Hacker News Reader

Comment by leafboi | Hacker News Reader

All the civilizations I mentioned were authoritarian. Egyptian Pharaohs, Roman Caesars, Chinese Emperors. The history of all great civilizations is by a huge majority created and maintained through authoritative rule.

In fact, modern anthropological theory states that the first step in the formation of a big civilization requires central authorities to form first.

>what we should really be looking at is whether they provide for their citizens the best -- which democracy does

America didn't have the capability to provide room for the influx of covid-19 patients. China built a hospital in a week. There's no question that for this specific instance, authoritarianism provided better for its' citizens than democracy.

Like I said. Complicated. Multifaceted.

View on HN

> America didn't have the capability to provide room for the influx of covid-19 patients

No, America had (and still has) central authority make (making) a conscious choice not only not to direct energy at that purpose but to actively interfere with subordinate authorities attempts to do so for purposes linked to maintaining institutional power by placing blame.

There was no lack of capacity caused by the absence of central authority, there was active prevention caused by the interests of central authority.

And the entire global pandemic is in no small part due to the delay and denial initially by China before they decided they needed to deal with it, again because of the propaganda interests of central authority.

There certainly is utility in central organization in dealing with things like pandemics, but COVID-19 itself, especially the US and China subparts of it, are hardly a ringing endorsement of “central authority good”.

>No, America had (and still has) central authority make (making) a conscious choice not only not to direct energy at that purpose but to actively interfere with subordinate authorities attempts to do so for purposes linked to maintaining institutional power by placing blame.

Right of course. You're talking about the HBB, the Hospital Building Bureau the government sponsored central entity that builds all hospitals in the United States obeying trump and not building any hospitals.

According to wikipedia:

   Health care in the United States is provided by many distinct organizations.[1] Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by private sector businesses. 58% of community hospitals in the United States are non-profit, 21% are government-owned, and 21% are for-profit.

Which is pure BS. Hospitals are centrally planned like you said by the HBB! Central authorities are stopping hospitals from being built! Nothing to do with private enterprise or the lack of central control! My friend told me it's because private enterprise isn't reacting fast enough to demand because the demand is temporary and there really is no profit for private business to build more hospitals! What a stupid answer. Obviously it's a government conspiracy.

Yes and how useful was that hospital? How much of that construction equipment moving about on the drone videos was just for show vs actually contributing to its construction?

The hospital was built to save lives. Now that the initial wave of the pandemic is over the hospital sits empty.

Private enterprise would never spend resources to build hospitals to save lives simply because it isn't "profitable." Only a centrally planned government will pull off such a feat purely in the name of saving lives without regard to profit. I mean literally no non-profit in the united states is capable of building a hospital just to handle a temporary spike in demand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com