COVID-19

[Hair Warrior]

Words

I didn’t quote Ayn Rand, and I specifically said it’s good for governments to make sure restaurants don’t have rats/mold. And I don’t see the Thunderdome anywhere so I don’t know what you wrote.

But I also believe in personal responsibility over red tape. If you are in a county where all nail salons and restaurants are ostensibly “licensed” but the nail salon or taqueria you see on the corner looks shady AF, are you or your family still going to do business there? Heck no. And if you get sick, is the county at fault, and are they going to make you well again? No and no. So what is the point of the county license, other than a barrier to entry.

When 7 year olds’ lemonade stands selling $0.25 cups are getting shut down within an hour of opening, something is horribly wrong, and the authorities are focusing their finite attention on the wrong things.

Answer this: Would you rather have a person get a $100/day check from the government for doing nothing, or $100/day profit for providing a good or service that someone actually wants?

 

[Hair Warrior]

China falsely telling Arab world U.S. source for coronavirus: MEMRI

A media research group has released the transcript of a China-produced Arabic-language news report to show how Beijing’s propaganda machine is blaming the coronavirus on America.

m.washingtontimes.com

 

[HAL Pilot]

 

[Pags]

I didn’t quote Ayn Rand, and I specifically said it’s good for governments to make sure restaurants don’t have rats/mold. And I don’t see the Thunderdome anywhere so I don’t know what you wrote.

But I also believe in personal responsibility over red tape. If you are in a county where all nail salons and restaurants are ostensibly “licensed” but the nail salon or taqueria you see on the corner looks shady AF, are you or your family still going to do business there? Heck no. And if you get sick, is the county at fault, and are they going to make you well again? No and no. So what is the point of the county license, other than a barrier to entry.

When 7 year olds’ lemonade stands selling $0.25 cups are getting shut down within an hour of opening, something is horribly wrong, and the authorities are focusing their finite attention on the wrong things.

Answer this: Would you rather have a person get a $100/day check from the government for doing nothing, or $100/day profit for providing a good or service that someone actually wants?

I never said you quoted Ayn Rand.

To your other point there are standards and then there's quality. I've eaten at plenty of "shady" tacquerias and they've all been pretty good. Hence the popularity of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. Again, the point of the licence is so that I have a level of confidence that I won't get food poisoning and that the restaurant is clean.

As to kids getting fined I think you're anchoring one or two cases at the far end of the spectrum to prove your point. A few cases of county inspectors being dicks isn't a good reason to throw out the whole system.

As to your final question, the answer is "it depends" and there's no reason it has to be strictly a "OR" question. Normally I'd say everyone should get to work but that there should be some level of societal safety net that balances the providing unemployment and some level of assistance to the disadvantaged while providing an incentive or method to better themselves. That way our towns don't end up looking like Dickensian London or Paris with "Les Miserable" literally living off the scraps. But with a pandemic going on I'll switch my answer over to do nothing for a limited time to help the greater good.

 

[Spekkio]

I think the big problem is that no one at the state and local level have the right resources to go through every bit of life and figure out what can and can't be done. How many people should be allowed in the barber shop? Does the barber need an n95? Do I?

That's the wrong question and it speaks to the mission creep of the economic shutdown.

What is the rate of serious cases vs available doctors and nurses? That's the question to answer. In most places, it's substantially below capacity.

Small risk mitigation measures like wearing masks is easy. Keeping large entertainment gatherings to a minimum for a couple more months is no big deal. No issue with doing it and seeing what happens. We have to accept that there's going to be trial and error here, so phase it so we can rapidly go back... the whole shutdown was an experiment that didn't work in NYC. But anyone who's ever rode a NY subway knows that its challenge to implement social distancing when 10 million people pack into a few small islands is unique.

 

[Randy Daytona]

Unfortunately that doesn't mean a whole lot of jobs will come with them, even if they do move back 'home'. Manufacturing has gotten a lot more efficient and less manual-intensive in many industries over the years, even if those industries had never left the number of folks employed by them will still have dropped precipitously over the years.

I agree with the above, however the direction I was aiming was that globalization and extensive, complicated supply chains may break down into regional supply chains. For example, a substantial amount of industry could move out of China to locations such as Mexico, Vietnam, etc. Although there will be some positive effects for the US economy, there is the possibility it could be a much larger negative for the Chinese economy. In addition, individual nations may look again and consider subsidizing manufactured items critical to national security rather than rely on the economists who preach Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage.

 

[SlickAg]

A Second Round of Coronavirus Layoffs Has Begun. Few Are Safe.

People who thought their jobs were secure, including white-collar professionals, increasingly face unemployment as the pandemic causes economic pain across industries.

www.wsj.com

 

[Hair Warrior]

I agree with the above, however the direction I was aiming was that globalization and extensive, complicated supply chains may break down into regional supply chains. For example, a substantial amount of industry could move out of China to locations such as Mexico, Vietnam, etc. Although there will be some positive effects for the US economy, there is the possibility it could be a much larger negative for the Chinese economy. In addition, individual nations may look again and consider subsidizing manufactured items critical to national security rather than rely on the economists who preach Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage.

Shack.

 

[Jim123]

In addition, individual nations may look again and consider subsidizing manufactured items critical to national security rather than rely on the economists who preach Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage.

That and public thinking on which items are critical to national security has a much wider meaning today than it was just two months ago- not only in the United States, but in every country that's been hit by COVID (exactly as you said, "individual nations may look again and consider...").

 

[Hair Warrior]

I never said you quoted Ayn Rand.

To your other point there are standards and then there's quality. I've eaten at plenty of "shady" tacquerias and they've all been pretty good. Hence the popularity of Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives. Again, the point of the licence is so that I have a level of confidence that I won't get food poisoning and that the restaurant is clean.

As to kids getting fined I think you're anchoring one or two cases at the far end of the spectrum to prove your point. A few cases of county inspectors being dicks isn't a good reason to throw out the whole system.

As to your final question, the answer is "it depends" and there's no reason it has to be strictly a "OR" question. Normally I'd say everyone should get to work but that there should be some level of societal safety net that balances the providing unemployment and some level of assistance to the disadvantaged while providing an incentive or method to better themselves. That way our towns don't end up looking like Dickensian London or Paris with "Les Miserable" literally living off the scraps. But with a pandemic going on I'll switch my answer over to do nothing for a limited time to help the greater good.

Roger. I think we can both agree that we hope government regulators can become more agile and adaptive to the needs of entrepreneurs and their employees, without degrading the quality of the government services that are necessary. If we could can have both safety/oversight, and also new agility for the free market to thrive and recover from this recession, that's the ideal.

Unfortunately, I often see a knee-jerk tendency for state and municipal authorities to block and shut down anything new or disruptive, as we all saw when Uber/Lyft first hit the scene. Uber/Lyft are obviously here to stay, and they now fill an invaluable role in the economy.

This coronavirus shutdown is going to disrupt industries because >20M hard-working Americans lost their jobs and need to find new income streams to support their families. Let's hope local governments make it a priority to keep pace with these abrupt economic shifts, and not force the eventual market adaptions to slow down to the speed-of-government.

 

[HAL Pilot]

 

[ABMD]

View attachment 25288

I agree, Internet (for work) and Sweatpants (also for work) are at the top of my list. My car and shaving are at the bottom.

 

[Hair Warrior]

https;//www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/world/new-evidence-links-carole-baskins-to-coronavirus-outbreak/index.html

 

[taxi1]

So will this be the new doubling rate, once per week, resulting in 40K total next Monday? Or will it continue to bend downward and "go linear" (another 11K lost this week, 30K total)? Looks like it will flatten, so number of new cases each week will be fixed.

OK, it about doubled in the week, so 40K total with 18K lost over the last week. Well below the twice-weekly that kicked off the fun. If flattening, we could reasonably expect another 18-20K this week (no doubling), home run if less than that. I genuinely worry about a super spreader event at the protest rallies, but we won't see the impact of that for another two weeks or so, and being outside hopefully disperses the virus.

 

[Jim123]

I genuinely worry about a super spreader event at the protest rallies, but we won't see the impact of that for another two weeks or so, and being outside hopefully disperses the virus.

I thought for sure there would be some super spreader events two weeks down the road from when the Florida Governor announced the state lockdown (which was more like a lot of recommendations). The idiots came out of the woodwork within minutes and bumrushed the grocery stores, thinking those would be closed (WTF, people?!?). Two weeks and now almost three weeks later, there don't seem to have been any spikes.

The protest rallies make part of me smile that so many people are participating in a free society (some of the state and local governments have done arbitrary stuff that I find detestable- or worse), but those rallies are also infiltrated by a lot of idiots- the ones crowding in shoulder to shoulder, the ones strapping ARs, or the ones who were unwittingly blocking the hospitals in Lansing (again... WTF, people?!?).