04-28-2020, 01:28 AM
(04-27-2020, 11:26 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(04-27-2020, 10:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: States that relax too early will get spikes. If people think that times are rough now for local economies, then think of how times will be when people avoid whole states because of a dangerous epidemic.
Some of us have the choice between prosperity and life and between action and life. Prosperity means nothing if one is dead.
The best that anyone can hope to do is to outlast this plague.
But let’s assume Warren is right. The more population dense your people are, the closer together everyone is, the greater the risk. Some states are more at risk than others. If your population density is low enough, the trade of between the most safety and the best economy is very different.
Rachel had one farmer and a dump truck full of potatoes. He had this nice contract with all sorts of restaurants. It just went poof. Thus, he gave away free potatoes which he otherwise would end up destroying. Food banks desperate for potatoes were glad to take them off his hands.
Restaurants and bars are "oily rags" for the spread of the 2020 plague. People cannot eat or drink while wearing masks, Of course I feel sorry for anyone who absorbs a loss, loses a job, or must even give up on a traditional indulgence because of COVID-19. But what can we do? The farmer did the right thing, but it is unfortunate that he didn't get anything for his potatoes and spend probably an ungodly amount of money driving the potatoes to disparate food banks. But what can we do?
Quote:Something similar happened in New York, where many dairy farmers had contracts with the city’s school system. What happens when the schools close? How do you find a way to keep the economy running and get the milk in the right hands? Any hands? How long can the food producers keep running charity before they need someone to step in and grease the operation with some cash?
The kids still need milk... it is of course inappropriate to expect any business to operate strictly for charitable purposes. Kocal government should pay for the milk, as it was going to spend the money for it anyway.
Quote:That doesn’t mean, however, that you can escape risk or avoid it all. I can think of a couple of reasons one might get in trouble in an agricultural state. You might have a job at a meat processing plant. If you don’t go to the meat packing plant, will you be fired?
Of course. Employees are expected to show loyalty even if the conditions become horrible (including unduly dangerous) or access becomes impossible or fiendishly expensive. Driving to work instead of using a taxi? Ugh, especially in New York City!
Quote:You might want to go shopping in the big city. You wind up going to a high risk high population area. A question arises about what is essential. Are you shopping for basic groceries, or jewelry? Did you just exclude everybody who produces stuff that isn’t necessary, that is a luxury? Didn’t we just spend a couple of decades ratcheting up the economy by producing luxuries?
The point has been to keep people home by ensuring that there are no real places to go. Thus I can think of plenty of stores that I would like to visit. Maybe more establishments will be open if people are obliged to wear masks. On the other hand, just consider how crowded most core cities are on normal days. Social distancing is obviously impossible in Midtown Manhattan. OK, so we can all shop on line, and I already know of some things I will get from one retailer exclusively on-line when I get my stimulus check. Complete sets of Haydn and Bartok string quartets, among other items. I will also rescue a dog so that I can get some reliable companionship generally denied me lately. (I am in a bad household situation.
Quote:Right now, the meat packing plants are one of the more obvious examples of a vital function that has been optimized for a small thus close together assembly line operation. Very efficient. The best way to do things in normal times. How much do you have to change things if a worker takes one animal and goes all the way from killing the beast to packaging the finial product? He is safe, but how efficient is he? How much more space does it take? How much equipment would have to be purchased for each worker? How do you best trade it off between worker safety and worker efficiency?
Meat-packing plants are infamously dangerous even in good times. Management of such places fits the classic sweat-shop model well known in Marxist polemics. Now that the Grim Reaper has taken a position in such plants in which people are expected to work even if injured or sick because such is good for keeping costs down... well... Let's also remember that much of America's meat supply ends up in the maws of dogs (which generally do not thrive on vegetarian diets) and cats (obligate predators, no matter how nice those mini-tigers may be to us).
Quote:There ought to be some ground between business as used to be usual and shutting it all down. We may be spending too much effort on one or the other impossible extreme, and not enough on trying to find a middle ground.
In good times the choices are not so stark. In Crises, the choices are stark and often so in the extreme. The only people who have all the answers are the ideologues and special interests.
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.