[ExI] next county

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, 6 Aug 2020 at 06:59, spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> > *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] next county
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> Well Dylan, what would you do?  Maybe we should have done this with the
> flu.  How do you come up with an equation or something that balances
> economic loss with loss of life?  How much is a life worth?  Of course if
> we all stayed indoors no one would die of a lightning strike, eh?    bill w
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> The uncertainty in the covid death rate is one thing, but the uncertainty
> in the numbers who caught covid and recovered without incident, or who
> never knew they had it is even greater.  Along with uncertainty in
> mortality rate we have still more uncertainty in how much damage this has
> done to the world economy.
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> In my opinion, we need to focus on coming up with a realistic model for
> how much this shutdown is harming people.  I have a tendency to
> underestimate this for I am a solitary old turd: not really a socialist at
> all.  I get along fine with people but isolation doesn’t bother me much.
> However… I have friends who are going crazy from loneliness.  I have
> friends whose lives are spinning out of control because their businesses
> are failing or their jobs are going away and they have no idea what they
> are going to do or where they will go.
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> I am retired, so I have it easy.  My bride’s job was declared essential
> and on she goes.  My son is prospering under remote learning.  So I am a
> fortunate exception.
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> But please keep this in mind: the shutdown isn’t an opportunity, it is a
> crisis.  If businesses die, we die.  It isn’t just in capitalist America,
> it is everywhere.  It really isn’t an opportunity to transform anything, or
> if so, the transformer’s fondest wish would be to transform it to back the
> way it was before they seized the opportunity.  It really is a crisis only.
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The crisis is because there is a deadly disease around, making people
reluctant to go about their normal activities. If the government ORDERED
businesses to stay open under these circumstances there would still be an
economic crisis, and perhaps an even bigger one. The experience around the
world so far is that the economies of those countries which managed to
suppress the infection rate best are recovering faster.

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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