Your life in a first world society has caused you to forget a simple fact:
Life is unnatural. It is death that rules nature.
The enormously complex machinery of modernity, most of which is coordinated
through economic means, produces this unnatural outcome where most humans live
not only to reproductive age, but to their children’s reproductive age.
When this machinery breaks down, people start dying. Most obviously, when the
sewage infrastructure starts to decay, people die. When road signs fall down
and don’t get replaced, people die. When the cold chain for refrigerated food
starts to hiccup, people die.
Less obviously, when the web of innovation that creates ventilators and road
signs and crumple zones starts to slow down, people die.
As Bastiat says, people naturally react to that which is seen, but they forget
the unseen effects of their actions (or more perniciously, the unseen
non-effects of their non-actions)
The performance of the stock market isn’t the goal, it’s merely a measure of
economic activity, and economic activity is strongly correlated with lifespan
and health span. All your emotions about what you want and feel don’t change
these facts.
If you have the economy of Japan, you’ll end up with the lifespan of Japan, and
that’s good.
If you have the economy of Bulgaria, you’ll end with the lifespan of Bulgaria,
which is already ten years less.
If you have the economy of Somalia, you’ll end up with the lifespan of Somalia.
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really
know about what they imagine they can design.” - Hayek
On Mar 26, 2020, at 3:41 AM, Jake Anderson (Redacted sender "jake" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's complicated because people don't typically enjoy being left to die in
their fluids over the course of a few weeks to protect stock options. Despite
assurances by those with said stock options that it's really better for
society this way.
I understand maths too, I also understand how at these levels you can make
statistics say pretty much anything you want to so it's very important to see
who is saying them. Further I know enough about the science of economics to
know that it's half made up and a lot of the rest is guesswork. Not the best
basis for making life and death predictions on IMO.
If you want a purely rational economic argument then nobody over 60 with a
net worth less than the likely cost of treatment should be treated. When you
run out of money you die. Also insurance should be suspended for people
unlikely to recover to preserve the funds for young healthy people and the
owners of insurance companies.
Why do we even have healthcare for people over 60? Their grand kids are
typically grown enough not to need extended family daycare. Yet these people
consume the majority of healthcare costs. They are just a burden on the
economically viable young people.
That's not the world I want to live in.
On 26/3/20 6:29 pm, David Summers wrote:
You are under no obligation to spend any money to save my life. Society is
marginally better off if you save my life spending $100k. Society is worse
off if you spend $100m to save my life.
Why is this complicated? I am not evil because I understand math. The
reality was there before the math, the math merely describes it. Emotive
reasoning does not change reality.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 9:24 PM Jake Anderson <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
I guess the equations are different in America than the rest of the world.
So much freedom.
Should we kill you if I can prove it's good for the economy too?
On 26/3/20 6:08 pm, David Summers wrote:
Speaking very roughly, for every $1-10 M lost someone dies. They die
because we couldn't get the cancer treatment, or the process wasn't as safe
as it could be, etc. So by wiping out a trillion dollars, long term you
have kill 100k to 1m people unless we dig ourselves out.
Money is life people. Technology, even medical technology, doesn't matter
without the money to deploy it. And money is not something that can be
arbitrarily created or stolen. Theft and printing money destroys it, rather
than create it. Basic economics.
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020, 8:58 PM Jake Anderson <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Sorry dad, trumps stockmarket portfolio is going down so you need to die.
On 26/3/20 4:22 pm, roxanna Mason wrote:
Today one week later:
657 infections, 12 deaths, 43 recovered.
Were's the age vs deaths data? If it's disproportionately the elderly and
health
compromised then maybe its time to get back to work and let herd immunity
do its job.
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
<https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6>
On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 3:23 PM Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 10:26 AM ken mason <laserpro1234@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:laserpro1234@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Observation: One of the largest population
country with the lowest infection rate is India -
Over a billion people with only 244 infected 5
deaths 20 received. Why?
India and Pakistan are now both on lockdown, desperately hoping to flatten
the peak enough that their limited medical resources can more-or-less
cope. It hasn't been done particularly skillfully in either country, and
they've got big problems with very large numbers of poor people who don't
have enough safety margin to handle being out of work for weeks, but
they're trying.
Henry