
It's Time to Act – A Response to Marc Andreessen - wglb
https://blog.coryfoy.com/2020/04/its-time-to-act-a-response-to-marc-andreessen/
======
crispinb
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, Cory is probably mostly right on
the specifics. On the other, Andreeson's article was so vapid and ignorant
it's barely worth addressing. We only talk about it because the guy's a US
ubermensch (a nation & class rapidly losing significance, to everyone's
benefit). Yet here I am commenting too I suppose.

~~~
ianai
Not properly refuting bad ideas let’s the bad idea spread.

~~~
crispinb
We seem to live in an age where comprehensively refuted ideas readily gain
adherents (not that I have an Age of Reason in mind to be particularly
nostalgic about). There can be a fine line between useful refutation and
promotion. A hard one to draw, I would accept.

------
Thorentis
I was waiting for Cory to get to the main reason he had an issue with Marc's
article, since most of his initial response was just quoting other random bits
and pieces to try and prove him wrong. And then came this sizzler:

> We’ve chosen not to build a system because we’re a racist, classist country.

And there it is. Racism is to blame. All the deaths in NYC due to
unpreparedness, lack of funding over decades, a shitty private health system,
no decent leadership from both sides of politics ... they're actually because
the US is just a racist country. The IRS? Turns out they're actually racist
for requiring a bank account to transfer money to.

Sorry. You need to do better than that.

> Or, you know, break the systemic racist, classist policies that form the
> backbone of repression throughout this country.

Oh look, there it is again. Not enough hospitals being built? That's because
we're racist. Core infrastructure falling apart? Yeah, racism. Not enough jobs
to go around? That's racist too!

This is pathetic.

~~~
ggm
Just so we're clear, you actually don't think there is wide scale systematic
institutionalized racism? Not that there are not other contributing factors,
that it doesn't exist?

~~~
tomcatfish
I do not believe the poster said that, it is more that, in the style they
quoted it, the article says `p -> q`, where q = we are racist and q = we did
not build this system.

They never claim there is not racism in the United States, only that they do
not agree that is why the system was built.

~~~
ggm
I wouldn't normally quote politico as a source, my politics don't align. That
said:

[https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/19/why-new-jerseys-
ven...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/19/why-new-jerseys-ventilator-
guidelines-may-favor-younger-whiter-patients-194094) _Lawmakers in New Jersey,
which is quickly becoming the new epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic, are
worried new emergency triage guidelines for the state’s hospitals could push
younger, whiter patients to the front of the line._

 _“We do know that it exists, institutional bias exists throughout all of
health care,” Persichilli said Wednesday_

------
samdung
I wonder if Marc Andreessen would have invested in any of the things he now
says that are in shortage. Words are cheap. By writing his essay Marc portrays
that he is interested in the greater good but when it comes to actions its all
quickbucks.

~~~
icelancer
This was my first reaction, but Tren Griffin pointed out something fairly
reasonable; VC funding is very small ($50 billion/year or so compared to the
trillions the central government spends, to say nothing of the states).

Your point is reasonable, I think, but the scale is pretty off as it relates
to VC funding vs. public spending.

~~~
ignoramous
> VC funding is very small

The money does and can make a huge difference even if it only helps with
building out a proof-of-concept? Uber took on the entrenched Taxi industry
world-wide with VC money. Zenefits did the same to the insurance industry.

The problem is, one cannot compete with the incumbents head-on, for which one
might need a gazillion dollars from the get-go, but I think one can definitely
take on them with a humble investment to the tune of a few million dollars...
Isn't that anyway the promise of nimble, innovative startups [0] -- out-
manouver large corporations? I don't see VCs balking at startups competing
squarely with a FAANG, say, for instance. Somehow, this rationale that the
government has deeper pockets seems like a dishonest excuse.

I agree public spending does trump any amount of money private investors can
conjure up, but I do not agree that they are blame-free for not moving the
needle forward, because they don't really lack ambition on-paper at least [1].

And, hey, software has been eating the world without significant public spend
for a long time. There's been talk of private money building the future [2]
for sometime, now...

/rant

[0] [https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-
quest-...](https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-quest-to-
kill-ebay-bb4992dc5020)

[1] [https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs](https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508356)

------
foogazi
> Again, this is false. FEMA and the CDC produced guidance for Pandemics over
> 10 years ago.

What’s the point of having a plan if it’s not put into action?

Reminds me of this timeless quote:

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." \- Mike Tyson

We where told we would be punched in the mouth and guidance was not enough to
prevent the damage

~~~
mjcohen
It is harder when the people who knew how to implement the plan were fired.

~~~
TMWNN
Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and
nothing else. One would think reading only that, or the Twitter thread (!) the
piece is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration
hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was
eliminated and everyone in a large DC office building was fired.

Actually reading the contemporary NBC News
[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-
bossert-t...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-
trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321) and _Washington Post_
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2018/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-
health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-
exits-abruptly/) articles the Snopes piece cites in the body, they seem to
have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council
hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related
agencies, as part of a desire to have his own hierarchical structure. Ziemer
resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was.

COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time
before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a
government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as
needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and
nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-
American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things.

You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is
somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness.

PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget" either.
[https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104](https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104)

~~~
mschuster91
> COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some
> time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a
> government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as
> needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and
> nothing else.

The USA have alerted NATO allies and Israel in mid-November (!) about
coronavirus: [https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-
dise...](https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-alerted-israel-nato-to-disease-
outbreak-in-china-in-november-report/)

The ban on China travel came two months later. Two months of inaction that
have cost a lot of lives. If it's any solace, us other NATO countries haven't
been better, but at least our leaders were not as stubborn as to claim "corona
was under control" until Feb. 24 or "[the Democrat's] new hoax" (Feb. 28) as
Trump did.

The ones who did _not_ waste any time and who actually do have a standing
pandemic response team are Asian countries like Taiwan - Taiwan is directly
adjacent to China, has a shitload of travel to China under normal
circumstances, got sidelined from the WHO thanks to Chinese pressure, yet only
422 cases with 6 deaths IN TOTAL.

That's what happens when a competent government is in action: they locked down
travels on end of december and put actual experts in charge.

What does Trump do, in contrast? Infection rates are nowhere near "under
control", and he appoints his daughter and son-in-law on a "council to re-open
America": [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2020/4/14/21220755/t...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2020/4/14/21220755/trump-council-to-reopen-america-fox-news-economy)

~~~
TMWNN
>The USA have alerted NATO allies and Israel in mid-November (!) about
coronavirus:

Yes, the US alerted allied nations of a new disease that ought to be watched.
Similar warnings went out for SARS, MERS, and Ebola, as well as (for example)
the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

>The ban on China travel came two months later. Two months of inaction that
have cost a lot of lives.

"Patient Zero" arrived in Seattle from Wuhan on January 15. At that point

* The WHO was still denying that COVID19 could be spread by person-to-person contact.

* Trump was still impeached by the House of Representatives and awaiting trial in the Senate.

What would have happened if on January 1 Trump announced the only thing that
would have prevented COVID19 from arriving in the US: A complete _and
indefinite_ shutdown of all land, sea, and air borders?[1] Trump would have
been denounced by the entire world as a racist sexist fascistNaziKKK preparing
to seize unlimited power to avoid being removed from office, using the thin
pretext of a disease that seemed only China's problem.

>"[the Democrat's] new hoax"

No. Trump called the Democrats' response to what the administration was doing
about COVID19 a hoax, consistent with his describing what led to his
impeachment as a hoax a few sentences before the above words.

[1] And before you say that that wasn't necessary, that a 14-day quarantine
would have been sufficient, a) That time period wasn't known for sure then.
Very, very little was known about the disease or SARS-CoV-2, partly because
China wasn't saying anything and WHO wasn't inclined to get China to talk. b)
A 14-day quarantine for all visitors _is_ effectively a shutdown of the
border. Very, very few people are willing to visit any country that mandates
such a thing at entrance.

~~~
drapred7
I dont think he would have been called sexist for that. Be accurate and dont
flame, especially when you get the big picture right.

~~~
TMWNN
>I dont think he would have been called sexist for that.

CNN on January 30: "Coronavirus task force another example of Trump
administration's lack of diversity"
[https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/politics/donald-trump-
coronav...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-
diversity-obama/index.html)

~~~
mschuster91
The point is, this _is_ a problem. When the task forces all end up dominated
with rich, white, old men, then the problems that specific groups of the
society face end up ignored/overlooked.

We have a similar issue in Germany at the moment - while we do have Ms. Merkel
as chancellor, the advisor group (Leopoldina) only has two women in it and no
representatives of e.g. disabled people - leading to the problem that issues
of childcare or care for disabled persons, or poor people, or people locked
down in totally inadequate cramped conditions completely lacked representation
in their latest recommendations.

In France, it's similar but worse - there have been violent explosions last
night as people literally cannot endure the enormous stress that a really
strict lockdown in cramped housing causes.

A lack of diversity in advisory groups and task forces has _real, quantifiable
and sometimes deadly_ consequences.

------
kbenson
While there are good points here, I can't help but feel the auther felt
compelled to comment negatively on every aspect of what was said, even where
it made little sense and they had to bring up u related or at best
tangentially related issues.

Should the left have to prove their models? Yes! And so should the right! They
both see outcome as intent[1], and that's not a useful way to comrpomise and
actually achieve change.

1: School funding is different for black communities because it's poorly
optimized for merit and susceptible to horrible feedback loops, not because
racist people decided it. Criminal juatice/prison reform isn't about making
life better for criminals, it's about making sure people have people have the
chance to be productive members of society, which is better for everyone
involved.

~~~
lazyasciiart
It is generally true that systems like school funding are racist in outcome
but not design - but there are a surprising number of instances where the
design actually is created with that intent. Most commonly seen these days
with a rich white suburb deciding to incorporate their own school district so
they can stop having nearby black kids attend - usually they can skate by with
some platitudes about local control but when actually on a witness stand it
doesn't hold up. [https://www.vox.com/2019/9/6/20853091/school-secession-
racia...](https://www.vox.com/2019/9/6/20853091/school-secession-racial-
segregation-louisiana-alabama)

~~~
kbenson
> usually they can skate by with some platitudes about local control but when
> actually on a witness stand it doesn't hold up.

Maybe I'm missing the portion you're looking at, but all I'm seeing this says
is that the plaintiffs argued it was about race, and the defendants didn't
have good evidence as to their reasoning why they did it. To my eyes, and
based on a lot of the information presented in the article, it is just as
likely (if not more so) that it was about class. I sincerely doubt that
district wanted to invite the poor white students from the full district any
more than the poor black ones.

What that means is that this attempted change, which would have been racist in
outcome if possibly not intent, was defeated by viewing it as racist as
intent. Was that a good thing? Maybe? I guess it depends on what else they
did.

How do you rectify the actual problem, when you assume it's people not liking
others with different skin colors? You vilify those people and try to punish
them or change them or wait for them to die or by marginalized, none of which
seem to work very well. But if they weren't actually racist, and it was more a
problem of class and poverty, _there are other solutions_ , because _in
addition_ to trying to change the people you can also try to help those in
poverty.

Distilled to a simple form, it's like seeing a white shop owner turn away a
black homeless person. You can _assume_ racism, and ostracize the shop owner.
Or you can _assume_ classism, and do the same but also try to help the
homeless person. I think in many cases racism is used as an easy way to
"resolve" a problem without addressing it at all. It exists, but it's also
intimately ties with class and poverty, and one of those is much more useful
to address at this point than the other, but it also much less likely to be
addressed.

~~~
lazyasciiart
> there are other solutions, because in addition to trying to change the
> people you can also try to help those in poverty.

Yes. That solution, to the problem of rich white people trying to stop sharing
their school funding with poor black people, is to not allow them to leave.
That's what happened. Nobody ostracized anyone and your simple form is an
invalid analogy. If anything, it would be more accurate to say that they saw a
white shop owner consistently turning away black people and took them to court
to say that black people should not be turned away.

~~~
kbenson
> That solution, to the problem of rich white people trying to stop sharing
> their school funding with poor black people, is to not allow them to leave.
> That's what happened.

But what about the solution to the problem of the rich people not wanting to
share with the poor people? What if that's a major part of the problem? Was
that addressed at all, or just swept under the rug as "racist people will be
racist, just don't let them"? Preferably, something that also addressed the
issue of poverty, or at least kept it acknowledged as part of the problem.

> If anything, it would be more accurate to say that they saw a white shop
> owner consistently turning away black people and took them to court to say
> that black people should not be turned away.

Exactly. But is that the better solution? What about the poor white person
that comes in next? Do they get turned away, because they're not black? What
about the fact that they're both still homeless?

When you identify the wrong problem, you're at risk of implementing a worse
solution. Racism is bad, and it's sometimes the case it perfectly explains
what happened, but not always, and not often entirely, but it's _convenient_
because it means nobody else has to change or do anything. We all get to point
at the bad people that make convenient scapegoats and comment about how _we_
would never do anything like that, while nothing really changes, because the
problem was only partially racism to begin with, and there's not a lot to
_change_ structurally to stop it that hasn't already happened when it is
racism.

------
metabagel
If I read this article correctly, Republicans opposed funding for more
Covid-19 testing. Why would this be a partisan issue?

“The agreement would include $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for
testing, which have been major Democratic demands.”

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/04/19/trump-
co...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/04/19/trump-coronavirus-
democrats-small-business/)

~~~
pas
Because it wasn't "us" who proposed it, but "them", and bam!, it just became
partisan. Or maybe someone asked for clarification, no one replied, and now it
seems "they" blocked it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
xupybd
> They have bank accounts, permanent addresses, internet access. We’ve chosen
> not to build a system because we’re a racist, classist country.

I don't know if this is true. Withholding aid to migrants that don't have
legal immigration status might not be the right thing to do right now. However
it need not have any racist motive. Yes it will have a strong racial bias in
it's outcome but does that make it racist?

~~~
davidgerard
> Yes it will have a strong racial bias in it's outcome but does that make it
> racist?

Functionally, yes absolutely?

If racially biased outcomes just somehow keep happening, "racist" is
absolutely a correct English word for that phenomenon.

~~~
joaomacp
The most common meaning of "racism" in conversation is "acting based on the
race of some person / group of people".

Immigration policies can (should) be discussed without taking into account
people's race, and still lead to racially-biased outcomes, simply because the
majority of immigration-seekers have a race that's different from the majority
of people in the target country.

~~~
drapred7
What's your opinion on Israel only allowing ethnic jews to immigrate? That
would meet your definition of racism.

~~~
viklove
It _is_ racism, textbook racism. They're deciding who to let in based solely
on race, that makes it racist...

~~~
xupybd
If that were true I'd agree that is racism.

I don't think this is the case. I don't think the US bases immigration policy
even partially on race.

Some nations leaders are a threat and their people are going to have a harder
time but that is not a race issue. For example a North Korean would have a
harder time than a South Korean yet they are the same race.

------
norgie
Bravo! Great response. Incredible that people like this are considered
“thought leaders” outside of very narrow fields.

------
mwerty
I could not figure out what the author's overall position is on the pandemic
response - understandable given the format.

Is the author saying we had all the tools ("ability") but we did not have the
people in positions of power that the author approves of?

~~~
dbmikus
The author is saying that we had the tools and the plans, but the system de-
incentivizes the ideal response, for a number of reasons the author claims
throughout.

People in "power that the author approves of" seems like subtext that one
would have to see on their own reading of the article. To me it seems like the
author was arguing against some aspects of capitalism and how incentives for
profit can misalign with benefits for society.

------
vijaybritto
I wanted to disagree with Marc on twitter about some of his views but for some
unknown reason he has blocked me and countless others on twitter even though
we have never interacted in anyway

~~~
loteck
This is weird, does anyone have more information on how this would happen?

~~~
larrysalibra
He blocks many people for no apparent reason. There was an article written
back in 2015. Some considering a pmarca twitter block a sign that you’ve made
it!

[https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/23/technology/marc-
andreessen-...](https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/23/technology/marc-andreessen-
block-twitter/index.html)

------
sakoht
Narratives that blame "greed" and other kinds of non-egalitarian behavior seem
to forget that humans are animals. We should recognize that expecting
organized forethought across a species, and organized ethical behavior is
expecting something never, ever, ever seen before in nature.

There are no animals, besides us, that ideate about anything except benefit to
themselves and their offspring. However "bad" we are, we are the sole species
that has spent a full single second of its existence trying to be "good"
instead of just eating and f __ing and killing our way to the next day,
possibly feeding the animal next-to us to our lovely offspring. For every
other animal, killing an adjacent creature to take what they have is exactly
is routine, and they are unapologetic.

It is great to see humanity become more impact-aware, and I have high hopes
for an even more enlightened future, but it is somewhat absurd to presume that
honesty, kindness, and altruistic thinking are somehow the baseline because
that is the way we would like it. We imagine that something is "wrong" when
they aren't happening. These are the default conditions. Every time a human
departs from "hand-to-mouth", and from rationalizing deaths of the weak is a
valiant leap from natural instincts.

By these measures, humanity's response has been unprecedented. The
coordination, however flawed, has never been seen like this in the history of
this world or any other that we have seen. It is only the grandiosity of our
fantasies about what we are that lets us tell these alternate stories.

------
rapsey
And yet medical personnel are without required medical protections.

------
roenxi
We're still mid pandemic. The error bars are tightening but there is a lot we
don't know about the disease. There has been no time to determine whether the
response was actually good or bad when considering the costs. People don't
even know what the costs are yet.

Marc Andreessen's diagnosis was a knee-jerk guess at where the problems are
and is probably wrong. Cory does a good job of pointing that out. However, if
anything makes Americans wake up to the looming strategic threat of China that
has been around for at least a decade then that is probably for the best. The
CCP are the same type of 'friend' as the Saudis.

The US hasn't been making sensible strategic decisions since at least '08\.
There is a lot of spending on wars that don't suppress rivals and a lot of
debt that isn't making the economy robust. The research advantage that America
once had is being chipped away; Huawei won't be the last time China achieves
technical dominance over US tech companies.

~~~
vkou
> There has been no time to determine whether the response was actually good
> or bad when considering the costs.

Lockdown takes us from exponential growth to linear growth. This has played
out so many times, in so many different regions, that I think it's pretty
clear as to what the response accomplished on the plus side.

You can quibble over what lockdown should look like, and which of the measures
are not necessary to stop the exponential, but it's pretty clear that the form
of it adopted in every country that has tried it... Works.

~~~
icelancer
>> Lockdown takes us from exponential growth to linear growth.

Do you have data that supports lockdown does this better than advisories?

~~~
vkou
Only one country has successfully gotten to linear growth without lockdown.
South Korea. [1] [2] [3]

Every other place has had exponential growth, that goes linear a week or two
after lockdown is in place.

That's more than enough evidence for me. We know that lockdown works. We know
that wishful thinking doesn't. All we can do is tweak the parameters of what
lockdown looks like.

[1] Except it does have a lockdown! Whoops! It banned gatherings, shut down
parks, closed borders, closed daycares, schools, sporting events, closed
public spaces, etc, etc, etc. It's a lockdown by another name.

[2] Sweeden also closed its borders, and banned large gatherings. It didn't do
most of the other things. It's currently in the exponential growth stage.

[3] Singapore is also on an exponential trajectory. Which is why it is also
shutting down.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Norway has closed schools, universities, gyms, and placed restrictions on
cafés, bars, and restaurants. But as private individuals, while encouraged to
work from home if we can, we are free to go where we please (except no
spending the night in your cabin in the mountains). Our public spaces are
open, shopping centres are open, quite a few cafés are also open.

If we leave the country we have to go into 14 days quarantine.

Our death rate per unit population (3) is a lot lower than, say the UK (23),
even though we are free to move about and they are not. So lockdown is not
always as effective as might be hoped and also not always necessary. Local
conditions mean a lot, not all populations are willing to behave responsibly
even when the law demands it, while some merely need to be told what is
necessary.

------
askafriend
This is quality, you gotta give it that.

~~~
DataGata
It literally isn't quality. It's a hate band wagoning post written by a
thought influencer for the clout.

~~~
askafriend
I mean it's a quality rant.

To be clear, I think the original post by Andreessen and this response are
both silly in their own ways.

I just find the public discourse around this very entertaining.

------
sradman
The criticism in the Cory Foy’s post takes two forms: 1. We were prepared, and
2. Preparedness can not overcome the systemic oppression and exploitation
built into western capitalist society.

I have little patience for the second point which is core to social justice
activism. I have little patience for MAGA protectionism either so I’ll address
the first point on preparedness.

We, across the globe, had varying degrees of strategic preparedness but
utterly failed with respect to the tactics and execution required to make
those strategies a reality. A good example is the CPIP: Canadian Pandemic
Influenza Preparedness guide:

[https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/flu-
influenz...](https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/flu-
influenza/canadian-pandemic-influenza-preparedness-planning-guidance-health-
sector/table-of-contents.html)

This strategy is almost perfect with a few tweaks but Canada dropped the ball
on three fronts: 1. Data Sharing, 2. Process Scaling, and 3. Communication.
The failures started with an inability to integrate Border Services data into
the plan and the system failed to anticipate the scale of isolating the peak
number of Snow Birds and March Break travellers returning back to Canada.

Strategy is a starting point but it is not the full story with respect to
COVID-19 preparedness.

------
pmiller2
This was a pretty good takedown of a pretty garbage essay, but I was
disappointed the author didn't spend more time talking about how capitalism
has failed us here. For instance, corporations are fundamentally good at one
thing: maximizing the amount of profit they can make by selling whatever it is
they sell.

This is precisely why we were scrambling for ventilators a few weeks ago: it
wouldn't have been profitable to build them a year ago, because hospitals
wouldn't buy them, because they didn't have the ability to use, store, or
maintain them.

Another example is the current situation with toilet paper. What's happening
here is not that people are pooping more than they were a few months ago. It's
just that they're doing it more at home, rather than at work. TP for home use
and TP for commercial use are different products (anyone who's pooped at work
or in a public bathroom knows this), made by different companies and using
different supply chains.

While we have enough capacity to make and ship all the TP we need right now,
what's happening is that commercial TP makers are (rightly!) not switching to
making TP for home use, because that would be really expensive for them to do.
They don't have the proper supply chain (contracts, logistics, _etc._ ) to
support it, either. End result: no TP in the stores. [0]

I saw a shower thought on Reddit that said something to the effect of "the
economy is in a bad state right now because people are only buying what they
need." While this vastly oversimplifies the issue, there is a good amount of
merit to it. Right now, most of my spending on stuff that is not rent is
literally food for myself and my dog, and the occasional item to make this
lockdown a bit more bearable. There's no way I'm spending money on anything
that isn't immediately useful or will become necessary in the near to medium
term future. And, I'm one of the lucky ones who still has their job, because I
can WFH.

OTOH, there are a number of things I hope we can learn from this lockdown.
I've already written about how I hope people can realize Keynes was right, and
we don't really have to work so damn much. [1] More importantly, though, I
hope people can realize that most of our elected representatives simply do not
have our interests in mind ( _e.g._ Trump wanting to "reopen the economy" by
Easter, in spite of all the deaths that would have caused), and start voting
in people who actually do represent them.

It's an absolute crying shame that the US doesn't have even the most basic
levels of worker protections that every country in Europe offers. So many
people are suffering right now through no fault of their own, simply because
we can't afford to let people who have lost their jobs have more than a
pittance of unemployment benefits, and a pathetic $1200 check they had to wait
to get because someone wanted their signature on them.

\---

[0]: [https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-
about...](https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-
toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0)

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901430)

------
chrisco255
Bail out money is a death march to insolvency. The unlimited helicopter money
the Fed is promising is enabling politicians to ignore fundamental, long term
consequences of the economic shutdowns. We cannot run a country or a currency
on the bail out model. Our national debt is skyrocketing to higher levels than
World War 2 (as percent of GDP). We've got an insolvency crisis fast
approaching with boomers retiring and unfunded liabilities in the dozens of
trillions. Our economy is contracting dramatically as we speak. 22 million
people are unemployed and it's week 4. Millions of businesses are going to go
bankrupt from the largest cash flow retraction in world history. The financial
contagion is not being addressed. It's the 800 pound elephant in the room, but
it will be with us much longer than the virus will.

~~~
yokaze
> Our national debt is skyrocketing to higher levels than World War 2 (as
> percent of GDP).

Funny, that you say that. What happened after WW2 with taxes and the economy?

~~~
chrisco255
It's not 1945. First of all, we had Bretton Woods agreement in 1944
establishing dollar as world reserve currency backed by gold. That of course,
went away by 1971 and modern dollar is fiat and susceptible to poor monetary
policy. We had 50% of world economy coming out of WWII as we were the only
major country not buried in ashes. We had a birth boom (the boomers now
retiring). We had tons of assets to still borrow against and we weren't
overlevereged on everything from housing to education to corporate assets,
etc. We had tons of technological and economical expansion left to experience,
like interstate highways, jet travel, spread of electricity, computing, world
trade, integration of women in work force, etc.

It's 2020. We don't have the deck stacked in our favor like we did in 1945.
We've got massive obligations and a populace that's becoming increasingly
demanding of bailouts, loan forgiveness, UBI, etc which are all untenable
given that our existing social programs are already approaching insolvency.
The government is on pace to spend half or more of GDP this year alone. Its
not clear this spending will actually stimulate economy in the same way
building interstate highways, airports, nuclear power, etc. in the 50s did.

~~~
me_me_me
I agree with your points, except of phrasing of one thing.

>populace that's becoming increasingly demanding of bailouts

Its corporations that setup that system and those are sole beneficiary of the
system. Now days you cannot default on student debt even if you are working in
completely different area.

Corpos eat up all profits in times of prosperity, and in times of crisis all
they do is cry for bailout money. Which they will promptly get, award the ceo
for their cunning skills and move on.

That is the problem, the business model of too big to fail. That is straight
out rent seeking.

And that is the problem. Bloated 'too big to fails' copros are holding nations
as hostages. Allowing them to act like they are 'too big to fails'.

> Its not clear this spending will actually stimulate economy in the same way
> building interstate highways, airports, nuclear power, etc. in the 50s did.

This is another clear example of current insanity. Building infrastructure was
the solution, it worked. It gave money to the bottom guy, who spend it locally
allowing small business to stay afloat further propping up confidence in
spending.

But now only solution is to shower fire with money in hopes that eventually it
will die down.

