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I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

blogmaverick.com

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Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#81

Post by hippich »

eru wrote: post #48
itronitron wrote: post #33

This is a nice example of private business picking up the mantle of what is ordinarily thought of as a government function. All the hostile comments (on the blog) are probably being made by people that favor small government and therefore theoretically in favor of a private company doing the survey. But apparently they don't want anyone telling them what to do.

Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology? Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions were most probably non-binding as a constraint. Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway. (Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at that minim…

I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#82

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

davidw wrote: post #65
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean it's safe for Dallas to open up, since the state is doing test/trace/isolate and the city requires masks in enclosed spaces.

This site doesn't show Texas as really having the capacity to do that effectively, but it could be wrong or a bit out of date, as much is these days even if well-intentioned. https://testandtrace.com/ Mark Cuban's article indicates that masks are not as prevalent as they ought to be.

This kind of site is a core example of why people are skeptical of the "false choice, we can open up responsibly" narrative. In practice, if a graphic designer makes a nice-looking chart where a state is red, that seems to be treated as a conclusive argument that opening up isn't responsible. The site doesn't appear to have any specific argument why Texas is wrong to think it can safely open up, just fixed numerical thresholds which Texas hasn't hit.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#83

Post by tom_ »

ashtonkem wrote: post #54
torgian wrote: post #26

Wow, comment section there is a true dumpster fire. That said, it seems that America is just flailing about and hoping for the best. and not even expecting the worst if the comment section is to be believed.

For those curious, a significant percentage of the commenters seem to think that this is exactly equivalent to the Stasi.

I wonder if this is due to a team hired by a competing billionaire?

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#84

Post by albntomat0 »

hippich wrote: post #81
eru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology? Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions were most probably non-binding as a constraint. Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway. (Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at that minim…

I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).

I'm not sure they would be anywhere near full occupancy even without government restriction. I can imagine a significant portion of the population self-limiting to essential activities only, regardless of the level of government restrictions.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#86

Post by davidw »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #82
davidw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This site doesn't show Texas as really having the capacity to do that effectively, but it could be wrong or a bit out of date, as much is these days even if well-intentioned. https://testandtrace.com/ Mark Cuban's article indicates that masks are not as prevalent as they ought to be.

This kind of site is a core example of why people are skeptical of the "false choice, we can open up responsibly" narrative. In practice, if a graphic designer makes a nice-looking chart where a state is red, that seems to be treated as a conclusive argument that opening up isn't responsible. The site doesn't appear to have any specific argument why Texas is wrong to think it can safely open up, just fixed numerical…

Those thresholds seem reasonable to me. The fact that so many states are "red" on the map (not ready to reopen, not the political "red") is indicative that we wasted a lot of time in the US not getting ready. This failure is going to continue to cost us billions of dollars, to say nothing of lives lost.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#87

Post by coldcode »

hippich wrote: post #81
eru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure people there have such a coherent ideology? Restaurants NOT opening when the restrictions were lifted is actually a good sign if you are interested in small government: it tells that the restrictions were most probably non-binding as a constraint. Ie they were telling people to do stuff that they would have done anyway. (Compare to eg a 0.1 dollar/h minimum wage: almost no-one would actually be at that minim…

I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).

Exactly this, restaurants rarely make big bucks unless they have huge takeout already or get multiple uses out of each table. If you have the former you are doing well without your dining room, if you don't 25% is pointless.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#88

Post by sct202 »

evmar wrote: post #13
kube-system wrote: post #4

Wow, the comments on that blog are a dumpster fire.

I know it's probably not "Russian bots", but... Two of the comments post the same CDC 2017 list, and both come from twitter accounts with 0 posts (one is 100% retweets of anti-"liberal" content). I'm never sure how plausible it is for someone to have the time to sit on twitter all day just to RT these things and then jump onto rando blogs to leave long comments like these.

Judging by my facebook, these people are probably real. There aren't a lot of them but in the last month they've been getting more vocal.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#89

Post by jonfw »

itronitron wrote: post #33

This is a nice example of private business picking up the mantle of what is ordinarily thought of as a government function. All the hostile comments (on the blog) are probably being made by people that favor small government and therefore theoretically in favor of a private company doing the survey. But apparently they don't want anyone telling them what to do.

Many of these commenters aren't against the act of testing the regulation- they're against the regulation- and they see this blog post as support towards that regulation.

Re: I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas

#90

Post by jonfw »

albntomat0 wrote: post #84
hippich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am no expert, but something to consider - in Austin a few restaurant owners said they will not reopen with 25% occupancy requirement, as it will be unprofitable. So the fact that very few businesses are open might be due to that as well (which is a direct effect of the government restriction).

I'm not sure they would be anywhere near full occupancy even without government restriction. I can imagine a significant portion of the population self-limiting to essential activities only, regardless of the level of government restrictions.

if that was true- why bother with regulation in the first place?
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