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Worth repeating for those who aren't paying attention. The virus has affected the economy. There was no escape from that. With no enforced closures people, for

by harry8 6y ago

Worth repeating for those who aren't paying attention. The virus has affected the economy. There was no escape from that. With no enforced closures people, for example, aren't going to restaurants because of the pile of bodies. Sociapaths may wish everyone ignored the piling up of the bodies and acted exactly as they would have without all those dead bodies but that's simply not how humans behave. Some fantasy that letting everything rip would have had the economy unaffected is just delusional. So now we look at how to minimise the effect on the economy. (1) overreact early. (2) testing and contact tracing (3) quarantine (4) mask wearing. Taiwan. South Korea. Japan. Hong Kong. These are the models worth understanding. The government does national defense. This fight against the virus that is killing us is national defense. The problem was hopelessly incompetent government. Becuase, as a libertarian, this is exactly when you need the government. There's literally no other option. It's the same as property rights enforcement. It's the same as pollution control. As a libertarain I do not feel I have the right to discharge firearms at random in the street. I do not feel the laws against and punishments for doing so infringe on libertarian principles at all. And so it goes for steps 1 through 4. Don't harm others for your own comfort. The end. Wear your mask when going inside anywhere that isn't your home like a genuine libertarian. This way we minimise the economic cost of the virus. This way we save the most lives - more important to me. (And maybe consider that being libertarian has nothing to say about being sociopathic, that's kind of the point, but we can choose not to be as well. That pile of bodies, each of them was loved and is a person who is missed. Taring libertarians as not caring about that at all s^%ts me. There are socialists who also don't care and irk me similarly).

twblalock 6y ago
There is a big problem with the argument that the virus would have destroyed the economy no matter what — look at how people are behaving in the places that have reopened. They were behaving that way before the lockdowns too. Restaurants are packed. People just don’t want to hide in their homes from this. If they had been doing that, the lockdown orders would have been unnecessary and superfluous. It’s fair to say that the virus would have damaged the economy, but it’s just not reasonable to believe that damage would have been as bad as, or worse than, the damage caused by the virus plus the lockdowns.
- harry8 6y ago
  Taiwan did not lockdown and minimised the economic impact by not acting like a pack of muppets in office.

by harry8 6y ago

twblalock 6y ago

There is a big problem with the argument that the virus would have destroyed the economy no matter what — look at how people are behaving in the places that have reopened. They were behaving that way before the lockdowns too. Restaurants are packed. People just don’t want to hide in their homes from this. If they had been doing that, the lockdown orders would have been unnecessary and superfluous. It’s fair to say that the virus would have damaged the economy, but it’s just not reasonable to believe that damage would have been as bad as, or worse than, the damage caused by the virus plus the lockdowns.

harry8 6y ago
Taiwan did not lockdown and minimised the economic impact by not acting like a pack of muppets in office.