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Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

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Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#71

I’m honestly looking forward to a new economy served by large corporations. Large companies are more consistent in their user experience across multiple locations, and are better buyers of tech. They are always looking for new ways to automate their operations and frequently turn to tech companies to solve their problems at scale. So in a way, it’s good for the valley if more of the economy becomes more corporate.

/s ?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part about small businesses?

Everything is related. Imagine if the market only dropped a bit, large companies could support their employees, the credit markets wouldnt require massive trillion dollar spending. Supporting small businesses would be a walk in the park.

You're right about the financials but wrong about the direct economic impact. It's a 3 month hit that people are accepting, with the underlying fear that it will be a year-long hit, and the sickening feeling that recovery from this will take at least 5 years.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#73

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

>. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

We need to develop that capability. Imagine the next pandemic was worse, spread more asymptomatically and/or required a longer isolation time to get over without spreading combined with higher fatality rate, or fatalities in a younger demographic.

This could also help us learn how to deal with more tangentially related things like grid disruptions (hopefully we don't eliminate cash in response though as that might hurt in that scenario).

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#74

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

> It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time.

Is that actually true though? What resource are we low on? Do we not have enough nonperishable goods or public funds to pay for utilities and basic infrastructure?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#75

The stock market is largely collapsing because: 1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market. 2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit market…

The stock market is collapsing because the population is increasingly unable to go anywhere or do anything. As a result whole sectors of the economy are almost completely unable to function. They're predicting 25% GDP contraction and 25% unemployment which about the same as the peak of the Great Depression in 1933. And we don't know when that's going to end and it will probably take most of a year at least.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#76
Regarding restaurants. I live in Massachusetts where sit in is not allowed as of last week. I'm sure many restaurants are hit hard. But I also see many cafes and restaurants that adjusted quickly to take out and delivery and seem pretty busy. Some adjusted their menus and selling soup in bulk etc. Bars got hit harder.

Many sport studios quickly moved to online classes. Not everyone can of course. The climbing gym near my house is closed and who knows if they ever reopen. I'm not saying that we're not in a middle of a small businesses catastrophe, just that many small businesses find ways to survive. But obv they won't be able to for too long.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that even mean?

Congress declares war. Think WWII. Edit. Thanks to the wonders of HC I can’t reply to you so I have edited this post. The declaration of war is symbolic in one way, but it captures what needs to be done. The entire economy needs to be swung around to getting this pandemic under control as quickly as possible. Once war is declared we can start conscripting people to do the things that need to be done like enforce curf…

So the sarcastic response to that is: What does that even mean?

What I tried and failed to get at in my other comment is that massive resources are already being marshaled to produce more tests and find treatments and find a vaccine and so on. Federal leadership appears to be…poor, but that isn't stopping people from stepping forward.

So when you step past the slogan, what does Congress write in their declaration?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#78
post #68

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

> The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. I disagree, and strongly. This would be a knee-jerk, hyberbolic, and woefully ineffective over-response. Typical for the times. The only thing this might achieve is creating an even greater climate of fear and loathing. There will be false positives. And false negatives. There are with every medical test. Back-of-the-envelop…

> we would needlessly quarantine 12.5 million people

As opposed to needlessly quarantining 300 million people?

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#79

The stock market is largely collapsing because: 1.) Hedge funds levered up their capital 5 - 15x to make more money, then got caught with their pants down. So they all panic sold at once, crashing the market. 2.) CEOs of large corporations used cash to buy back their stock, inflating the stock price, and depleting their cash reserves. So now those same companies are on the brink of collapse, causing the credit market…

1) Hedge funds didn’t crash the market. There’s just no evidence for that. The market crashed because there’s enormous uncertainty and people would rather be liquid while they wait to see what happens vs losing a huge percentage of their wealth. 2) Businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders. Yes, they should have some retained earnings as a rainy day fund, but some of these companies are losing 75-100%…

> Businesses exist to make a profit for their shareholders.

It is an insidious and morally bankrupt myth that this is the only purpose of a company.

Re: Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides]

#80

The virus is terrible. But our solution could turn into an economic catastrophe. It simply isn't possible to shut down the economy and then pay people, businesses to sit idle for an undetermined amount of time. The solution is aggressive, continuous testing so that people can feel safe going back out. 1. Make hundreds and millions of the rapid tests available. 2. Deploy them to every business, every institution. 3. T…

Can we make millions of the tests rapidly available? I am still reading about test shortages on both coasts, even under the restricted testing regime we have been in so far. Maybe the no-contact thermometers could be a scalable approach. Go to the bank? Forehead scan to get in. Go to the grocery store? Same. At least until--and maybe even after--we can scale the RNA testing.

Get IDT or (other nucleotide synthesis company) to start mass producing the detection primers, and ship them to their whole active customer catalog, they all have thermal cyclers. Then figure out the other reagents needed to locally produce tests that trade off false positive rate for the lowest false negative rate you can get. How to get swabs to the closest lab with a thermal cycler, no idea, but we have phones with gps. Rate limiting step here is probably the step from swab to sample ready for amplification. I kind of wonder if it makes sense to tell people to start swabbing now and keep the swabs in the freezer until testing comes online so that we can start filling in the missing data.
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