[ExI] cumulative cost of shutdown

[Dave Sill]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 1:04 PM Ben via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 07/04/2021 22:51, billw wrote:
>
>  ... how many lives have been saved?  No one is shutting down things to
> ruin the economy.  Impossible to measure, I'll grant you that.  But that
> has to be the other side of the equation.  People are still catching it and
> some are dying.  Keep that in mind.  How much damage to the economy is
> worth it to save a life?  Theoretically.  Does anyone know what variables
> are being used to make these mask and shutdown decisions?  Who is measuring
> the effects?  Are they making decisions based on data? What data?  Does
> shutting down even work?   Somebody has to know these things so they can
> make recommendations.  I see none of the above in the news - just the
> actions to open up or close down.  bill w
>
> It seems obvious to me: These are political decisions, made in the same
> way that all political decisions are made. The important thing is to get
> re-elected, to maintain power. This takes precedence over everything: Human
> lives, the economy, the environment, the entire world, everything. The way
> to be re-elected is to be seen to be 'doing something'. Doing nothing is
> political suicide, because you can't get credit for doing nothing, no
> matter what the outcome. So the politicians will decide to 'get things
> done', without any regard for the actual effectiveness of the actions
> taken. If the voters see them as being decisive, they will get re-elected.
> Data doesn't come into it, calculations don't get anywhere near it.
> Recommendations are listened to then disregarded. Or not even listened to
> at all. Politicians know how effective 'knee-jerk' reactions are, and are
> experts at manipulating them for their own ends. No other explanation is
> needed.
>

Yep. All good politicians know better than to let a crisis go to waste:
they're opportunities to expand their powers while looking like they're
concerned and helping.

-Dave
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210408/bda5c881/attachment.htm>