Dear Jeff Bezos, instead of firing me, protect your workers from coronavirus

While luxury condos don't "make" homeless people homeless; they're just a graphic depiction of how flagrantly housing prioritizes profit over the actual use value of housing people. And they could make homeless people not homeless if we had a sane system.

As for support for homeless people, I agree that it's tricky and we shouldn't just shove them somewhere, but it's not insurmountable EXCEPT when systems for supporting people are systematically defunded and people are kept without the support/job/community they need. And that's the case everywhere. It seems much harder than it is because it's impossible to solve within unrestrained capitalism, which is the natural state capitalism slides towards all the time.

As one final point, it isn't inefficient in any real sense to have people live in cities. In fact, with reasonable infrastructure (admittedly nonexistent in the US), it is much more efficient in terms of any real resources for people to live densely, especially if they need support. The only way in which it is inefficient is that landlords and profiteers siphon wealth away and drive costs up to the sky. This is a solvable problem but it is a problem of capitalist market anarchy, just like cities busing their homeless away.

I agree that setting rules and transparency is a good thing - but a lot of that probably depends on the management at that particular warehouse.

In my opinion, perception management is more important than content and substance for 99.9% of companies and executives.

This is the thing causing most problems in society today, in my personal opinion.

I never said they were

> they are not calling out the 'get medical workers the N95s' policy

Why the hell would anyone call them out for wanting to get masks to medical workers? Medical workers should have masks, but that does not mean the public should not also have masks. People are rightfully calling them out for telling the average Joe to not wear a mask, but for some reason people like you are worried about the poor helpless corporations.

> This 'blame the rich' populism is irresponsible.

The only reason we can't produce enough masks domestically is because "the rich" have exported most of our production capabilities out of the country, so they can increase their margins and hoard more wealth. Bringing this to light is not irresponsible, the decisions that the wealthy in this country have made on its behalf is what's irresponsible, and there will be a reckoning.

No. You just seem to have reacted reflexively seeing the word "planned" placed next to the word "economy," without seeking any clarification or understanding or even really putting it in context.

The OP was clearly focused on criticizing prioritization of profit-seeking over all other interests, and the corrosive effect that has had on our ability to respond to this present crisis.

> Developed countries all find some balance between central planning and laissez faire, but they do so by assuming the free market as the default. Intervention and central planning is only applied to specific cases where there is a concrete public interest in doing so.

And you know what? This crisis is uncovering a lot of areas where less laissez faire and more government intervention would have been "concretely in the public interest."

The market system is an imperfect means to an end, not an end itself.

His point was that capitalism's optimization function steered us in the direction whereby most of our "wealth" in this country is derived from the assumption of intact and normal flowing international supply chains to fuel the engine of consumerism instead of being based on the actual capability to produce and deliver finished product from raw material in a time of crisis or otherwise.

Globalism has spelled doom in the sense that we haven't been making sure to maintain our own industrial capability, while instead raking in as much "capital" return by exploiting the wage gap found internationally. Yet as soon as that decision bit us in the ass, our capability as a lone nation to take care of our owm has essentially been sold off to the lowest bidder elsewhere, who is now more than happy to turn around and hold said resources hostage as diplomatic leverage.

But no, please. Yet another entertaining and predictable rant about the socialist boogeyman would be great. Has the bonus of distracting from the actual problem as well, so kills two birds with one stone. /s

I'm so tired of hearing people hit stop points over capitalism vs. the merest notion that a nation should have some level of influence over the market and industrial infrastructure it maintains in the interests it's own security.

0x is absolutely fucking right. Unrestrained capitalism encourages selling the jewels right out from under the nation that is dependent and instrumental to the very jewel's existence. No goddamn pile of dollar bills or IOU's is capable of taking the place of actual, physical, manufacturing capability ready to go, unreliant on unreliable trade partners in a time of crisis. It's a case of personal safety, writ large.

The fantasy of a world pacified through economic interdependence was a bloody sham from the beginning, made even worse by the vices of the ultra-wealthy, and exacerbated even more by the aspirations of the swathes of temporarily inconvenienced billionaires that seek to figure out how to get on top of the carriage one day so maybe they get their turn at playing the part of the "Invisible Hand".

So I counter your Socialist boogeyman once again with "look at where your Global Capitalist paradise got you: Diplomatic tensions through the roof, your primary economic rival holding most of the relevant industrial cards; an isolated population, paralyzed by a virus you can do nil about because you sold/didn't build the factories, a collapsing economy, and in the same breadlines the "Socialists" you so despise are in".

So quit the bloody rhetorical posturing. It's all been said and it does nothing to help with the problems at hand. The country needs to industrially mobilize once more: without the crutch of foreign powers oh so eager to provide a workforce on the condition we show them how to build the actually challenging bits and leave all the physical assets with them, to be held hostage the first time things get tough.

I have no grudge against the Chinese or anyone else at the moment. We're all in this pandemic, so they're going to do what hi.ans do and look after themselves. If anything,I'm more pissed off that my own country which so pounds the drum of being responsible and self-sufficient has been on the global trade dole to the point it's forgotten how to pick itself up and go without squabbling over who gets the contract, and how hard can I screw my workers.