7 ms·

> Now we have a lot of governors issuing decrees based on emergency authorities that they’ve been using for six months. This is quite simply a conflict with our

by dx87 6y ago

> Now we have a lot of governors issuing decrees based on emergency authorities that they’ve been using for six months. This is quite simply a conflict with our basic notion of democracy. We do not have rulers, yet our governors are issuing rules purportedly carrying the weight of law with no oversight from legislature. That was my biggest issue with the whole situation in the USA. All of these emergency measures were done without any mention of timelines, all the while a vocal part of the population was saying "fuck your freedoms", and "millions of people will die if they lift the lockdown". It's like everyone forgot about the Patriot Act overnight, and doesn't realize that the government doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens. Something needed to be done, but this whole situation made me lose a lot of faith in the government and my fellow Americans.

ashtonkem 6y ago
I have never understood the demand for timelines. Pandemics do not care about calendars, and expecting our response to a pandemic to have an expiration date struck me as both folly and hubris of a lethal variety. Now if we expected our government to set conditions of the lock down ending, that would be better. Something based around the pandemic itself, such as new infections per day and test positivity would probably be best. But time? That’s not how this works.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Timelines can have milestones instead of dates, as you say. It's still a "timeline" because it's a sequence of events ordered by (indeterminate amounts of) time.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >I have never understood the demand for timelines. Pandemics do not care about calendars, and expecting our response to a pandemic to have an expiration date struck me as both folly and hubris of a lethal variety. I'm sure the legislature will have no problem forgoing a game of golf with lobbyists in order to vote to extend a bill that gives government more power. They have no problem doing that every time the Patriot Act comes back up. There's no good reason emergency measures can't have sunset clauses.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Pray tell, what powerful special interests have long-term incentives to force people to wear masks and stay out of restaurants? Like, are you actually suggesting that Big Mask and Big Pre-Cooked Meal Co. are going to take mayors or lawmakers golfing? I genuinely don't understand this theory.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      I don't think you interpreted my comment correctly. I was insulting the legislature by pointing out that they have no problem showing up and voting to curtail people's freedoms for nefarious reasons without a pandemic so there's no good reason they can't vote every few months on whether or not to continue to curtail people's freedoms to mitigate a pandemic.
      - throwawaygh 6y ago
        I see. That's not at all what I thought your comment was saying. Well, in a lot of states the legislature can do that today if they want. It's completely within state legislature's capacity to force action from municipalities, either directly or through the purse strings. Most don't want to because they're publicly supportive of shutdowns. Or because they're publicly courting anti-maskers but privately know shutdowns are necessary and therefore don't want to take responsibility.
    - ghthor 6y ago
      The mask wearing is some type of AB test by the CIA mind control team.
- dfee 6y ago
  You’re confusing a constraint of the granted power (time-duration for an emergency action within the social contract) and the constraint of the situation (time-duration of the virus). No one is arguing whether the virus is on our clock. The argument is whether we’ve granted our governments the right to indefinitely extend their emergency authorizations.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    No, I am not confusing the two. I am in fact arguing that limiting the governments powers to fight the pandemic based on time is bad, because it ties our ability to fight the pandemic to a metric that is completely unrelated to successfully fighting the pandemic.
    - showdeadtest 6y ago
      I think some would prefer standing up a more democratic process and putting time constraints on the undemocratic processes.
    - HideousKojima 6y ago
      That's why you leave it up to duly elected legislatures to decide whether or not to extend the shutdowns created in response to the initial emergency. The legislature could create a reopening plan with specific metrics to follow to determine when that should happen. But the emergency powers that continue to be wielded by executives are an usurpation of democratic rule. The legislatures can and should have formulated a proper reopening plan by May at the latest, and they could have continued to modify it as more information became available.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        That’s literally a different argument though. “After X days responsibility should transfer from the executive branch to the legislative” is completely different from “the governments ability to take X measures to stop a pandemic should be limited to Y days”. I am only responding to the latter. My fear about the former is the implicit assumption that the legislature won’t also close gyms, bars, and other businesses that a vocal minority want re opened immediately.
throwawaygh 6y ago
> doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID. Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID? What do mayors gain by forcing people to wear masks post-COVID? It's in the government's interest, as an institution, to open things up ASAP. They're hemorrhaging money. The things I'd actually worry about -- using COVID to justify suppressing protests and speech, for example -- aren't happening even now. The only way this theory makes even the remotest bit of sense is if elected officials are malevolent villains hell-bent on literally any arbitrary form of control even in cases where it undermines their own self-interest and happiness. Believe it or not, governors and mayors enjoy eating out, some go to the gym, and no one enjoys wearing masks. I do believe there's a very real danger of emergency powers being extended indefinitely in general. But not in the case of health orders related to COVID. Because the powers being exercised aren't the sort of things even the most power-hungry person would want to enforce indefinitely. There's just no motivation to do so. And, for anyone not experiencing a literal and extreme psychotic break, lots of even completely self-interested incentives to get things back to normal.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The problem is, what's post-COVID? The virus won't be eradicated any time soon, even after a vaccine arrives; most experts predict a timeline of decades to never. I doubt many mayors are supervillains who want to keep people miserable just for the sake of it - but I worry that quite a few might feel like they have to as long as cases are being detected. (Why do we still have strict TSA restrictions, even though everyone agrees they make flying miserable and everyone knows they're unreliable at actually detecting dangerous objects in luggage?)
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    Yeah sorry, you can’t equate taking your shoes off twice a year when you fly to being stuck in your f’ing house for 7 months on end because our overlords deem it so.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    > I doubt many mayors are supervillains who want to keep people miserable just for the sake of it - but I worry that quite a few might feel like they have to as long as cases are being detected. Why would they have to? It certainly wouldn't be in their electoral self-interest.
NationalPark 6y ago
Is that actually true? My state has well defined phases of reopening based on infection rates, and I searched for a handful of random states across the political spectrum and found similar plans in place. I don't really buy the power grab angle here. Most of the flack the federal government got was for explicitly _not_ doing any country-wide coordination or restriction. "Leave it to the governors". And it's hard not to find the "assault on freedom" angle disingenuous when it comes primarily from the socially conservative parts of the country that have historically worked to constrain individual rights.
- whiddershins 6y ago
  As far as NYC, all the milestones were met long ago but we still can’t do most indoor things.

by dx87 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

I have never understood the demand for timelines. Pandemics do not care about calendars, and expecting our response to a pandemic to have an expiration date struck me as both folly and hubris of a lethal variety. Now if we expected our government to set conditions of the lock down ending, that would be better. Something based around the pandemic itself, such as new infections per day and test positivity would probably be best. But time? That’s not how this works.

nitrogen 6y ago
Timelines can have milestones instead of dates, as you say. It's still a "timeline" because it's a sequence of events ordered by (indeterminate amounts of) time.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>I have never understood the demand for timelines. Pandemics do not care about calendars, and expecting our response to a pandemic to have an expiration date struck me as both folly and hubris of a lethal variety. I'm sure the legislature will have no problem forgoing a game of golf with lobbyists in order to vote to extend a bill that gives government more power. They have no problem doing that every time the Patriot Act comes back up. There's no good reason emergency measures can't have sunset clauses.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Pray tell, what powerful special interests have long-term incentives to force people to wear masks and stay out of restaurants? Like, are you actually suggesting that Big Mask and Big Pre-Cooked Meal Co. are going to take mayors or lawmakers golfing? I genuinely don't understand this theory.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    I don't think you interpreted my comment correctly. I was insulting the legislature by pointing out that they have no problem showing up and voting to curtail people's freedoms for nefarious reasons without a pandemic so there's no good reason they can't vote every few months on whether or not to continue to curtail people's freedoms to mitigate a pandemic.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      I see. That's not at all what I thought your comment was saying. Well, in a lot of states the legislature can do that today if they want. It's completely within state legislature's capacity to force action from municipalities, either directly or through the purse strings. Most don't want to because they're publicly supportive of shutdowns. Or because they're publicly courting anti-maskers but privately know shutdowns are necessary and therefore don't want to take responsibility.
  - ghthor 6y ago
    The mask wearing is some type of AB test by the CIA mind control team.
dfee 6y ago
You’re confusing a constraint of the granted power (time-duration for an emergency action within the social contract) and the constraint of the situation (time-duration of the virus). No one is arguing whether the virus is on our clock. The argument is whether we’ve granted our governments the right to indefinitely extend their emergency authorizations.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  No, I am not confusing the two. I am in fact arguing that limiting the governments powers to fight the pandemic based on time is bad, because it ties our ability to fight the pandemic to a metric that is completely unrelated to successfully fighting the pandemic.
  - showdeadtest 6y ago
    I think some would prefer standing up a more democratic process and putting time constraints on the undemocratic processes.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    That's why you leave it up to duly elected legislatures to decide whether or not to extend the shutdowns created in response to the initial emergency. The legislature could create a reopening plan with specific metrics to follow to determine when that should happen. But the emergency powers that continue to be wielded by executives are an usurpation of democratic rule. The legislatures can and should have formulated a proper reopening plan by May at the latest, and they could have continued to modify it as more information became available.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      That’s literally a different argument though. “After X days responsibility should transfer from the executive branch to the legislative” is completely different from “the governments ability to take X measures to stop a pandemic should be limited to Y days”. I am only responding to the latter. My fear about the former is the implicit assumption that the legislature won’t also close gyms, bars, and other businesses that a vocal minority want re opened immediately.

throwawaygh 6y ago

> doesn't like giving up control after whatever "emergency" situation happens I genuinely don't understand this fear re: COVID. Why would governors want keep gyms and restaurants closed post-COVID? What do mayors gain by forcing people to wear masks post-COVID? It's in the government's interest, as an institution, to open things up ASAP. They're hemorrhaging money. The things I'd actually worry about -- using COVID to justify suppressing protests and speech, for example -- aren't happening even now. The only way this theory makes even the remotest bit of sense is if elected officials are malevolent villains hell-bent on literally any arbitrary form of control even in cases where it undermines their own self-interest and happiness. Believe it or not, governors and mayors enjoy eating out, some go to the gym, and no one enjoys wearing masks. I do believe there's a very real danger of emergency powers being extended indefinitely in general. But not in the case of health orders related to COVID. Because the powers being exercised aren't the sort of things even the most power-hungry person would want to enforce indefinitely. There's just no motivation to do so. And, for anyone not experiencing a literal and extreme psychotic break, lots of even completely self-interested incentives to get things back to normal.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The problem is, what's post-COVID? The virus won't be eradicated any time soon, even after a vaccine arrives; most experts predict a timeline of decades to never. I doubt many mayors are supervillains who want to keep people miserable just for the sake of it - but I worry that quite a few might feel like they have to as long as cases are being detected. (Why do we still have strict TSA restrictions, even though everyone agrees they make flying miserable and everyone knows they're unreliable at actually detecting dangerous objects in luggage?)
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  Yeah sorry, you can’t equate taking your shoes off twice a year when you fly to being stuck in your f’ing house for 7 months on end because our overlords deem it so.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  > I doubt many mayors are supervillains who want to keep people miserable just for the sake of it - but I worry that quite a few might feel like they have to as long as cases are being detected. Why would they have to? It certainly wouldn't be in their electoral self-interest.

NationalPark 6y ago

Is that actually true? My state has well defined phases of reopening based on infection rates, and I searched for a handful of random states across the political spectrum and found similar plans in place. I don't really buy the power grab angle here. Most of the flack the federal government got was for explicitly _not_ doing any country-wide coordination or restriction. "Leave it to the governors". And it's hard not to find the "assault on freedom" angle disingenuous when it comes primarily from the socially conservative parts of the country that have historically worked to constrain individual rights.

whiddershins 6y ago
As far as NYC, all the milestones were met long ago but we still can’t do most indoor things.