361–370 of 560 posts
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> All the shopkeepers aren't from Beijing originally, so they close shop for two weeks and go back to their hometown. Sounds like an opportunity for someone to open some bagel shops.
Hm yea. Bagels aren't very popular in China. Or really outside the US.
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Maybe outside of China we see it as "ruled by fear", but that's really not the case in China, at least for the majority: China doesn't try to make it's citizens afraid. Quite the opposite. Their modus operandi is "move along, nothing to see here, everything is fine." Indeed, that was their initial message to the public for this virus. So, the problem and partial cause of panic is when there is a problem that is very…
> Indeed, that was their initial message to the public for this virus. You're going to have to source that because I have a friend who lives in China and he was telling me from the start that China was surprisingly open about all of it.
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I think the point is that the Chinese government didn't act swiftly, arrested people who initially spread information about the disease in Wuhan, failed to contain the situation, and has now allowed it to become a global problem. Due to the way China's government has lied in the past, I am hesitant to believe their numbers or their narrative until it can be confirmed by outside parties.
Are there any government whose narrative you trust? It seems to me that never trusting anything a governments because they have once [0] lied is a little extreme. In fact, I'm not sure I can name a country whose government hasn't lied in recent times. This would then extend to academia as well, since most research is in some way funded by the state. [0]: I know they have lied more than once. I'm not sure what a more…
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For a large part of history, negative real returns on stores of value were the norm. Before financial systems existed, almost all investments had negative returns if you didn’t put work and energy into them. To store value, you had to accumulate stuff, buildings or land. Most options either had high maintenance costs, were subject to risk of damage from natural causes and theft, were very volatile or required hard la…
Can you elaborate a little on this? Investments having a negative return does not mean the market (reference) interest rate is negative. Take the gold standard, do you think anyone was able to borrow gold and pay less back? Isn’t that the actual interest rate we are discussing here?
Gold in a free market would tend to self adjust.
Buying gold as an asset when there is a "flight to safety" and then selling it in better times when there are enough other good assets available such as stocks with good dividends would mean buying gold when gold prices are high and selling it when prices are low thus resulting in negative returns.
Negative real returns happen in free markets. Blocking them causes huge problems.
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How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated? How would the party and the public respond if there were leaks about his private life and behavior? I wonder what his skeletons in the closet are... I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system. A film that highlights how the government treats humans and…
> How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated? Very stable. Basically nothing besides something coming from withing the party itself can shake him, and he took down all of those threats to him from within the party. Not even Mao ever managed to cleanse all of his detractors from the party up until his death. Saying this, you should not be confusing that "people are throwing looks into his back," and quiet whispe…
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How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated? How would the party and the public respond if there were leaks about his private life and behavior? I wonder what his skeletons in the closet are... I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system. A film that highlights how the government treats humans and…
>I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system. 1. Not Very receptive, as it will be seen as someone ( Foreign Intervention )trying to attack them. Something which may be hard to comprehend for most people. 2. Vastly underestimated the power of CCP. I think these sort of thoughts are precisely why the We…
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This website provides daily updates on the spread of the virus: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
Here's the WHO map, which I find a bit more legible. http://who.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/c88...
The Johns Hopkins map can be made more similar by switching to the terrain map layer with the icon in the upper right hand corner of the map widget.
Having lived in Beijing for 9 years, I’m glad I’m not there right now. Not because of a fear of getting sick, but of the sheer boredom of being stuck in my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an appropriate face mask. Heck, even going to the office is probably off limits right now.
> being stuck in my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an appropriate face mask As someone who never been there (or in China for that matter), is "face mask" a synonym for something or you mean literally a face mask? Don't think it's mandatory to wear face masks, just that a lot of people do it, right? If someone knows better, please correct me
https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/12232189775700787...
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By "our government" do you just mean the Federal government? Or do you mean all levels of government? The mayor of New Orleans had parking lots full of empty school buses and claimed he had no way to evacuate citizens. The governor of Louisiana whined and wrung her hands instead of doing anything. The Federal response was far from perfect but it was much more effective than the state or local response.
> parking lots full of empty school buses and claimed he had no way to evacuate citizens That just sounds like a sensational headline lacking in context and details. For example, with Hurricane Harvey in Houston they had to weigh calling mass evacuation against the ability of the road system to handle that much traffic. It doesn't matter how many buses you have in a parking lot if they can't leave the city. I'm not s…
Houston is way bigger than New Orleans, but either way you obviously can't evacuate a major city in one day. Their first obvious mistake was waiting way too long to call it (of course a very easy thing to say after the fact). As I recall, Bush was calling on the mayor and governor to evacuate for a couple days before they finally did. Then there was confusion about which govt was in charge with the gov finally taking over the city then Bush taking over the state. In the mayor's defense, he never really had much power to being with, and cops were abandoning their posts so I don't know who he could have called on to get things done. And as you say, once it become national politics, it's impossible to get much objective analysis.
As for examples, the comparison was made to Cuba. A small city in a small country with an absolute dictator calling the shots. I get the impression that the previous poster wanted to criticize Bush as being dictatorial, which is ironic, since it's ultimately a lack of federal domination that everyone complains about in Katrina.
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No, literally a face mask, so that people know that you aren't going to give them the virus. I don't know if it's mandatory to wear a face mask. But it doesn't seem like it would be too different from what always happens in Chinese New Year in Beijing. All the shopkeepers aren't from Beijing originally, so they close shop for two weeks and go back to their hometown. There's pretty much no restaurants open, except may…
> All the shopkeepers aren't from Beijing originally Why is that? Are the native Beijingers to rich and fancy to run a shop?
Consider that Beijing has 21 million residents but less than 14 million hukou holders, there is a lot of migrant labor to go around.