Okay — that's the argument I'm not seeing. Why not?!
I do see "Goodbye, Green New Deal" by Kevin D. Williamson at The National Review (dated March 27, 2020):
The current crisis in the U.S. economy is, in miniature but concentrated form, precisely what the Left has in mind in response to climate change: shutting down large sectors of the domestic and global economies through official writ, social pressure, and indirect means, in response to a crisis with potentially devastating and wide-ranging consequences for human life and human flourishing....ADDED: If the argument I suggest is not being made by the erstwhile advocates of the Green New Deal, it seems to mean that they were never sincere about their demands. The Greta Thunberg HOW DARE YOU? argument was fake. Green New Dealers: Step up and prove me wrong.
What we are seeing right now is what it looks like when Washington tries to steer the economy.... The Left wants very much to convince Americans that climate change presents an emergency of the same kind requiring the same “moral equivalent of war” worldwide mobilization.... A couple of months of this is going to be very hard to take. Nobody is signing up for a lifetime of it.
I don't expect an answer, so I will offer what I think is the best explanation of how there could be both silence and sincerity. The Green New Dealers feel empathy for those who are now suffering from the disease and from the economic shut down. They don't want to exacerbate the pain. And it's not merely empathy. They're afraid of the political damage if they point to the pain and call it a great opportunity. They don't want to look like ghouls.
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259 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 259 of 259Original Mike said...
As others have pointed out, the problem with 'inessential' is that someone needs to decide what's essential and what's not. I don't know if that's socialism or fascism, but I know it's not freedom.
4/9/20, 10:17 AM
Don't you worry! It will be handled by "top men", I assure you!
Howard,
I'm guessing your needs change based on circumstances, judgment and experiences. The same is quite true for others.
When you say 'our addiction' and 'disease' and 'overconsumption' you seem to be using assumptions:
-Who falls into and out of your definition of 'our.' Which knowledge do you possesses which allows for this judgment? Would you apply 'our' to yourself through time? What about when you're sick? When you had kids? When you were by yourself in school?
-consuming things isn't necessarily a 'disease' Depending on how broad your definition, you're consuming air, O2, C, nitrogen etc. I'd like to extend the courtesy of leaving it up to you and your moral lights as to how much consumption is enough at any given time. If it's a genuinely limited and finite resource, markets tend to work better than regulation, for all the human reasons (ignorance, corruption, nepotism, incentives etc.)
Listen, I get having your life simplified can be a good thing (virus or not), or at least, a time of reflection, gratitude and reconnecting relationships.
It can also be a time to look at the roots in your mental garden. What are they sending up? Where might they lead?
You are actually wrong bagoh2o. Most epidemiological models of hazardous chemicals and radiation in the early days greatly underestimated risk. One factor involved in this was the concentrated breeding of young mice for lab experiments. This scared the mice into having very high resistance to toxicity. do you remember when they pulled vioxx off the market?
I'd like to know:
1) How many COVID-19 deaths were actually due to something else in whole or part.
2) What would have been the extent of this if China was transparent from the start, and the W.H.O. wasn't corrupt.
3) What we would do different if we knew that next year another virus like this was going to emerge in the same way?
Roughcoat said...
Who said that the epidemic is a plot by Big Toilet Paper?
I still laugh when I think of that one.
4/9/20, 10:23 AM
WOW, now you did it! Let the cat out of the bag! You do know this site is "monitored" don't you? Better take that back before you suicide with two in the back of the head. Don't laugh, it has happened over less. Do you have ANY idea how much money there is in TP?
Rabel said...
I had my biannual doctor visit today. Did it on Zoom.
Which worked on the first try after install!!!
Also, it appears that my forehead is much larger than I thought.
On the downside, the evil Chinese Communist Party now knows quite a bit about my colon.
4/9/20, 10:31 AM
Did you at least buy yourself dinner before the prostate exam?
Chris N. My wife and I have devoted our lives together to build, nurture and maintain our family. So we tend to spend our money on things like education and sports training and cultural enlightenment and not to borrow money for jet skis boats campers fancy electronic equipment fancy dinners at hifalutin restaurants expensive travel and vacations. I don't see the pandemic changing any of our priorities, only confirming that we were already on the right track.
There is another health concern in this time: People who aren't COVID are having their health care delayed.
I live in a small neighborhood. An elderly neighbor had intestinal distress in the first week of the shutdown. Her doctor told her by phone to hydrate. I bought her pedialyte and walked her dog. After a week she was diagnosed via phone to have a UTI. She got medication. Then I had a health issue and shut myself away for 7 days. Just two days ago, another neighbor brought her to the emergency room. It turns out she had an abscess behind her colon. A real medical problem! But nobody wanted to see her because she didn't have COVID.
Another neighbor, a middle aged man, had a head injury a few months ago and isn't recovering. They want to check to see if there is fluid leaking either from his spinal column or his brain (I'm not a doctor. I'm recalling what his wife said). But he can't get these tests until the COVID is over.
As for me, I've had my ovarian cancer screening delayed. Which isn't urgent, but still. Someone out there isn't getting the cancer screenings they need and will be hurt because of it.
Pushing people into public transport seems like a super tough sell for GND right now.
"Most epidemiological models of hazardous chemicals and radiation in the early days greatly underestimated risk."
And what was our response to that?
What should it be now if we find our models to also be vastly unreliable in the other direction. People seem to keep forgetting the cost we are about to endure, and it seems to be people who are not paying much of one themselves. A lot of people are going to be hurt, and badly by this. We need to find a better way than to panic over unreliable data.
It reminds me of a crowd of people who think they hear a gunshot, panic and start trampling others to death. "I'm getting out of here. I don't give a shit. I'm not getting shot."
We did not spend much time analyzing the cost of our action. We jumped on it pretty quick, and maybe that was for the best this time. I'm not convinced yet, but it's not by any stretch a good reaction to this threat next time.
Maybee: exactly. The pandemic threat in the future will help guarantee the adoption of autonomous vehicles for individuals and perhaps the great tunneling project of Elon Musk.
I'm going to need to get a better mask before I ride on the T
Howard,
Those sound like very reasonable aims to me, and I largely share them myself.
The quibble I'd have is when you abstract to the 'our' in your previous comment. I think it's right to live within one's means, but that might be about as far as you can take it once your abstract to many levels beyond your experience. Others might have different experiences, needs and opportunities, reasoning from different principles, just as you might possibly have and will throughout your life.
Bagoh2o: lots of people got cancer. You know cigarettes for one. Cigarettes have been largely eliminated from our society and is having a huge wonderful impact on public health. Models on nutrition resulted in the obesity epidemic another example of under estimating or Miss identifying risk and the consequences there in.
Chris N: of course people have different needs wants and desires. However, consumer culture is driven by advertising which is basically psychological manipulation of The human condition and it helps to feed the global elite and their dominion over us. I think it's very important that we re-examine our priorities as a nation and as the example to set for the rest of the world. To whom much is given, much should be expected.
CStanley
"nobody wants the kind of lifestyle and society that green new dealers have promoted"
True enough, but another aspect is that GND'rs have not been remotely honest about the ramifications of their plan: a 15th century lifestyle will necessitate a 50th century population. Let The Great Dieoff begin! We only need to lose 95% of our current population.
But why not move into the level of activity that proponents of the Green New Deal said were justified by the predictions of climate change?
Perhaps the fact that early models appear to have been off by at least two orders of magnitude may be contributing to skepticism about climate models. Possibly. Sort of.
As others have pointed out, the problem with 'inessential' is that someone needs to decide what's essential and what's not. I don't know if that's socialism or fascism, but I know it's not freedom
In a few weeks my barber will be essential.
The pandemic will change many people's experience, and interactions with technology, work, instutions etc. I think we'll have to wait and see how this pans out because of the high rate of change right no, across many variables.
For me, it means more work from home, better relationships, and some confirmation bias regarding what institutions can actually do. For me, the primary purpose of gov't is still the common defense, borders, a national project, but life is local, and people are who they are. Being where you are takes work.
Personally I still want a boring government of better people keeping out the worse, religious liberty and genuine civility and tolerance, markets growing, and treaties/deals with other countries well-designed and based more on a realist foreign policy model (no friends, only alliances and common goals, friendships between happen in the process)
Howard,
1. I see consumption is driven by need. We need water, food, shelter and health first. This happens in open and closed societies and civilizations. In poorly run, unfree ones, more people die and get less of the basics. Advertising is a thing people do, some very well. I don't always like it but accept it as part of the cost of being mostly free to choose. The psychological manipulation smells like partially digested Marxism but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
2. 'Consumer culture' is a very large abstraction. Can you define it more clearly?
3. Global elite is a very large abstraction. Can you define it more clearly?
I'm not going to do your homework for you Chris these are relatively common terms that have been in use for the last 50 to 75 years.
When we talk of consumer culture it is not about water sewer food shelter.
The Greenie Gnew Dealio was always a lie.
It was a pursuit of power.
That is ALL the Leftist Collectivists desire.
BAMN, that is all: power.
1. I see plenty of advertising for water, food, shelter and health, and I see all of these needs as necessary for our survival and endemic to our condition
2. What does consumer culture mean? Who's in and out? Which types of books/music/words/ideas are included or not? I honestly don't know quite what you mean. As you've probably been able to tell during the shutdown, a book, to a large extent, is just a book.
3. 'Global Elite.' Elite for what? Olympic athletes are elite. Some musicians have global appeal. Money? Government officials? Celebrities? Doctors?
if the common flu can kill 60,000 people in 13 weeks, shouldn't we shut down like this every year?
So, I doubt we’ll get good data but one thing that would be useful when we’re looking at this year in the rear view mirror would be to compare this years flu deaths to a typical year. It’s obvious that the shutdowns should be blunting the flu greatly, and we should be able to roughly extrapolate from that how much we were really able to reduce Covid19 deaths during the same period.
But the skeptics who might be willing to consider that will also be unwilling to believe that data is accurate, and to some extent they are right to doubt that flu deaths are being sorted accurately from Covid deaths.
consumer culture = people are acting in ways I don't approve of.
advertising = is way overrated and easily avoidable now
Yes, 'consumer culture' has the feel of the abstraction defined to serve the purpose of re-definition towards one's one goals/pre-hold beliefs.
But, I'll bite. I'm genuinely interested in getting a clearer understanding.
If your models are always overstating the problem by a lot, and you constantly have to lower the level of danger, then what should you learn from that?
That's normal and bothers me not at all. I don't expect models to be accurate when predicting the future using crappy data. That isn't their purpose, they are intended to serve as planning tools and to prepare people for possible eventualities. As data accumulates, they improve.
If we double the COVID deaths from where they are today in the U.S., it would be about 100 deaths/million population out of over 8600 deaths/million, or about 1% of US deaths per year, and the other 99% will keep coming every day of every year, including 168/million from the flu. COVID this one time would be a similar number to how many die of Parkinson's every single year.
Pushing people into public transport seems like a super tough sell for GND right now.
Exactly, Maybee! And remember the Berkeley grad student who said that rural people are bad people and everyone should live in cities?
Sebastian, re your 10:22 comment.
We have to do something better than this should the virus return in November. Or what happens if it doesn't go dormant during hot weather? There is so much we don't know, and one of those things is still how many healthy people will die from it. From what I've read, more will suffer physical damage that will leave them vulnerable to this or any other affliction in the future.
I think we did a remarkable thing based on what the great majority of medical people advised, and we've done it on the fly with minimal opportunity to reconsider. We flattened the curve, avoiding what both China and Italy experienced, and we have protected vulnerable groups; at least to some hard-to-quantify extent.
But your repeated comments that anyone older than some unspecified age -- Sebastian + 5 years? S + 10 years? You tell me -- is going to die anyway in a few years, so why on earth are we taking this action and damaging the economy (which more often sounds like you mean your income) are the wrong perspective for policy, IMO.
3) What we would do different if we knew that next year another virus like this was going to emerge in the same way?
The likelihood is this virus.
this is about control, our mandarin clan and the enemy are taking notes,
I think it's very important that we re-examine our priorities as a nation and as the example to set for the rest of the world.
I certainly do not mind if you re-examine your priorities so long as you do not try to re-examine mine. But I’m sure that is where we disagree.
- Krumhorn
Recovery from chronodeath won’t spur us to go backwards to the old moral panic of warming. Recovery from a crisis results in an exuberance, an awakening. There will be a few years of enjoyment before the next new and improved panic can be created. Cherish your new green deal, for you must soon let it go.
Kai: "You tell me -- is going to die anyway in a few years, so why on earth are we taking this action and damaging the economy (which more often sounds like you mean your income) are the wrong perspective for policy"
My income? No: the millions filing for unemployment, the hairstylists down the street.
Why on earth? Yes: why on earth a ruinous policy with no regard for cost-benefit balancing.
"Going to die anyway": well yeah -- but let's protect them, by isolating them, for real. To start: check ID and temperatures at the stores.
Kai Akker 12:54
Bravo.
I think we will be able to do better in a few months. We will have sufficient tests. We will know which treatments actually work. We will have a core of immune health and other workers.
Assuming that is that we can get that far without collapsing. I think the greatest threat to collapse is rampant death and sickness. That is a threat that Sebastian and the other denialists simply dismiss. Hard to have a sensible discussion when they think the only acceptable choice is to just go back to the way things were a few months ago (with fewer fat old people who need to just accept their fate).
bagoh20:
Nor how many will die from the suicide, poverty, and lost capital of our response. The one thing that made our safer, healthier, more peaceful, and longer lives possible is economic prosperity. Everything else is built on it and sustained by it. Every bit of it lost is a bit of those things lost as well, and we just lost a pile of it. Maybe it was the right thing to do or not, we may never know, but we shouldn't ignore the costs
I am doubtful that there will be thousands of suicides based on economic disruption, but I have not consulted the xperts lately. Here is the Sebastian (and perhaps your) argument: these businesses you speal of are just marginal businesses, small businesses that would have gone belly-up in the next recession anyway. So how many people have to die to enable those marginal, barely surviving businesses to stay "viable" for a few more quarters?
Hard to have a sensible discussion when they think the only acceptable choice is to just go back to the way things were a few months ago
Hard to have a sensible discussion with assholes who continue to insist people are saying things they actually aren't.
It's also nice to know nothing's changed in the last two weeks. Tootles.
Sensible discussion = bankrupt municipal government, spend 8.3 trillion USD, lose 3-6 trillion USD of economic activity and put 40-70 million people out of work
Any more sensible and mobs of people will be checking the structural security of lampposts nationwide.
Go long on the yardarm companies.
Is one of the lessons from this damned CCP virus that no one can live on a shoestring? Not the consumer, who might find himself unexpectedly unemployed, nor the business enterpriser, who may find business interrupted for a month or three?
Those surveys that hit the 'net periodically about how many Americans are only two or three paychecks from bankruptcy -- maybe one of the incidental messages from this hell in which we find ourselves is that you can't do it that way. Or you can, but expect misery as a result at some point.
I do not support the Green New Deal, which strikes me, so to speak, as a lot of hot air, but I do support collective action, both nationally and internationally, to reduce the rate of global warming, the rate that plastic is being dumped in the ocean, the rate of extinction, etc.
The obvious reason for not pushing that agenda now is first things first. Got to beat, or manage, the virus and then bring the economy back to acceptable levels.
But there's another reason for not pushing that set of issues, which is that the coronavirus crisis speaks to climate change and related issues in ways that clearly push in the right direction, emphasizing the importance of science and expertise; the importance of not ignoring or minimizing phenomena which are hard to predict with precision but that can go out of control and have big downsides; and the need for collective action, whether in the form of pricing or restrictions on personal behavior, to deal with the harms and risks created by such phenomena. Because both the controlling of coronavirus and the economic recovery from it seem very likely to keep emphasizing these truths, they are likely to make the case for sensible approaches to climate change far more effectively than any advocacy for the Green New Deal.
Ken B said ... I think the greatest threat to collapse is rampant death and sickness. That is a threat that Sebastian and the other denialists simply dismiss. Hard to have a sensible discussion when they think the only acceptable choice is to just go back to the way things were a few months ago
It is amazing that we survive "rampant death" on an annual basis. Over 233,000 people died every month in the US alone, according to the CDC (2018). That I cannot deny.
What are the rampant death figures from COVID-19 over the past three months?
Still under 20,000. Hmmm.
Kai: "Here is the Sebastian (and perhaps your) argument: these businesses you speal of are just marginal businesses, small businesses that would have gone belly-up in the next recession anyway"
I thought you were one of the good-faith commenters. I'm sorry I was wrong.
Jim: "Hard to have a sensible discussion with assholes who continue to insist people are saying things they actually aren't."
Getting tiresome, isn't it? Anyway, I take it as a good sign: they have nothing better to say.
Birkel: "Sensible discussion = bankrupt municipal government, spend 8.3 trillion USD, lose 3-6 trillion USD of economic activity and put 40-70 million people out of work"
And a quarter of the economy idle: that's just "marginal businesses." But at least we have those people on record here.
So how many people have to die to enable those marginal, barely surviving businesses to stay "viable" for a few more quarters?"
You can interchange "businesses" and "people" in that sentence.
That was my point! : )
"The likelihood is this virus."
It is also very likely this virus will mutate to a less deadly and or less contagious form. These types of viruses mutate early and often from what I've read.
I thought you were one of the good-faith commenters. I'm sorry I was wrong. [Sebastian]
Nice try. But feel free to take your marble home with you. I simply switched the subjects of businesses, many of which are doubtless marginal, and people, especially the older people you write about.
Just think what we could have done for humanity if we had spent 2 trillion in new funding to find cures for heart disease instead of spending it in failed damage control after destroying the economy for a second rate disease. We do everything for the novelty problem but ignore the main drivers of death. Humans are not rational, politics taints us.
Update to The Sweden vs Michigan comparison:
On March 24 Michigan started its stay at home order. On that date:
Michigan: 1791 cases, 24 deaths.
Sweden: 2299 cases, 40 deaths.
Today:
Michigan.. 21,500 cases,. 1076 deaths (108/million)
Sweden..... 9,141 cases,.. 793 deaths (79/million)
It's not that Sweden is getting away unscathed, but that they are not doing worse from staying open for business.
Two caveats:
1) Sweden only tests people with symptoms. Not sure about Michigan.
2) I assume that Swedes are much better at following instructions voluntarily than Michiganders, but I'm not real familiar with either.
Green New Deal - There goes all hope for the "Roaring Twenties."
But there's something to be said for the idea that instead of forcing people to give up their frivolous vacation travel, we get companies to replace business travel with virtual meetings.
What about the old dinosaurs though, who like to look people in the eye, and judge them by the strength of their handshakes?
Sebastian,
"The falling projection, the result of aggressive social distancing behaviors Americans adopted to curb the spread of the virus"
That's just about the biggest unknowable that anyone has cited all week long.
Francisco, re Skype interviewing, I was doing that for the last 15 years of my career as a high level headhunter with a global practice. I found I could get much more done by video interviewing than by flying all over the place. Could easily do 4-5 interviews in multiple cities in a day that way, vs 1 or maybe 2 depending on which cities in which countries. My clients liked it too because I could get searches done more quickly and at drastically reduced cost, since all interviewing expenses are rebilled to the client. Two hour video bill vs air travel, hotels, meals etc.
I’m usually a critic of many things Althouse says, but in this case it’s clear she was stating the potential arguments of the greenies to provoke discussion. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are not her arguments as well, but I give her the benefit of the doubt.
Ken B, you’re what’s known as a sophist. Not a respected trait.
The Green New Deal is a fantasy, folks. That's why the only people pushing it are the technologically illiterate and those hoping to profit from this fraud.
"...which more often sounds like you mean your income..."
The ability of some people to read minds is amazing.
Do you have a subscription service so we can learn your mental arts?
/sarc
Maybe AOC can persuade her fellow Democrats Cuomo and DiBlasio to shut down LaGuardia. NY would be greener and they would be much less susceptible to future pandemics. Surely they will all agree.
Howard. This from you will not cut it here.
"In the late 1970s scientist from Exxon the world's largest oil company confirmed that carbon dioxide global warming was real was happening, posed liability risk to the firm and the company should adjust its behavior to minimize the release of carbon dioxide from certain oil fields."
As JPS already pointed out, the 1970s were the time of the global COOLING scare. Had Exxon really believed its product might help to heat up the planet, they'd have been as likely as not to use it as an advertising gimmick. "Drive an Extra Mile for a Warmer Planet Earth." The current nonsense about Exxon may appeal to a bunch of venal AGs and enviros who figure they can shake down big oil and make names for themselves. No one else is going to be fooled.
Civilian air travel may not be essential, but the airlines are. Unless the law has changed, all US flagged airlines are part of the Civil Reserve Airlift Fleet. As such, they are required to maintain the ability to meet Pentagon demands that exceed military airlift capability during emergencies. In return they have been promised a certain amount of federal support. They are in a similar relation to the military that the railroads were during WW II. They are considered essential to national defense.
Howard said, "I'm not going to do your homework for you Chris these are relatively common terms that have been in use for the last 50 to 75 years.
When we talk of consumer culture it is not about water sewer food shelter."
What about smartphones? Internet access? Health care? Beyond food, what about fresh produce? After all, we've all heard about "food deserts," in which food is technically available but is of low nutritional value.
Basically "essential" means what the powerful decide it means, and it different depending on whether the speaker is talking about his in-group or not. It appears that you just think you belong in the ranks of the powerful.
Ugh. My husband frequently tells me I should've been a lawyer, loving to argue as I do. But the problem is, I advocate - I don't concern myself with defending any position I don't believe in. And that makes it hard for me to take our host's "cruel neutrality" sometimes; it often strikes me as a pose to avoid true engagement in the argument.
Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't. It's her blog and she may simply enjoy the back-and-forth. Or, she may just value her own privacy such that she, rightly believing that no one here has any right to know her real opinion, instead deliberately takes positions she doesn't hold, or takes multiple positions in sequence to camouflage her own.
Whatever. With most of the rest of us rather energetically advocating for the positions we do hold, I suppose suffering through some "cruel neutrality" is a small price for me to pay for the intellectual interest these threads provide. (I won't speak for anyone else.)
And all this was spurred by "virtual funerals."
" There is so much we don't know, and one of those things is still how many healthy people will die from it?"
Hdealthy people don't die frfom it. As we have seen. The at risk groupare people who who already have underlying health issues. What you probably meant is that seemingly healthy people will get sick. A certain number of those unhealty people will die. It is now looking like , that while worrisome, the diease is not as deadly as first presented.
China would have done the world a service if they had just warned people in November when this first showed up in Wuhan.
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