Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#31

Post by tehjoker » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #25

chewzerita wrote: post #10

The idea of a "big government" is a spook. In my country, "big government" is a bad word meaning taxes on corporations, any sort of industry regulation and breaking up monopolies. When I think of "big government", I imagine a militarized police force, lack of access to medical care, pervasive surveillance, unchecked imperialism, billionaires writing their own rules and to tie a bow on the top: a propaganda wing to ma…

I think a few of your boogeyman are out of date. The militarized police force was bested by a couple hundred anarchists and no charges even filed. The lack of access to medical care just spent $6 billion buy vaccines for everyone in the country. The unchecked imperialism just drew down all their troops and is achieving real progress towards normalized peaceful relations. A few of the others are quite on point though.

> The militarized police force was bested by a couple hundred anarchists and no charges even filed.

The police funding was increased instead of decreased as the movement demanded. The policy goals of people in the streets were absolutely thwarted and the police continue to do whatever they want.

> The lack of access to medical care just spent $6 billion buy vaccines for everyone in the country.

Congrats, you get one (1) vaccine so they can keep making money off your labor. If you have a stroke or an accident, that's on you.

> The unchecked imperialism just drew down all their troops and is achieving real progress towards normalized peaceful relations.

The US military has "lily pads" in over a hundred (and maybe over two hundred) places in the world and patrols the high seas. The oil supply is secured and various coups are funded or otherwise supported, for example in Bolivia which has just defeated the latest attempt to secure private control of the lithium fields.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#32

Post by kortilla » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

porpoise wrote: post #28

x87678r wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting to me when Chinese govt told everyone in Jan/Feb they have the virus under control, much of the world relaxed, but its neighbours Korea/Vietnam/Taiwan/Japan all knew to ramp up response and not believe them.

What do you have in mind by "telling everyone they have the virus under control"? I don't recall any such communication from China. If you mean the cover-up or data fudging accusations, I highly recommend the four part series in Quillette that examines the merit of these charges. It's very long, however. https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-serie... Here's the Twitter thread where the author introdu…

Refuting it shouldn’t require 4 essays though unless there are a bunch of mental gymnastics involved that the author has to sell you on?

What is the tldr? China didn’t do it on purpose and they were just grossly incompetent? They didn’t share data because it was all in word perfect files and they couldn’t convert it?

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#33

Post by just-juan-post » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #30

As a South Korean, I'm not sure covid has much to do with acceptance of "big government." Unlike most of the West, many Asians have lived under real dictators - some still do. We know what a dictatorship looks like, and we know how terrible your life can be when the government abandons its duty to protect people. To put it other way, "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's to…

Yeah everyone talks about the technology and nobody talks about the Confucian foundation that many Asian countries are built on.

For anyone who wants a summary the Confucius episode of Genius of the Ancient World on Netflix has a good overview.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#34

Post by kortilla » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

jariel wrote: post #13

jameslk wrote: post #9

I don't usually go off on the deep end with conspiracies, and I don't believe COVID-19 was intentionally spread, but I do think the needed response to fully control the spread of a virus creates perverse incentives for governments. Especially governments that would like to disrupt other countries which have cultures that don't like to be told what to do by their own government. COVID-19 didn't cause such trouble, but…

Yes - while we have to be careful of making sure not to support the anti-mask/'covid is fake' hysteria because it really is a time to act in unison ... there is a 100% chance governments around the world are going to use this time to do things they might not otherwise do and we have to be careful. And I mean good and bad governments, with good and bad ideas. It's hard being in government, you never get to do the thin…

> That is point blank crazy. That is a weird financialisation of the economy that we don't yet understand - inflation in a fixed asset that doesn't increase productivity.

This isn’t weird, it’s simple supply and demand. Nobody wants to build housing and people still need a place to live so they have to sacrifice more and more of their income to fight over the limited good space.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#35

Post by bawolff » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

eunos wrote: post #2

The 1918 flu pandemic along with the end of World War I, introduced the roaring 20s, a period of economic prosperity, a new cultural idea and in some sense decadence. Will the idea of big spending government also delivers the same outcome? If yes, how do we manage those so that we will not arrive at the great depression of 1929?

> Will the idea of big spending government also delivers the same outcome?

I don't know if that is the right lesson to learn. The great depression was largely caused by a stock market crash related to lack of regulation, and a drought (hello climate change). It was largely solved by big government wartime spending.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#36

Post by chewzerita » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #25

chewzerita wrote: post #10

The idea of a "big government" is a spook. In my country, "big government" is a bad word meaning taxes on corporations, any sort of industry regulation and breaking up monopolies. When I think of "big government", I imagine a militarized police force, lack of access to medical care, pervasive surveillance, unchecked imperialism, billionaires writing their own rules and to tie a bow on the top: a propaganda wing to ma…

I think a few of your boogeyman are out of date. The militarized police force was bested by a couple hundred anarchists and no charges even filed. The lack of access to medical care just spent $6 billion buy vaccines for everyone in the country. The unchecked imperialism just drew down all their troops and is achieving real progress towards normalized peaceful relations. A few of the others are quite on point though.

> The militarized police force was bested by a couple hundred anarchists and no charges even filed.

Source? A couple hundred anarchists were not there to "best" Officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove when they shot 32 times at Breonna Taylor in her own home.[1] It is not just a few "bad apples" when the whole tree was planted to enforce and uphold slavery.[2]

> The lack of access to medical care just spent $6 billion buy vaccines for everyone in the country.

We funded the development of these vaccine candidates, yet it seems like we are going to have pay to out of pocket if we actually want to use them. If we already payed for it, under what circumstance should we not already have it guaranteed for everyone?

On another note: losing a job should not mean losing access to healthcare. Healthcare is a human right.

> The unchecked imperialism just drew down all their troops and is achieving real progress towards normalized peaceful relations.

Really? All their troops? This one really puzzles me, especially since my country currently has its hands deep in at least two South-American country's democratic processes.[3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Breonna_Taylor

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_patrol

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gideon_(2020)

[4] https://theintercept.com/2020/07/23/the-u-s-supported-coup-i...

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#37

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

>For decades, leaders like Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad spoke proudly of Asia's tradition of small, nimble public administration.

Yeah, but speaking of it was all they did. Singapore always had an entirely dominant state, they just figured out how to brand themselves correctly. State owned businesses became 'state-linked', regulatory frameworks are 'governmental disruption', and so on. The government owns the housing market, pretty much controls every piece of equipment that any hospital buys, and controls what newspaper can be printed. Imagine if the US nationalised the entire housing market, created an investment fund of the size of a third of the economy, and banned a dozen newspapers, I doubt we'd call it nimble administration.

There is no tradition of 'small government' in much of Asia. The centrality of public administration in the region, in China say, goes back thousands of years. Post-war Japan was basically the US if the New Deal had gone on for fourty more years, and South Korea developed for the most part under a military dictator.

In general 'big government' isn't a scary thing to most people outside of the US and England maybe. Not even in Europe does anyone actually complain about 'big government', so it's an entirely weird discussion.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#38

Post by porpoise » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:46 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #32

porpoise wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have in mind by "telling everyone they have the virus under control"? I don't recall any such communication from China. If you mean the cover-up or data fudging accusations, I highly recommend the four part series in Quillette that examines the merit of these charges. It's very long, however. https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-serie... Here's the Twitter thread where the author introdu…

Refuting it shouldn’t require 4 essays though unless there are a bunch of mental gymnastics involved that the author has to sell you on? What is the tldr? China didn’t do it on purpose and they were just grossly incompetent? They didn’t share data because it was all in word perfect files and they couldn’t convert it?

I strongly recommend giving that Twitter thread a look (click the "see more tweets" to expand it), where author also explains why he had to write so many words. By "mental gymnastics" I assume you mean "needlessly drawn out argumentation/reasoning". The essays contain very little of that and are densely packed with arguments and links. Only exception is in Past IV where he gets technical explaining why China's data does not violate Benford's law as some have suggested. The tldr is that there is little evidence to support the charge of "deliberate cover-up" during initial outbreak or subsequent data fudging.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#39

Post by jariel » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #34

jariel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - while we have to be careful of making sure not to support the anti-mask/'covid is fake' hysteria because it really is a time to act in unison ... there is a 100% chance governments around the world are going to use this time to do things they might not otherwise do and we have to be careful. And I mean good and bad governments, with good and bad ideas. It's hard being in government, you never get to do the thin…

> That is point blank crazy. That is a weird financialisation of the economy that we don't yet understand - inflation in a fixed asset that doesn't increase productivity. This isn’t weird, it’s simple supply and demand. Nobody wants to build housing and people still need a place to live so they have to sacrifice more and more of their income to fight over the limited good space.

"Nobody wants to build housing "

Construction is 11% of the Canadian economy, and it's not just a function of housing shortage.

"It's supply and demand"

Technically, but that's not the best way to describe it.

This is not 'more people fewer homes'

It's mostly due to low interest rates, and, the very strong expectation there will be increased value. This leads to explosive valuations. Add in some foreign interest, banks making loans for ever longer periods, and it gets into an ugly cycle.

It's very, very bad for the economy to get into this state because money pours into assets that don't increase productivity.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#40

Post by rangibaby » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 4:55 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #30

As a South Korean, I'm not sure covid has much to do with acceptance of "big government." Unlike most of the West, many Asians have lived under real dictators - some still do. We know what a dictatorship looks like, and we know how terrible your life can be when the government abandons its duty to protect people. To put it other way, "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's to…

> "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's too much power"

What’s enough power? A government-mandated lockdown is legally impossible in Japan but they have managed to keep COVID cases within a number that can be handled by their medical system.