Doctors Say Shortage of Protective Gear Is Dire

Purely economically, the west is at a disadvantage because they'd be fighting free-market pressure of everyone wanting the lowest price. Right now, for whatever reason, things are cheaper to make/buy-from China and other Asian countries. From my perspective, there are only 3 options as to how to fix this:

1. Accept and be willing to pay a higher price (for manufacturing that happened in friendly places)

2. Impose tariffs on Chinese-made goods so that the local higher-price is a non-issue and may even be cheaper due to lower shipping costs.

3. Impose whatever it is that makes things more expensive in the West to also happen in China. E.g. environmental laws, regulations, working conditions, etc.

My vote would be number 3. Get the damn UN to proclaim something, impose sanctions and embargoes if they don't comply, kick them out of the UN meetings, blockade their border and punish countries that don't comply with the sanctions/embargo, etc. Right now, we all keep complaining, treaties and stuff gets passed and blasted out on the news with feel-good promises of compliance X-years later, but when non-compliance happens blatantly, no one does anything but complain and half-ass it by proclaiming condemnation, imposing silly sanctions that do very little, etc.

Half the humanitarian and human-rights problems happening right now around the world can be fixed if strict rules were put in place, and non-compliance by various governments was punished severely. We need to stop treating countries as nebulous entities with no accountability. Hold the entire country accountable and watch the dominoes fall into place as everyone really at the end of the day wants to get along and just go about their daily lives. If democracy works for citizens, it should work for countries.

I personally don't think that Libertarianism (and anarcho-capitalism by extension) have a blindspot when it comes to public health. Right now we're seeing huge efforts in the private sector to mitigate this disaster, that can not be discounted. As simple examples, private entities are giving out sanitizers, increasing hygiene and cleaning policies, putting up posters for awareness, coming up with contact-less procedures for public interaction, hiring people to fix online shopping demand, etc. When people are scared, they act. When a business's continuation is threatened, it will act.

My private health-care provider and insurance provider have already extended (without government mandate, direction or legislation or extra-cost) my cover for any corona-related treatment/illness/death. In-case I lose my income due to this, they've also extended my unemployment to cover that so I won't be losing my income if it comes to that. And I can get a private test at my-cost (or healthcare provider will reimburse me) for less than $70.

So that just leaves what...Mass coordination of "public" spaces? Again, tragically those spots are both everybody's and nobody's at the same time, essentially paralyzing them from doing anything too drastic without government approval.

Not to mention the government is now stepping in and stopping some of these efforts because "human rights". They're planning on commandeering private hospitals and facilities to provide healthcare for free for those that don't pay and to deal with the fact that they were inadequately prepared for this crisis. They've also started with curfews, sent military police to private premises to "count" heads in case they go above some magical government number, prohibited public-dissemination of information by epidemiologists without government-approval.

> Every western country has used some central economic control continuously for the last 100+ years. Tariffs are ancient, but more modern tools like the FED or child labor laws are far from recent.

Tariffs and child labor laws are not remotely "turning industry over to government to run."