Effect of economic crisis on America’s small businesses [slides] • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by digitaltrees » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:09 AM UTC

OGWhales wrote: post #201

digitaltrees wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business does not have to be structured as a Corporation with limited liability. That is a privilege allowed by the sovereign power of the people through an elected government. If companies don’t behave responsibly they should lose that privilege and the owners could be held liable for debt and these kinds of mistakes personally. The fetishized obligation to shareholders and ONLY shareholders is not some holy pronoun…

> It was made up by a professor at University of Chicago and ran contrary to the history of business and limited liability company structures Who is this guy? Also where can I learn more about this and related topics. I’ve taken an interest to learning about our economic system in my free time and would love it if someone could point me to some good resources/podcasts/whatever.

Milton Friedman.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-ori...

The amazing thing is when you compare this with the history of corporate structures. For much of history after the joint stock ventures were created in the 1600s they were extraordinary one time grants from the king and only for very very risky ventures. Basically they were used to induce businesses that wouldn’t exist but were vital for society. In exchange there was an express charter that laid out the obligations of the firm. There were expectations on how the company would act in society. There were obligations to employees, bond holders, the community etc.

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

#232

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:09 AM UTC

timr wrote: post #230

airstrike wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. So far... wait until you get the number of critical cases above the number of ICU beds and you'll see 18 year olds dying from this

You won't, because we triage patients.

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by ivalm » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #125

aaron_m04 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

We might have enough food etc stockpiled, but the servicing of debt (upon which everything is built) drives a certain modest urgency through the whole system.

I think it is implied that the debt is serviced via quantitative easing.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #214

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's Red Cross supposedly advised Italy yesterday that 'total economic shutdown'[1] is the only way to contain the COVID-19 situation in the country now. It all comes to what part of the curve the country is now, the choice being total lockdown incl. economic shutdown vs aggressive testing. Considering US lapsed on aggressive measures in the beginning and that proper test kits are just being flown in from Italy[2]…

> total economic shutdown seems to be the only option left That's quite the overreaction. Italy found that among fatalities the median age is over 80 (older than the average lifespan of an Italian man). 99% of fatalities were among people with a prior illness. About 50% of the deaths were people suffering from at least three other illnesses. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... To put it an…

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by twomoretime » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #184

hyperion2010 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

I really feel like you guys are ignoring a lot of the difficulties in ramping up production to nation scale for this hypothetical test. A "rapid" test no less. These things are not as easy as everyone is making them out to be. Making one? Simple. Scaling that up to 8 figures worth? Not so simple. A lot of us are being a little too Jedi hand-wave-y about this issue. And think about it, I'm only talking about getting u…

Aren't there multiple existing labs all over the country who do this regularly? Are these tests made in small batches or something? Do you need to grow viral cultures? What exactly is the limit here and why can't a typical lab just double production in a few weeks by doubling it's hardware?

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

#236

Post by doingmyting » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #110

danieltillett wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

BTW France declared war officially.

I wonder if they'll actually fight this time

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

#237

Post by logicchains » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

Rapzid wrote: post #212

logicchains wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are destroying the middle class for some "theoretical" projection that might not even play out the way they think. What is guaranteed though is that businesses will die in troves and the economy and middle class with it. Look at the age of the people making the decisions. If you were 60+, unhealthy, and had the option of minimising your own risk of catching the disease by stopping the economy, you sure you woul…

The greatest outcome differentiator we have control over right now is whether or not a person can get adequate care or not. It seems like that can make a difference in the realm of points; big boy points. Our top political leadership would not be left wanting for medical care if they needed it. Pelosi and McConnell are both in for keeping congress together in DC vs running and hiding at home. "Going down with the shi…

Even with top care, the fatality rate is still over 10% for someone 80+. Compared to 0% if they aren't exposed to the virus.

>Pelosi and McConnell are both in for keeping congress together in DC vs running and hiding at home. "Going down with the ship" so to speak.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't all the lockdown decisions so far been made by state governors, not the federal government?

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

#238

Post by ivalm » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:18 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #42

maxerickson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasonable compliance with social distancing from 25% of the population has a huge impact on the slope of the curve. Of course better compliance from larger numbers of people has even more impact, but it's not a binary condition. That said, we probably aren't doing enough to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, or to even push that very far into the future.

Not enough, all the simulations show we’d need to basically reduce our number of interactions a day by 75% and double the number of ventilators by 100% to “stay under the curve” that’s if we didn’t have a huge number of celebrations and people in lines, etc. Projections are 500k dead by June. Maybe with the precautions we can slow the millions dead by the end of the year. It remains to be seen.

I mean, italy is no longer exponential, China clearly contained their issues. The doom and gloom is somewhat overblown.

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

#239

Post by lumost » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:18 AM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #125

aaron_m04 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

We might have enough food etc stockpiled, but the servicing of debt (upon which everything is built) drives a certain modest urgency through the whole system.

As a point of theory, in a highly deflationary scenario the correct response may be for the government to (controllably) print paper. Given the right distribution mechanism debt could be serviced on the freshly printed paper. The effectiveness of such a strategy is dependent on how efficient the mechanism to distribute paper to end debt holders as well as how well monitored the money supply is.

The worst case on such a scenario is that an economy sits on rationing for a period of time, followed by a strong and possibly inflationary demand spike, but businesses and people's balance sheets could be partially paused.

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

#240

Post by hyperion2010 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 4:19 AM UTC

twomoretime wrote: post #235

bilbo0s wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel like you guys are ignoring a lot of the difficulties in ramping up production to nation scale for this hypothetical test. A "rapid" test no less. These things are not as easy as everyone is making them out to be. Making one? Simple. Scaling that up to 8 figures worth? Not so simple. A lot of us are being a little too Jedi hand-wave-y about this issue. And think about it, I'm only talking about getting u…

Aren't there multiple existing labs all over the country who do this regularly? Are these tests made in small batches or something? Do you need to grow viral cultures? What exactly is the limit here and why can't a typical lab just double production in a few weeks by doubling it's hardware?

You don't have to culture anything (if we did we might as well just give up). We use PCR to amplify a known section of the viral genome. With the oligo production capacity in this country alone we could synthesize enough primers test everyone in the country 10 times in a couple of days. That is not the limiting reagent. The limit is either sample prep or sample collection. Actually running the amplification shouldn't be a bottleneck, there are hundreds of thousands of thermal cyclers across the country. In my more cynical moments I might say the bottleneck is that some companies might want to make money from all the tests ....