Why not? This is a matter of survival. If the economic system breaks because of one pandemic that will last less than a year maybe that economic system needs to die and be replaced by something more solid and useful for most.
Let me put it in simple word: you'll loose your job. Your friends and family will loose their jobs.
As a result, when your savings run out, you'll loose your appartement. And so will your friends and family.
You won't be able to afford food without government assistance.
And even if shutdown lasts only 30 days, it'll wreck the economy for a long time. Once a restaurant defaults and closes, it won't just re-open. Those jobs will be lost for a long time.
Now, maybe you're one of the lucky ones with enough savings to ride this out and this won't affect you. But it'll affect millions of others.
that's the wrong way to think about it, and also a misunderstanding of economics.
If a teacher is paid the way a CEO is paid, there won't be enough money for very many teachers. You'd find it hard to afford a teacher for your kids, let alone free education.
A doctor, back in the middle ages, is only affordable to the nobility. These days, doctors are still quite highly paid (too high imho), and that is one reason why medical services are expensive.
Imagine if you associate the "importance" of a resource with its price. Water would cost more than diamonds and gold! Water is needed for sustaining life - you die without it. Therefore, in theory, it's so important that you end up paying infinity amount of money to have it, under your system!
The fact that we have water so cheap (literally 0.000001 cent per cup), is a good outcome. Everybody can afford water.
No thanks.
> If a teacher is paid the way a CEO is paid
You are thinking about it wrongly. We should pay the CEO the same as the teacher. Managing a bunch of adults can't possibly be harder than teaching children. Education is an actual investment. Bullshit inc not so much.
Anyone is free to start a corporation, name a CEO, and pay him whatever they want to (from their money). They can even name themselves CEO!
This is not true for publicly traded companies - where the board (consisting mostly executives at other companies) determines compensation on behalf of the owners
We have a finite amount of labor and a finite amount of resources available to us.
The thing our governments lack since the days of lords and god kings is direction. This is necessary since a group of people poorly working together isn't smarter than the smartest person in that group.
We all do stupid shit at times, if a lot of people decide to support the same stupid thing it is entirely possible to dedicate all time and resources to throwing virgins in the volcano, smoking opium or borrow money in stead of printing it. Who knows, someone might create the ultimate video game, we could retool our entire civilization to play the game non stop.
A [proverbial] god king would have other priorities, there might be a war coming with the neighboring country, there might be regular floods, there might be an insect plague, there might be a disease or the food might be running out.
We have distributed wealth recklessly (to put it blunt) and ended up with millions of little emperors who pay their little generals whatever they like. They are constantly at war with the next little empire.
The plague or the flood simply become economic developments that one can leverage for ones advantage. What is left of our government is a vending machine that one can use as a weapon to do whatever each little empire is willing to pay for.
I should mention we've made a ton of technological progress with this role playing game. It might just be that we've created the ultimate game already and that everyone is playing it. If so I'd have to argue we have one shitty dungeon master. The adventures planned out for most of us are not very interesting. Most of us are simply chasing the carrot on the stick. The heroes are not gaining as much experience points as they could, they are not learning as many new skills and abilities as they could. We can do better and we know it.
Say you are in charge for sake of argument. The orc's are getting ready to attack from the east, the goblins from the west but all your population cares about is opium. Would you dedicate resources to making swords and training or would you give the CEO of Opium inc in his competitive struggle with Meth corp the 10 000 men he wants for a promotional parade? The people might be enraged. If we make swords who will care for the poppy fields??
> Anyone is free to start a corporation
Indeed, I could create a product triggering superior production of endorphins. I could win a large market share and then present myself as if a philanthropist on a mission to help humanity with its struggles. I could prove it by moving funds into a non profit organization that might not do anything by design or struggle hard not accomplishing anything.
It's almost funny, the real needs retooled into a vehicle for public relations. If you play enough candy crush we will be sure to defeat the orc's.
Thanks for your time.
There is an infinite amount of labor available - because of improvements in efficiency. The manpower required to make a shirt has declined by something like 99% in the last 200 years. For growing food has dropped a similar amount. And on and on.
Resources are infinite because they can always be re-used and re-purposed for other things. For example, despite everyone eating chicken and ham, there is no looming shortage of chickens or pigs, because people figured out how to raise them efficiently.
If humanity can't react appropriately to pandemics like this, then how can we expect to survive in the eventuality that something even worse comes along? And any economic system that gets crushed by this proves that it simply wasn't prepared and needs to be replaced, lest it cause even more damage to individuals.
Even without this pandemic, we live in a World where there is enough shelter, food and drugs for everyone but we still have homeless people, people starving or at the least malnourished and people dying in a rich country because they have to ration fucking insulin.
This economic system is not working at all. People die every die directly because of this system[0]. This pandemic just brings it to light.
Of course socialism is a failed economic model but hey maybe this time it will work /s
Just go ask Argentina[0], collapsing months after IMF was praising the "good" work Argentina was doing and how a good Capitalist country it has become[1].
This pandemic just made most people feel what the lives of billions is like all year long under Capitalism. And your dismissive comment is just shameful and disgusting.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998%E2%80%932002_Argentine_gr...
[1]: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/pou.htm
ohh I dont know, the millions upon millions that have died in starvation due to socialism over the many decades that it has been tried
but those where not "real socialism" right....
Pointing to one good that some people can not afford (the reason is largely due to government control not capitalism BTW) does not in any way "prove capitalism failed"
it is true that sometimes with capitalism you will get breadlines, but with socialism sometimes you get bread
Out of curiosity, why do you think it's likely that something more solid and useful to most is likely to come out of an economic collapse? Economic collapses have happened before - are there any instances of a solid and useful system coming out of them (maybe the new deal after the great depression? That one is arguable though).
Didn't even last a decade until they got themselves an emperor.
> Arguably the Russian Revolution if you accept the USSR as a step up from feudalism.
Considering that the USSR killed orders of magnitude more of its own people than feudalism under the Czars ever did, I'm going to vote "no" on this one.
Not that it's a model to imitate. Although some folks in this thread sound rather ready to sacrifice millions of people, for the sake of keeping the economy limping along...
That’s because they believe they are young and would fight off the virus with no problem. Change one of those variables and they will change their tune.
So Sweden has right now 1,639 confirmed cases with 16 deaths so far. There are some young people treated in critical care but so far it has been older people who has passed away, often with other diseases as well. Sweden currently only tests older people, people with severe symptoms, healthcare workers and similar personal and those who can work from home these days and travel is discouraged.
One expert estimated that we have around 100k infected in total right now and discussed that some things like shutting down schools for younger kids will have a large effect on society but not do that much on the spread of the virus. Instead you should focus on protecting vulnerable groups, stay home if you feel any symptoms of cold etc.
100k out of 10 million population would fit roughly with Iceland who did random sampling and found 1% of their population affected.
Of course he acknowledged that there is no way to know and taking extreme measures are better than taking too small but emotional/political reactions vs practical is really a discussion to be had.
Are there reasons you see why a more robust cannot be developed? I suspect HN could easily come up with a substantial list of improvements. Limiting stock buybacks seems like a good place to start.
We all work in the system, some would make more than others but even those who work the least or not at all would not be left behind. So if you make more you can enjoy more "stuff" and gadgets and if you make less you are still stress free about life.
Would we have $1000 phones or shopping shelves filled with hundred of fake choices? Most likely not but at least we won't have people rationing insulin or people living in the street of the richest city in the richest country.
We live in a world with so much production and people spend their time worrying about surviving and getting ahead instead of relaxing and making the world a better place.
No, this is people breaking. Peoples lives and livelihoods break due to this kind of economic and social strain.
And the quarantine effects everyone severely, not just 14% of people.