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Comment by Taywee | Hacker News Reader

> when the swivel-eyed loons claim that the COVID lockdowns were a pretense to control everyday people while rich people swanned around having a lovely time, they’re not entirely wrong.

I don't really believe that it's a "pretense" but rather that people in power tend to take every opportunity to keep and bolster their power and freedom and care less about the power and freedom of the already disadvantaged.

Something being leveraged for somebody's advantage doesn't mean that it was created for that advantage.

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It's not even that. Plenty of everyday people "swanned around having a lovely time" too; or at least, didn't think the restrictions should apply to them. Sure, in some of the cases he cites there's rank hypocrisy involved that should be called out, and the burden of the restrictions impacted the poor and underpivilged relatively more harshly and some leeway can be given there. But to imply it was just the former is bollocks.

> But to imply it was just the former is bollocks.

It is epistemically unsound, as is calling it bollocks.

Because of this, herding sheep is easy, thus I am hyper-vigilant about identifying potential sheep herding maneuvers, of which there were many during the whole covid debacle.

Yeah, although the stuff I saw first-hand around vaccine distribution in affluent/elite circles was mind blowing.

People found so many ways of gaming the system and getting the vaccine instead of the prioritized elderly/immune-compromised. I knew rich college kids with parents who had ownership stakes in elder care companies so they got the shot early, etc. etc., in SF many seemed to get hold of the special codes that were given to communities with low vaccine uptake, etc.

A few of my friends also got the vaccine much earlier than they should, but they aren't rich or well connected. They merely lied about having preexisting conditions.

To be fair, if you are living in SF and a commentator on HN (as I assume you are), then your friends are certainly among the 1% richest people in the world and likely top 5% in the US.

The Venn diagram of (people outraged somebody else got the vaccine first) and (people outraged they were told to get the vaccine).

> Plenty of everyday people "swanned around having a lovely time" too; or at least, didn't think the restrictions should apply to them.

The difference is that none of those people were themselves hyping the threat of the virus, or insisting everyone else should stay at home.

Which again is a charge of hypocrisy by the most powerful, and is a legitimate charge, but doesn’t mean the swivel eyed loons have a point.

Non swivel eyed non loons have been pointing out the hypocrisy of the govt and those in charge for a long time. Even the Cummings example created outrage and if it wasn’t for the UK being led by probably the most unethical PM in its history, he would likely have gotten into far more trouble (or more likely wouldn’t have acted so blatantly illegally). Ironically, the reason Boris Johnson was PM was entirely due to Brexit, which the swivel eyed loons at least disproportionately, if not all of them, likely voted for.

Person A tells Persons B and C that they're under a grave threat if they step outside and must stay indoors. B and C then observe A strolling around outside without a care in the world. B says, "A is a hypocrite, and they must have been lying to me! I'm not going to follow their edicts" and resumes living life outside as normal. C says, "A is a hypocrite! They're behaving just like that degenerate B and refusing to take this deadly threat seriously!"

Who is the "swivel eyed loon" in this scenario again?

The everyday people weren't in positions of power.

Trying to read people's minds and intentions and looking for a master plan, rather than seeing coordination problems and simple human weakness and fault is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. It's so hard for humans not to try to find a sensible pattern and accept that not everything make sense.

The fundamental problem is that structural incentives often look exactly like a master plan (which is why we sometimes call incentives an "invisible hand")

Nope, invisible hand means not deliberately imposed incentives, but spontaneous creation of order from seemingly chaotic market forces.

> Trying to read people's minds and intentions and looking for a master plan, rather than seeing coordination problems and simple human weakness and fault is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories.

And mistrust in general as well.

> is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories.

Also mind reading (or simple guessing/heuristics).

But these things are usually master plans? Like Agenda 2030 - what could you call it but a master plan?

Sure there is often times a plan, it typically doesn't deserve the term "master plan" though and certainly doesn't deserve to be associated with the images the term invokes. Plans are usually badly though-out, watered-down for compromises and ignore second order effects. In addition, the things people latch on to were clearly not part of the plan. There wasn't a COVID lockdown, so that the guy in charge was able to visit a castle without other visitors there. At the risk of practicing mind-reading myself, I am pretty sure that visiting the castle didn't come up at any stage of the decision-making process that led to a lockdown. The cast visit wasn't part of the master plan. Like Gavin Newsom's visit to the French Laundry wasn't part of the plan for the lockdown in California. It's just shit leadership and inability to lead by example.

All these things are usually bad compromises that came out of some group or committee that's not nearly as homogenous and aligned as conspiracy theorists like to believe.

Edit: what is Agenda 2023? Google shows me links to places wehre I can buy a planner for 2023.

> Edit: what is Agenda 2023? Google shows me links to places wehre I can buy a planner for 2023.

Typo, fixed.

Not sure if OP edited his comment, but as of now it's written 2030, not 2023.

If I tell people not to go out "for their safety", and then I go out, it is reasonable to question whether I believe those rules are actually necessary to keep people safe. It is also reasonable to question whether I understand how normal human nature is going to react to the revelation that I didn't keep the rules that I myself made, and whether I understand how pervasive cameras are these days.

But for it to be a pretext or pretense for the restrictions, the powerful would have to benefit in some way from the rest of the folks abiding by those restrictions. I don't think the world got more enjoyable for the rich just because the rest of us were hunkering down. They might have not played by the same rules, but the didn't get an outsized benefit - only less encumbered.

If everyone else is hunkering down while they traipse around, then they have less of a chance of getting infected by the rabble.

Power over other people in itself is the ultimate pleasure for the powerful people of the world.

The wealthy and powerful have read their Marx, and understand that for them to maintain their station requires that the vast majority of humanity be pressed into ever-worsening material conditions. What better way to get everyone to accept a lower standard of living, worse education for their children, and amped up surveillance and restrictions on their movements, than to sell it as a pandemic response that's all "for their own good"? The part where they forced huge swaths of small/medium sized firms out of business and consolidated their market share for huge corporations was just a bonus.

"Capital's profitability now depends on 'lockdowns', acute social enclosure, and 'medical' tyranny": https://grossmanite.wixsite.com/my-site/post/capital-s-profi...

Nobody but Marxists read him and take him seriously. Their theory of mind are all universally godawful in that they expect everyone richer than them to think like a cross between a mustache twirling villain using their twisted and stunted vocabularies.

This is a case where the privilege of wealth and political connections is made starkly clear by contrast. Part of the point of accumulating wealth and connections is to insulate yourself from the oppressive grind that is the daily life of the rabble. This is the way it is every day, regardless of whether there is 'pretense' for it or not. We're just largely blind to until something happens to draw the eye to it. (see also: 2009 financial crisis)

But that's exactly what Cory says here.

> The COVID crisis is very, very real.

> But that doesn’t mean that it’s not also a pretext.

> ...

> This didn’t have to happen, but powerful people know better than to let a good crisis go to waste.

That's not what the words mean. "pretext" and "pretense" both imply that there's a hidden purpose for something in the first place.

Using those words implies that the COVID lockdowns were created entirely for that purpose, and the stated purpose was a lie.

I don't read it like that at all.

It's literally the definitions of the words:

> A reason or excuse given to hide the real reason for something.

> That which is assumed as a cloak or means of concealment; something under cover of which a true purpose is hidden; an ostensible reason, motive, or occasion; a pretense.

The main thing, though, is that we need to figure out how to validate that these people have spotted some bullshit, while helping them to expand their context. It is entirely possible that it's far too late for any such meliorations, and it is necessarily going to have to take to the streets before we bring it back to the table. I hope not.

What leads them down these toxic paths is that they lack the full context; they have been primed on decades of Pelican Brief X Files Conspiracy turds to not trust certain parties, but somehow they've missed that there are worse parties than those.

> "we need to"

There is your problem, right there. You still think in "we" vs "them" in 2023, and express yourself with an air of superiority towards people with a different world-view than you.

Ahh yes, I forgot that we are all actually just one freefloating being and all divisions are mere hallucinations brought on by the hangups of society, man.

> I don't really believe that it's a "pretense" but rather that people in power tend to take every opportunity to keep and bolster their power and freedom and care less about the power and freedom of the already disadvantaged.

My take is that the rich and powerful get special treatment and never have to follow the rules so why would they during a pandemic. Its just that it was a bit more noticeable then during their rule flouting during normal times.

that's really what the article was saying. that, yes, there's a thing, and that the powerful will work to use it to their advantage, and the swivel eyed loons _notice_ that and start constructing wingnut theories and reaction against it.

(regardless of what the crisis says on the tin, or the response formally says on the tin, this is a thing and the wingnuts aren't... entirely wrong in noticing that there's something off about the world)

This form of argument by the author breaks down very quickly.

Rich people get away with a lot of shit poor people don’t. Theft, scams, murder, genocide, illegal wars, etc.

The equivalent of this argument would be that locking people up for murder is simply a pretext for rich people controlling the masses because they rarely if ever get caught whereas the poor and ordinary are locked up for it all the time, therefore those advocating for legalizing murder are not really wrong.

This is essentially a tl;dr for the article, but phrased as if it's a rebuttal.

> The antilockdown movement exploited the legitimate anger of everyday people about elites ignoring the rules they set for the rest of us. These everyday people were then mobilized to fight for the rights of factory owners, logistics companies and other large corporations to murder their workers with a policy of “let ’er rip.”

The idea that continuing with life as normal -- especially various forms of essential social contact and economic activity -- amounts to "murdering workers" when a somewhat bad respiratory virus is going around was one of the most risible bits of nonsense pushed into widespread adoption during the COVID response. Just because Doctorow may not mind extended social isolation with only his computer to keep him company, does not mean that everyone else was somehow uninformed if they weren't agitating for the same restrictions to be applied to themselves. Life is more than the pathologically assiduous avoidance of death.

People in power created the lockdown policies, and told their subjects they were necessary because of a uniquely threatening contagion which everyone needed to avoid until vaccines could be distributed. They then carried on with their own lives as normal, indicating no fear of the virus on their own part whatsoever. Doesn't that suggest the rationale for the lockdowns was a pretense from the start?

Although, Boris Johnson, whose misdemeanors Doctorow somewhat misrepresents, nearly died of COVID—he was hospitalized and on a ventilator. He understood the risks.

(And, an irrelevant aside while I'm on the topic. Cummings, rat though he is, did not 'drive 275 miles to Durham to check in on his family' as Doctorow claims. He drove there to take his autistic child, who needs round-the-clock care, to his parent's house because he believed he and his wife were infected. There was no real excuse for the Barnard Castle trip though)

> Boris Johnson nearly died of COVID ... He understood the risks.

The second does not follow from the first. Some people don't understand risks ever. Learning is optional.

What, if anything did Mr Johnson learn from having COVID in office? What did Mr Trump?

I suspect a) nothing and b) less than nothing.

I could be wrong, but the opposite, that "he must have learned" does not follow.

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