Volcano Gods Demand Workers | Hacker News Reader

Volcano Gods Demand Workers

pluralistic.net

56 points9nGQluzmnq3M34 comments

Wow, I had no idea that Ohio had a line for reporting people who don't show up to their jobs out of fear of becoming infected [1]. It seems crazy to me that people are being asked to choose between their life and their livelihood.

[1] https://secure.jfs.ohio.gov/covid-19-fraud/

That is a daily reality for many people. It's not surprising that many of us are privileged enough to not know, but it is kind of sad.

The form requires you to certify that you maintain the state's safety standards. Workers should exquisitely document their working conditions, and take pictures if possible.

In labor activism, there's an old strategy called work to rule, where they follow every rule to the letter. Workers should do exactly this when they're forced to work, according to the CDC's current reccomendations.

1) Always maintain at least six feet distance between themselves and other people. Be very strict about this.

2) Go to the restroom to vigorously wash their hands for 20 seconds every half an hour.

3) Use employer-supplied hand sanitizer before and after every time their hand comes into contact with a physical surface.

4) Use employer-supplied masks at all times. If they aren't supplying them, leave.

5) Anytime a customer touches a door or surface, immediately disinfect it.

6) Take your temperature every half hour. If it is every elevated to 100F or above, report it and leave.

etc

The actual legal protections this offers would be less than real work to rule, but at least if you get fired "for cause," the employer is bound to get a ton of blowback.

The people working in these situations don’t have the power to lawyer up

> people are being asked to choose between their life and their livelihood

This is practically the swan song of human history. Society was built on a lose-lose situation for most peasants to either participate and be exploited to death or don't and either starve or just get outright killed.

From the subsistence farmers having 95% of their crop taken by their lords so their families can subsist on a potato each day, to the factory line workers whose fingers would fall off from chemical exposure, to the miners who choked on their own bile, to the soldiers who died for the conquests of robber barons beset by greater greeds. Almost all peoples in all times were given this same "choice".

From time to time, those pesky peasants tend to revolt.

I dream of a world where we could discuss the complex trade offs involved in the situation without people accusing others of just wanting to sacrifice workers to a volcano god.

There's a certain richness to demanding regular people carefully evaluate scientific evidence and the subtleties of different policy choices and be willing to risk their lives for the sake of the common good, while the person who is driving all these decisions is on stage suggesting everyone drink bleach.

The world is frequently black and white. It isn't immature to say so.

In this situation, I think there are no complex tradeoffs. If you disagree, tell us what the tradeoffs are rather than making a high-minded appeal to moderation.

Obviously, on the one hand we have risks posed by the virus. That itself is complicated because of everything we don't know. Will we be able to create a vaccine? Does the lockdown actually save lives or just delay deaths until the lockdown is lifted? Exactly how deadly is the virus? How much of the population has already had the virus? If we stop the lockdown, will healthcare be overwhelmed?

On the other hand, we have the cessation of useful work. That's going to have consequences. There are reports of crops going to waste because they can't be harvested. The lost productivity will lower everyone's standard of living, which will translate into additional deaths. The isolation imposed during the lockdown will also damage people's mental health.

So, yes, I think there is a complex trade-off and I think its immature and naive to think otherwise.

Because there is no "complex tradeoff". We should stay the hell locked down.

BUT ...

If you REALLY wanted workers to go back to work, give them $2,000 per month WHETHER THEY ARE WORKING OR NOT and reopen. People can also make their own choices as to whether they think they should go back to work.

Best of all worlds right? Republicans get to demonstrate that people really do want to go back to work, individuals get to make the final decision thus indicating personal liberty, and the people working and getting $2000 would help restart the demand side of the economy.

The problem is that the Republican leaders want to DENY $2,000 a month (HAHAHAHAHA! Like anybody on unemployment is getting that ...) and instead we have "snitch lines" to force people back to work.

"Coercion" is not a complex tradeoff, thanks.

Where is the $2000/month you’re talking about coming from?

GDP in the US is about $17 trillion per year. That's the total amount of income we create each year. The top 1% have $25 trillion in wealth.

So if we took all the wealth of the 1% (income > $421,926/year), we would be out of their money in less than 2 years.

Btw, the total wealth of the US is about $123.8 trillion. We would consume that in about 7 years.

On board with redistribution, monthly $1500 checks, higher wages, unemployment checks, paid sick leave, PPP, and all that. But people gotta work. A main goal of policy makers right should be quickly figuring out how to get people back to work safely.

The idea that work is a pointless volcano feeding plot is way off, work is creating all the goods and services around you. There's no vault of gold somewhere we can raid to live off of.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Unit...

With respect, this is a mistaken understanding of the nature of money.

You don't ever use money up. It is always being created anew. That is by design, it is encoded in the rules of accounting.

While it is true that having stuff requires work, there is a "vault of gold"- both literal and figurative- in the Federal Reserve system.

The literal gold is not what is interesting here- the value of physical assets is largely a shared fiction- but the conceptual gold- the balance sheet- is a tool of essentially unlimited power, capable of providing necessary liquidity to keep most people safely home and fund essential work in a non-sacrificial manner.

When the Kuhnian revolution comes it will be with wonder and horror at the barbarity of a society that forced people to sacrifice for something as banal as liquidity.

Cory's story captures- correctly, in my view- the essence of the dynamic.

I'd ask why this was flagged, but it's pretty obvious why HN would not want this particular truth spoken.

Very US-specific, exceptionalistic, arguments in this piece. The fact is that the 1% is making the same aguments all over the world, including all the places that have universal healthcare.

>>> They think they won't get sick, and if they do, they think they'll get better. That's because they never had to go without medical care because they lacked insurance or because their insurer-imposed rationing denied them the care their doctors advised them to get, so they are less likely to have chronic illnesses and other comorbidities.

But in canada all those workers have health care yet exactly the same arguments are being made by business leaders. The reality is that the 1%, who are generally older, are probably more susceptible to this disease than the workers they hire. Rich people have heart disease. Rich people are old. Rich people are diabetics. They don't want to see disease sweep though the lower orders anymore than the rest of us.

Being at risk and rich is way safer than being poor and nominally healthy. Those of us with more economic power have many ways to mitigate our risk without losing our livelihoods, but the poor work in jobs that require exposure. With or without public health care, the rich have less skin in the game.

They don't walk the lines at their factories or monitor the staff on the floor. They have penthouse offices with private access elevators at worst, but more likely are just staying home until this all blows over.

The article actually touched on this somewhat, but really, those with the resources will truly isolate themselves to avoid infection. The hospitals could be flooded with the dying and those with the means can hole up in their apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand.

That did not seem anywhere near a balanced argument at all.

Is skepticism permissible? Do individuals retain any agency and responsibility for balancing risk on their own?

Covid-1984, indeed.

> Do individuals retain any agency and responsibility for balancing risk on their own?

When their means to provide survival for themselves is not in their own hands, no. They have no agency. If you are getting evicted this month for non-payment because you got furloughed, or cannot afford food, or are at risk of losing essential utilities because you are bankrupt, you are not making "personal decisions". You are either going to be homeless & hungry or bow.

Note that this isn't about giving individuals the ability to balance risk on their own. This is an action by government and employers to prevent individuals from balancing risk on their own.

It takes away choice and is deciding for workers that the risk to them is minimal compared to the benefit to forcing them to work.

The death rate is about 10 times lower than the original estimates stated.

If you don't make stuff then there isn't stuff. People like this act as if goods just materialize from nothing.

Ummm?

I will offer this: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-worlds-highest-coronaviru...

And this that shows we are currently sitting at 6%: https://covidusa.net/

Even if testing ramps up seems hard to imagine a world where this drops by a factor of 10.

So what are you talking about?

Case fatality rate isn't the same as the actual mortality rate. Case fatality rate is an indirect measure of your testing ability, testing criteria, and testing procedures. It says very little about how deadly the disease is, and comparing it across countries is completely useless.

Actually, it's worse than useless, because any conclusions made from it are going to be horribly wrong.

That is exactly why I included the first link in my reply above which makes that distinction.

The headline: "Limited coronavirus testing in the US has meant its death rate appears alarmingly high — but it will likely drop"

Many experts were saying a million deaths in the us.

Poster said "death rate" not number of deaths.

Which is why we locked down major cities to slow down the spread. We don't know how many would have died otherwise but it would have been a lot more. Saying that the experts who urged us to lock down to avoid millions of deaths were wrong because we locked down and there weren't millions of deaths is a bit odd.

My recollection, which could be flawed, were that some experts projected millions of deaths even with lockdown. Moreover I recall the experts not disclaiming their predictions, which is a huge problem. The fact of the matter is that we don't know what would have happened, and experts and policymakers alike (IMO) are in desperate need to figuring out how to convey uncertainty with honesty, ahead of time, not retrospectively. Treat your information consumers with respect for their intelligence and they just might not act like idiots.

Projected before any response. That was pre-lockdown. That was at a time where there were no tests because the CDC botched trying to manufacture their own. If business as usual carried on since mid March we could have seen those numbers realized.

That is the ultimate joke in all this - if expertise is correct and mitigates the virus and prevents the worst case scenario agendas will push rhetoric that they were exaggerated estimates and overblew the situation. And they can say that with confidence knowing any worst case scenario was avoided.

I'm no doctor. I just tried to research the COVID death rate and I found a lot of conflicting and nuanced information. My impression is that if you want to make claims around this, you should cite sources. Unfortunately the best articles I found on this were somewhat dated. I don't think I can offer either correction or rebuttal.

I think we can agree that there is a significant cost to having folks not work. As I read it, TFA is mainly pointing out the significant conflict of interest here. Big business owners have big incentives to get production back on track, but face little risk from the disease. Workers need money, but will also be the ones who will face the risks.

We still need to apply caution but what we are doing right now is excessive. This is a new virus, there are still a lot of unknowns but the current situation doesn't warrant a complete shutdown. We need to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. We need to make sure that long term care homes have strict procedures and we owe good care to our elderly and vulnerable. They've earned it and we're more than capable of providing it. The facts seem to be that if your young and healthy you have little to worry about. We should still practice good hygiene and reduce unnecessary contact but we need to do our jobs. We need to produce the essentials that our civilization depends on. It's not business as usual but it is a matter of soldiering on so there will be a world to come back to.

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