5 ms·

> We're re-opening because we have to. We cannot realistically stay closed until a cure comes out. Why not? We have our own currency and have no qualms manipul

> We're re-opening because we have to. We cannot realistically stay closed until a cure comes out. Why not? We have our own currency and have no qualms manipulating it to manipulate the stock market. We can communicate with other countries. By opening up our economy we’re pointing a gun at the world. This just strikes me as a very naïve and dogmatic worldview. Where are you getting this from?

darawk 6y ago
> Why not? We have our own currency and have no qualms manipulating it to manipulate the stock market. We can communicate with other countries. People are starting to go crazy. Personally I couldn't be happier with lockdown, I love staying inside. I'd be happy to do this for the rest of my life, but almost everyone else I know is losing it. And that's not even to speak of all the people who've lost their jobs and can't make money. It seems like you are proposing that to fix the income issue we just print money indefinitely until a cure comes out, and then restart the economy. Doing something like that is not really comparable to the kind of QE that's being done in the stock market. It'd have to be done on an incredible scale, and nobody really knows what the effects of that would be on the economy. > By opening up our economy we’re pointing a gun at the world. Many countries are already open. Sweden, China, Japan, Korea. Reopening isn't pointing a gun at others, it's pointing a gun at ourselves. My point isn't that the gun isn't there. It's that we're getting shot no matter what, the only choice we have is whether we also want to lose a few million more jobs and a few trillion more dollars of GDP. > This just strikes me as a very naïve and dogmatic worldview. Where are you getting this from? I'm just looking at the outcome potentials as I see them. A cure, optimistically, is 9-12 months away. Every month we keep the economy closed, more businesses blow up, because they aren't generating revenue to meet their fixed obligations. They are firing employees, and then those employees can't make rent, and then the landlords can't make their mortgage payments, and on and on. This stuff will cascade throughout the economy and destroy it, and it gets worse the longer we wait. You can fix some of this with cash transfers, but not all of it, and the long and medium term effects of large scale cash transfers of the kind that would be necessary are not well understood. Originally the purpose of lockdown was supposed to be "flattening the curve" so as not to overwhelm the medical system with peak demand. That is and was a good goal, that we have more or less achieved. The goal of lockdown was never to just wait out the entire virus, because that's just not realistic.
- monadic2 6y ago
  Of course it’s realistic, we can still produce necessary goods at the rate we need to live. > It seems like you are proposing that to fix the income issue we just print money indefinitely until a cure comes out, and then restart the economy. Doing something like that is not really comparable to the kind of QE that's being done in the stock market. It'd have to be done on an incredible scale, and nobody really knows what the effects of that would be on the economy. At least people could know they have food and shelter. We live in a death cult. I wonder why we don’t know how to make a basic plan for the economy, hmm... oh yea we jailed those folks and hunted them down and killed them around the globe, yay freedom to die on the job or starve while rich fucks nest up in cabins with personal servants and massive stores of resources. Hell even in the last year we ran Evo Morales out of one of the greatest runs of poverty reduction in contemporary times and he was replaced with a fucking nazi. Your attitude is mask-off homicidal.
  - darawk 6y ago
    > Of course it’s realistic, we can still produce necessary goods at the rate we need to live. For a little while. But things will start to break. There are all sorts of things that can be done for a bit, that cannot be extended indefinitely. > I wonder why we don’t know how to make a basic plan for the economy, hmm... oh yea we jailed those folks and hunted them down and killed them around the globe, yay freedom to die on the job or starve while rich fucks nest up in cabins. I'm not sure what you're referring to here. This isn't an issue of planning, and it doesn't have much to do with inequality either. A major economic depression is going to hurt the poor more than the rich.
    - ozzyman700 6y ago
      >I'm not sure what you're referring to here. This isn't an issue of planning, and it doesn't have much to do with inequality either. A major economic depression is going to hurt the poor more than the rich. > it doesn't have much to do with inequality either > hurt the poor more than the rich. ...seems like the poor and rich, are quite inequal. Possibly the rich could have rigged the rules in their favor using their wealth. One could then say, that is an issue of planning, as the rich should not hold greater political sway than the majority.
makomk 6y ago
No clever currency manpulation tricks will help when the things you want to buy don't exist and no-one could sell you to them if they could. We're also seeing rioting all over the world, children aren't getting vaccinated[1], that kind of thing. Currency manipulation tricks probably can't help that either. There doesn't even seem to be much they can do about the fact that a lot of smaller businesses simply won't exist soon. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52911972 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52911972
mehrdadn 6y ago
People are starting to commit suicide at higher death rates than coronavirus deaths. This was posted to HN not too long ago.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Wait, suicide deaths are higher than coronavirus deaths? That can't possibly be true. I think you misunderstood whatever it was you read.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    I didn't mean globally, sorry if that's where your confusion was. I said "starting to" to mean it's happening in some places. > Doctors at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek say they have seen more deaths by suicide during this quarantine period than deaths from the COVID-19 virus. > "We've never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time," he said. "I mean we've seen a year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks." https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-during-pandemic-death-by/6201962/ https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-duri...
jcims 6y ago
The economy is more than dollars. There is a global supply chain of things and services that create an unbelievably complex graph of dependencies. Want your farmer to be able to put crops out? John Deere's entire supply chain needs to be operational. I have no way to vet this list but it looks perfectly reasonable to me: https://csimarket.com/stocks/suppliers_glance.php?code=DE#mobilead https://csimarket.com/stocks/suppliers_glance.php?code=DE#mo... If there's a material interruption in this network, including suppliers of all of those suppliers, John Deere can't put out equipment or new parts. No equipment and no parts? You start impacting food security. You think shits popping off now?

darawk 6y ago

> Why not? We have our own currency and have no qualms manipulating it to manipulate the stock market. We can communicate with other countries. People are starting to go crazy. Personally I couldn't be happier with lockdown, I love staying inside. I'd be happy to do this for the rest of my life, but almost everyone else I know is losing it. And that's not even to speak of all the people who've lost their jobs and can't make money. It seems like you are proposing that to fix the income issue we just print money indefinitely until a cure comes out, and then restart the economy. Doing something like that is not really comparable to the kind of QE that's being done in the stock market. It'd have to be done on an incredible scale, and nobody really knows what the effects of that would be on the economy. > By opening up our economy we’re pointing a gun at the world. Many countries are already open. Sweden, China, Japan, Korea. Reopening isn't pointing a gun at others, it's pointing a gun at ourselves. My point isn't that the gun isn't there. It's that we're getting shot no matter what, the only choice we have is whether we also want to lose a few million more jobs and a few trillion more dollars of GDP. > This just strikes me as a very naïve and dogmatic worldview. Where are you getting this from? I'm just looking at the outcome potentials as I see them. A cure, optimistically, is 9-12 months away. Every month we keep the economy closed, more businesses blow up, because they aren't generating revenue to meet their fixed obligations. They are firing employees, and then those employees can't make rent, and then the landlords can't make their mortgage payments, and on and on. This stuff will cascade throughout the economy and destroy it, and it gets worse the longer we wait. You can fix some of this with cash transfers, but not all of it, and the long and medium term effects of large scale cash transfers of the kind that would be necessary are not well understood. Originally the purpose of lockdown was supposed to be "flattening the curve" so as not to overwhelm the medical system with peak demand. That is and was a good goal, that we have more or less achieved. The goal of lockdown was never to just wait out the entire virus, because that's just not realistic.

monadic2 6y ago
Of course it’s realistic, we can still produce necessary goods at the rate we need to live. > It seems like you are proposing that to fix the income issue we just print money indefinitely until a cure comes out, and then restart the economy. Doing something like that is not really comparable to the kind of QE that's being done in the stock market. It'd have to be done on an incredible scale, and nobody really knows what the effects of that would be on the economy. At least people could know they have food and shelter. We live in a death cult. I wonder why we don’t know how to make a basic plan for the economy, hmm... oh yea we jailed those folks and hunted them down and killed them around the globe, yay freedom to die on the job or starve while rich fucks nest up in cabins with personal servants and massive stores of resources. Hell even in the last year we ran Evo Morales out of one of the greatest runs of poverty reduction in contemporary times and he was replaced with a fucking nazi. Your attitude is mask-off homicidal.
- darawk 6y ago
  > Of course it’s realistic, we can still produce necessary goods at the rate we need to live. For a little while. But things will start to break. There are all sorts of things that can be done for a bit, that cannot be extended indefinitely. > I wonder why we don’t know how to make a basic plan for the economy, hmm... oh yea we jailed those folks and hunted them down and killed them around the globe, yay freedom to die on the job or starve while rich fucks nest up in cabins. I'm not sure what you're referring to here. This isn't an issue of planning, and it doesn't have much to do with inequality either. A major economic depression is going to hurt the poor more than the rich.
  - ozzyman700 6y ago
    >I'm not sure what you're referring to here. This isn't an issue of planning, and it doesn't have much to do with inequality either. A major economic depression is going to hurt the poor more than the rich. > it doesn't have much to do with inequality either > hurt the poor more than the rich. ...seems like the poor and rich, are quite inequal. Possibly the rich could have rigged the rules in their favor using their wealth. One could then say, that is an issue of planning, as the rich should not hold greater political sway than the majority.

makomk 6y ago

No clever currency manpulation tricks will help when the things you want to buy don't exist and no-one could sell you to them if they could. We're also seeing rioting all over the world, children aren't getting vaccinated[1], that kind of thing. Currency manipulation tricks probably can't help that either. There doesn't even seem to be much they can do about the fact that a lot of smaller businesses simply won't exist soon. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52911972 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52911972

mehrdadn 6y ago

People are starting to commit suicide at higher death rates than coronavirus deaths. This was posted to HN not too long ago.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
Wait, suicide deaths are higher than coronavirus deaths? That can't possibly be true. I think you misunderstood whatever it was you read.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I didn't mean globally, sorry if that's where your confusion was. I said "starting to" to mean it's happening in some places. > Doctors at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek say they have seen more deaths by suicide during this quarantine period than deaths from the COVID-19 virus. > "We've never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time," he said. "I mean we've seen a year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks." https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-during-pandemic-death-by/6201962/ https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-duri...

jcims 6y ago

The economy is more than dollars. There is a global supply chain of things and services that create an unbelievably complex graph of dependencies. Want your farmer to be able to put crops out? John Deere's entire supply chain needs to be operational. I have no way to vet this list but it looks perfectly reasonable to me: https://csimarket.com/stocks/suppliers_glance.php?code=DE#mobilead https://csimarket.com/stocks/suppliers_glance.php?code=DE#mo... If there's a material interruption in this network, including suppliers of all of those suppliers, John Deere can't put out equipment or new parts. No equipment and no parts? You start impacting food security. You think shits popping off now?