deathgrips

What a tragedy. Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets, the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress.

Another example is shutting down What.cd, which was a digital library that had an unbelievably large collection of music. Many titles couldn't be found anywhere except on What.cd.

Ah, ok. So an article about a specific incident or a specific, small subsidiary would work?

Antisocial personality disorder is almost a prerequisite for career criminals. Disagreeable enough to commit crime and not feel bad about it, extroverted enough to enter or form a gang, and low enough in neuroticism to keep your cool under pressure. I'm not trying to paint all antisocial people as "bad". It's also a personality configuration that works well in certain military positions.

Censorship by one company isn't specific?

One big example was Google's censorship during the 2016 American election. The autocomplete suggestions were wildly different than every other major search engine (DDG, Bing, etc.). Typing "Crooked" into every other search engine would suggest first the completion "Crooked Hillary". Searching on google about the Wikileaks Clinton email server leaks wouldn't yield results that would take you to the links. Most notably, the Chrome browser would try to divert you from the website entirely claiming that wikileaks was unsafe to visit.

I'm sure there are plenty more examples and I'm not attempting to portray any particular motive or larger scheme, but there is boatloads of evidence that Google censors political information and news during American elections. For all the talk of Russian interference, you'd think we'd talk more about Google's interference.

Here are some examples:

* making it illegal for homeless people to exist in cities (loitering laws etc. when the homeless cannot help but break the law)

* taking away the right to bear arms as soon as black people started carrying firearms for self defense

* a long history of police brutality in the LAPD against minorities

* Los Angeles refusing to protect Asian Americans during race riots

* The California Dept of Labor refusing to enforce minimum wage laws regardless of the citizenship status of workers (only the federal government has to enforce border and immigration laws)

We're talking about California in this thread. If you want to talk about the federal government you're free to do so.

My alma mater built a second stadium for their tier 3 football team that just got kicked out of their league for poor performance. I must be very ignorant of where this magical revenue comes from.

Modern soldiers are not "cannon fodder", they are for the most part highly trained professionals that you cannot draft and quickly ship off to war.

That sounds like a great system. From purely selfish motives, the state will reap more taxes from college educated citizens than they would otherwise, so literally investing in public colleges makes financial sense. America chose to invest in education debt (and modern day indentured servitude) instead.

>You only need one big score where you get away clean and you're done

The laughable part is here. People bring their problems with them. The kind of person who would pull off a big score, such as a brilliant hack or a bank robbery, won't retire to the Oregon coast and drive at or below the speed limit for the rest of their lives. A lot of those traits are traits of antisocial personality disorder. People like that are magnets for trouble. They won't lie low and relax for the rest of their days.

>The unspoken assumption is that there never will be a "real" war with China or Russia or any other 'near peer'.

Yes, because despite Wikipedia saying that the Cold War ended in the 20th century, we still have thousands of nukes ready to launch at each other in five minutes. There may someday be unconventional war, proxy war, or cyber war, but there will not be a great war unless it begins and ends with a nuclear holocaust.

Gee, this is what subsidized looks like? Must be a lot cheaper than the tuition in other countries that don't have nearly as many international students :)

What sort of vehicles will those deliverers and caregivers use?

How will they get to the dispensary?

No, that's not the point. If the small risk of someone dying from covid19 is enough to take away everyone's rights, what keeps your state from taking away your rights for a similarly flimsy reason, such as the risk that you will commit a crime?

You will never be able to confidently say you are not infectious of some disease.

>It is not a human right to earn a living.

What gives you the right to decide that?

Depriving people of the right to earn a living regardless of their health status and regardless of their health practices (PPE, distancing in the workplace, sanitizing surfaces, air filtration) is absolutely not due process. It is the sort of arbitrary and absurd regulation which is quintessentially Californian. California has a history of depriving people of human rights without rhyme or reason; this is just furthering the trend.

The ability to earn a living is a human right that no government can deprive you of without a good, specific reason and due process.

Lawyer up.

Every workplace exposes people to infectious diseases, covid19 or not. Don't companies do risk management all the time? What's the acceptable level of risk?

>How much money do you think the recession will destroy? Take that amount, and add a few percentage points of the total money supply to it.

I think we'd have to print more than we could assume is safe. We're in an unprecedented situation right now. This isn't a normal depression. We shouldn't stumble into a battlefield and expect the old skirmish tactics to save us. We're acting unbelievably foolhardy and cavalier about the serious threat this poses to the poor.

People on hacker news, the media, and in the CDC have no real fear of being evicted or going without food, so why would they seriously consider it? If you're a doctor or an epidemiologist, your work is essential so your main threat is the virus. You're optimizing national policy for one variable (disease spread and deaths) rather than multiple variables (disease spread and deaths, starvation, suicides due to job loss, increased homelessness, and general welfare of the country).

>If you want more businesses to re-open, we should be working on better mitigation for the virus. The more testing, the more contact tracing, the more PPE, the better we comply with social distancing requirements, the better we can prevent spread in workplaces, the more non-essential businesses can re-open.

I wholeheartedly agree and think that we all need to realize that we have a great responsibility to do our part to protect our loved ones from this disease. Funding testing and contact tracing is a life or death decision.

>Could it be because the same political factions that are pushing for re-opening aren't interested in paying for it?

I can't know for certain since I'm not in those political spheres. I can predict that the wealthy want their businesses to continue operating while they will personally self-isolate until they get a vaccine (social distancing for me, not for thee). Regardless of how our national policies change, I expect that the poor will get no significant financial support, as always. I predict that if we do print money, it will just go to businesses. About 80% of the financial assistance distributed so far has not gone to individuals. It has mostly bailed out businesses like hotels and airliners (because we desperately need hotels and airliners for the next two years!).

That's the main reason why I don't buy the notion that the government will bail out individuals. It never has. It's a carrot on a stick.

Anyways, I appreciate the insight on QE to offset deflation. Do you know of any interesting books on that topic I could check out?

How much money can we print until people lose faith in the currency? How many months can we do it for? It may take up to 2 years to discover and distribute a working vaccine. Can we print money to pay everyone's food and rent for 2 years?

Why aren't we treating every workplace as essential, since they produce an income for their workers?

Are you sure about that? Many essential businesses rely on goods that are produced by inessential businesses. These shortages can cascade throughout supply chains.

The big one that no one seriously considers is people running out of money, and then their governments running out of money. It's hard to tax people who can't work.

Are the human requirements for water, food, and shelter also a "human invention"? These needs are only fulfilled by a functioning economy.

There are plenty of psychiatric disorders that are demonstrably structural in nature, such as schizophrenia (likely genetic, lifelong and incurable), but there are plenty of others that seem to be a disorder in the contents of your brain rather than its structure. An example is depression, where people seem to be able to think themselves into depression and think themselves out of it.

I'm not sure why but I wouldn't feel comfortable letting some tech bros decide what drugs people should take.

This is much like saying "No one will go homeless if we institute universal basic income". You're completely correct but you're missing the point. I don't see any indication whatsoever that the US will realistically give people enough compensation to stay at home or can afford to do so.

What is the risk of recovered patients developing a life-threatening or disabling condition over 6 months after recovering? Do you have any estimate for this risk? 5%? 10%? 50%? 100%?