| General > General Technical Chat |
| What is a good about Covid 19 related? |
| << < (7/25) > >> |
| IDEngineer:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on March 29, 2020, 07:18:01 pm ---My criticism isn't purely aimed at the Chinese, even though they are to blame for this pandemic. The whole world needs to improve animal welfare and hygiene. It won't stop until there's a global ban on these intensive farming practices. --- End quote --- Precisely why I said that's what really scares me. The world will have to isolate - by force - those nations that refuse to eradicate this behavior. Imposing your will on another nation doesn't generally end well for either side. |
| SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on March 29, 2020, 06:25:19 pm ---1) What I'd LIKE to be good about this incident (but have no illusions it will last for any length of time) is that it snaps humanity back to the understanding that each of us, with our families, cannot rely on "someone else" (read: government) to be our safety net. --- End quote --- I would like that too, but I'm unfortunately thinking that it will have the exact opposite effect, as people will tend to focus on the "cure" (the way we are currently handling the catastrophe - and for this, most people are currently relying on their government to provide both directions and care, and admittedly it's too late for anything else right now) rather than on the "preventive" part of things. All that people will remember in the end (well, most of them) IMO is how bad things suddenly went and how we dealt with this, rather than ponder on how we could have avoided it altogether. And I'm afraid all we will keep from this is how to prepare for the next one, rather than how to avoid the next one. |
| BravoV:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on March 29, 2020, 06:25:19 pm ---One thing that will soon become evident is that, while government "safety nets" might work to help the occasional person/family, no government can save everyone at the same time. The $2T(!) "stimulus" package just passed by the US government is about 10% of the national GDP. Think about that for a moment... the government cavalierly trying to replace 10% of the entire country's GDP. Not to make light of the situation, but from the money's point of view this isn't much different from everyone in the country taking a multi-week vacation and expecting the government to pay for it. Guess what... that money isn't "free". We are literally stealing it from the future. And many inside and outside of the government are screaming that $2T wasn't enough!!! More will be required! --- End quote --- For US adversaries, this is actually a good beginning. Its like a human body that has serious opened wound that keep bleeding out fast, instead of willingly to experience or endure the temporary pain at fixing the wound, like stitching it to stop the bleeding and etc, now the gov. just keep pumping in water to dilute the blood, while confident that its the blood pressure that need to be maintained, a.k.a. ... just print a lot-lot more money and spread it for free. Indeed this is an interesting era to watch, to be honest I didn't even expect of watching this in my life time. |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on March 29, 2020, 07:26:24 pm --- --- Quote from: Zero999 on March 29, 2020, 07:18:01 pm ---My criticism isn't purely aimed at the Chinese, even though they are to blame for this pandemic. The whole world needs to improve animal welfare and hygiene. It won't stop until there's a global ban on these intensive farming practices. --- End quote --- Precisely why I said that's what really scares me. The world will have to isolate - by force - those nations that refuse to eradicate this behavior. Imposing your will on another nation doesn't generally end well for either side. --- End quote --- What concerns me is countries such as the US will criticise China's wildlife markets, without reassessing their own intensive farming practises. Regarding the other point you made in your other post about self-sufficiency: no one in a modern society can be truly self-sufficient. We all depend on other people for something. Even if you save enough cash for a rainy day, it doesn't guarantee it will be of any use if it's wiped out by hyperinflation. Some sort of insurance is necessary although I do agree that it can only go so far. If I get sick and lose my job, I can get housing benefit to cover the mortgage, the National Health Service will treat my illness until I'm well enough to work, then I can claim jobseeker's allowance until I find a new job. This is obviously no good if everyone is sick and loses their job at the same time. |
| IDEngineer:
--- Quote from: BravoV on March 29, 2020, 07:53:34 pm ---...the gov. just keep pumping in water to dilute the blood, while confident that its the blood pressure that need to be maintained, a.k.a. ... just print a lot-lot more money and spread it for free... --- End quote --- It has to end at some point. The numbers don't lie and cannot be fooled forever. But I think today's politicians are in too deep to stop it with any sort of normal response. The debt is simply too great to repay, no generation will be willing to sacrifice that much for the excesses and bad judgement of earlier politicians. As an ever-increasing percentage of the budget goes to debt service (read: interest) there will come a time where someone's ox will get gored. There won't be any "good" options. My guess is that the US government will simply declare selective bankruptcy: Debts owed to foreign entities are suddenly null and void, with the US military to make it stick. Impossible? The only alternative would be to turn their backs on US voters upon whom politicians are dependent for their careers. Given those options I fully expect politicians to favor their constituents - and their elected positions - while hiding behind the US military. One would hope that we'd pass a balanced budget amendment as part of this action so that international trust in the USA would have some hope of rebuilding. Things were bad enough back in 2008-2009 that I thought this might happen then. We can't pull too many more rabbits out of this particular hat. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |