Comment by thu2111 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thu2111 | Hacker News Reader

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That can be easily flipped around though.

From the perspective of people who see the virus as not in fact that dangerous in the grand scheme of things, it looks like a lot of people couldn't care less about the lives of others: the people who are trapped on their own for months at home under house arrest, the people who spent their lives building a business who tomorrow will have to tell their teammates it's all over, the people who are losing everything, and that's before we get to the risks of knock-on effects like food shortages, critical equipment failures due to the manufacturers of a special widget going bust and so on.

I don't understand people who hear "the economy" and appear to think of going on holidays? Or gambling in a stock market? They don't think of a supply chain that leads to a replacement filter in their local water treatment plant. They don't think of the builders who are trying to grow a family by constructing their house. They don't think of food being harvested in the fields or internet companies linking loved ones by video chat. They think it's all "just a couple of bucks".

It's not just user spiderfarmer above - we've seen actual politicians talk like that, which is terrifying. The economy isn't optional, the economy is life support and everything else that makes life worth living.

This is just strawman after strawman. No one's saying we shouldn't do essential work like maintaining water treatment plants. No one's saying the economy is just spring breakers. In fact, they're demanding financial support from Congress to help people while the economy is shut down.

Please do more research and be more responsible. The stakes are very high.

You've missed my point. There's no working definition of "essential". The water plant depends on regular deliveries of components. The components come from factories which in turn need more components, and those components come from factories that depend for business on orders from some "non essential" industry. So they shut down to preserve cash, and that ripples through the supply chain until suddenly water pressure is falling because treatment works can't get the supplies they need.

The economy is one giant web. You say it's a strawman argument, but that would mean I was putting words in people's mouths. The problem is that this is the opposite of what's happening: people aren't talking about these kinds of problems because they seem to perceive the economy as this optional nice-to-have thing which governments can neatly and instant partition into "needed" and "frippery which shouldn't matter if anyone is sick". That's just not how economies work.

Finally, please don't engage in childish condescension like your last statement. Describing people concerned about the economy as irresponsible is exactly the kind of behaviour I am condemning. There's nothing naive or irresponsible about the people sounding the alarm right now.

> There's no working definition of "essential".

There is, it's whatever your government says it is. They're consulting with experts and people on the ground to make and update those determinations.

> Water plant, etc.

Yeah there are tons of cases like this. All to be handled by your government in consultation with experts and people on the ground. When the water treatment plant needs X, they'll figure out how to get it (after figuring out if it's worth the risk).

> You say it's a strawman argument, but that would mean I was putting words in people's mouths.

No a strawman is mischaracterizing someone's position to make it radical, and thus easy to discredit. Here's what you've said about others:

> I don't understand people who hear "the economy" and appear to think of going on holidays?

> it looks like a lot of people couldn't care less about the lives of others

This is mischaracterizing someone's position to make it callous and naive, and then calling it callous and naive. No one's saying these things. You also did it again when you said "they seem to perceive the economy as this optional nice-to-have thing which governments can neatly and instant partition into "needed" and 'frippery which shouldn't matter if anyone is sick'." No one is trivializing the economic impact, in fact many (including me) are deeply worried about it. But coronavirus is worse, and we have other tools to deal with the economic fallout. The only thing we can do to fight coronavirus is to shelter until we have testing.

> Finally, please don't engage in childish condescension like your last statement.

I wasn't condescending, I was admonishing. When I said "please do more research" I meant "research what your government is doing and the dangers of breaking shelter too early." By "be more responsible" I meant don't engage in strawman after strawman to try and persuade people that breaking shelter is a good idea, because you haven't done adequate research. By "the stakes are very high" I meant lots of people might die and it doesn't seem like you know, because you haven't referenced it. Your posts have been one-sided in favor of breaking shelter.

I think you should re-read the comment I replied to originally. The part about "it looks like a lot of people couldn't care less about the lives of others" is more or less a direct quote from that where spiderfarmer said:

"It seems a lot of people can't care less about the life of someone they don't know."

and my whole point was that this can be turned around exactly - people who treat shutting down the economy as if it were a trivial, obviously good thing to do don't appear to care about the lives of others who they don't know and who will be seriously negatively affected by that. As exemplified by the comment about how "Some people will kill someone for a couple of bucks".

So that's the opposite of a straw man!

They're consulting with experts and people on the ground to make and update those determinations

Unfortunately they really aren't. The only people with expertise in command economies (which is what our economies have suddenly become) know they always result in ridiculous outcomes. The shutdowns aren't some hyper-precise expert driven brilliance: they're shambolic, chaotic and riven with extremely stupid results.

Here in Switzerland I went to the supermarket the other day. You can buy many things there, but the toy shelves were covered, with a sign saying you're not allowed to buy them. There's no health justification for that because the people are in the supermarket anyway. And for the millions of parents stuck at home with bored kids, toys are rather important. Instead this is a side-effect of the way the law is written - it bans sales of particular goods, not openings of particular types of stores. They could have phrased it differently but then of course every store would start selling vegetables so they could remain open. Regardless of how such a law is written you get nonsensical and frustrating outcomes with no health justification.

In the UK the government is supposed to be buying essential items like PPE. Instead it's flailing around in a swamp of incompetence:

- Politicians are causing diplomatic incidents by claiming orders weren't dispatched but

- Those same orders weren't actually submitted to the sellers days or even weeks after it was claimed they were

- Private companies with PPE in UK warehouses are shipping it to other European countries, because the government didn't bother to actually buy it after import

- When equipment is ordered, it's bought from dodgy suppliers who routinely ship wrong or defective items.

You can find news stories about all these events in the British press.

We're living in a world where governments can't reliably purchase gowns and masks or make an exception so toys can be sold in supermarkets, let alone evaluate the tens of millions of products and firms to decide what's essential and what's not. Even conceptualising the size of such a task is beyond them. The idea the shutdowns are coordinated by experts on the ground is a pleasant dream, but sadly not real.

A lot of people seem to believe “the economy” is about profits, conspicuous consumption, and something like what you might see in a rap video.

In reality, it is how we house, clothe, feed, and provide the most basic humans needs.

Fact: if we do nothing and don't buy time to prepare, our healthcare system collapses, a lot of people die and there'll be a lot of unforeseen consequences. You can say, think and believe that that's not much of an issue, but you can't proof it.

Your argument: "the economy is important, we can't do without"

Yes it is, but the economy will rebound like it always does. It will not disappear. We need to flatten the curve, gain more insight in other consequences. We don't need to lockdown forever, but we can't immediately reopen either. Both would be stupid, we need to find a middle ground.

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