I do think most of this conversation will be moot due to, I believe, viable
medicines to treat the virus widely available to the sick in a few weeks.
This will change the models for mortality greatly.
As I tell my students, "Models are simplified versions of reality. If you
don't believe me, date one."
My $0.0197 anyway.
Doug Knight
On Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 8:49 AM Jake Anderson <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 26/3/20 11:44 pm, Kevin Ho wrote:
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
If economy defines lifespan why is the lifespan of Americans shorter
than Japanese?