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Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

This is going to make people who are concerned that there is a global oligarch overlord driven secret plan to dose up the world with vax disguised drugs and chip them for compliance extremely concerned. I'm surprised Gates who 'can't give his money away fast enough for it to not keep growing' has not injected a significant amount of his massive wealth into the wold economy at this critical time. Any of the measures he discusses will need very strong accountability, transparency and data access political control by the people to assuage concerns about fascism.

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He's not rich enough to juice the world economy. We're currently debating spending a trillion dollars on stimulus for the American economy, and many people are concerned that this won't be enough to make a difference.

>debating spending a trillion dollars on stimulus

Engineered systems can have various modes (operational, degraded, maintenance, etc.), bears can hibernate, some frogs can burrow for years in the ground waiting for better times, etc.

Our societies should also be able to switch modes to handle bad times, functioning under different laws until things get better, without all the drama that we see today.

"Injecting" money in the system to try to put it back to "normal" makes me think about a bear taking stimpacks to walk around in the winter looking for non-existent food.

It's surreal how this is so obviously logical, but we live in a world where ideas like this are treated as if they're absurdly impossible.

This doesn’t work because so much of our world is built around loans that assume certain things about the future. When that future gets disrupted, as it has these days, all those loans and everything else that goes along with it has to get painfully unwound (bankruptcies etc).

I think it helps to throw away the abstractions and think about people and situations.

Let's say there is a restaurant on a street corner. They have good food, people enjoy the vibe there and the decor is tasteful. Half a year a go they employed 15 people and the owner made a modest profit.

Now guests have stopped coming. But rent is still due and so are wages.

If somehow political leaders had the time to micro-manage what should they do about this situation? Should it stand empty so it's ready start serving people immediately as soon as corona situation is resolved? Should furniture be put in storage and the space be reused for something else in the mean time? Should the restaurant disappear to make room for something else? The employees should they be on standby? Or take on different roles while they wait?

And then having answered that question we can take the abstractions back, and ask how the outcome can be approximated by manipulating interest rates and helicopter money.

He's no where near rich enough to have any impact on the world economy let, not even the US.

In fact, even, if you took the combined wealth of every single billionaire in the US and totaled it up (2.5 Trillion) and then gave it away to every US person (divide by 300M), over the 30 year period it took to earn all that money, you'd still only get about 250$ per person per year.

It's our first and only impuse: just spend more. Personally, I think a much better way is to find ways to spend less. How to find ways to provide for people with fewer costs.

Keep in mind, the 8 months they mention uses a lifetime of accumulated wealth: https://checkyourfact.com/2019/02/15/fact-check-wealth-billi...

I know Gates or Bloomberg or other oligarch wealth would be a contributory drop in the 'bailout' ocean. It would make a refreshing change from nation states tax avoidance 'foundations' and their other vehicles though, that could also have humanity changing implications, such as massive (and massively profitable) vaxxing schemes. I'm commenting specifically about the Gates AMA and not the broader issues discussed in this thread.

How about these rich guys just open a domestic mask factory or two? I think I'd like to see that as an ante in the "Here is how you should all live going forward" game.

Its not ethical to overcharge for masks at this point so there’s no profit to be made so it’s not gonna happen

Because it takes months to open a mask factory.

Ah, well, that explains it. Mask technology is extremely advanced, after all.

And how long does it take to produce a safe, well tested vaccine that we are supposed to give to our kids?

> And how long does it take to produce a safe, well tested vaccine that we are supposed to give to our kids?

Didn't we cover this in SARS-COV-1 and Ebola outbreak 1 and Ebola outbreak 2 and Ebola outbreak 3? It takes a while. Generally months. When one of these shows up, you'll hear some news about an expiremental vaccine and someone volunteering to get it, but it normally takes quite a while- -months- to get all the stuff in place to actually get it to your kids.

Betting on a vaccine swooping in to save isn't smart.

Exactly my point. I agree entirely.

There is apparently one trial beginning now: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/21/818759617/i-wanted-to-do-some...

Per current rules, there's 14 months of monitoring involved before it is considered safe.

The threat has been known for months. But regardless, there are several factories around the world that are being repurposed to start producing masks immediately.

While mask production ramps up, it would be essential to stop spreading the misinformation on official channels that masks don't work, and also teach people how to correctly wear them. There are lots of people on the streets with masks pulled down on their chin or covering their mouths only.

Everyone should wear a mask, and if they don't have a mask, everyone should be teached to create makeshift masks, because almost anything that is a barrier in front of your face, such as a scarf, will help with reducing the spread of the virus.

Most infections are either asymptomatic, or cause mild symptoms that are not necessarily identified as COVID-19, but those people are still spreading the virus, because government officials are telling them to not wear masks.

What's more twisted, those who do wear masks out of precaution are called out and sometimes attacked because of this misinformation.

It only takes a few minutes to transfer funds to extant facilities and ensure the workers are justly compensated for their risk and extended hours.

Indeed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22613061

Isn't Elon Musk going to deliver 250K masks, like, tomorrow?

It would be significantly faster, cheaper and more effective to open additional mask factories in China. And they’d probably have a life beyond the pandemic there as well.

Besides, it’s likely considering how few American regions are actually taking the steps needed to limit the spread of the virus that within a few months a factory opened anywhere in the US will be shut down to prevent the spread of the virus anyways.

I think one lesson we might learn here is that having domestic capacity for most essential supplies is a worthwhile endeavor, even if it costs a bit more per lot.

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