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Meh. I’ve seen a lot of these short essays about how after the pandemic we either should not or simply will not return to the status quo. It doesn’t really do a

by soared 5y ago

Meh. I’ve seen a lot of these short essays about how after the pandemic we either should not or simply will not return to the status quo. It doesn’t really do anything to say “the economy doesn’t work” in 5 paragraphs and then say nothing else. Yes, lots of poor people are getting screwed. Some jobs don’t pay well despite the higher moral standing of directly assisting others. The environment looks pretty bad. But you can’t just say “rich people bad. New economy plz”. This essay is basically r/im14andthisisdeep

wefarrell 5y ago
At the very least we need Federally mandated sick days. My mother caught COVID at the beginning of March of 2020 from a coworker who knew her husband had it but continued to come into work out of fear of losing her job. It's crazy that it would happen again during the next pandemic. Meanwhile 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking off our shoes to get on airplanes.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > out of fear of losing her job Wait, are you saying she was actually threatened with being fired if she didn't come in sick or that she just thought that she might be? If the latter, no federal mandate would change that - I get sick days, but I feel weird taking them, like I'm getting a black mark on my employment record that will come back to haunt me later. No law can change that, that's just how our society (currently) is.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > No law can change that, that's just how our society (currently) is. Laws can change society, through propaganda. See "Click it or Ticket" campaigns, and the like. A simple PSA / Propaganda effort of "If you're sick with COVID19, stay at home. Federally mandated leave demands it", would probably go a long way. Maybe something like 'Use your sick days, they're a promised benefit of US Law', or "True Americans stay home when they're sick". (Etc. etc. I'm not good with PSA videos, but give it to some Hollywood artist and have them figure out the details, lol) The WW2 propaganda levied upon the population was incredibly epic in size and scope, and was key to building US national unity and drumming up support for the war. -------- There was that Bangladesh mask study, showing that something like 30+% of people would listen to masking advice/propaganda from religious leaders, in that 400+ village study. (200 villages as the control, 200 villages as the experiment. Found a bunch of religious leaders who would push pro-Mask statements and then ran the experiment). 10% of people wore masks before the study, 40% of the experiment-group wore masks after the study (so 30% of people were "affected"). No, that's not 100%. But changing even a fraction of the population would have huge effects.
  - wefarrell 5y ago
    A law would dissuade corporate cultures that punish workers for taking sick days. It would pave the way for class action lawsuits against companies where this type of thing is a pattern.
fileeditview 5y ago
I agree. He writes about how we lived in a dream but for me what he writes is also a dream of some sort. Just stop doing our dream-work.. and then? What do I do to provide for my family? Should we all get a patch of land and grow food for ourselves? This idea does not seem realistic or scalable. But maybe I am just misunderstanding the essay or my thoughts are just not deep enough.
- p2t2p 5y ago
  > Should we all get a patch of land and grow food for ourselves? A lot of those types would loooove to see lots of people to go back to subsistence. That is a lot of people but not them, they are way too smart for that and they’ll reluctangly agree to take the job of guiding lights for all those that went back to subsistence.
  - HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
    > A lot of those types would loooove to see lots of people to go back to subsistence. You're right. But it's crucial to understand that they don't do it themselves. They don't live the lifestyle they advocate for others. They just imagine it to be romantic.
  - phone8675309 5y ago
    Reminds me a lot of the meme of the intellectual advocating for communism thinking that they’ll have a nice cultural advisor job instead of either being shot by the thugs that seize power or forced to work 60 hours a week on a collective farm or in a shoe factory.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    I mean, everyone should know how. Subsistence is incredibly rewarding.
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      Can't think of worse occupation for me.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Did you expect a new country wise economic model to be purposed in this article? I believe the author was trying to say, "Poor people are getting screwed, some jobs dont pay well, the environment is bad, lets do something and not forget it." It is a solution? No. I don't think it is trying to be though. It's just trying to be a reminder that letting everything go back to the way it was is the easiest route forward and the quickly route to getting back on the shitty path the country has been on for the past 20 years.
- refurb 5y ago
  Ok let me try: Our current approach to curing cancer sucks and everyone should be reminded how many people die needlessly each year. Do you disagree? Of course not. Did I contribute anything worthwhile? Not really.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dTal 5y ago
  "The country"? What country is that? These issues seem pretty global.
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  Agreed. This article is pretty clear about its intent: don’t be lulled into a false sense of economic security after the pandemic and build this experience into our understanding of our system. The first step of any solution is convincing people there is a problem. Not just the obvious “things are bad,” but an understanding that these issues are systemic in a way that challenges American ideology. These articles frustrate HN because they aren’t pitching some technocratic reformism, but instead are seeding ideas about the structure of our society that need to be absorbed before we can hope to change it. I’m honestly surprised to see this pop up at all here, HN isn’t a crowd that is demographically primed to challenge the assumptions of capitalisms.
  - glogla 5y ago
    Based on what gets up and downvoted, most of people on HN are ancap or fascists. I guess it makes sense - startups are gold rush, VC's are the ones giving away shovels for portion of gold should there be any, and founders are people who either found gold or believe they will. I wonder if most of people have political outlook like this. If they do, it is both sad and comforting, because then the humanity is doomed to kill ourselves via climate change, but we would deserve it.
thanatos519 5y ago
No economy, please. The current system created artificial scarcity which kept many people poor and a few people rich. We didn't actually need to consume until the planet was ruined, but we did. Now we are all screwed because real scarcity is returning and we still don't know how to share.
- zohch 5y ago
  > The current system created artificial scarcity The current system has been responsible for creating actual abundance that has vastly improved the living conditions of the vast majority of people. Scarcity is the default state, not artificial.
  - montagg 5y ago
    Abundance for some. Built on scarcity for others.
    - EthanHeilman 5y ago
      Humanity managed to create an abundance but thus far has failed to distribute the abundance. This is not surprising and I'm very hopeful we will solve the distribution problem over the next two hundreds years. In the last hundred years we have made enormous progress to solving the distribution problem and expanding the abundance. Solving the abundance problem was the high priority as distribution was purely theoretical concern until we achieved abundance. It took us about 200,000 years develop the ideas, technology and to put the infrastructure in place to achieve post-scarcity for food and water.
  - vinceguidry 5y ago
    The 'vast majority of people' have not had their lives improved. They were, and still are, given a Squid Game-esque choice to either participate in a status-seeking game to destroy your health for someone else's comfort or exist in total squalor, dependent on other people who are destroying their health so that you can exist on the crumbs they throw your way. Capitalism seems more or less benign in affluent nations which can afford to value individual life at millions of dollars. You can rest assured that the homeless people you ignore aren't going to starve, that they'll just buy drugs with the money you'd have given them anyway. It's easy to squint your eyes and believe in the system. It's much harder to look at countries were life is much much cheaper and accept that the system is a net improver of lives rather than one of enforced stagnation. Where getting people fed, clothed and housed is a matter of politics, not logistics. Everywhere you go in the developing world, you see politics, by that I mean rich people preserving their riches, keeping the people willing to do the legwork and work out the logistics, from following through on their altruistic missions. We need to stop pretending the system designed to make people feel better about exploiting whatever they can in self-interest is the arbiter of human worth. Scarcity could go away tomorrow if the rent-seekers could just get out of the way.
drcongo 5y ago
Show me you don't know who David Graeber is without saying you don't know who David Graeber is.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  I don't know who he is/was and I don't much care who he is/was, because whoever that was doesn't change the fact that this is a low-effort communist screed like millions of other communist screeds (including Marx's own works): "bad things have happened to me, and I'm sure bad things have happened to you, so lets gang up on people who have some of the things we want and take it from them". What's infuriating is that I can sort of forgive somebody who thought this was a good idea 100 years ago, before we had 100 years of evidence that communism is catastrophic. If anybody thinks this is a good idea today, they're being willfully ignorant.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    See my other comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957611
fidesomnes 5y ago
wait until you hear the average thought process of female voters on the topic.

by soared 5y ago

wefarrell 5y ago

At the very least we need Federally mandated sick days. My mother caught COVID at the beginning of March of 2020 from a coworker who knew her husband had it but continued to come into work out of fear of losing her job. It's crazy that it would happen again during the next pandemic. Meanwhile 20 years after 9/11 we're still taking off our shoes to get on airplanes.

commandlinefan 5y ago
> out of fear of losing her job Wait, are you saying she was actually threatened with being fired if she didn't come in sick or that she just thought that she might be? If the latter, no federal mandate would change that - I get sick days, but I feel weird taking them, like I'm getting a black mark on my employment record that will come back to haunt me later. No law can change that, that's just how our society (currently) is.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > No law can change that, that's just how our society (currently) is. Laws can change society, through propaganda. See "Click it or Ticket" campaigns, and the like. A simple PSA / Propaganda effort of "If you're sick with COVID19, stay at home. Federally mandated leave demands it", would probably go a long way. Maybe something like 'Use your sick days, they're a promised benefit of US Law', or "True Americans stay home when they're sick". (Etc. etc. I'm not good with PSA videos, but give it to some Hollywood artist and have them figure out the details, lol) The WW2 propaganda levied upon the population was incredibly epic in size and scope, and was key to building US national unity and drumming up support for the war. -------- There was that Bangladesh mask study, showing that something like 30+% of people would listen to masking advice/propaganda from religious leaders, in that 400+ village study. (200 villages as the control, 200 villages as the experiment. Found a bunch of religious leaders who would push pro-Mask statements and then ran the experiment). 10% of people wore masks before the study, 40% of the experiment-group wore masks after the study (so 30% of people were "affected"). No, that's not 100%. But changing even a fraction of the population would have huge effects.
- wefarrell 5y ago
  A law would dissuade corporate cultures that punish workers for taking sick days. It would pave the way for class action lawsuits against companies where this type of thing is a pattern.

fileeditview 5y ago

I agree. He writes about how we lived in a dream but for me what he writes is also a dream of some sort. Just stop doing our dream-work.. and then? What do I do to provide for my family? Should we all get a patch of land and grow food for ourselves? This idea does not seem realistic or scalable. But maybe I am just misunderstanding the essay or my thoughts are just not deep enough.

p2t2p 5y ago
> Should we all get a patch of land and grow food for ourselves? A lot of those types would loooove to see lots of people to go back to subsistence. That is a lot of people but not them, they are way too smart for that and they’ll reluctangly agree to take the job of guiding lights for all those that went back to subsistence.
- HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
  > A lot of those types would loooove to see lots of people to go back to subsistence. You're right. But it's crucial to understand that they don't do it themselves. They don't live the lifestyle they advocate for others. They just imagine it to be romantic.
- phone8675309 5y ago
  Reminds me a lot of the meme of the intellectual advocating for communism thinking that they’ll have a nice cultural advisor job instead of either being shot by the thugs that seize power or forced to work 60 hours a week on a collective farm or in a shoe factory.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  I mean, everyone should know how. Subsistence is incredibly rewarding.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Can't think of worse occupation for me.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

Did you expect a new country wise economic model to be purposed in this article? I believe the author was trying to say, "Poor people are getting screwed, some jobs dont pay well, the environment is bad, lets do something and not forget it." It is a solution? No. I don't think it is trying to be though. It's just trying to be a reminder that letting everything go back to the way it was is the easiest route forward and the quickly route to getting back on the shitty path the country has been on for the past 20 years.

refurb 5y ago
Ok let me try: Our current approach to curing cancer sucks and everyone should be reminded how many people die needlessly each year. Do you disagree? Of course not. Did I contribute anything worthwhile? Not really.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dTal 5y ago
"The country"? What country is that? These issues seem pretty global.
jdgoesmarching 5y ago
Agreed. This article is pretty clear about its intent: don’t be lulled into a false sense of economic security after the pandemic and build this experience into our understanding of our system. The first step of any solution is convincing people there is a problem. Not just the obvious “things are bad,” but an understanding that these issues are systemic in a way that challenges American ideology. These articles frustrate HN because they aren’t pitching some technocratic reformism, but instead are seeding ideas about the structure of our society that need to be absorbed before we can hope to change it. I’m honestly surprised to see this pop up at all here, HN isn’t a crowd that is demographically primed to challenge the assumptions of capitalisms.
- glogla 5y ago
  Based on what gets up and downvoted, most of people on HN are ancap or fascists. I guess it makes sense - startups are gold rush, VC's are the ones giving away shovels for portion of gold should there be any, and founders are people who either found gold or believe they will. I wonder if most of people have political outlook like this. If they do, it is both sad and comforting, because then the humanity is doomed to kill ourselves via climate change, but we would deserve it.

thanatos519 5y ago

No economy, please. The current system created artificial scarcity which kept many people poor and a few people rich. We didn't actually need to consume until the planet was ruined, but we did. Now we are all screwed because real scarcity is returning and we still don't know how to share.

zohch 5y ago
> The current system created artificial scarcity The current system has been responsible for creating actual abundance that has vastly improved the living conditions of the vast majority of people. Scarcity is the default state, not artificial.
- montagg 5y ago
  Abundance for some. Built on scarcity for others.
  - EthanHeilman 5y ago
    Humanity managed to create an abundance but thus far has failed to distribute the abundance. This is not surprising and I'm very hopeful we will solve the distribution problem over the next two hundreds years. In the last hundred years we have made enormous progress to solving the distribution problem and expanding the abundance. Solving the abundance problem was the high priority as distribution was purely theoretical concern until we achieved abundance. It took us about 200,000 years develop the ideas, technology and to put the infrastructure in place to achieve post-scarcity for food and water.
- vinceguidry 5y ago
  The 'vast majority of people' have not had their lives improved. They were, and still are, given a Squid Game-esque choice to either participate in a status-seeking game to destroy your health for someone else's comfort or exist in total squalor, dependent on other people who are destroying their health so that you can exist on the crumbs they throw your way. Capitalism seems more or less benign in affluent nations which can afford to value individual life at millions of dollars. You can rest assured that the homeless people you ignore aren't going to starve, that they'll just buy drugs with the money you'd have given them anyway. It's easy to squint your eyes and believe in the system. It's much harder to look at countries were life is much much cheaper and accept that the system is a net improver of lives rather than one of enforced stagnation. Where getting people fed, clothed and housed is a matter of politics, not logistics. Everywhere you go in the developing world, you see politics, by that I mean rich people preserving their riches, keeping the people willing to do the legwork and work out the logistics, from following through on their altruistic missions. We need to stop pretending the system designed to make people feel better about exploiting whatever they can in self-interest is the arbiter of human worth. Scarcity could go away tomorrow if the rent-seekers could just get out of the way.

drcongo 5y ago

Show me you don't know who David Graeber is without saying you don't know who David Graeber is.

commandlinefan 5y ago
I don't know who he is/was and I don't much care who he is/was, because whoever that was doesn't change the fact that this is a low-effort communist screed like millions of other communist screeds (including Marx's own works): "bad things have happened to me, and I'm sure bad things have happened to you, so lets gang up on people who have some of the things we want and take it from them". What's infuriating is that I can sort of forgive somebody who thought this was a good idea 100 years ago, before we had 100 years of evidence that communism is catastrophic. If anybody thinks this is a good idea today, they're being willfully ignorant.
- drcongo 5y ago
  See my other comment in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957611

fidesomnes 5y ago

wait until you hear the average thought process of female voters on the topic.