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"Free Democracies" are passing the weirdest restrictions. It's mind boggling just how much power our governments are allowed to wield. I'm not even a libertarian and I think this is government overreach. So you're going to allow people to work out in gyms, but playing music that's too fast is somehow too dangerous to allow? Come on. If it was a real problem you'd just close the gyms again.

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This is what we call "compromise"; when you've got a reasonable position on one side, a reasonable position on the other, and the solution is to meet in the middle and produce policy which is totally unreasonable and makes no one happy.

Or, you have a reasonable policy on one side, and a batshit crazy policy on the other, so the "compromise" is a half-way batshit crazy policy.

This reminds me of how grocery stores were allowed to remain open, but the greeting card aisle was taped off because they didn't want people going to birthday parties.

It felt like insanity, what if I wanted to send a card in-lieu of going to a gathering? Didn't matter. They weren't going to sell me one.

Surely you are joking about the taped-off greeting cards?

I don't have a photo of my own experience, but here's a news article with one: https://www.cpr.org/2020/04/06/in-summit-county-essential-bu...

My crazy experience in Austria was that one was unable to buy plastic forks. Packets of plastic knives were still on shelves, but the forks had been removed. I thought it was random luck, but three large supermarkets were the same. I guess they really didn’t want people eating at those forbidden gatherings.

Seems more likely that they were just in short supply. Plastic forks always sell better than other plastic cutlery. I don't think there's much panic buying of plastic forks but it's the kind of item they probably weren't in a hurry to restock when there's a massive run on toilet paper and pasta.

In Toronto, the Dollarama until just a few days ago, had many of their shelves blocked off.

You could get food, candy, pet supplies, batteries but you couldn't get books, toys, clothing, headphones...

I thought it was all pretty random and bizarre.

Wasn’t common, but a few jurisdictions had a weirdly literal take on essential retail.

Isn't sending a card an alternative to visiting in person (different in the US?)

Some of these weird closures happened around retail fairness concerns. None of it made much sense. https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-lockdown-france-says-pots-an...

>they didn't want people going to birthday parties.

Did they state this reason? If so that's probably close to madness. But it does seem like a product that is frequently handled and returned to the shelves would be a good vector to suspend...

It seemed there was a story like this every day back in early 2020. The interesting thing was how much variation there was even among different states in the US on identical issues. For example, West Virginia encouraged people to go fishing by waiving license requirements during the lockdowns [1] while Washington completely banned recreational fishing statewide [2].

[1] http://www.wvdnr.gov/2020News/20news020.shtm

[2] https://wdfw.wa.gov/news/wdfw-closes-recreational-fishing-st...

In the US at least, this was mostly state governments trying to define "essential commerce", rather than preventing the sale of things that might lead to large gatherings. The idea was anything you don't need to stay alive, you don't need to be buying.

The armed standoff in Michigan was a direct result of this, Governor Whitmer banned the sale of home improvement goods (such as paint) and garden supplies (including seeds), in the spring, while ordering most of the population to stay at home. This was perceived by the population as unreasonable, and those restrictions were rolled back within a week of the protests.

I was troubled that Walmart and Target remained open, but the local hardware store had to close. Too big to close, perhaps?

There's a tendency with people in authority to want to be seen as engaged and acting responsibly, so they "do something" such as take a half step towards the more extreme response, even if rationally the half-step does nothing.

Or such is my observation.

Yep. Something must be done, so they do something.

People often do seem much happier when some action is taken, even if they know it's meaningless, so it's not exactly an irrational response on the part of the leadership.

That's part of it. Another is that they tend to have authoritarian tendencies.

I don't follow this argument. By your own argument, the government could simply close the gyms - and it even has the power! But because they feared political backlash (this wonderful thing called "democracy"), the government made a stupid compromise and settled with a lesser (and less effective) restriction, and this proves that the government has too much power?

This is an arbitrary decision that a proper democratic decision making process would not end up on.

It is not arbitrary, the very decision to limit high intensity workouts including the BPM restriction is coordinated between the government and gyms (the Korea Fitness Manager Association in this case) [1].

[1] https://www.nocutnews.co.kr/news/5586611 "거리를 두고 기본적인 방역수칙 외에도 특히 차단해야 되는 부분들에 대한 수칙을 만들기 위해서 애를 썼고, 관련 협회들에서도 그런 측면에서 어떤 것들을 좀 차단시키고 노력하겠다, 라고 제시한 수칙입니다." (Rough translation: In addition to the basic prevention measures like social distancing, we have also tried to make a list of especially required additional measures that the related associations have agreed upon with that context.)

In essence, closing the gyms is a straightforward action the government can take. The government is exercising their power, but the scope is limited.

By allowing the gyms to remain open only if they implement a multitude of restrictions based on a tier system seems like the government is intervening with a greater scope. Closing the gym is simple, they have the authority to do that. Telling gyms they cannot run treadmills past 6 km/h and cannot play music faster than 120 bpm seems like a much bigger exercise of power than telling the gyms they can't be open. Was the ability to make such detailed restrictions granted by law? Or only assumed to be allowable in the name of public health?

Does my perspective seem a bit more approachable using that lens?

Well, I do agree that this restriction sounds ridiculous (and frankly it also sounds ineffective), but the thing is, the reason for this half-ass measure is that so many small businesses (like gyms) are already terribly hit by COVID, and there's a limit on how much the government can push before people decide "Ah fuck it, I'm opening my shops anyway! And have a drink with my buddies while I'm at it."

So you might as well ask "Does the people (i.e. gym owners or partygoers) have too much power?" A compromise means there are two sides.

Closing the gym means the gym owner cannot earn a living, or pay his rent, or make his loan payments on the gym equipment.

Allowing the gym to remain open with restrictions helps the owner survive until the restrictions can be lifted.

> Telling gyms they cannot run treadmills past 6 km/h and cannot play music faster than 120 bpm seems like a much bigger exercise of power than telling the gyms they can't be open.

This is an interesting perspective and helps to explain a little more your original comment.

It seems that your objection is not necessarily the government's authority being excessive but rather too micromanaging? This is a sentiment I think most people can relate too - in our work, we'd rather our boss give us a straight no than make us jump through a dozen hoops and red tape. But in the real world where many different liberties are at stake such as the ability for businesses to make money and citizens to stay healthy, then policing in minutiae could have real tangible benefits.

I'm not saying that I agree with this policy - just trying to highlight your sentiment about not wanting to be micromanaged might be orthogonal to your stated desire not to be oppressed by an overreaching government.

I really appreciate the way you're looking at my post even though you do not share my views. Yes, I am somewhat worried about micromanaging in-and-of-itself, but my main concern is that the kinds of controls the government is imposing here don't seem to come from a legitimate basis, a law passed by representatives.

I don't think every single thing an executive does needs to be explicitly enumerated, but in this case forbidding songs above a certain BPM just seems excessive. I do not think public health and safety laws had such finely detailed actions in mind when they were passed decades ago. And as a measure to try and stop COVID, what they're prohibiting is very indirect and hard to effectively measure.

I don't think these restrictions are the kind of government oppression worthy of throwing tea into harbors for, but I do worry just how much we allow governments to control in a state of emergency. Especially stuff like this, which make you wonder "who gave you the right to ban this stuff in the first place?"

A sizable portion of South Koreans still believe in fan death.

I had to look this up as I'd never heard of it before. I don't even know what this makes me more of- sad, or impressed they pulled this off.

A democracy is just government by its people. People will try to pass any sort of law they fancy will do the thing they want it to do, whether or not it actually will is besides the point. The quality of the government is still going to be a factor of the quality of the people that a government can be drawn from, and legislative branches are often the most powerful in a free society precisely because if they could speak with one voice, there’s effectively no law they could not pass. That’s why they are bodies of distinguishable and accountable people instead of individuals.

This is why the Bill of Rights is important in the US. I wish we would expand it.

Democracies without explicit limitations on government power too often just become tyranny by the majority.

> A democracy is just government by its people.

In theory yes that's what Democracy originally meant.

In practice the "democracies" we know are "government by some group of popular noblemen" not by "its people".

Dunno about South Korea or your government, but that’s short selling all the democracies that give a wide variety of people enough rope to hang all their neighbors and then themselves with. My envelope of ballots are often 3 or 4 pages front and back, mostly offices to be filled but generally a good stack of ballot initiatives to go with them, covering two or three elections. Sometimes twice a year.

And that’s just the electoral process. Self-government extends far beyond the ballot box.

I think the problem here is democracies attempting to exercise restraint in response to popular concerns about overreach. I'm pretty sure the more effective response from a public health standpoint, and probably the starting point of the negotiation, would be to close cluster-friendly places like indoor gyms hard and early. Some special interest - gym owners, restaurants, whatever - gets in and says, but but we pRoMiSe to behave. What happens next in too many democracies is unfortunately this: some wishy-washy middle ground is negotiated that is politically acceptable but ineffective in reality, the epidemic gets out of control and then you get REAL overreach for a really long time, like long-term travel restrictions, curfews, etc.

Let’s keep in mind how crazy the average citizen is. Half are even crazier

That would be the median, not the average (but then it sounds less funny somehow...)

Since you opened the door to pedantry… median and mean are both ways of calculating an average.

Usually we mean “mean” when saying “average” because it’s the most common - but not always.

Only if crazy is normally-distributed.

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