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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”

#121

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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…

But it needs to be based on good science. As someone in thread said, the false positive rate needs to be staggeringly low. And the false positive for Testosterone -> AntiSocial behaviour is huge - marathon runners to entrepreneurs and weight lifters.

So the idea is good - test people for something bad they will do - but the ability to test reliably for all the bad things is real low. I think we shall just stick to past crime not FutureCrime for now.

And honestly, using "bad authoritarian governments do bad things with good tools so we should not use those tools" does not make a good argument. it just means we need to double down on democracy.

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

#122

Post by jyounker »

101404 wrote: post #64
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.

UBI could be possible in a closed society, but not if you are open for uncontrolled influx of people from outside your society. Because the offer "get free money" is just too good. There was the choice what to focus on, and we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration. Fair choice, but the consequence is that UBI won't work anymore.

> we decided we wanted uncontrolled immigration

The US is notoriously complicated to gain entry to by legal means.

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

#123

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

robocat wrote: post #99
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…

> scaling back shit that nobody needs The “shit” nobody needs is the main point of living: music, art, science, sharing, pets; the crap you desire versus the essentials. If we only got what we needed to survive (food, shelter) that would be a pointless and depressing life.

> music, art, science, sharing, pets;

I don’t believe anybody is seriously arguing against any of those things.

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

#124

Post by timwaagh »

kingkawn wrote: post #31
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.

Your certainty is as factual as a wish upon a star

I am basing this on the news reports which say a german company is ready for in-human-trials which last months. after that, they would be able to produce millions of vaccinations in weeks. I think it's very promising. The us president apparantly also thinks so, since he has been trying to bribe them into exclusivity.

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

#125

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

robocat wrote: post #99
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…

> scaling back shit that nobody needs The “shit” nobody needs is the main point of living: music, art, science, sharing, pets; the crap you desire versus the essentials. If we only got what we needed to survive (food, shelter) that would be a pointless and depressing life.

> that would be a pointless and depressing life.

The point of social distancing and quarantine measures now, is the choice between a hard time for the next few months, even to the point of it being "pointless and depressing"; and death.

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

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

kkwteh wrote: post #92
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.

Going into debt is a big problem if it eats up all of your tax revenue to service it. The WW2 debt was managed by growing the economy to the point where the debt became a small fraction of tax revenue. It seems impossible for modern economies to grow like that today.

> The WW2 debt was managed by growing the economy to the point where the debt became a small fraction of tax revenue.

The WW2 debt problem in the US was managed by roughly tripling the share of the economy taken in in taxes, not just growing the economy. Taxes aren't fixed.

> Going into debt is a big problem if it eats up all of your tax revenue to service it

It's a big problem if it eats up all of your productive output; tax revenue is an arbitrarily-adjustable figure.

OTOH, if your debt is denominated in your own currency, so is (in real terms) the debt itself.

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

#127

Post by keiferski »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #121
keiferski wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But it needs to be based on good science. As someone in thread said, the false positive rate needs to be staggeringly low. And the false positive for Testosterone -> AntiSocial behaviour is huge - marathon runners to entrepreneurs and weight lifters. So the idea is good - test people for something bad they will do - but the ability to test reliably for all the bad things is real low. I think we shall just stick to pa…

I don't think it is a good idea or good tool at all. I don't need or want some external authority to tell me if I'm allowed to leave my house. I used the example of "Anti Social" behavior as a joke and I thought that was obvious...but apparently not. The idea is entirely antithetical to a free society.

As someone indicated in another comment, the proper way to do this is through personalized incentives and social encouragement, not through authoritarian state action.

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

#128

Post by timwaagh »

raxxorrax wrote: post #118
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.

> We just have to adopt a different attitude towards fundamental rights. This is talk that really drives up any resistance against sensible health support. And the worst part, the resistance is more or less justified. You don't even know yet if the quarantine worked. We currently have data from countries without it that don't fare any worse. 2 weeks incubation period probably makes the tool worthless, but we don't ha…

I don't think the chinese government is intentionally lying about the data. If we can assume their numbers are trustworthy enough, we can infer their measures were effective. Of course, if it happens it will be a bitter pill to swallow for everyone.

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

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> For this crisis, people are saying, give $1000 to everyone... that money is mostly going to find its way into the pockets of already rich people

Whose pockets do you think it's going to come out of, whether by taxes or inflation (which is a tax on holders of dollar denominated assets). It's just doing more work for other people along the way.

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

#130

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

tomp wrote: post #119
jnwatson wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> First, it is highly paternalistic to tell people what to spend money on. Indeed, and that's kind-of the point: (1) you eliminate bullshit spending (on things like alcohol, tobacco, lottery) that many people are prone to do, but that they arguably shouldn't (to some extent, those products are "predatory"); (2) it provides a minimal standard (survival) yet incentivizes people to work (be productive) to increase their…

> eliminate bullshit spending (on things like alcohol, tobacco, lottery)

How do you propose to prevent people acquiring drugs, and gambling?

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