COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[spacediver]

Vital, meaning their value is high? Watch Uncle Milton again.

Precisely, they have high value.

And having a significant chunk of folks suddenly deprived of this value until the market catches up constitutes an acute harm.

A harm that is fairly easily mitigated with a few minor regulations.

Are you completely against all form of regulation? If not, then surely you'd agree that the amount of regulation should depend upon the landscape in question.

[Mark Rippetoe]

A high-value opportunity is something entrepreneurs actively seek. If folks are deprived of the commodity, they will either devalue it or pay for it. Choose wisely, right?

Or the government could just take over the business and run it for you, as they see fit (never any politics involved in this, of course), while leaving the rent, the liability, and the diminished margin to the owner.

Yeah, let's do it that way.

We are not talking about a few minor regulations, which I assure you were already in place. We are talking about the state takeover of a private business. Can you think of any examples of this occurring that turned out to be beneficial to everybody involved?

[spacediver]

A high-value opportunity is something entrepreneurs actively seek. If folks are deprived of the commodity, they will either devalue it or pay for it. Choose wisely, right?

Or the government could just take over the business and run it for you, as they see fit (never any politics involved in this, of course), while leaving the rent, the liability, and the diminished margin to the owner.

Yeah, let's do it that way.

We are not talking about a few minor regulations, which I assure you were already in place. We are talking about the state takeover of a private business. Can you think of any examples of this occurring that turned out to be beneficial to everybody involved?

I lack the historical knowledge to answer that question.

And I can't speak to the particulars of the situation in the United States. The actions of the government may well be immoral.

I'm just trying to suss out whether we agree on the underlying principles (i.e. are regulations sometimes necessary to 'fill in the gaps'?).

[Robert Santana]

Precisely, they have high value.

And having a significant chunk of folks suddenly deprived of this value until the market catches up constitutes an acute harm.

So you are saying we should make a poor decision that will surely bite us in the ass long-term to avoid short-term pain. Sounds about right

[Mark Rippetoe]

The actions of the government may well be immoral.

You may be salvageable. Can you think of a good reason that might be true?

[Kitsuma]

From March 5...

As an aside, what happens to the 2-3% mortality rate when the whole population is tested? Math happens and the mortality rate drops below 1%...perhaps even .05%.

Am I wrong? Or are the experts (CDC / Who / MSM) pretending to fail when they push the 2-3% mortality rate? Could this possibly be political?

and now, even with all the data fuckery, we see Millions of cases...small amount of death

No matter how many walls of text are posted here by "experts", the field of Epidemiology has been permanently disgraced by the actions of a few.

Fuckery. That's the parameter some of you failed to include in your analysis. And the fuckery permeates all "science" because "scientists" are for sale.

[RKC]

I saw something very interesting tonight on my way home. People out smiling and hugging in groups, taking photos, laughing (it’s graduation time at BYU). The traffic is back up to pre-crazy levels.

I think Provo just collectively decided this time out is over.

I hope they did.

[spacediver]

So you are saying we should make a poor decision that will surely bite us in the ass long-term to avoid short-term pain. Sounds about right

The poor decision being to modify regulations when the landscape changes?

Since I believe that regulations are an important and often necessary tool for the good of society, I don't agree that is necessarily a poor decision to modify regulations.

For example, we have building code regulations for a reason. Suppose that a region's risk of earthquake is suddenly understood to be much higher than previously thought, and that most buildings need to have an expensive upgrade to improve resilience against earthquakes (assume such an upgrade is possible in this thought experiment). Do we rely on the market alone as force to motivate these upgrades? If so, then why have regulations in the first place?

I'm perfectly willing to have my mind changed about the above bolded statement, and am happy to discuss.

I'll even try to steelman the other side:

"yes, in theory regulations might be a good thing. But in practice, governments aren't highly rational actors, and other interests dominate decision making. As a result, regulations are rarely commensurate with the landscape, and tend to accumulate rather than dynamically adapt to new conditions and new information. The harms associated with this outweigh the harms of not having regulations".

Are there any other considerations I should take into account?

[Dillon Spencer]

There's no reason for this demographic to be in a store right now if they are worried.

You can literally have people shop for them and wipe the stuff down and leave it on their doorstep.

Right, but as I said in my reply to Rip, that’s a much bigger burden to my family than adding a mask and gloves to the uniform a grocery store employee is already required to wear is to the employee.

Actually more than "very few" people are up in arms about this. I have multiple friends that want to move out of their states over this.

I’m not sure if you’re referring to COVID related stuff, particularly onerous regulations, or just regulations in any form. I agree that it’s absolutely possible to over regulate to the point where people may want to relocate to a less regulated locale. I specifically mentioned hardhats, steel toes, shelves that don’t collapse, and food storage standards because as far as I know those are pretty much universal, and the vast majority of people don’t have a problem with it.

Again, there seems to be a certain bare minimum of regulation most people accept, even if it’s such a bare minimum that it’s common sense. I can’t imagine too many people are clamouring to open Rotten Meats R Us, because I think we know how the market would handle that. Still, I’d also prefer that a bunch of people don’t have to get food poisoning before we decide to stop shopping at the grocery store with shitty refrigerators.

The "Public Burden" argument is the central question here. They just shut down restaurants, bars, gyms, stores, and lots of other places because we have all made the assumption that we are all responsible for everybody else's health and safety. There is no other reason to shut down a restaurant except to argue that the restaurant is responsible for contagious disease transmission. I'm not saying that the Health Department should allow dirty kitchens to poison people, although it's been my experience that the market disposes of shitty restaurants quickly and thoroughly. But the flu comes through every year, and this is the first time we have decided that owners of buildings are responsible for diseases that other people bring into the room. Again, where does this shit stop?

The market disposes of shitty restaurants quickly and thoroughly? Explain Taco Bell then Although, the fact that you acknowledge that the Health Department shouldn’t allow dirty kitchens to poison people shows that we have a bit of common ground. Now we’re back to talking about how much regulation is acceptable, rather than arguing from unrealistic extremes.

I just think we’re talking about different aspects of this. You’re saying the shutdown never should have happened, but that ship has sailed. I’m talking about what we can realistically expect to see if we’re going to get the economy reopened, and saying that gloves and masks on grocery store employees is probably the minimum public burden we can expect going forward for a while. It seems pretty fucking minimal compared to keeping restaurants, bars, gyms, stores, and lots of other places closed indefinitely.

I know there are people that want to stand by ideology on this, but I don’t think too many owners of restaurants, bars, gyms and stores are going to stand on principle if given the choice between reopening with PPE, or staying closed. It may be a bullshit choice in many people’s opinion, but it’s probably the choice we’re looking at. Getting outraged because your PPE equipped Costco employee wouldn’t touch your receipt doesn't seem helpful.

[MatthewG]

The "expert" behind the lockdown speaks up to defend his assessment, he obviously retorts Prof. Johan Giesecke view

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