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On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
This is a very charged discussion. Hospitals have to make this kind of considerations all the time when deciding when to go for risky and expensive operations for older patients for example. My grandfather died healthy at 70 for a condition he would have gotten operated for if he got diagnosed some years later.
The pandemic unfortunately forces us to make similar considerations, but there is more to it than lives vs money. Other values like security, fear, freedom, employment, culture, education or other health issues can also be important parts of the equation.
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On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark.
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On May 14 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark.
No. It would literally be a nightmare. Like someone previously said, hospitals are already making those choices in red spots. They will save the younger patients over the older.
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On May 14 2020 04:37 PhoenixVoid wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2020 02:40 farvacola wrote:On May 14 2020 01:52 PhoenixVoid wrote:There were two special elections for House seats yesterday and one went Republican and the other is showing the Republican candidate in a strong lead. The Wisconsin one was fairly expected because it went hard for Trump in 2016, but it was a long-time Democrat stronghold before that. The California one previously held by Katie Hill is a mixed bag that was a traditional Republican stronghold, went to Clinton by a solid margin and got turned blue in the 2018 midterms, but is looking like it's going back red for now. I read on 538 that if these two seats went for the Democrats it would be a sign for a blue wave incoming in 2020, but with one already gone and the other looking very unlikely, I think we can cross that out. (to be more precise, that specific sign, not the entire idea of a blue wave in 2020) One could say it's an omen for how close or poorly the presidential election will go for the Democrats in November because things like Trump's pandemic response and the economy loomed over the ballots, but then again, they will be going up for re-election again this fall, so it might just be a dress rehearsal and neither party took the special elections particularly seriously. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-california/republican-leads-in-california-vote-to-replace-u-s-house-member-who-quit-after-scandal-idUSKBN22O1DYOn May 14 2020 02:00 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Well, it is kind of difficult to get out and shake hands with the people because of the pandemic. And bombarding people with ads during the quarantine will only turn them off quicker. This is how the campaign season for this election year will go. Remote campaigning. Once people can congregate in groups and the like, I expect outcomes to be a bit different. It's shaping up to be an interesting campaign season. I wouldn't take yesterday's results as a solid bellwether for 2020, but it does preview some elements I expect to show up more in November like a reliance on remote campaigning as you said,, mail-in ballots and tailoring a message that is appropriate to the time. I don't like the results, but I think you're right to point out that there are a significant number of complicating factors such that they don't really bear a predictive weight. They weren't good for Democrats, for sure, but only in a marginal way. Both races were leaning Republican and a bit of a long shot to take, so yeah, not a real shocker or a sign the Democrats are going to be losing California or Wisconsin (eh, maybe Wisconsin). The Wisconsin seat is the kind of rural area where Trump swept over in the former Blue Wall and doesn't seem to be losing, and the California one was a reliable Republican seat, with the Democrat candidate winning usually within close margins. A nice pick-up from the midterms for sure, but an unsteady one. I'd think going to the polls for both president and congressperson will increase turn-out and general attention versus a relatively inconsequential special election in a pandemic lockdown. I guess if there's anything to learn, I'd say that rural seats in the former Blue Wall won't be converting back to the Democrats any time soon because Trump still has a stranglehold over them, and some of the House seats taken during the midterms in the blue wave can't be taken for granted.
I mean for CA the 2018 winner was a progressive who supported M4A and other policies and comfortably won against an incumbent. The 2020 Dem candidate was a centrist who didn't support things like M4A and lost hard.
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Thank you all for your responses, I have come away feeling more learned than before and I agree that it would not be a good idea. I think I just needed someone who wasn't wrapped up in this class to say that.
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On May 14 2020 22:49 Erasme wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark. No. It would literally be a nightmare. Like someone previously said, hospitals are already making those choices in red spots. They will save the younger patients over the older.
Hospitals make these decisions all the time, and not just hospitals but literally pretty much every allocation of resources is about nothing else. It's rarely as binary as death and life, but when we allocate money to drug research we prioritize some lives over others. When we send military or police in regions or don't send them. When we decide where to spend how much on education, and so on. When we decide how much we spend on combatting air pollution, or the reduction of domestic violence, or what measures we do or don't take to prevent traffic deaths, and so on.
Trade-offs between the value of life and other values like freedom or questions of allocation are made every single day. If this weren't the case we'd all be locked in or houses all the time and we'd spend whatever money we have on extending the lives of everyone by months. Of course, nobody actually thinks this is reasonable.
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On May 15 2020 05:45 JimmiC wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On May 15 2020 05:06 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 04:12 IgnE wrote:On May 15 2020 02:46 JimmiC wrote:
To the bolded part, my point is not that exploitation does not exist, just that it does not automatically exist. I personally know many business owners who sell and/or close their businesses to go back to working for someone because they did not like the pressure and risk of ownership. I bet you also know people like this. There seems to be a misconception that all owners of businesses are doing fantastic and making loads of money off the backs of their under paid staff. This is simply not true in every case, probably not even in most though I do not have the statistics. Is the starbucks CEO making way too much money off the backs of his labour, yes. He makes an absorbent amount of money with little to no risk. Is Linda who pulls in 30k a year while running and owning her small town coffee shop and paying her employs 17- 20 dollar's an hour which works out to about the same money with none of the risk or hassles of ownership exploiting her staff? Certainly not.
This is not an all or nothing kind of proposition. There is actual fair business owners and there also are many many falling businesses where the labour is benefiting more from their work than the owner is. No, the point is that it does automatically exist in any successful business. Any time a business makes a profit it is producing surplus value, that is, it is paying less for its inputs than it gets for its outputs. That is essentially the definition of exploitation: a relation of waged labor in which the laborer produces more value than they receive in return. That is what makes labor power a special commodity in Marxist theory: it is bought and sold at a price underneath its value when exercised. What you are arguing is that exploitation can be fair. That is a totally different proposition. What you are also arguing is that not all businesses are successful. We might interpret your example where Linda "pulls in 30k a year" in a couple of different ways: 1) Linda is a bad business owner or 2) the coffee shop is a non-profit in which people who buy coffee are buying a service/product that Linda offers them at no-profit. In either case the fact that there is "no exploitation" according to you is superseded by the fact that you've offered an example that is not a capitalist business. Again, an entirely different proposition than the fact that "capitalism" necessarily requires "exploitation" in the Marxian structuralist sense. Take note though, that once Linda starts to make a profit that accumulates, and that allows her to reinvest her profit for further returns on capital, the business becomes "successful" and a relation of exploitation exists. Well now you are adding successful business that was not there original in Biff's example. You adding it changes the equation because you are taking the risk factor out. I agree that without risk their should be no expectation of reward. And you are right that I am suggesting that their is a fair amount of money that can be brought back by the person who puts their capital at risk. Ideally everyone would put in the same capital at risk, but that is rarely the case. Neb who argues for Co-ops deal with profit in many different ways some pay it back to customers based on how much they have spent, others do it other ways. My understanding based on Neb's feelings towards co-ops that he would not consider the workers exploited in this situation, but by your definition they would be as they would not be getting the full value of their labour. Generally I think it pointless to get into arguments about the semantics. There iare also many reasons business fail outside of a person being a bad business owner. Look at how many will fail because of Covid? There is the problem of cashflow constraints, the cost of being over leveraged, theft and vandalism, fire, raising cost of supplies, increased local competition, there is literally 100's of reasons businesses fail. You can not completely ignore risk to prove your point because risk is real and exists. It would be no different than a capitalist arguing that everyone has a chance to succeed while ignoring all the structural barriers and exploitation. Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 04:32 IgnE wrote:
I'll also point out that your examples are (somewhat ineptly) gesturing towards the disconnect between "small businesses" that are valorized in American rhetoric and properly "capitalist" business interests that dominate the market. That many "small businesses" are essentially corporative bodies of wage-laborers paying collective rent to property owners is something that can be difficult to understand. I understand and agree with this which is why I have asked in the past who is part of the "capitalist class"? I was told that every business owner is. And in separate discussions have had them called the enemy and even need to be killed. This is also why I have been saying that we need to talk about the differences between small business owners and large corporations. They need to be regulated in completely different ways and are not remotely similar. Not to mention it is a huge spectrum even making up an cut off point is difficult and something governments struggle with. I think you need to direct this point to GH and Neb because they have indicated the opposite. As too the property ownership point that is also very complicated. Because of my back ground I am very familiar with the reserve system here in Canada. None of that land is owned by any individual but rather by the first nations band collectively. This has not stopped the situation of have's and have not's nor has it has it removed the structural exploitation of the people. The money flowing into the reserve from the government is then handled locally at each band and it is not distributed fairly in all cases. On top of that their are other issues around who gets the best jobs and so on. This is not to say there is not good and fair situations, just that removing individual property ownership does not in itself solve the problems. The lack of ownership in the property also makes people (members of the band and extrenals) not want to invest in buildings and so on to serve the community. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/salary-tracker-explore-the-earnings-of-first-nations-chiefs-across-canada/article20070005/Saying all property owners are exploiting is the same as saying all business owners are. There are certainly some that are, but their are also small owners that are leveraged and need the rent to make their payments and so on. If you want to talk about how the banks are a major problem with how much reward they receive when they have very little risk and are able to make billions in profit I'm on board. Making all those banks alone are not going to solve those problems though they also exist in credit unions. My point of both examples is that removing ownership alone won't solve the issues and not all "owners" are equal. To deal with the problems we need to find a fair expectation of reward given the risk or if eliminating ownership then develop a fair way of spreading out the capital. In some ways video games are good a analogy the developer sets out a bunch of rules with in a complex system. No matter how hard they try, players will inevitably find exploits and advantages. A good developer will continue make changes to try to make it "fair". Players will continue to exploit and also complain and disagree about the changes that are needed. Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 05:31 IgnE wrote:And you are right that I am suggesting that their is a fair amount of money that can be brought back by the person who puts their capital at risk. Ideally everyone would put in the same capital at risk, but that is rarely the case. Neb who argues for Co-ops deal with profit in many different ways some pay it back to customers based on how much they have spent, others do it other ways. My understanding based on Neb's feelings towards co-ops that he would not consider the workers exploited in this situation, but by your definition they would be as they would not be getting the full value of their labour. Generally I think it pointless to get into arguments about the semantics. I'm sorry, but this is an issue where semantics matters, because it is not clear on either side what the distinctions being made are and what is at stake. You can't defend your lack of precision, stemming from ignorance, as you not wanting to devolve into issues of "semantics," because it doesn't seem to be clear even to yourself what you are saying. This is all true regardless of your interlocutors' own murky semantics. This is website feedback, so if you want my responses to the other issues raised in your post please post pointed questions in the other thread. First the semantics was around Fairness. Pointed questions to follow. Is a co-op who pays part of the profits to customers exploiting the workers since they would not be getting their full value of labour by your definition? In the world we live in where risk does exist, how do you suggest the parties share it? How about in situations where people have different amounts of capital invested? As a side note if you wish to respond to only part of my post I would prefer if you spoiler'd the part you don't wish to get into it rather than deleting it. Removing it changes the meaning and spoilering allows the context to remain without the extra space being taken up. Appreciated.
1) No, probably not. Your example is a little unclear: why are we calling what they return to their customers profits? and why would such profits not also accrue to the employees, hence rectifying a discrepancy between value of labor power and value of realized labor?
2) Well risk is an interesting thing, right? Because in talking about "risk" we are looking at the world as it is right now, with it's unequal distribution of wealth. So how should we think about "risk" when some people have billions and some people have nothing but debt? One answer to your question, one that GH might favor, is to say "well in a communist society property would be communal and so risk would be distributed." I doubt you'd be satisfied by that answer because it doesn't answer the question of what to do now. We might extend Marx's discussion of "primitive accumulation" here as a kind of indeterminate fable for how capital ever accumulated in the first place. That would necessarily involve a recognition of the violence of primitive accumulation that is to be counterposed to the corresponding "violence" of redistribution. But to give a short explanation, I can understand a certain rationale for rewarding risk-taking within the prevailing (neo)liberal consensus about "reality." That would, however, leave a lasting antagonism between the interests of property holders and the relation of exploitation that they have to their employees. In other words, even if I grant that risk should be rewarded, I would insist on the existence of "exploitation" and point to the apparent aporia between these two positions as a problem.
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On May 15 2020 02:45 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2020 22:49 Erasme wrote:On May 14 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark. No. It would literally be a nightmare. Like someone previously said, hospitals are already making those choices in red spots. They will save the younger patients over the older. Hospitals make these decisions all the time, and not just hospitals but literally pretty much every allocation of resources is about nothing else. It's rarely as binary as death and life, but when we allocate money to drug research we prioritize some lives over others. When we send military or police in regions or don't send them. When we decide where to spend how much on education, and so on. When we decide how much we spend on combatting air pollution, or the reduction of domestic violence, or what measures we do or don't take to prevent traffic deaths, and so on. Trade-offs between the value of life and other values like freedom or questions of allocation are made every single day. If this weren't the case we'd all be locked in or houses all the time and we'd spend whatever money we have on extending the lives of everyone by months. Of course, nobody actually thinks this is reasonable.
My point was more that our current calculations results in millions of preventable deaths from poverty and unimaginable concentrations of wealth leading to yachts with helipads and mini yachts inside. Instead of no helipad yachts and no (or at least far fewer) preventable deaths from poverty.
So that if we used them in reference to reopening amid the pandemic they would likely conclude more poor people need to die to perpetuate the concentration of wealth at the top. Not because it is "worth it" based on a objective CBA, but because they literally mean that if letting someone die is more profitable then letting them live there isn't a built-in reasoning for why they shouldn't die for more profit.
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You can't make money if everyone is dead. So that doesn't make any sense to an employer. The obscenely wealthy don't care one way or the other, but some businesses would kind of mind if their customers just died.
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On May 15 2020 07:47 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
You can't make money if everyone is dead. So that doesn't make any sense to an employer. The obscenely wealthy don't care one way or the other, but some businesses would kind of mind if their customers just died.
Virus isn't going to kill everyone just mostly the people that are the most expensive for society to keep alive and running low on viable working years (if they have any at all).
The notion that small businesses wont have the capital, legal defense, etc. to be a viable business is real and likely catastrophic, so I agree with that. On the other hand, Bezos is set to be a trillionaire while 10's of millions of people are losing their livelihoods and 10's of thousands of people are dying from a preventable illness. So on a CBA it balances out.
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On May 15 2020 07:35 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 02:45 Nyxisto wrote:On May 14 2020 22:49 Erasme wrote:On May 14 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark. No. It would literally be a nightmare. Like someone previously said, hospitals are already making those choices in red spots. They will save the younger patients over the older. Hospitals make these decisions all the time, and not just hospitals but literally pretty much every allocation of resources is about nothing else. It's rarely as binary as death and life, but when we allocate money to drug research we prioritize some lives over others. When we send military or police in regions or don't send them. When we decide where to spend how much on education, and so on. When we decide how much we spend on combatting air pollution, or the reduction of domestic violence, or what measures we do or don't take to prevent traffic deaths, and so on. Trade-offs between the value of life and other values like freedom or questions of allocation are made every single day. If this weren't the case we'd all be locked in or houses all the time and we'd spend whatever money we have on extending the lives of everyone by months. Of course, nobody actually thinks this is reasonable. My point was more that our current calculations results in millions of preventable deaths from poverty and unimaginable concentrations of wealth leading to yachts with helipads and mini yachts inside. Instead of no helipad yachts and no (or at least far fewer) preventable deaths from poverty. So that if we used them in reference to reopening amid the pandemic they would likely conclude more poor people need to die to perpetuate the concentration of wealth at the top. Not because it is "worth it" based on a objective CBA, but because they literally mean that if letting someone die is more profitable then letting them live there isn't a built-in reasoning for why they shouldn't die for more profit.
This is one of the thru and thru dumbest posts i have ever seen.
It is incoherent, it has no idea behind it, its just an absolute moron rambling against stuff he hasn't the faintest clue about. You should feel ashamed to be that uninformed/indoctrinated... Seriously, most 14 year olds edgy poems are closer to reality thanthis giant pile of crap.
Shame on you.. Retard.
User was warned for this post.
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On May 15 2020 07:59 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 07:47 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
You can't make money if everyone is dead. So that doesn't make any sense to an employer. The obscenely wealthy don't care one way or the other, but some businesses would kind of mind if their customers just died. Virus isn't going to kill everyone just mostly the people that are the most expensive for society to keep alive and running low on viable working years (if they have any at all). The notion that small businesses wont have the capital, legal defense, etc. to be a viable business is real and likely catastrophic, so I agree with that. On the other hand, Bezos is set to be a trillionaire while 10's of millions of people are losing their livelihoods and 10's of thousands of people are dying from a preventable illness. So on a CBA it balances out.
I am clearly not following your train of thought on this at all. I'll back out.
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On May 15 2020 02:45 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2020 22:49 Erasme wrote:On May 14 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark. No. It would literally be a nightmare. Like someone previously said, hospitals are already making those choices in red spots. They will save the younger patients over the older. Hospitals make these decisions all the time, and not just hospitals but literally pretty much every allocation of resources is about nothing else. It's rarely as binary as death and life, but when we allocate money to drug research we prioritize some lives over others. When we send military or police in regions or don't send them. When we decide where to spend how much on education, and so on. When we decide how much we spend on combatting air pollution, or the reduction of domestic violence, or what measures we do or don't take to prevent traffic deaths, and so on. Trade-offs between the value of life and other values like freedom or questions of allocation are made every single day. If this weren't the case we'd all be locked in or houses all the time and we'd spend whatever money we have on extending the lives of everyone by months. Of course, nobody actually thinks this is reasonable.
Yes, only in hospitals it should be about life and death. I don't think you'd like local cops to hold that over you. You say that hospitals are doing that all the time ? Unless you're talking about waiting lists for organs (which would be wrong because the doctors arent the ones making the decisions), it doesn't happen. Else we wouldn't have all those stories about doctors killing themselves because they had to make that decision. And btw it's not a choice. If you keep lumping that with resources allocations you need to rethink your argument.
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The economy is more or less in free fall until the economy reopens fully. I expect another consumer/general population bailout coming by the end of the month. With what seems 25% max capacity in a lot of restaurants/bars/malls, it's only a matter of time before the unemployment just sits at 15%. I work as a bartender currently but it doesn't seem worth the effort to go back unless they pay the hourly rates and include tips. But something tells me they won't.
With spending going down for in-person purchase, end of the year sales and many stores just won't be around.
In a historic collapse, retail spending in the U.S. nosedived again last month, dropping a record 16.4% as people avoided restaurants, bars, stores and malls during the coronavirus pandemic.
Retail sales are a major part of the economy, which has been battered by tens of millions of layoffs, and April's plunge broke the record set just a month earlier. The Census Bureau has been tracking sales since 1992. The measure includes spending on gasoline, cars, food and drink.
Friday's data showed a growing division between online retailers and other types of companies that remained closed, fired or furloughed staff and lost sales. Even grocery stores declared "essential" — which have seen huge demand and even hiring sprees — showed a slowdown in spending.
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On May 15 2020 09:06 Erasme wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2020 02:45 Nyxisto wrote:On May 14 2020 22:49 Erasme wrote:On May 14 2020 21:44 iamthedave wrote:On May 14 2020 17:41 mahrgell wrote:
If you bring those numbers more into the open, you open Pandoras box when people discuss the value of humans.
Do you really want public discussions (especially seeing how way more innocent topics escalate and deteriorate) about:
- is this 30 yo worth as much as this 75 yo?
- is this miner worth as much as this university professor or this rent lord or the homeless unemployed guy next street?
- Does this unborn already have this value, or does it start with birth or when reaching adulthood? Are there intermediate values?
- Is this Mexican immigrant worth the same?
- Do you lose value if you committed a crime? Does it matter if you smoked a joint or killed someone?
- If a human life is worth x$, why can't Elon Musk just pay with a bunch of Tesla shares for a killing spree?
I understand, that in some ways, sometimes there is kind of weighting of human lifes vs cost. And this might make it easy to put an equal sign between some amount of dollars and a human life.
But I strictly oppose putting this equal sign there.
I think that would actually be helpful. There's too much that's sublimated and hidden and not talked about. I think it's only by bringing that conversation nakedly into the light that people are going to start realising that there's some dangerous precipices that the political discourse is teetering on. It's better to have that discussion as a society than not have it in the open and let it be decided in the dark. No. It would literally be a nightmare. Like someone previously said, hospitals are already making those choices in red spots. They will save the younger patients over the older. Hospitals make these decisions all the time, and not just hospitals but literally pretty much every allocation of resources is about nothing else. It's rarely as binary as death and life, but when we allocate money to drug research we prioritize some lives over others. When we send military or police in regions or don't send them. When we decide where to spend how much on education, and so on. When we decide how much we spend on combatting air pollution, or the reduction of domestic violence, or what measures we do or don't take to prevent traffic deaths, and so on. Trade-offs between the value of life and other values like freedom or questions of allocation are made every single day. If this weren't the case we'd all be locked in or houses all the time and we'd spend whatever money we have on extending the lives of everyone by months. Of course, nobody actually thinks this is reasonable. Yes, only in hospitals it should be about life and death. I don't think you'd like local cops to hold that over you. You say that hospitals are doing that all the time ? Unless you're talking about waiting lists for organs (which would be wrong because the doctors arent the ones making the decisions), it doesn't happen. Else we wouldn't have all those stories about doctors killing themselves because they had to make that decision. And btw it's not a choice. If you keep lumping that with resources allocations you need to rethink your argument.
I think you are probably right to point out that hospitals don't usually have to directly choose who will live and who will die. Still, I think Nyxisto is making a good point. For example, hospitals conduct medical research often with the goal of saving lives but there is always an opportunity cost when it comes to research. Using resources to find a cure for a disease means giving up resources that could have been used to cure another disease. A decision like this is tough, but it lacks the same emotional impact as determining the ultimate fate (life or death) of your patients. in
As another example of Nyxisto's main premise in action, say a politician reduces the police budget. Fewer people might die as a result of police brutality but maybe some people will die from an increase in violent crime. In other words, whether or not you think it may be a wise policy, some people who would have been alive if it weren't implemented will now be dead and vice versa. Policy makers have to make these types of decisions all the time and they have to accept the possibility that their judgment may indirectly lead to someone's death. I can think of many examples of these kinds of decisions in the domains of national security, crime, law, healthcare, immigration, regulations, etc.
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Running through NPR during lunch and this popped up. This is what happens when ignorance wins out and rationale decisions aren't made. I looked forward to the numbers that come out of this decision (among other places that lifted isolation orders) to see what the results are. I'm for not giving the people who went out to celebrate treatment if they do become infected, but that's just my callousness speaking.
The mayor of Madison, Wisc., is slamming the decision by the state's supreme court this week to overturn the governor's stay-at-home order, saying businesses are not in a position to reopen and warning that the coronavirus will only spread as a result.
"There is absolutely a danger here and that's why it's so irresponsible of the court to have struck down the governor's 'safer at home' order without a plan in place for how we transition out of it safely," said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway in an interview on Friday. "This is the supreme court that thought it was safe for us to hold an election in person during a pandemic, and what we saw from that is that dozens and dozens of people got sick. I expect the same to happen with this decision."
The mayor's comments followed Wednesday's 4-3 vote by Wisconsin's supreme court to strike down efforts by the state's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, to extend a statewide stay-at-home order designed to slow the virus. While some cheered the court's action — even taking to bars to celebrate — others have decried the court's action as a threat to public health, reflecting the competing forces that elected officials are being forced to confront as they weigh next steps in a pandemic that has infected more than 1.4 million nationwide and killed 86,000.
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It's a shame that people can't just stay indoors or not be around people for an extended period of time when it's an effort to flatten a deadly disease and save lives. It seems to me, people really want that second wave to hit sooner rather than later.
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On May 16 2020 03:45 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Running through NPR during lunch and this popped up. This is what happens when ignorance wins out and rationale decisions aren't made. I looked forward to the numbers that come out of this decision (among other places that lifted isolation orders) to see what the results are. I'm for not giving the people who went out to celebrate treatment if they do become infected, but that's just my callousness speaking. Show nested quote +The mayor of Madison, Wisc., is slamming the decision by the state's supreme court this week to overturn the governor's stay-at-home order, saying businesses are not in a position to reopen and warning that the coronavirus will only spread as a result.
"There is absolutely a danger here and that's why it's so irresponsible of the court to have struck down the governor's 'safer at home' order without a plan in place for how we transition out of it safely," said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway in an interview on Friday. "This is the supreme court that thought it was safe for us to hold an election in person during a pandemic, and what we saw from that is that dozens and dozens of people got sick. I expect the same to happen with this decision."
The mayor's comments followed Wednesday's 4-3 vote by Wisconsin's supreme court to strike down efforts by the state's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, to extend a statewide stay-at-home order designed to slow the virus. While some cheered the court's action — even taking to bars to celebrate — others have decried the court's action as a threat to public health, reflecting the competing forces that elected officials are being forced to confront as they weigh next steps in a pandemic that has infected more than 1.4 million nationwide and killed 86,000. SourceIt's a shame that people can't just stay indoors or not be around people for an extended period of time when it's an effort to flatten a deadly disease and save lives. It seems to me, people really want that second wave to hit sooner rather than later.
Ive been on the side of staying home and social distancing but its become blatently obvious the government is not going to have widescale testing anytime soon. Without mass testing, randomized testing, and anti body testing we have no idea the true death rate or where we are on the curve. Its beyond frustrating
Weve stayed home for 8 weeks but it doesnt feel like weve made any progress other than flattening the deaths in the worst areas. Its hard to force people to stay home when the data is still incomplete. Its not clear where we are with infections as a whole, what the true death rate is, how exactly its being transmitted (surfaces, particles in air, etc)
The federal govt shit the bed on this hard but the states cant just shut down forever. We need a plan and real data.
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On May 16 2020 03:56 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2020 03:45 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Running through NPR during lunch and this popped up. This is what happens when ignorance wins out and rationale decisions aren't made. I looked forward to the numbers that come out of this decision (among other places that lifted isolation orders) to see what the results are. I'm for not giving the people who went out to celebrate treatment if they do become infected, but that's just my callousness speaking. The mayor of Madison, Wisc., is slamming the decision by the state's supreme court this week to overturn the governor's stay-at-home order, saying businesses are not in a position to reopen and warning that the coronavirus will only spread as a result.
"There is absolutely a danger here and that's why it's so irresponsible of the court to have struck down the governor's 'safer at home' order without a plan in place for how we transition out of it safely," said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway in an interview on Friday. "This is the supreme court that thought it was safe for us to hold an election in person during a pandemic, and what we saw from that is that dozens and dozens of people got sick. I expect the same to happen with this decision."
The mayor's comments followed Wednesday's 4-3 vote by Wisconsin's supreme court to strike down efforts by the state's Democratic governor, Tony Evers, to extend a statewide stay-at-home order designed to slow the virus. While some cheered the court's action — even taking to bars to celebrate — others have decried the court's action as a threat to public health, reflecting the competing forces that elected officials are being forced to confront as they weigh next steps in a pandemic that has infected more than 1.4 million nationwide and killed 86,000. SourceIt's a shame that people can't just stay indoors or not be around people for an extended period of time when it's an effort to flatten a deadly disease and save lives. It seems to me, people really want that second wave to hit sooner rather than later. Ive been on the side of staying home and social distancing but its become blatently obvious the government is not going to have widescale testing anytime soon. Without mass testing, randomized testing, and anti body testing we have no idea the true death rate or where we are on the curve. Its beyond frustrating Weve stayed home for 8 weeks but it doesnt feel like weve made any progress other than flattening the deaths in the worst areas. Its hard to force people to stay home when the data is still incomplete. Its not clear where we are with infections as a whole, what the true death rate is, how exactly its being transmitted (surfaces, particles in air, etc) The federal govt shit the bed on this hard but the states cant just shut down forever. We need a plan and real data.
I agree. While I'm used to spending an unhealthy amount of time with my thoughts and projects, I know some people are starting to get cabin fever. We've been on isolation since March 21st here in Illinois. Even I'm ready to be around someone other than my reflection in the mirror. At the same time however, I understand the need to minimize contact with others as much as possible. I don't see the point in rushing back only for this to hit harder.
I don't think the states or feds have overstepped constitutional boundaries just yet, but any longer and it could brush fire quickly. There are industries and sectors of the economy that can reopen and probably should be allowed to reopen regardless, but there needs to be some kind of plan in place (a lot of states have phases they are doing and most are in phase 2 or 3 at the moment).
The retail sector is probably screwed in terms of revenue and employees still. There just isn't any way for 25% capacity limit establishments to survive. Congress is about to vote on another 3 trillion bill today or soon. So we'll see what that does. But I'm not optimistic that a vast majority of people will be back to work soon. And even if they are, they will be underemployed.
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