Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

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> People aren't asking for authoritarian restrictions. People have been asking for common-sense coordinated and effective measures that we can all rally around (like wearing masks).

It’s hard to find persistent daylight between those two things. (For the record, I wear masks outside and in grocery stores, which are the only shops I go to. I find this at least 75% common sense.)

When it comes time though to force someone who doesn’t want to do what you find common sense, where’s the impersonal, referenced only to ground truth, line that says that’s ok under force of law, but other similar-appearing things, well those things would be authoritarian, but these things are just common sense we can all rally around? If everyone is already rallying around something, you don’t need any government force of law to make it happen. (Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.)

Apply this to guns, drugs, abortion, climate change, restaurant seating capacity during COVID, or whatever topic people tend to have their own individual “common sense” about.

This is a take against all laws if you prop it up a bit more. It doesn‘t make sense. The people enacting these laws are democratically elected. „Common sense“ in this case is not arbitrary. It is the culmination of the „common senses“ if all politicians that were elected by their citizens. This is not undemocratic, it is democracy in its purest form.

At some point in dire situations, as a government, you have to save your citizens from themselves.

That isn't direct democracy. That is a republican form of government. Whenever you have representatives instead of citizens governing themselves, you can have situations where the government saves the citizenry from themselves but also situations where the representatives exploit the government for themselves. Both cases have happened throughout history and are happening with the coronavirus.

In the US, Fauci was initially anti-mask to preserve supplies for health care officers. This theoretically saved citizenry from themselves but at the cost of long term trust in institutions.

Democrat led governments lengthened lockdowns for political gain. Republican led governments shortened lockdowns for political gain.

- Democrats point at the increased infection rates in Republican states as proof that lockdown measures are still necessary but ignore much lower death rates we are seeing.

- Republicans point to the economic devastation that lockdowns cause as cause to end lockdowns without proper planning to limit infection.

- Democrats push for very large stimulus over loosening lockdowns without discussing the long term costs of adding so much to the deficit and the long term costs to the economy.

- Democrats hoist blame at Trump but ignore how certain Democratic run states were some of the worst at initially handling the coronavirus.

- Trump overhypes the availability of vaccines and underplayed the virus.

We live in a system with groups jockeying for political power. The groups continue to maintain power as long as they continue to convince enough of the populace to vote for them. They do this in various ways. One way is to form a coalition of subgroups and promising such subgroups favors. Another way is to convince the populace that they are all in it together. One favorite technique is to raise the spectre of an external enemy.

Some current enemies: China, global warming, coronavirus, immigrants, racism.

The longer you live, the more you see these techniques repeated over and over. The situations are rarely as the political parties make them out to be. The political parties mostly lie since entities that don't are disadvantaged at obtaining political power. People as a whole are too easy to manipulate so it is to your advantage to lie.

One thing to note is that the current situation is ripe for massive political power gains since so many things have been thrown into flux. That is why both sides are playing so hard right now. There is much power to be gained and that power will be locked in till the next big change.

Fair enough on most of those points, but I wouldn't blame democrats on the slow response. It just so happens that coastal urban centers are blue and were hit earlier and harder than anyone else.

The gravest political failures in regards to the pandemic have been the administration and a few of its most ardent political supporters. (Many republican governors have acted in good faith to protect their state). And that failure was not so much a failure to act soon enough, but a failure to listen to medical and scientific leadership and a propensity to meddle in the public health structure for political reasons.

I think both parties did that. The difference is mostly in the scale of their powers. The administration controlled the federal government and thus had both greater powers and a bigger microphone.

Governors controlled each state. You had Democratic governors and representatives acting just as badly. It is just that they had less scope to do damage. A governor can usually directly harm only their own state and not other states.

Some Republican governors opened lockdowns probably too quickly. Cuomo basically spread covid-19 into nursing homes by sending patients back into nursing homes. de Blasio resisted a NYC lockdown probably increasing its spread.

I would fault the administration on a lack of a coordinated response between the federal and state levels. I wonder if this was from a fear on being blamed for deaths and that they wanted to shift responsibility and blame onto states.

When the vast majority of people agree that we should do something reasonable for the common good and you disagree loudly while flailing your arms about, then it doesn't make you a defender of liberty, it makes you an obnoxious moron.

Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. What a wretched subthread this spawned.

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