Compaq and Coronavirus
stratechery.com
stratechery.com
The first example was the rise of Compaq (in the West) when it had that willingness, followed by its fall when it didn't. And the rise of other companies in Taiwan that were willing to do the actual work.
The second example is coronavirus, where Taiwan's current success stands in stark contrast with the unwillingness of western countries to even consider taking effective action. Taiwan shows what it is possible. The USA can only consider which tragedy to choose. And has gone about it so badly that it is effectively choosing both.
Wasting many weeks of runway, then suddenly discovering an emergency due to lack of foresight.
Many citizens knew what was happening, yet somehow our political organisations failed us.
This is my fear. We are taking half-measures. So instead of an extreme spike of cases that is short-lived or "flattening the curve", we are instead going to take the middle route of a prolonged stress on our health care system and economy.
It seems humans are at their best when faced with adversity, which is why being new, raw, and unproven always helps create the best, even in media like music and films. The second wave of good stuff usually comes when an artist again feels 'disrespected' or has some inhuman innate drive to always be better and reach new heights.
I'm coming around to the idea that in downturns we should be protecting people, not businesses. Businesses will naturally have a safety net if their employees and founders have a safety net in their own lives.
As of the first week of February, emergency SMS alerts in S. Korea were sent out daily, sometimes several times per day. These alerts told everyone to wear masks, stay inside, wash hands, and exercise caution. S. Korea was already mobilizing government resources when there were very few cases. I remember there were only 20 cases at this point and all the efforts seemed overkill, but now we know they were necessary.
Meanwhile in the US none of this was taking place and the president is publicly saying everything is under control, when it was not.
It's comically easy to see why the US is failing to contain COVID if you have been watching how governments in Asia have been handling the outbreak.
Taiwan was relatively recently an autocracy. It still can resort to its historical behavior overnight. In the West the sort of actions that Taiwan took absent an emergency are politically unpalatable.
This is a political/ideological reality. Comparing that with empires that have lost their way is intellectually devoid of any basis and just seems incredibly lazy.
From a purely functional perspective it's worth noting that much of the West has a much closer intertwining with China than Taiwan does. This seems counter-intuitive -- China is right beside it, after all -- but multiples more Chinese nationals live in Canada than Taiwan. There were magnitudes more flights between the US and China (purely from a flight # perspective, and certainly much larger from a passenger perspective) than between China and Taiwan. That Taiwan has been somewhat spared thus far is partly explained by this reality.
The difference is that Taiwan saw the emergency coming and decided to make a decision early instead of dithering.
Falling back on "we just can't do stuff like that BECAUSE DEMOCRACY" is intellectually lazy and self-sabotaging.
Arguing about principles instead of considering specific circumstances is exactly how organizations lose their way.
I didn't say that, but okay.
In the widespread expectation of personal freedoms, however, it's harder to implement draconian controls without evidence it's clearly needed and of obvious benefits. Autocratic societies will always have the advantage in such situations because you can stomp the boot down at a moment's notice with little resistance.
It's also easier when your country is a homogeny with extremely few immigrants, extremely few travelers, etc. For a country like Canada or the United States to do what Taiwan could do, with literally millions to tens of millions of citizens returning from overseas, is logistically in a different universe.
And let's be clear that those situations are rare. "But it's just like Compaq because..." -- whatever that stupid noise was. Yeah, I'd rather be "Compaq" in that stupid analogy 99.9% of the time.
Anyways yes the countries that were able to contain this may be autocracies but their people will live. We can’t do this because a we are a democracy is just a flawed argument and one that allows status who to prevail when change is needed.
As for the govt futzing around in the us and Giving itself 10 out of 10, somebody on one of my posts said it best - “drain the swamp my a$$, let it burn”. In a way a lazy citizenry deserves the govt it gets.
Also all the countries - Taiwan, Singapore , China etc whole dealt with this effectively - this was not their first rodeo. They had the foresight due to experience of sars and swine flu etc. the west only has experimented with military type attacks..
The difference between this situation and the usual pretexts used to curb liberties is that 1. we know pretty well, scientifically, what is the problem and how it acts (not this specific virus, but in terms what diseases are in general) and 2. it's comparatively clear when such a crisis begins and ends. Compare that with the typical scenario of some dangerous people doing shady things, we don't know who and where, the government can't tell us, and we are to just give the state permanent and not clearly delineated powers.
Epidemic and war are the textbook legitimate emergency states.
To that extent I almost feel that talking about this crisis in terms of civil liberties may be harmful, in that it may make people more susceptible and desensitized in the long term in these discussions.
Various forms of authoritarian government are well known as being able to respond to crises quicker and more effectively. So, yes, being able to declare a state of emergency is an important ability, but living in a permanent state of emergency is to be avoided.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...
But the latter part, about how Taiwan is handling the situation, I thought was pretty interesting.
On a long enough timeline, the entities that do the work to understand the problem and respond to it are rewarded, the entities which try to coast by on their past success and "brand" will be punished.
- too much compromising and not enough dynamic effort leads to death
Unfortunately, the government doesn't always know what needs to be done, and some of his examples (e.g., response of local businesses) don't actually require government control, but a societal attitude shift. Add in the desire of some parties to use the crisis to further their agendas, and government control gets worrisome.
Article summary:
The analogy: "the West feels like Compaq in the 1990s, relying on its brand name and partnerships with other entities to do the actual work, forgetting that it was hard work and determination that made it great in the first place."
Important points:
""" look more closely at what Taiwan has done to contain SARS-CoV-2 to-date — you can reframe everything in a far more problematic way:
Restrict international movement and close borders (including banning all non-resident foreigners this week) Integrate and share private data across government agencies and with hospitals. Track private individual movements via their smartphones. Even the mask production I praised required requisitioning private property by the government, and the refusal of local businesses to serve customers without masks or insist on taking their temperature """
Major tool for that is the total control on population, e.g. using smartphones and other technical means.
The fact: people and society in general there have different mentality historically. Population density was significantly more high there in thousands of years.
And so, in these thousands of years, population agreed on far smaller "privacy radius" by giving up personal privacy, generation by generation.
As of "privacy radius", consider population of Korea - 52 mln and population of Canada - 38 mln. While territory of Canada is 100,000 times larger.
So in East Asia you can technically implement total control of each person. Countries have infrastructure and acceptance of population already.
Therefore they can fight such problems effectively.
But on other hand high density of the population is a breeding bullion for next such COVIDs ...