[ExI] Unemployment

Sun Apr 5 12:49:05 UTC 2020

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat

>…Remember, those tens of millions of people may not have a job or savings or insurance or hope but they do have guns….

That should put the second amendment debates to bed for good.  Imagine what a fix we would be in if we didn’t have the guns.  The bad guys would kill us all.  Now they know to go to the much safer the community food security stations, such as the one they set up locally, first as a fallback for students, but they aren’t turning anyone away.

Plenty of the neighbors took a chance and are not armed.  But the bad guys don’t know which ones they are.

I used to do two food drives with the scouts every year.  We collected a loooootta lotta stuff, most of which perished of old age in a storage container at one of our local food banks because there were not enough takers.  Now perhaps we can freshen that up a bit.

>…There is another problem, how can congress pass any legislation if it becomes unsafe for hundreds of elderly men to meet in one room? It seems to me in that case you've got to have online virtual meeting and voting, but one of the very few things that both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agree about is they don't like that idea. But neither has offered an alternative solution.  John K Clark

I can see this going several different ways.  It might cause people to stop depending on congress (my fond hope) and focus on the community resources where the meetings continue online and help is available.  Zoom works for those.  The schools are using it successfully.  Churches not so much, because they depend on stirring emotion to get people to drop cash in the offering plate.  Without Easter services, plenty of churches may fold.  

But the city leadership meetings are continuing and it mostly works.  The public comment stuff has to be written comments only, so of course the digital divide goes from a gap to a yawning chasm: those without the equipment or inclination are shut out completely.

On the other hand, if one can attend city hall meetings from home, that brings in new participants.

We have plenty of reason to think the quarantine can transform society such that we take advantage of the technological advances that have been sitting there waiting for us for years.  One can get a ChromeBook free on loan from the local high school, equipped with a camera, microphone and even public bandwidth if one doesn’t have internet.

I am involved with the local schools.  One of our biggest challenges is getting the teachers union to settle down and work with the new system.  We also struggle to somehow get the usual idlers among the student body to get their asses in gear.  We are mostly succeeding with the teachers, mostly failing with the idlers.  The teachers union people are very nervous, even though they are still getting paid, while plenty of the locals are not.  It could be that a lot of them are not armed, hard to say.  There are food banks, but we don’t yet have gun banks.

…heeeeeeeyyyyyyyy now THERE’s an idea…

spike

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