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Comment by jorblumesea | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, no.

Filing for bankruptcy will never, ever be equivalent to someone dying from willful negligence because you wanted to keep you business open.

Full stop. There's no argument you could make, it's never going to be equivalent and there's nothing you can say that will balance that out.

I say again, fuck your business. Any size of business. Small family business, large corporation, hot dog stand. If you can't it open, safely, without getting people killed, then you're toast.

Any argument you make is just muddying the waters. This is very clear and unambiguous.

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You're either being deliberately emotional and obtuse, or you're trolling, because your argument is so absolutist that it becomes absurd.

It even works against itself, like so, to rephrase your own words: "If you can't shut down the economy and force all normal social activity to cease without getting people killed, then you're toast"

Since you obviously can't claim that your extreme insistence doesn't cause such a level of harm (and it would, directly or indirectly), somebody else could argue just as forcefully against your own idea because it will destroy their lives or lead to the death of some loved one. This is why I mentioned the very important question of balancing harms and outcomes. How can that be so hard to understand on a rational level?

As the other reply said, virtually any activity can be deadly in some context and it's impossible to promise it can't possibly be. This was the case before COVID and it's the case now too. I assume you participated in normal social and economic activity before the pandemic, thus you could also call yourself a hypocrite in cherry picking your starting point for moral outrage.

You're not even engaging with the parent's point.

This logic does not work. You must make a choice to balance risks, because EVERYTHING has risks. Aggregate economic ruin kills people.

By your logic, you shouldn't be able to sell cars, food, practice medicine, go for a walk, run, play sports, do ANYTHING AT ALL because all of these things could injure or kill you or others.

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