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“I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

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Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#101

Post by mcv »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #22
rapsey wrote: post #3

Is covid-19 the biggest world event since WW2?

Depends how you measure and what you call a "world event". * Mao Zedong killed 40 to 80 million people during his rule after WW2, but "only" in China. * 2-5 million died in the Second Congo Civil War between 1998-2003, but to a first approximation only Congo and its immediate neighbors even noticed. * The US response to 9/11 killed around 500,000 people directly (war violence) and a lot more indirectly (health, econo…

Those were certainly big events, but they were mostly local. COVID-19 is more global than anything I can think of. Social life is getting shut down in east Asia, India, Europe and the US. I'm not sure what South America, Africa and the Middle East are doing, but COVID-19 will hit them too.

Even if the death toll is going to me more limited than other big events (we don't know that, though), it is absolutely massive and truly global.

As for the potential death toll, if half the world gets it and 2% of them die, we're looking at a 80 million death count.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#102

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

jstummbillig wrote: post #89
black_puppydog wrote: post #15

I don't agree with the conclusion. We can scale down our economies and still maintain production of essentials by ` `drumroll` ` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Starting with an overblown healthcare admin system in the US, IMHO, but also including less inflammatory non-essential things like yet another range of plastic toys and luxury perfumes and and and. Essentially in this scenario, we should take this as an…

I have zero strong feelings about anything you wrote, no holy cows, no anything else – but I do despise downvote-martyrdom. Please, let's not make this place reddit.

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

;)

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#103

Post by Taek »

keiferski wrote: post #42
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a future where you do a swab test every morning while brushing your teeth. If you had any of thousands of infectious diseases, you're required to stay home. The test would take only 5 minutes, and you get fined if you don't do it, and receive sick pay if you test positive. I imagine that within a few years of rolling this out, common colds might be a thing of the past, and overall worker productivity higher r…

Imagine a future where you do a swab every morning while brushing your teeth and your testosterone and adrenaline levels are evaluated for likelihood of engaging in Anti-Social or Anti-Authority Activity. Individuals with high levels are locked into their apartments and subject to online training courses. Repeated violations result in a visit from the authorities. Yeah, no thanks. Not every solution to a serious prob…

Open source toothbrush that's not connected to the cloud.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#104

Post by jnwatson »

tomp wrote: post #71
netsharc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sane/benovelent governments will probably switch to universal basic income, i.e. go deep into debt and just pay everyone money to live. And no, actually going into debt is not a huge problem, ask Keynes, or what happened in WW2; it was an emergency and governments borrowed and borrowed with no fear.

I never understood this logic, and I understand it even less now. If we have the industrial / economic capacity to provide everyone with necessities of life (food, water, heat, shelter, ...), why not just provide that directly?! No need to go via the "money -> essentials" route... that way you're only indirectly making landlords and grocery store owners rich. For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone…

There’s a lot of research on this in the effective charity set. See [1].

First, it is highly paternalistic to tell people what to spend money on.

Second, it takes a huge bureaucracy to manage and enforce controls. Folks still sell their food stamps.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#105

Post by simonh »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #39

Some solutions that already exist, are already in use and could be firmed up: 1. Working from home. 2. Ordering online and getting takeout. 3. Using self checkout. 4. Collaboration and socialization via phone and internet. You can't get sick if you aren't exposed. People don't get sick due to some random number generator. You have to have a vector. We already know a great many ways to disrupt the spread. The antidote…

This is going to last all year, and possibly much longer and most jobs can't be done from home. We're simply not set up to educate kids from home. Hence the economic hit the blog is talking about. Just because many of us have tech jobs we can do from home, doesn't mean that's a viable option for enough people for it to make a major difference.

Washing hands and not touching our faces will slow it down, not stop it. There are numerous recorded cases on transmission with no physical contact, and virus concentrations in throats and saliva are ridiculously high. This is an aerosol disease, you get it just by breathing and many of the masks out there aren't very effective against it. That's why so many health care workers are getting it. Yes we should do these things, but they won't solve the problem, only slow it down a bit and the guy writing that post knows it.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#106

Post by lbeltrame »

timwaagh wrote: post #5

I'm sure if china can shut people inside their houses to prevent spread, so can we. We just have to adopt a different attitude towards fundamental rights. Besides, medicine development seems to go rather quickly. I am sure it will be mostly dealt with in a years time.

> I am sure it will be mostly dealt with in a years time.

What do you mean exactly? If you mean locking people up in their homes for a whole year, I think this will have not only economic, but also deep social impacts.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#108

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

lordnacho wrote: post #50
black_puppydog wrote: post #15

I don't agree with the conclusion. We can scale down our economies and still maintain production of essentials by ` `drumroll` ` scaling back shit that nobody needs. Starting with an overblown healthcare admin system in the US, IMHO, but also including less inflammatory non-essential things like yet another range of plastic toys and luxury perfumes and and and. Essentially in this scenario, we should take this as an…

I think you're right that is is an opportunity to think about what we really need done in society, but the implications are simply enormous. One concrete thing that will come into focus, especially in this US election year, is the healthcare system. If the virus overwhelms the capacity in the US, it will be constantly in the news. There's no better use of the attention than to have that debate about how healthcare sh…

One perspective is that we will continue on pretty much as we have been, replete with bullshit jobs, manicured lawns, and consumption to excess, because those are the only choices we know how to make.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#109

Post by TeMPOraL »

QuesnayJr wrote: post #58

David Graeber is a stupid person, and the thesis of that book is stupid. There are boring jobs, and there are jobs that wouldn't exist in utopia, but he has no idea why jobs exist or what function they serve. His book is paradoxically feel-good, in that just because we can imagine a world in which nobody has to shovel shit that we can eliminate all shit-shoveling jobs today. Shit, I actually worked at the kinds of jo…

Bullshit jobs are the job market equivalent of software bloat. They have the same issues: you can take a popular modern webapp or "desktop" app and notice that it's 80% of fat that isn't necessary for it to deliver all its value, but if you zoom in, almost every single piece of that fat can justify its existence because of other pieces. So you can't just start cutting it out piece by piece, you'd have to redesign the whole application.

Same with the job market: a lot of jobs are just fixing the damage done by other jobs, or implementing a distributed consensus algorithm through zero-sum competition. Every job is justifiable in terms of other jobs it serves, even though a whole lot of them could be pruned with no loss in value created for the society.

Re: “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”

#110

Post by jnwatson »

ALittleLight wrote: post #91
TuringTest wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an alternative model: that people who do nothing productive don't work at all in producing silly products and services, and they can spend their time doing things they enjoy instead. https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

Who would choose to spend time working though if they could do whatever they wanted instead without cost?

Anybody that wants more money. You know, the same reason that folks look for promotions: more responsibility for more money.
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