
Volcano Gods Demand Workers - 9nGQluzmnq3M
https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/08/volcano-gods/#reopening
======
djaque
Wow, I had no idea that Ohio had a line for reporting people who don't show up
to their jobs out of fear of becoming infected [1]. It seems crazy to me that
people are being asked to choose between their life and their livelihood.

[1]
[https://secure.jfs.ohio.gov/covid-19-fraud/](https://secure.jfs.ohio.gov/covid-19-fraud/)

~~~
zanny
> people are being asked to choose between their life and their livelihood

This is practically the swan song of human history. Society was built on a
lose-lose situation for most peasants to either participate and be exploited
to death or don't and either starve or just get outright killed.

From the subsistence farmers having 95% of their crop taken by their lords so
their families can subsist on a potato each day, to the factory line workers
whose fingers would fall off from chemical exposure, to the miners who choked
on their own bile, to the soldiers who died for the conquests of robber barons
beset by greater greeds. Almost all peoples in all times were given this same
"choice".

~~~
dylan604
From time to time, those pesky peasants tend to revolt.

------
winstonewert
I dream of a world where we could discuss the complex trade offs involved in
the situation without people accusing others of just wanting to sacrifice
workers to a volcano god.

~~~
bsder
Because there is no "complex tradeoff". We should stay the hell locked down.

BUT ...

If you _REALLY_ wanted workers to go back to work, give them $2,000 per month
_WHETHER THEY ARE WORKING OR NOT_ and reopen. People can also make their own
choices as to whether they think they should go back to work.

Best of all worlds right? Republicans get to demonstrate that people really do
want to go back to work, individuals get to make the final decision thus
indicating personal liberty, and the people working and getting $2000 would
help restart the demand side of the economy.

The problem is that the Republican leaders want to _DENY_ $2,000 a month
(HAHAHAHAHA! Like anybody on unemployment is getting that ...) and instead we
have "snitch lines" to force people back to work.

"Coercion" is not a complex tradeoff, thanks.

~~~
wmeredith
Where is the $2000/month you’re talking about coming from?

------
joshe
GDP in the US is about $17 trillion per year. That's the total amount of
income we create each year. The top 1% have $25 trillion in wealth.

So if we took all the wealth of the 1% (income > $421,926/year), we would be
out of their money in less than 2 years.

Btw, the total wealth of the US is about $123.8 trillion. We would consume
that in about 7 years.

On board with redistribution, monthly $1500 checks, higher wages, unemployment
checks, paid sick leave, PPP, and all that. But people gotta work. A main goal
of policy makers right should be quickly figuring out how to get people back
to work safely.

The idea that work is a pointless volcano feeding plot is way off, work is
creating all the goods and services around you. There's no vault of gold
somewhere we can raid to live off of.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States)

~~~
jonahbenton
With respect, this is a mistaken understanding of the nature of money.

You don't ever use money up. It is always being created anew. That is by
design, it is encoded in the rules of accounting.

While it is true that having stuff requires work, there is a "vault of gold"\-
both literal and figurative- in the Federal Reserve system.

The literal gold is not what is interesting here- the value of physical assets
is largely a shared fiction- but the conceptual gold- the balance sheet- is a
tool of essentially unlimited power, capable of providing necessary liquidity
to keep most people safely home and fund essential work in a non-sacrificial
manner.

When the Kuhnian revolution comes it will be with wonder and horror at the
barbarity of a society that forced people to sacrifice for something as banal
as liquidity.

Cory's story captures- correctly, in my view- the essence of the dynamic.

------
joeyh
I'd ask why this was flagged, but it's pretty obvious why HN would not want
this particular truth spoken.

------
sandworm101
Very US-specific, exceptionalistic, arguments in this piece. The fact is that
the 1% is making the same aguments all over the world, including all the
places that have universal healthcare.

>>> They think they won't get sick, and if they do, they think they'll get
better. That's because they never had to go without medical care because they
lacked insurance or because their insurer-imposed rationing denied them the
care their doctors advised them to get, so they are less likely to have
chronic illnesses and other comorbidities.

But in canada all those workers have health care yet exactly the same
arguments are being made by business leaders. The reality is that the 1%, who
are generally older, are probably more susceptible to this disease than the
workers they hire. Rich people have heart disease. Rich people are old. Rich
people are diabetics. They don't want to see disease sweep though the lower
orders anymore than the rest of us.

~~~
evrydayhustling
Being at risk and rich is way safer than being poor and nominally healthy.
Those of us with more economic power have many ways to mitigate our risk
without losing our livelihoods, but the poor work in jobs that require
exposure. With or without public health care, the rich have less skin in the
game.

------
smitty1e
That did not seem anywhere near a balanced argument at all.

Is skepticism permissible? Do individuals retain any agency and responsibility
for balancing risk on their own?

Covid-1984, indeed.

~~~
scarmig
Note that this isn't about giving individuals the ability to balance risk on
their own. This is an action by government and employers to prevent
individuals from balancing risk on their own.

It takes away choice and is deciding for workers that the risk to them is
minimal compared to the benefit to forcing them to work.

------
JPKab
The death rate is about 10 times lower than the original estimates stated.

If you don't make stuff then there isn't stuff. People like this act as if
goods just materialize from nothing.

~~~
bwha
Ummm?

I will offer this: [https://www.businessinsider.com/us-worlds-highest-
coronaviru...](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-worlds-highest-coronavirus-
death-rate-limited-testing-2020-3)

And this that shows we are currently sitting at 6%:
[https://covidusa.net/](https://covidusa.net/)

Even if testing ramps up seems hard to imagine a world where this drops by a
factor of 10.

So what are you talking about?

~~~
dnautics
Many experts were saying a million deaths in the us.

~~~
pault
Which is why we locked down major cities to slow down the spread. We don't
know how many would have died otherwise but it would have been a lot more.
Saying that the experts who urged us to lock down to avoid millions of deaths
were wrong because we locked down and there weren't millions of deaths is a
bit odd.

~~~
dnautics
My recollection, which could be flawed, were that some experts projected
millions of deaths even with lockdown. Moreover I recall the experts not
disclaiming their predictions, which is a huge problem. The fact of the matter
is that we don't know what would have happened, and experts and policymakers
alike (IMO) are in desperate need to figuring out how to convey uncertainty
with honesty, ahead of time, not retrospectively. Treat your information
consumers with respect for their intelligence and they just might not act like
idiots.

------
pharke
We still need to apply caution but what we are doing right now is excessive.
This is a new virus, there are still a lot of unknowns but the current
situation doesn't warrant a complete shutdown. We need to protect the most
vulnerable members of our society. We need to make sure that long term care
homes have strict procedures and we owe good care to our elderly and
vulnerable. They've earned it and we're more than capable of providing it. The
facts seem to be that if your young and healthy you have little to worry
about. We should still practice good hygiene and reduce unnecessary contact
but we need to do our jobs. We need to produce the essentials that our
civilization depends on. It's not business as usual but it is a matter of
soldiering on so there will be a world to come back to.

