04-10-2020, 10:06 AM
(04-07-2020, 10:51 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:(04-07-2020, 09:34 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(04-07-2020, 04:10 PM)David Horn Wrote: If it doesn't happen in South Korea, don't expect it here.
Exactly my point. Widespread business closures never happened in South Korea, so we don't need them here. Masks did happen there, so we do need them here.
(04-07-2020, 08:29 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: Covid-19 isn't a flu virus, so summer, no good.
There has been a study on Covid virus reproduction factor in China, which showed a correlation between increasing temperature and humidity, and decreased reproduction factor. Coronaviruses also cause common colds, which also tend to go away in summer. There's every evidence that it will become easier to control in summer - most likely generating a false sense of security, since summer doesn't last forever.
Agreed that free movement of people will take a long term hit. I think free movement of goods will take less of a hit.
Nope, South Korea is a first world nation with first world health care. Americans need to get in their heads that the US is a shithole country in may ways, but especially health care.
https://twitter.com/existentialfish/stat...1131012096
The movie Black Panther about a hidden civilization in Africa (and not about an extremist Black Pride group in America) that in its well-cultivated wisdom and technology is able to solve all the world's big problems has as the simulation of an advanced technological civilization... South Korea! After seeing the credits at the end that showed that, all I could say (to twist Lincoln Steffens' infamous and deluded quote) "I have seen the future and it works".
If I had been rich I would have gotten my father the means of visiting the country that he had seen in the 1950's as a land of destitution, probably then on par with India at the time, for what it was. The only thing wrong with South Korea, so far as I can tell, is its neighbor -- arguably the worst neighbor that any country could ever have.
South Korea might be more authoritarian a society than many Americans would like... but such is a consequence of a high population density that requires more social organization than fits a land of yeoman farmers. Demographic change will compel Americans to live more like the Japanese or South Koreans if they live in the Acela corridor, Greater Seattle, southern Florida, or coastal California.
Quote:So, shut it down, shut it all down. That's the only way our shitty health care system can handle this thing. People over profits. I mean even if that means destroying the Neoliberal order, I'm all for it. Autarky uber alles.
It's the Reagan-Trump paradigm, a fusion of libertarian ideals with absolute plutocracy, that must die. The failure is obvious; Trump has taken it to the logical conclusion and people are dying. Were it not from COVID-19 it would eventually be from a War For Profit that goes far worse for America than did WWII because we would be on the wrong side of the ethical divide that gives the enemy cause for fighting back (protecting their dignity as people), mass hunger as the ideology allows tycoons and executives the power to decide who lives and who dies, or civil war in a proletarian revolution, or outright genocide. I hate to defend something awful as an alternative to something far worse but that can be how one judges a Crisis Era, but here we have it. We must defeat Donald Quisling Trump in 2020 -- but we must also reshape our national character so that we do not end up with a leader more competent, cunning, and politically slick.
COVID-19 is killing people at the rate typical of a Crisis War, so it can be the defining event of this Crisis Era. After this, much more of America will be ready for major reforms even if they come with more regulation, changes in business practices (especially in labor-management relations), changes in the educational system, and closing some of the loopholes in our political system so that we can better thwart any ruthless and fanatical leader who would use those loopholes to impose despotism or dictatorship. Trump has been part of a Gang That Can't Shoot Straight. He made the mistake of purging the Republican Party before shutting down, co-opting, regulating, or outlawing the opposition. Someone else intent on establishing a plutocratic, theocratic dictatorship -- let us say a Christian version of Iran or a system aping the People's Republic of China except for having different icons (the Mount Rushmore Four + FDR) gutted of democracy instead of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Sun Yat Sen*, and Mao stripped of socialist pretensions.
Quote:And, you have to shut down every international flight to keep it from coming back. So, even if the transmission rate is lower in a warmer warmer weather, there's no worldwide immunity , so again, given globalism, the current pandemic is just one plane ride away from sparking a new outbreak. So, John, the only way to kill covid is to kill globalism. I'm all in favor of shutting down globalism for good. It's dead man walking anyway, so let's just nudge it off the cliff to the great beyond.
At this point it would be difficult to get me on any jetliner, helicopter, boat, train, or bus of any kind. So long as the COVID-19 plague is active, the Angel of Death is a fellow passenger on such a conveyance. If I were a religious person I would be leery of attending any religious service or procession. I would also avoid any picnics, fairs, festivals, parties, concerts, parades, protests, sporting events, or political rallies. We are not giving up on these; we will do those again as soon as they are safe. COVID-19 has made many things impossible for now. They will be back, and we will need to find ways in which to find virtual substitutes. I would not be surprised to find myself witnessing a virtual funeral. COVID-19 is the deranged killer who taunts us with the sick boast "KILL ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN!"
Quote:Ohhh yeah, baby, burn, globalism, burn. The smell of burning balance sheets of elites smells good in the morning.
I would like to see America go back to relying upon small business and non-profit entities as the usual form of business operation. When such was so, more Americans had the opportunity to found businesses and to get ahead in life in the smaller, but much-less-bureaucratic organizations that we used to know. And, yes -- we need to see Donald Trump and those around him, and those who foster leadership like his in political and economic life, discredited as long as possible. Economics was far saner and safer when it depended upon personal savings and pay-as-you-go practice instead of MMT.
*Sun Yat-Sen was in fact an admirable figure, more democratic than the other icons of the People's Republic of China; he is much admired in Taiwan and among the Chinese diaspora. The People's Republic of China on the whole guts the less admirable parts of its national icons. Gutting the democratic heritage of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt would be even more objectionable.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
