect for companies to deliver bad news, as the blame (and perhaps opposition) gets lost in the noise. I'm wondering if something similar will happen in politics - a lot of things that were not possible to push through in calmer times will now get implemented, with all the energy pandemic mitigation adds to them, and they'll stick after all it's done. Government has a lot of inertia after all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22571121

Naomi Klein wrote a major book about this years ago called The Shock Doctrine.

I now think of these economic shocks as opportunities for profit taking, like a game of musical chairs. Sell off before the rubes notice, then buy it all back up at bargain prices.

Previously, Kevin Phillips' book Wealth & Democracy in America is a more academic, pedantic telling of the same story.

https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Democracy-Fortunes-Government-...

It’s happened in politics for a long time. Two decades ago, a political advisor in the British government sent an email on 11th Sept 2001 saying the day was “a very good day to get out anything we want to bury”. It didn’t go down well, but others have been much more subtle.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1588323.stm

Well, not only ChuckMcM:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22566970

He however was not downvoted for the observation.

The difference seems that ChuckMcM observed a pattern of reactions, whereas cryptica postulated an active conspiracy to create a disaster.

What was it Rahm Emanuel said? "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

That was Churchill

Definitely Emanuel[1], and with elaboration.

[1] https://youtu.be/1yeA_kHHLow

Then he’s definitely repeating an idea that has been around for a long time.

These things are only temporary disaster relief. This is completely different from waiving all student debt.

Let me quote the immortal example:

  // somedev1 -  6/7/02 Adding temporary tracking of Login screen
  // somedev2 -  5/22/07 Temporary my ass

We already know that it's possible to build an economy that is interest/usury free. It's been done before. It's just that the people benefiting from it today make easy money, while putting down the section of the population that needs it, ensuring continual slavery. Neither the democrats nor republicans dare bring this up.

Interesting! Got any reading material on this?

Thanks

Usury/interest are banned according to Islamic Law. This means that until very recently when Western banks were forced into the Middle East, all the nations there were operating interest-free. This includes the Ummayad, Abbassid, and Ottoman empires. The well-known and prosperous Islamic Golden Age[1] took place during those eras as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

Eh, not really. Interest was handled by oursourcing (to Jews) or black/grey market.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riba

Muslims are prohibited to deal with interest with anyone, Jews or anyone else. So no, it was not outsourced to them. If Jews were allowed to lend money with interest to non-Muslims, that's a separate topic altogether.

Muslims still had to work in the economy and run businesses, and it was a Muslims majority land, so a few Jews lending money with interest is not going to affect the overall economy which is not based on interest.

Just look at the Scandinavian countries

Trump was never very ideologically inclined, so this does not seem unbelievable. He mostly acts out of self-interest and to stroke his ego (a caricature, but one which doubles as a fairly solid heuristic).

As other commenters have pointed out, the interest rates are also historically low.

It's a fairly sold heuristic for the average politician.

He really does take it to another level though. Take his attitude towards engagement with Cuba. During his campaign he flipped, flopped, flipped again then flopped again all within a few weeks. Some of the reversals were literally on consecutive days, it just depended who he was talking to at the time.

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