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Comment by big_chungus | Hacker News Reader

Where do you get that conclusion? You think crashing the economy won't hurt people?

> Shame on you.

Seriously?

I agree, things get heated when people start to moralize about things without considering the other side. On one hand, people affected by a death or very sick family member are going to feel one way, especially if they are not feeling a lot of economic pain. That said a small restaurant owner, or worker who is living on the edge who is facing the real possibility of losing everything is, understandably going to feel differently. Both have VERY valid points and there is not an easy answer because both options have very bad outcomes for a group of people.

There's also a third group with an equally-valid point: the people who don't want to pay for any of it. I think they've gotten drowned out by the others.

Yes, seriously. You're willing to sacrifice a million people to keep your house of cards economy going instead of fixing the root cause. To add insult to injury you want to shrink the state, thus collective resources, even more and calling every citizen of the US welfare queens? What the hell?

This is some fundamentalist "the cause justify the means" bullshit. An economy that requires 1 million in human sacrifice during a crisis is nothing to keep around. Not to mention the already ~60k/year that dies due to lack of healthcare access because people like you want to keep the welfare state to this non-functioning minimum.

> You're willing to sacrifice a million people to keep your house of cards economy going instead of fixing the root cause.

There's this bizarre idea that the only people who are harmed by a bad economy are "those evil one percenters". Being out of work hurts lots of people. What do you believe is the root cause? Also, many of those will still die even with measures taken.

If one person could die, or everyone could lose his job, which would you pick? Ten people? Where's your bright line? At some point, that one person doesn't get to tell everyone he expects the nation to stay home to save him. Nor do the ten people. Why is that different for more people, and how many must it be? I'm not saying they should just go to work and harm themselves, but they are responsible for keeping themselves home and safe. Not the government.

> you want to shrink the state, thus collective resources

Yes. Why is this bad?

> calling every citizen of the US welfare queens?

I didn't call every citizen one, I said we're turning into a nation of them. There's a joke that is depressingly accurate that I've seen in several places over the past few days:

"What does it take to turn a Trump supporter into a socialist?"

"$1200."

Everyone wants to take someone else's money.

> fundamentalist

No, I just don't believe it's the government's job to keep us safe from a virus. I get pretty sick of people running around asking bureaucrats to "do something". Americans need to take responsibility for themselves; weigh their options and make their best decisions.

> people like you want to keep the welfare state to this non-functioning minimum.

Who are "people like me"? You seem to be lumping me in with some "other", but I'm not sure which. To be more accurate, I wish to abolish the welfare state entirely; I'd hardly call three trillion dollars a year a "minimum" of any sort.

Please don't do flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> You're willing to sacrifice a million people to keep your house of cards economy going

This breaks the site guidelines, which include:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

I realize the GP comment was provocative but taking this big a step into total flamewar makes things clearly worse. Please don't do that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Surely some form of social shunning is required for a healthy community? There's limits.

Maybe, but if you're going to defend the health of the community, you need to do exemplify its norms (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), not violate them, while doing so. Otherwise it seems like you're attacking for petty reasons, such as personal or ideological animosity.

It isn't easy. The mind likes to take the experience of being right as an opportunity to also vent surplus emotion or aggression. To catch oneself doing this and forego the satisfaction is not something we do instinctively. Surprisingly, though, the trivial genre of internet comments turns out to be a good place for practice (and lord knows we can all use it).

Fair enough. I disagree however that the health of a community will always fall within normal courtesy bounds.

The problem is that when people leave those bounds, they all-too-easily feel that they're doing it for principled reasons, and this is almost always false. They may not feel it, but it comes through acutely to others—especially to those on the side being attacked, who then feel entitled to react in kind. This is how we get a downward spiral. Each reacts to the shadow of the other, which appears as a kind of demon [1], and fails to see their own, and therefore feels justified and righteous. "He's causing the problem; I'm simply reacting." It's astonishing how often that comes up even in the mostly-trivial field of an internet forum.

I know these moderation comments can easily sound like "everybody please be civil and courteous", but that's not where we're coming from. Closer would be to say: be responsible for your shadow.

It's an open question how to process enough of one's shadow so that pure anger can cut like a sword in a clear way when called for. Most of us have work to do before we get there.

[1] more on 'demons' here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Thanks for a well-thought-out answer. I do reckognise that there's indeed a snowball-effect. But perhaps the shadow that's being blocked, may be blocked for a reason. I'm not a moderator of any sort, so I know that my opinions are obviously biased. I do respect the effort in objectivity.

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