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Comment by PixyMisa | Hacker News Reader

That would kill upwards of 95% of the world's population.

You need to keep essential production and distribution active of course. Food is absolutely essential. Anything that's essential for its distribution is also essential to keep functioning. Health care is essential, of course. As is garbage disposal, emergency services, and anything that stops society from falling apart.

Anything that's not essential can still be done if it can be done from home or with other serious restrictions that minimize the risk of spreading the disease.

Anything that involves a lot of people getting together should really be prevented. Luxuries are not essential. Festivals will need to be cancelled.

It's not an all-or-nothing thing; you need to look at what's essential, and what poses too great a risk.

Nonsense.

Don't forget, things were more than livable a hundred years ago.

We don't need multinationals to feed us. It's a sham. We're just not making proper use of our available space/resources as individuals.

> Don't forget, things were more than livable a hundred years ago.

Well, you're writing off ~75% of the world population right there. So that's not a strong argument.

There was quite a lot of growing your own food at the time, true, but not barter.

This is a ridiculously myopic view of the world. A more efficient economy supports more people. This is inarguable.

A more efficient economy may also be more vulnerable. Food produced closer to home, with decentralised supply chains, may be more expensive, but are harder to disrupt on a large scale in the face of disaster.

So your solution is to, what, kill people until a less efficient economy works again?

I have no idea where you'd possibly get such a bizarre idea.

For one thing, I'm not offering a solution here, but an analysis. But if you want a solution, mine would be to save as many lives and reorganize the economy so less lives will be risked in the name of short-term profits.

Thank you. Everything is "efficient and streamlined" until the government says stay in your houses for six months...then we all suffer and some of us starve anyway.

>Don't forget, things were more than livable a hundred years ago.

We also didn't have so many people a hundred years ago. Population increased but the land remained the same.

We didn't have 7.6 billion people on the planet 100 years ago. 100 years ago in 1920, the world population was approximately 102 million. It's beyond naive to think that the systems from 100 years ago are capable of supporting the needs of 7.6 billion people. Besides the challenge of feeding people without rampant deforestation, you can say goodbye to most of modern medicine. The tech and knowledge won't go away, but the ability to deliver those goods and services will be greatly hindered.

This seems to be a feature, not a bug.

Yes, I'll go first, if it comes to that.

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