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The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

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Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#321

Post by pmiller2 »

nickff wrote: post #302
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't they have goals and aspirations? Who says they don't? People living on state benefits may yet have things they are passionate about. Their time is spent doing something , and sometimes that is something good for society, even though it isn't immediately profit-generating. Living in Finland I met a man who was perpetually on the dole, but he was an extremely active Wikipedia editor, for example. I have oft…

Your comment actually illustrates one thing I find repulsive about basic income proposals; many people seem to want basic income to finance a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves.

> ...a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves.

This is what most people do anyway. So, what's the problem?

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#322

Post by HelloMcFly »

JoshTko wrote: post #306
HelloMcFly wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can confidently confirm that 1) there are leftover vaccines, 2) good-faith efforts were made to administer them to the target audience, and 3) there were leftover vaccines that were definitely otherwise going to go to waste then I'm 100% fine with people administering to their contact list. I'd rather that 1000x over than unused vaccines be tossed into the garbage. We all lose with unused vaccines.

It's just poor design to allow for good-faith. It's too easy for a bad actor to artificially create "leftover" doses to give to friends and family. Just don't allow doctor discretion and organize better for the next day, problem solved.

You don't need to blindly trust that someone is acting in good faith, you need merely examine the evidence. If what counts as "evidence" is documented in advance this becomes all the easier.

For instance, one simply needs documented evidence that 1) the right populations were clearly made aware of vaccine location and time, 2) communications went out to "in-scope" target audiences at least X hours before the doses expired, and 3) if vaccines are at threat of expiring once they are - let's say - two hours from expiring then those that control that particular supply should do everything they can to use them.

And while this solution is a bit reductive, it's honestly not that reductive; this is a solvable problem. People on Hacker News solve much, much, much harder problems than this.

And I'd rather 20% of vaccines go to the wrong people than 5% of vaccines go in the trashbin, personally.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#323

Post by civilized »

kxyvr wrote: post #153

For reference for non-Houston readers, he took the vaccine from a vaccine event in Humble to his home in Sugar Land. That's over 40 miles through the fourth largest city in America. His route home would have had him drive by the Texas Medical Center, which contains 21 hospitals that employs over 100k people. Further, the city/county run vaccine effort has been very strict about verifying addresses. He took the vaccin…

> I believe it's a false dichotomy to assert that either he takes the vaccine home or it goes to waste

I don't see a specific, viable, knowable-at-the-time alternative course of action Dr. Gokal could have taken, from you or anyone else. And the events in question happened over a month ago. Dr. Gokal's boss has had over a month to BS about what Dr. Gokal should have done, and failed to come up with anything. Dr. Gokal had six hours.

> Say I work as the mayor of a city and my brother really is the best contractor for the job, do I hire him? I'll contend that's not exactly an easy question and neither is the case with this physician and the vaccine.

I am disgusted with the laid-back, bureaucratic attitude so many people seem to have about this vaccination campaign. It is truly no surprise anymore that we have managed this pandemic so disastrously, and let so many people die needlessly.

Dr. Gokal had six hours to get ten doses into vulnerable people's arms. It was night time and he had no guidance from management on how to avoid wasting those doses. Wasted doses mean dead bodies.

Do you understand that? And after understanding that, can you explain to me how armchair quarterbacking Dr. Gokal is anything but unconscionable?

This is not a time to gab with the angels on our shoulders about optics, about whether we look like perfect little boys and girls. It is time to actually be good. It is time to save as many lives as we can. Dr. Gokal did that, he made no attempt to hide it, and he paid a terrible price. If you're going to sit in judgment of people, it should be the horrible bureaucrats who dare to judge him, when it was THEIR failures that put him in this position.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#324

Post by nickff »

pmiller2 wrote: post #321
nickff wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment actually illustrates one thing I find repulsive about basic income proposals; many people seem to want basic income to finance a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves.

> ...a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves. This is what most people do anyway . So, what's the problem?

I don't want to enable further selfishness and vanity.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#325

Post by nickff »

mofosyne wrote: post #313
nickff wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment actually illustrates one thing I find repulsive about basic income proposals; many people seem to want basic income to finance a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves.

Still more ethical than a vegan having to compromise their morals by taking a butchering job because they can't find any other jobs and need to feed their kids and have a roof over their head.

That seems like a false choice.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#326

Post by pmiller2 »

nickff wrote: post #324
pmiller2 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...a life of vanity, where they help no one more than themselves. This is what most people do anyway . So, what's the problem?

I don't want to enable further selfishness and vanity.

So, basically, you just don't like what you think people would do with their time, if given the chance because they're not chained to a job? Sorry if this sounds overly confrontational, but I couldn't think of a more civil way to say it.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#327

Post by nickff »

pmiller2 wrote: post #326
nickff wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to enable further selfishness and vanity.

So, basically, you just don't like what you think people would do with their time, if given the chance because they're not chained to a job? Sorry if this sounds overly confrontational, but I couldn't think of a more civil way to say it.

I was specifically responding to a comment which said:

>"Living in Finland I met a man who was perpetually on the dole, but he was an extremely active Wikipedia editor, for example. I have often thought if that basic income existed, I could finally do some of the huge OpenStreetMap expeditions I had in mind (adding house numbers for the entire surrounding region, for example.)"

It is my opinion that those are examples of vanity projects which provide little benefit to others, which is why I said:

>>"Your comment actually illustrates one thing I find repulsive about basic income proposals..."

I never said that this was true for any and all people, or that:

>>>"[I] just don't like what you think people would do with their time, if given the chance because they're not chained to a job"

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#328

Post by PicassoCTs »

colechristensen wrote: post #120
ascagnel_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this comes from the Reagan-era idea of "welfare queens" -- that because the idea of "government handouts" are so enticing, people will cheat the system to get them. There are two issues with this: - "government handouts" and a reliance on welfare are typically a symptom, not a root cause, of an ailing society -- there are bigger issues at play around wealth and ownership if a large segment of the population…

I likewise know someone who intentionally makes as little money as possible in order to take advantage of state support program. Or to be more accurate, makes as much money as possible under the various limits for benefits while living in a comfortable (essentially inherited) situation. This is a person with high education, without any major disability or impediment to working, they just choose not to work because th…

I know some people, who parasite on the system, by leveraging systemic knowledge via the stock market. Never really contributed anything of value in their whole life - whole systems of parasites with parasites on top.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#329

Post by floatingatoll »

skrowl wrote: post #287
floatingatoll wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that given what we’ve done here in the US to the past forty years of workers, they’ve earned a decade off to live on UBI and heal from burnout and develop interests of any sort in anything at all again, before we could even begin to productively analyze their reactions to UBI. They’ve been traumatized and it will take time to heal and I certainly hope that we implement UBI and let them do so. We can aff…

210,000,000 working age adults in the USA * 40,000/year UBI welfare handouts * a decade = 84 TRILLION dollars. The US govt is currently spending about 2 trillion / year more than they take from their citizens in taxes. Out of curiosity, what makes you think "We can afford it as a country"?

The alternative to affording it seems worse. And your figured are rather assumptive, ignoring critical implementation details like “UBI could be written as a tax credit” or so on. But, let’s take your numbers and scenario briefly anyways.

$4T per year is only 15% of GDP, right? 15% is the capital gains tax, and technically GDP is the measure of a country’s capital gained, so just apply the 15% capital gains tax to the country’s capital.

“But that’s a lot!” Yup.

“Is GDP growing enough?!” Not the way we treat workers today; the last time it was above 5% was, coincidentally, right when the wage/efficiency gap started widening.

“How do we make the math work then?” Good question. What figures make your approach work, given historical rates of GDP and growth pre-Reagan, post-Reagan, and in a theoretical world where pre-Reagan rates return once we stop abusing our workers?

I was just making the point that we have a lot of healing to do before we can presume to measure under UBI the contributions and growth and courage and strength of mind and will from the workers we’ve abused for forty years.

You’re making an argument that, I think (?), we can’t afford to allow 100% of our working age citizens to subsist on UBI. So tell us what figures you think would plausibly work in your own terms, so that we can see your complete viewpoint and argument. Is that $100/person/month or $1000? Are you accounting for GDP growth over ten years or not? What percentage of workers can we afford to carry on UBI for ten years? And so on.

Do the numbers work out better if you factor in an imaginary 50T reclaimed through taxation/levy/law from those who’ve accumulated it and transfer the entire sum directly into the UBI payout fund? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26102709

It’s fine to try and use math to argue your point, but being sarcastically dismissive with simple algebra hasn’t given me enough to give your point consideration, as I’m still not even sure I understand it yet. I did my best and I hope the above is some use to others, but I’m not confident at all that I understood well enough to reply to you.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#330

Post by defen »

topspin wrote: post #309
defen wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like the trolley problem, but even dumber. You have a trolley headed for a bunch of people. You can throw a switch to take some people out of the path of the trolley, or do nothing. You are suggesting that doing nothing is better, because that way there won't be "equity" disparities in trolley victims.

Correcting historical equity disparities such as unfair distribution of medicines is one example of the steps necessary to achieve a just world. Note that placing the term equity in quotes as you have done can be seen as implying some qualification of the concept, as though it is in doubt or not legitimate. I'd ask that you please avoid this in the future.

Usually equity is considered a good thing, but you are literally saying the equitable thing is for more people to die. Hence the airquotes.
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