5 ms·

One of my good friends is a restaurant owner in NYC and my spouse is a doctor/surgeon in NYC. Startups aren't pummeled -- they're insulated. Restaurant owners a

One of my good friends is a restaurant owner in NYC and my spouse is a doctor/surgeon in NYC. Startups aren't pummeled -- they're insulated. Restaurant owners and doctors are pummeled. And all of you who thought incompetent federal government leadership was OK in this modern world -- you were bamboozled. You can start apologizing now.

seibelj 7y ago
But I genuinely believe all federal government leadership is incompetent - it’s not a matter of it being “OK”, that’s just the default for every administration. Which country on earth is responding to this well without resorting to authoritarian practices?
- numair 7y ago
  Denmark. Norway. Singapore. New Zealand. Taiwan. The fact of the matter is, there’s too many people in America invested in a cynical notion that we should expect the government to “fail,” which makes it easier to keep everything underfunded, which almost guarantees failure (random acts of heroism not withstanding). THAT, more than any single person, is what’s killing America. And that’s a bipartisan cancer.
  - not2b 7y ago
    No, in the US there's only one party that is explicitly anti-government, anti-expert, expecting government to fail. The other party has its own problems (its progressive and centrist factions are are war with each other, for example), but they are different problems.
  - ikeyany 7y ago
    The American people want public services to be funded, but that is not where money comes from. American politicians are far more influenced by big money than they are by their constituents.
  - makomk 7y ago
    The Singapore model for tackling the coronavirus that all the American press were blaming the American government for being too incompetent to manage doesn't even work in Singapore, as it turns out - they're going full-on lockdown now, with all non-essential businesses forced to either work from home or close down.
  - appleshore 7y ago
    Everything’s not underfunded. It’s a problem of how the bureaucracies and agencies are created.
  - vxNsr 7y ago
    Lets go down that list shall we? Denmark - shutdown everything march 14th, same week that the US started shutting down, not sure what we could emulate there except more trust in government? I live in a large very liberal city that has voted blue for the last 40 years and we still have our mayor pleading daily with ppl to follow SIP orders. Norway - See Denmark. They have a slightly stronger federal government then the US and thus were able to use that power in ways that our Fed could not. Singapore - Whatever they were trying before it all failed and they are now doing a lock down that's actually stricter than ours, also the stuff they implemented initially was draconian and would never fly here, and didn't work there in any case. New Zealand - An island the size of New Jersey with almost half as many people (5 million), they still have 1000 cases. Not a lot the US could emulate from there. Only reason NJ has so many cases now is because of its proximity to NY and a certain demographic that still refuses to listen to SIP orders (See Bnei Brak for another ex., I'm pretty ashamed). Taiwan - If you looked at what they were doing to contain this you would know why it's not practical here. 1) they have a national citizen db. 2) That db can be cross referenced with their national healthcare system, 3) which is also cross referenced with everyone at every point of entry. 4) They also used cell phone data to track people's whereabouts. Not a single one of those things is remotely possible in the US. Some are outright unconstitutional others would require bills to be passed and 3-5 years of preparation. If you think the patriot act is wrong... well the fed being able to unilaterally cross-ref different db's and track law-abiding citizens wouldn't pass muster either.
- ibero 7y ago
  i been impressed with guatemala’s overall speed and depth. they were on top of the ball in latin america by weeks, to the initial derision of many countries.
- grapehut 7y ago
  It'll be a couple more months before we can say with certainty, but I think Sweden has done an excellent job of balancing economic, life and liberty trade offs.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    I heard an interview of someone from the Swedish chamber of commerce. He said "Social distancing is part of Swedish culture." Having spent a decent amount of time in Stockholm, I don't disagree. I remember the custom on mass transit is to stay quiet and as far away from any other passenger as possible...unless there's been drinking.
    - FartyMcFarter 7y ago
      This doesn't apply to kids in schools though. If kids are a big transmission vector then not shutting down schools will have a big effect.
- pixelmonkey 7y ago
  If you don’t believe competence can exist in federal government administration, then you don’t believe in our representative democracy. If you don’t believe in that, then spare us your participation, and don’t vote. But please don’t express your lack of belief in competence by intentionally voting an incompetent leader into our most important office. This pandemic is a world-wide A/B test on the difference between competence and incompetence, and we here in NYC now have to suffer because of votes we did not cast. Indeed, in spite of millions of votes we cast, that simply did not count. The callous, purposeless, senseless disease came to us first, the lack of coordinated federal response harms us the most, but the contagion marches exponentially along — indifferently laying waste to grand life projects, solid small businesses, and urban vibrancy — and soon, it will come for us all.
  - seibelj 7y ago
    > If you don’t believe competence can exist in federal government administration, then you don’t believe in our representative democracy. I have a different idea of what the federal government should be doing than you. I want the government to be as limited as possible and focus on fundamental issues like national defense. The federal government continually fails - see Hurricane Katrina, Iraq / Afghanistan (Obama made the situation worse!), the Great Recession - these are caused because a centralized all-knowing all-powerful actor can’t fix every problem. It’s my philosophical belief. How will the pandemic be solved? The individual actions of millions people making their own localized choices. That’s how everything ultimately gets solved. You can dream of a perfect president who could wave his hands and make everything better. But it’s simply not possible.
tdfx 7y ago
If this crop of federal leadership is rotten, I'm not seeing much hope in the possible followup cohorts. The US government has effectively delegated responsibility for the crisis to state governments, and they all seem to be following the same stupid "stay in your home" model. Federal and state, their only solution has been to throw money at the problem, but that doesn't work when you've got no one around who can execute. Taking control and centralizing all testing? Still barely happening. Isolating infected people? We've got thousands of non-critical COVID-19 patients and we are sending them home to infect their families. Anyone thought to use the hundreds of thousands of vacant hotel rooms for something? But there's no self-starters here. The option of least resistance is to just tell everyone "stay home it will be fine" and hope for the best. I expected some failures in leadership but this is far beyond what I could've imagined. It's not Republican or Democrat, it's failures all down the line. No one is bringing anything to the table.
- not2b 7y ago
  Only the federal government has the ability to borrow money. States have to balance their budgets every year, and whoops, half their tax money has now vanished, because so many can't work. Delegating responsibility to state governments and simultaneously refusing to provide the needed resources is a recipe for failure. Allowing unlimited profiteering on essential supplies and forcing states to bid against each other, while national stockpiles are withheld to be used for political purposes, means it isn't going to get better. So we need to stay at home until we're able to test on a much larger scale.
  - sjg007 7y ago
    States can borrow money if they want, they are called bonds. The Feds can print money or they can sell bonds. That's the difference.
    - pasttense01 7y ago
      No. Lots of states have very strict limits on the amount of money they can borrow in their constitutions.
exolymph 7y ago
> all of you who thought incompetent federal government leadership was OK in this modern world Nobody thinks this, they just disagree with you about what constitutes competence.

seibelj 7y ago

But I genuinely believe all federal government leadership is incompetent - it’s not a matter of it being “OK”, that’s just the default for every administration. Which country on earth is responding to this well without resorting to authoritarian practices?

numair 7y ago
Denmark. Norway. Singapore. New Zealand. Taiwan. The fact of the matter is, there’s too many people in America invested in a cynical notion that we should expect the government to “fail,” which makes it easier to keep everything underfunded, which almost guarantees failure (random acts of heroism not withstanding). THAT, more than any single person, is what’s killing America. And that’s a bipartisan cancer.
- not2b 7y ago
  No, in the US there's only one party that is explicitly anti-government, anti-expert, expecting government to fail. The other party has its own problems (its progressive and centrist factions are are war with each other, for example), but they are different problems.
- ikeyany 7y ago
  The American people want public services to be funded, but that is not where money comes from. American politicians are far more influenced by big money than they are by their constituents.
- makomk 7y ago
  The Singapore model for tackling the coronavirus that all the American press were blaming the American government for being too incompetent to manage doesn't even work in Singapore, as it turns out - they're going full-on lockdown now, with all non-essential businesses forced to either work from home or close down.
- appleshore 7y ago
  Everything’s not underfunded. It’s a problem of how the bureaucracies and agencies are created.
- vxNsr 7y ago
  Lets go down that list shall we? Denmark - shutdown everything march 14th, same week that the US started shutting down, not sure what we could emulate there except more trust in government? I live in a large very liberal city that has voted blue for the last 40 years and we still have our mayor pleading daily with ppl to follow SIP orders. Norway - See Denmark. They have a slightly stronger federal government then the US and thus were able to use that power in ways that our Fed could not. Singapore - Whatever they were trying before it all failed and they are now doing a lock down that's actually stricter than ours, also the stuff they implemented initially was draconian and would never fly here, and didn't work there in any case. New Zealand - An island the size of New Jersey with almost half as many people (5 million), they still have 1000 cases. Not a lot the US could emulate from there. Only reason NJ has so many cases now is because of its proximity to NY and a certain demographic that still refuses to listen to SIP orders (See Bnei Brak for another ex., I'm pretty ashamed). Taiwan - If you looked at what they were doing to contain this you would know why it's not practical here. 1) they have a national citizen db. 2) That db can be cross referenced with their national healthcare system, 3) which is also cross referenced with everyone at every point of entry. 4) They also used cell phone data to track people's whereabouts. Not a single one of those things is remotely possible in the US. Some are outright unconstitutional others would require bills to be passed and 3-5 years of preparation. If you think the patriot act is wrong... well the fed being able to unilaterally cross-ref different db's and track law-abiding citizens wouldn't pass muster either.
ibero 7y ago
i been impressed with guatemala’s overall speed and depth. they were on top of the ball in latin america by weeks, to the initial derision of many countries.
grapehut 7y ago
It'll be a couple more months before we can say with certainty, but I think Sweden has done an excellent job of balancing economic, life and liberty trade offs.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  I heard an interview of someone from the Swedish chamber of commerce. He said "Social distancing is part of Swedish culture." Having spent a decent amount of time in Stockholm, I don't disagree. I remember the custom on mass transit is to stay quiet and as far away from any other passenger as possible...unless there's been drinking.
  - FartyMcFarter 7y ago
    This doesn't apply to kids in schools though. If kids are a big transmission vector then not shutting down schools will have a big effect.
pixelmonkey 7y ago
If you don’t believe competence can exist in federal government administration, then you don’t believe in our representative democracy. If you don’t believe in that, then spare us your participation, and don’t vote. But please don’t express your lack of belief in competence by intentionally voting an incompetent leader into our most important office. This pandemic is a world-wide A/B test on the difference between competence and incompetence, and we here in NYC now have to suffer because of votes we did not cast. Indeed, in spite of millions of votes we cast, that simply did not count. The callous, purposeless, senseless disease came to us first, the lack of coordinated federal response harms us the most, but the contagion marches exponentially along — indifferently laying waste to grand life projects, solid small businesses, and urban vibrancy — and soon, it will come for us all.
- seibelj 7y ago
  > If you don’t believe competence can exist in federal government administration, then you don’t believe in our representative democracy. I have a different idea of what the federal government should be doing than you. I want the government to be as limited as possible and focus on fundamental issues like national defense. The federal government continually fails - see Hurricane Katrina, Iraq / Afghanistan (Obama made the situation worse!), the Great Recession - these are caused because a centralized all-knowing all-powerful actor can’t fix every problem. It’s my philosophical belief. How will the pandemic be solved? The individual actions of millions people making their own localized choices. That’s how everything ultimately gets solved. You can dream of a perfect president who could wave his hands and make everything better. But it’s simply not possible.

tdfx 7y ago

If this crop of federal leadership is rotten, I'm not seeing much hope in the possible followup cohorts. The US government has effectively delegated responsibility for the crisis to state governments, and they all seem to be following the same stupid "stay in your home" model. Federal and state, their only solution has been to throw money at the problem, but that doesn't work when you've got no one around who can execute. Taking control and centralizing all testing? Still barely happening. Isolating infected people? We've got thousands of non-critical COVID-19 patients and we are sending them home to infect their families. Anyone thought to use the hundreds of thousands of vacant hotel rooms for something? But there's no self-starters here. The option of least resistance is to just tell everyone "stay home it will be fine" and hope for the best. I expected some failures in leadership but this is far beyond what I could've imagined. It's not Republican or Democrat, it's failures all down the line. No one is bringing anything to the table.

not2b 7y ago
Only the federal government has the ability to borrow money. States have to balance their budgets every year, and whoops, half their tax money has now vanished, because so many can't work. Delegating responsibility to state governments and simultaneously refusing to provide the needed resources is a recipe for failure. Allowing unlimited profiteering on essential supplies and forcing states to bid against each other, while national stockpiles are withheld to be used for political purposes, means it isn't going to get better. So we need to stay at home until we're able to test on a much larger scale.
- sjg007 7y ago
  States can borrow money if they want, they are called bonds. The Feds can print money or they can sell bonds. That's the difference.
  - pasttense01 7y ago
    No. Lots of states have very strict limits on the amount of money they can borrow in their constitutions.

exolymph 7y ago

> all of you who thought incompetent federal government leadership was OK in this modern world Nobody thinks this, they just disagree with you about what constitutes competence.