Their concern, they claim, is that if America is effectively shut down for several weeks or a couple of months it will destroy our economy and plunge us into a second Great Depression.
I'm usually the person in conversations like this that points out that human life isn't infinitely valuable, that no one treats their own life as infinitely valuable, let alone anyone else's and that we have to consider life and money exchangeable at some margin in order to have a functional society.
That said, if someone is going to argue that life must be sacrificed for the sake of prosperity, I'd like to see their working. Because we don't have a lot of data on how our economy is going to handle this, so we're going to have to play it by ear. Shut things down for a while and see what happens. If the economy suffers badly we'll have to rethink the level of control involved. But we have to remember that while life isn't infinitely valuable, it his highly valuable and some economic loss to prevent loss of life makes sense, and that's before considering the economic damage from having a lot of people dead or in hospital.
But there's a lot we can do to soften the blow. I'm not a fan of large-scale government interventions, but there's a difference between amputating a gangrenous limb and sawing off people's legs at random. The big risk here is that the drop in activity becomes permanent - if people lose their ability to consume to to income loss, that will magnify the medium-term economic effects of the lockdown. So the key is to keep businesses and workers solvent in the short run so things can pick up quickly when lockdowns end. If lots of people go broke and have to cut consumption as a result, well it will be fine in the long run, but a lot a damage will be caused in the meanwhile.
Not really, nothing like this has happened recently enough for us to have decent data on it. GDP hadn't been invented yet when the 1918 pandemic happened.
I'm on leave right now, but once that ends I've been classified as essential personnel. My job is going to be working in a team to figure out what high-frequency data we can get to figure out how the economy is reacting to the lockdown.
Since predicting the economy's present is hard enough right now, It's going to be tricky to predict its future. I expect were'g going to learn some interesting things from the pandemic response, one way or the other.
It is a good thing we should all be happy about (except maybe Trump and Putin). In a civilised country Sanders would never have been allowed to run for the Democratic nomination in the first place.
The the Democratic Party was able to suppress Sanders so effectively has massively increased my estimation of their competence. If only the Republicans had been able to eliminate their opportunistic parasite as effectively.
Yeah Paradox games are unforgiving. I believe Stellaris is easier than most of the others, but that's not the same as being easy in an absolute sense.
Here's a couple of tips from someone with a few hundred hours under his belt:
1) don't overbuild your planets. Districts and buildings have an energy upkeep even when they're not being used. Also, your pops will take specialist jobs over worker jobs and once they become specialists they will resist demoting back to worker. As such, if you build lots of buildings (which usually provide specialist jobs) you can end up with your districts abandoned, choking out your raw materials.
2) Population growth is key - switch your food policy to "Nutritional Plenitude" at the start of the game (you can bring up policies with F6). It might also make sense to change your trade policy depending on whether your empire is better at making energy or consumer goods. Also, prioritise colonising planets - more planets means more pop growth.
3) Explore a lot. I build a second science ship as soon as I have the energy to hire another scientist. Buy more when you can, having 5-6 running around the galaxy is no bad thing.
New Zealand goes into complete lock-down at midnight tonight. We haven't had any outbreaks here yet (nearly all the cases we have came in from overseas), but the government's trying to get ahead of it by shutting us down early.
Most business are closed already, my local cafe was running takeaway services only yesterday, and I bought lunch since it will be at least 4 weeks before i get to do so again. I have this and next week off work (I had planned leave before all of this happened), but after that I may have to go back into the office as I have been designated essential personnel, and if our network can't handle everyone working from home I will just have to go in and work from there.
At the moment, morale seems high, the lockdown has significant popular support. I guess we'll have to see how everyone's feeling in 4 weeks.
New Zealand has had 28 cases so far, but no signs of community transmission, so we're not as locked down as the US yet. The government has just closed the borders to non-citizens/residents and everyone entering has had to self-isolate since Monday, but apart from large gatherings being banned, regular life continues as normal for now.
I organised to have the next 2 weeks off work, but since my plan is to spend that time at home, nothing much has to change there. I have been pulled into Business Continuity planning, as some of my job is considered an essential service, so if the Ministry has to shut down, I am one of about 5 people in my branch who would still be working, though remotely if at all possible I imagine.
With any luck all these precautions are going to feel like a massive overreaction, but only time will tell. Best wishes from the deepest South, I'm thinking of you all.
Note also how the one character speaks of "the 'flu", far different to how we talk about it now. This was only a decade after the Influenza Pandemic after all, and I doubt many people would have thought of the 'flu as a minor matter back then.
Stellaris is s good game for long-playing. It doesn't require manual skill and you get to tell a story about this species and empire you've created while you play a strategy game. Also the new expansion comes out on Tuesday.
That's my favourite thing about Biden. He's not seen as a great saviour, there aren't hordes of deranged Biden stans, he's just a guy and hopefully that will result in people treating him like a president and not some kind of priest-king.
Death is not the biggest risk here. Sure, it could happen (if Biden wins and serves 2 terms he'll be older than any of my grandparents lived to), but the government has a good system for dealing with a dead President that seems to work just fine. Sure, you have to worry more about the VP than you normally would, but other than that it's not too bad.
The real problem is loss of capacity. That could be dementia, but it could also be just the lack of energy and vigour older people have. President is an extremely demanding job, and I'm not convinced octogenarians will have the energy to do it properly, leading to lower quality decisions. And let's face it, I don't see a party using the 26th Amendment to remove a President unless they're actually comatose - US parties identify with their Presidents so much that any criticism of the President is seen as an attack on the party itself.
Yeah, I think "Marginal Libertarianism" is one of mine. In general I think revolution is overrated and incremental reform underrated, and taking a marginal approach to libertarianism can make the world better without having to win large-scale political battles.
The same can be said of his healthcare plans - abolishing private health insurance is not a common European practice - even New Zealand and the UK, which have state-run hospitals, still have private insurance schemes.
Sanders is not trying to replicate the neoliberalism of modern Scandinavia, he's trying to recreate something closer to pre-Thatcher Britain where the government owned much more of the economy and had massive control over what it didn't directly own. That is not a recipe for a successful society, as history has made clear.
As an outsider, the thing that I find remarkable about your parties is how strong and weak they are. Strong in that they have complete control over the electoral system, but are totally lacking any kind of party discipline.
I think X-Wing has done a lot for improving accessibility of tabletop wargames. Since it doesn't have the painting and modelling requirements of a regular wargame, it's a great gateway into the hobby.
There are certain things that social scientists get taught that physical scientists don't, because there are things you need to know when you study people that don't matter so much when you're studying electrons or strands of DNA.
One of those things is that "good" and its derivatives are slippery. In order for them to mean anything you have to establish a set of evaluative criteria and different people will have different criteria. This means that there is no such thing as objectively superior genes. Sometimes you can get a broad consensus, but there will be contentious cases.
To put it another way, selective breeding works on animals, but it works for animal breeders.
Also when "In God we Trust" was added to your currency. The 1950s was the point where the Us government got a lot more Jesus-y.
I find it interesting that, of all the things one might find objectionable about Marx and Communism, that it was atheism that the US government decided it needed to ceremonially oppose.
Brandon Sanderson noted that writing subsequent volumes of his Stormlight series was harder than he anticipated because the number of details to keep coherent explodes with each book. Now this doesn't hurt Sanderson's output because he takes a break from writing by writing something else. But I totally understand why Martin and Butcher are having trouble - We're several book into a proper story ark in the Dresden Files, and that's a whole different ball game from writing episodically.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “It’s Not Time…Yet”
I'm usually the person in conversations like this that points out that human life isn't infinitely valuable, that no one treats their own life as infinitely valuable, let alone anyone else's and that we have to consider life and money exchangeable at some margin in order to have a functional society.
That said, if someone is going to argue that life must be sacrificed for the sake of prosperity, I'd like to see their working. Because we don't have a lot of data on how our economy is going to handle this, so we're going to have to play it by ear. Shut things down for a while and see what happens. If the economy suffers badly we'll have to rethink the level of control involved. But we have to remember that while life isn't infinitely valuable, it his highly valuable and some economic loss to prevent loss of life makes sense, and that's before considering the economic damage from having a lot of people dead or in hospital.
But there's a lot we can do to soften the blow. I'm not a fan of large-scale government interventions, but there's a difference between amputating a gangrenous limb and sawing off people's legs at random. The big risk here is that the drop in activity becomes permanent - if people lose their ability to consume to to income loss, that will magnify the medium-term economic effects of the lockdown. So the key is to keep businesses and workers solvent in the short run so things can pick up quickly when lockdowns end. If lots of people go broke and have to cut consumption as a result, well it will be fine in the long run, but a lot a damage will be caused in the meanwhile.
"
For now it probably touches too closely on my job, but perhaps somewhere down the road I can do something.
"
Not really, nothing like this has happened recently enough for us to have decent data on it. GDP hadn't been invented yet when the 1918 pandemic happened.
I'm on leave right now, but once that ends I've been classified as essential personnel. My job is going to be working in a team to figure out what high-frequency data we can get to figure out how the economy is reacting to the lockdown.
Since predicting the economy's present is hard enough right now, It's going to be tricky to predict its future. I expect were'g going to learn some interesting things from the pandemic response, one way or the other.
On “Election 2020 Chapter 2: The Big Dog Emerges Thanks To A Big Choke”
It is a good thing we should all be happy about (except maybe Trump and Putin). In a civilised country Sanders would never have been allowed to run for the Democratic nomination in the first place.
The the Democratic Party was able to suppress Sanders so effectively has massively increased my estimation of their competence. If only the Republicans had been able to eliminate their opportunistic parasite as effectively.
On “Life Under Quarantine”
Yeah Paradox games are unforgiving. I believe Stellaris is easier than most of the others, but that's not the same as being easy in an absolute sense.
Here's a couple of tips from someone with a few hundred hours under his belt:
1) don't overbuild your planets. Districts and buildings have an energy upkeep even when they're not being used. Also, your pops will take specialist jobs over worker jobs and once they become specialists they will resist demoting back to worker. As such, if you build lots of buildings (which usually provide specialist jobs) you can end up with your districts abandoned, choking out your raw materials.
2) Population growth is key - switch your food policy to "Nutritional Plenitude" at the start of the game (you can bring up policies with F6). It might also make sense to change your trade policy depending on whether your empire is better at making energy or consumer goods. Also, prioritise colonising planets - more planets means more pop growth.
3) Explore a lot. I build a second science ship as soon as I have the energy to hire another scientist. Buy more when you can, having 5-6 running around the galaxy is no bad thing.
"
New Zealand goes into complete lock-down at midnight tonight. We haven't had any outbreaks here yet (nearly all the cases we have came in from overseas), but the government's trying to get ahead of it by shutting us down early.
Most business are closed already, my local cafe was running takeaway services only yesterday, and I bought lunch since it will be at least 4 weeks before i get to do so again. I have this and next week off work (I had planned leave before all of this happened), but after that I may have to go back into the office as I have been designated essential personnel, and if our network can't handle everyone working from home I will just have to go in and work from there.
At the moment, morale seems high, the lockdown has significant popular support. I guess we'll have to see how everyone's feeling in 4 weeks.
Take care everyone, and stay safe.
On “Senate Coronavirus Bill Fails, Stalemate Continues”
There's a New Zealand expression that seems pertinent here: "couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery".
On “In Which Em Goes Into Hiding”
New Zealand has had 28 cases so far, but no signs of community transmission, so we're not as locked down as the US yet. The government has just closed the borders to non-citizens/residents and everyone entering has had to self-isolate since Monday, but apart from large gatherings being banned, regular life continues as normal for now.
I organised to have the next 2 weeks off work, but since my plan is to spend that time at home, nothing much has to change there. I have been pulled into Business Continuity planning, as some of my job is considered an essential service, so if the Ministry has to shut down, I am one of about 5 people in my branch who would still be working, though remotely if at all possible I imagine.
With any luck all these precautions are going to feel like a massive overreaction, but only time will tell. Best wishes from the deepest South, I'm thinking of you all.
On “Feeling Swell”
Note also how the one character speaks of "the 'flu", far different to how we talk about it now. This was only a decade after the Influenza Pandemic after all, and I doubt many people would have thought of the 'flu as a minor matter back then.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Good games for when you’ve got a lot of time to play”
Stellaris is s good game for long-playing. It doesn't require manual skill and you get to tell a story about this species and empire you've created while you play a strategy game. Also the new expansion comes out on Tuesday.
On “Gone With the Wookie”
It's true that the way droids are treated in Star Wars is really messed up.
On “Super Tuesday Open Thread”
I'm not an American either, I'd just like to not have every news cycle filled up with whatever surreal nonsense the President is spewing forth today.
Plus, government should be boring. Politics being interesting is a sign something has gone horribly wrong.
"
That's my favourite thing about Biden. He's not seen as a great saviour, there aren't hordes of deranged Biden stans, he's just a guy and hopefully that will result in people treating him like a president and not some kind of priest-king.
On “About Last Night: Biden Dominates In South Carolina”
Death is not the biggest risk here. Sure, it could happen (if Biden wins and serves 2 terms he'll be older than any of my grandparents lived to), but the government has a good system for dealing with a dead President that seems to work just fine. Sure, you have to worry more about the VP than you normally would, but other than that it's not too bad.
The real problem is loss of capacity. That could be dementia, but it could also be just the lack of energy and vigour older people have. President is an extremely demanding job, and I'm not convinced octogenarians will have the energy to do it properly, leading to lower quality decisions. And let's face it, I don't see a party using the 26th Amendment to remove a President unless they're actually comatose - US parties identify with their Presidents so much that any criticism of the President is seen as an attack on the party itself.
On “Libertarians – Join or Die”
Yeah, I think "Marginal Libertarianism" is one of mine. In general I think revolution is overrated and incremental reform underrated, and taking a marginal approach to libertarianism can make the world better without having to win large-scale political battles.
On “The Socialism of Bernie Sanders”
The same can be said of his healthcare plans - abolishing private health insurance is not a common European practice - even New Zealand and the UK, which have state-run hospitals, still have private insurance schemes.
Sanders is not trying to replicate the neoliberalism of modern Scandinavia, he's trying to recreate something closer to pre-Thatcher Britain where the government owned much more of the economy and had massive control over what it didn't directly own. That is not a recipe for a successful society, as history has made clear.
On “From Fox News: Bernie Sanders projected to win Nevada caucuses”
As an outsider, the thing that I find remarkable about your parties is how strong and weak they are. Strong in that they have complete control over the electoral system, but are totally lacking any kind of party discipline.
On “X-Wing Miniatures Isn’t Just a Game, Its a Community”
I think X-Wing has done a lot for improving accessibility of tabletop wargames. Since it doesn't have the painting and modelling requirements of a regular wargame, it's a great gateway into the hobby.
On “Modern Game Design: The Route to Fun and The Fun of Root”
I'm still waiting for mine - one of the downsides to living down here.
"
4 players out of the box, the expansion lets you play to 6.
On “Dawkins Sticks His Foot In It…Again”
Sorry, that was a severe failure of my phone's autocorrect. That was supposed to say "eliminating genetic".
I'm on board with voluntary genetic testing, I'm on board (with some caveats) for self-directed genetic modification.
It's the "you shouldn't date" part where I start to get antsy.
"
As I said, there will be some things that have broad social consensus as being bad or good, but of course even this can be treacherous.
We're on pretty.safe ground with onatinggenetic diseases that cause death or severe impairment, but sometimes there can still be contention.
"
There are certain things that social scientists get taught that physical scientists don't, because there are things you need to know when you study people that don't matter so much when you're studying electrons or strands of DNA.
One of those things is that "good" and its derivatives are slippery. In order for them to mean anything you have to establish a set of evaluative criteria and different people will have different criteria. This means that there is no such thing as objectively superior genes. Sometimes you can get a broad consensus, but there will be contentious cases.
To put it another way, selective breeding works on animals, but it works for animal breeders.
On “Wednesday Writs: SCOTUS and Almighty God Edition”
Also when "In God we Trust" was added to your currency. The 1950s was the point where the Us government got a lot more Jesus-y.
I find it interesting that, of all the things one might find objectionable about Marx and Communism, that it was atheism that the US government decided it needed to ceremonially oppose.
On “Release Date Announced for Jim Butcher’s next book in the Harry Dresden series: Peace Talks”
Brandon Sanderson noted that writing subsequent volumes of his Stormlight series was harder than he anticipated because the number of details to keep coherent explodes with each book. Now this doesn't hurt Sanderson's output because he takes a break from writing by writing something else. But I totally understand why Martin and Butcher are having trouble - We're several book into a proper story ark in the Dresden Files, and that's a whole different ball game from writing episodically.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.