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Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#51

Post by jameslk »

yongjik wrote: post #49
jameslk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job. Propaganda? What? > I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's…

Yet American colonists hanged witches all the same, and slavery persisted for much longer than in European kingdoms those colonists had fled from. Seems like the correct lesson to draw is that the size or power of government doesn't necessarily tell you how much systematic misery and injustice you will find there.

When did I say anything about the power of governments relative to misery/injustice? It seems you've picked a strawman to attack with little relation to what I said.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#52

Post by Guthur »

jniedrauer wrote: post #7
bpodgursky wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, the automobile, the industrial revolution, and a booming population through agriculture and medical improvements led to economic prosperity, despite a deadly plague. It's a pretty hard case to make that a disease which disproportionately killed health 20-30 year-olds led to mass prosperity. Given all the advancements which were happening in the early 20th century, I'm inclined to say that prosperity happened in S…

> It's a pretty hard case to make that a disease which disproportionately killed health 20-30 year-olds led to mass prosperity. That's exactly what happened during the black plague. It lead to the end of feudalism. A shortage of labor will absolutely boost the value of labor.

Which is not what's happening with covid, if anything the opposite, with locked up and made all those young healthy people unemployed causing an increase in available labour

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#53

Post by shadowprofile77 »

jniedrauer wrote: post #7
bpodgursky wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, the automobile, the industrial revolution, and a booming population through agriculture and medical improvements led to economic prosperity, despite a deadly plague. It's a pretty hard case to make that a disease which disproportionately killed health 20-30 year-olds led to mass prosperity. Given all the advancements which were happening in the early 20th century, I'm inclined to say that prosperity happened in S…

> It's a pretty hard case to make that a disease which disproportionately killed health 20-30 year-olds led to mass prosperity. That's exactly what happened during the black plague. It lead to the end of feudalism. A shortage of labor will absolutely boost the value of labor.

I think this is questionable logic, the last statement I mean. The Black Death killed nearly half the total population of Europe across all age groups (in some regions and whole cities, it even wiped out 70% or more of their inhabitants. That level of life destruction creates an immense, definitive shortage of labor for the urgent needs of a devastated society. The 1918 pandemic killed tens of millions, but proportionally, this was a comparatively miniscule fraction of the world population and of the working population in the industrialized world of 1919 onward. Certainly not enough to heavily affect labor supply or cause massive changes in how working populations relate to their employers

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#54

Post by EliRivers »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #53
jniedrauer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a pretty hard case to make that a disease which disproportionately killed health 20-30 year-olds led to mass prosperity. That's exactly what happened during the black plague. It lead to the end of feudalism. A shortage of labor will absolutely boost the value of labor.

I think this is questionable logic, the last statement I mean. The Black Death killed nearly half the total population of Europe across all age groups (in some regions and whole cities, it even wiped out 70% or more of their inhabitants. That level of life destruction creates an immense, definitive shortage of labor for the urgent needs of a devastated society. The 1918 pandemic killed tens of millions, but proportio…

I understand there's a pretty solid consensus that it did. In some places, serfdom effectively ended. But we don't have to guess. We can just look it up and find that people who know a lot more about it than us have come to those conclusions.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#55

Post by rasz »

strogonoff wrote: post #45
Barrin92 wrote: post #37

>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…

Singapore sounds like a well-branded dictatorship from what I keep hearing, but Japan and South Korea have limited governments that aren’t even allowed to enforce a full lockdown. This is a commonly misreported point—earlier this year I saw The Guardian claim that the reason Japan, SK and China are better at dealing with COVID is because “police visibly enforced lockdown”; two of the three never did! Sure, in Korea a…

Just 6 years ago South Korea let 300 schoolchildren drown because they were paralyzed by fear of what their current dictator, lady president, might say if anyone showed a shred of initiative and independent decision making skills. Instead establishing a video link for high ranking government officials was more important than actual rescue mission.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sinking-of-the-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#56

Post by strogonoff »

rasz wrote: post #55
strogonoff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore sounds like a well-branded dictatorship from what I keep hearing, but Japan and South Korea have limited governments that aren’t even allowed to enforce a full lockdown. This is a commonly misreported point—earlier this year I saw The Guardian claim that the reason Japan, SK and China are better at dealing with COVID is because “police visibly enforced lockdown”; two of the three never did! Sure, in Korea a…

Just 6 years ago South Korea let 300 schoolchildren drown because they were paralyzed by fear of what their current dictator, lady president, might say if anyone showed a shred of initiative and independent decision making skills. Instead establishing a video link for high ranking government officials was more important than actual rescue mission. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sinking-of-the-... https:…

Perhaps that’s part of the reason she got impeached?

(Speaking of, the masses protesting by government buildings to make that happen showed people that could hardly be paralysed by a concern about what she might say.)

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#57

Post by rasz »

strogonoff wrote: post #56
rasz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just 6 years ago South Korea let 300 schoolchildren drown because they were paralyzed by fear of what their current dictator, lady president, might say if anyone showed a shred of initiative and independent decision making skills. Instead establishing a video link for high ranking government officials was more important than actual rescue mission. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-sinking-of-the-... https:…

Perhaps that’s part of the reason she got impeached? (Speaking of, the masses protesting by government buildings to make that happen showed people that could hardly be paralysed by a concern about what she might say.)

https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/asia/south-ko...

tldr its a shitshow

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#58

Post by suifbwish »

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…

Allowing non citizens to own real estate in your country is a grave strategic error that has not yet revealed itself. In essence you open yourself up to foreign powers manipulating the price of your housing and industry markets and thus the rest of the economy as well. The fools!

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#59

Post by cafard »

yongjik wrote: post #49
jameslk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job. Propaganda? What? > I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's…

Yet American colonists hanged witches all the same, and slavery persisted for much longer than in European kingdoms those colonists had fled from. Seems like the correct lesson to draw is that the size or power of government doesn't necessarily tell you how much systematic misery and injustice you will find there.

According to Matthew Arnold, the last hanging of witches in the United Kingdom occurred in 1716. As for slavery, it was a much smaller economic interest to the European colonies. Also, "much longer" is an exaggeration: twenty-seven years longer than the English colonies, seventeen than the French colonies count for only so much over a history that began 300-odd years before that.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#60

Post by burnthrow »

tylerjwilk00 wrote: post #19
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…

"Never let a good crisis go to waste” ~ Winston Churchill

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