Hacker News Reader

Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

It seems really hard to imagine how that could be so. Why would random commentators or protesters care so passionately about unemployment budgets?

View on HN

Random commentators and protestors don’t. Certain politicians do, and those politicians have done an outstanding job of convincing those random commentators and protestors that this situation is political one, bringing all of the fervor and zealotry that politics brings.

This situation went from being “we are staying inside to defeat the virus” to now “we refuse to stay inside (reopen) because that lets those evil democrats (Republicans) win, and I won’t ever allow that”.

I agree. The beginning of this crisis really did hold promise of 'we are in this together'. And yet it quickly morphed into 'the other guys are out to get us'. I watching all this with genuine worry that things can easily spiral out of control.

To be clear, no one is asking to stay inside - everyone wants the economy reopened again. But, there's the sensible way and there's the stupid way. The latter method involves just going to back to the way things were and pretend the virus doesn't exist. That is untenable, and the smarter folk who think that a phased opening is a better approach are the ones being shouted down.

One of us is getting media bubbled here. I've seen a lot of people argue that they do not want the economy reopened and everyone should stay inside because it's not safe yet. Attempts to engage in a phased opening have produced headlines like "Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice"[1], and major figures are still talking on Twitter about how "No life is worth losing to add one more point to the Dow."[2]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georg...

[2] https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1258184774486642688

I want to stay inside. Most people I know want to stay inside. The economy can limp along for the rest of this year just fine. The sensible way of re-opening involves not doing so now.

Texas is still gaining new cases and deaths at a high rate. Our curve is not flattening. And yet with one eye on the unemployment coffers, Governor Abbott is overriding the same local decision-makers he deferred to just weeks ago, and forcing business to re-open. Hair salons open tomorrow, while four of the six days of May so far have set new records for new COVID-19 cases.

Everyone I know who works retail jobs would rather be home. Some of them are being forced back, some have never been able to stop working. None of them are happy about it.

Here on HN somebody posted an analysis of the websites pushing these narratives. I recall it was two guys selling T-Shirts. They discovered the power of the meme, and align it with their business interests.

Because they pay for those unemployment budgets, perhaps?

You may not agree with that perspective, but it is held by quite a few people.

They don’t. They’re stirred up by rich people through astroturf groups:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-prote...

Your thesis here is that the movement is made up and nobody actually agrees with it? I guess I don't know how to rigorously disprove that, but it strikes me as unlikely as well. The easiest way to stir people up is to tell them things they already believe! It seems naive to look at even a moderate sized protest and say "oh, nobody actually believes in this cause, it's astroturfed".

Not saying this company is behind this particular set of protests, but it makes a kind of general point: https://crowdsondemand.com/

It's not absurd to imagine a lot of people are manipulated into believing whatever the person writing the check wants. We can't pretend Cambridge Analytica never existed.

I believe that their is real discontent in the face of a deadly pandemic and massive unemployment, but also that rich people are harnessing that discontent to their own, cynical ends. These protests would not exist if we had UBI like Spain or a sane, well-managed response like Taiwan.

I dunno how much history you’ve read, but the rich cynically exploiting the masses to direct their anger away from themselves and towards their enemies or other scapegoats is hardly a novel development.

I disagree. I think the protests would still exist if we had UBI like Spain - the reason Spain hasn't seen any protests is that their lockdown policies were so strict nobody could protest, and as they loosen up over the next few weeks I (falsifiably) expect to see some. If we had replicated Taiwan's results, sure, there'd be less to protest about.

The rich cynically exploiting the masses is definitely a known thing. But the right response to that can't be ignoring the masses.

No, the right response is social democratic floors and an effectively managed response, both of which impinge on the power and wealth of the American oligarchy. That’s the obstacle. To prevent confrontation with that obstacle, the rich direct anger away from themselves into unhinged fictions and scapegoats.

Again, not a new phenomena in American politics and life.

"the right response is to ignore the masses and follow my preferred social policies, because the only reason someone would disagree is if they've been taken in by corporate propaganda"

That's the only way I can really parse your statement.

What would it take for you to believe that a large fraction of people genuinely do not want the policies you support?

The masses aren’t militia cosplayers camped outside a Baskin Robbins. They’re retail workers, nurses, bus drivers, etc for whom social democratic policies poll at comfortable majorities. And they’re writing op-eds asking not to be sacrificed for the sake of the economy.

What do you think it would take for you to realize this?

I notice a distinct lack of "construction workers", "farmers", "truck drivers" and the like in your list. Also generally regarded as "the masses", and also generally against those social democratic policies. (which you haven't named, but I'm going to assume the normal grab bag)

I'm sure you could easily find some willing to write an op-ed in favor of reopening soon. You'd have a hell of a time getting it published in the NYTimes, of course.

I grew up in a farming community in Michigan, my little brother works construction, and my high school sweetheart was a truck driver’s daughter. I get you just fled here from Los Angeles, but you still seem to be still getting your bearings.

And I grew up in Michigan, and went to school in Michigan. What's your point? That I can't say "there are conservative people out there" because I spent a few years in LA?

For that matter, if you grew up in rural Michigan, why are you asserting that everyone agrees with social democrat policies?

I never said everyone supports social democratic policies. I said a comfortable majority does, which is true. Having grown up in rural Michigan, I'm also quite familiar with bosses at Amway, Steelcase, and GM dressing up their politics as those of the working poor, when that's far from the truth.

UBI can't solve this problem. UBI does absolutely nothing if there's nothing to buy because nobody is working. You can't UBI your way around meat plants closing, restaurants not being staffed, stores closing, and so on.

If anything, UBI encouraging more people to not work can only make it worse.

The whole premise of UBI is that there's such a surplus that the only sane thing to do with it is to distribute it. There is now no surplus, and indeed credible threats of shortages. Therefore, it is only logical that the rest of the argument is now invalid. Hopefully, only temporarily.

We want to encourage people not to work; so much so that we have, as a matter of policy, made it illegal for them to work [0].

Everyone recognizes that some work is still necessary, which is why these bans make exclusions for "essential" work; so that we can continue to produce an adequate supply of essential goods.

The current discontent is not about supply shortages; it is about the segments of the population who are having difficulty accessing those supplies.

There is also the issue of rent/mortgage, which is closer to an issue of financial bookkeeping that real supply concerns (although, medium term, maintaince becomes an issue)

[0] More precisely, made the work that they would be doing illegal.

The whole point of it being universal is that UBI gives incentive to work on top of it for more while providing a maintenance floor for those unable to work while still providing some demand for the products which are still needed.

Things would be far more spartan with more of the population on UBI in a shutdown but they would be alive and their "self support" would be an outsized negative externality compared to what they generate.

I said that there wouldn’t be protests like these with UBI or a response like Taiwan’s, not that it solves the problem. Only a working vaccine or wildly effective therapeutic solves this problem.

Giving people a social floor so they’re not going to be out on the street or dead while we work on those is a necessary and proven effective mitigation tactic, however.

What social floor? I don't think you are internalizing that people can't buy things that don't exist. Nobody is going to care how many "dollars" they have if they can't buy food. Nobody is going to feel safe or secure or comfortable. Nobody is going to feel safe or secure no matter how many dollars you throw at them if they visibly are doing worse. There will be protests if people can't buy food and if you try to literally throw dollars into those protest crowds you'll only enrage them more if there is no food to buy with them.

You can't solve these shortages with UBI, or indeed, any amount of money. There is no "social floor" if the economy doesn't function. The whole premise of UBI is broken here.

Yes. It is absolutely possible for you to go to the grocery store and for there to be nothing there. Millions of people have had this experience and you are not immune to it. The warning shots are already being fired. Take them seriously.

I actually don't expect it to progress to this point, but it'll because the people who actually understand this stuff opened up even over the objections of the HN gestalt. TBH even the HN gestalt ought to be getting more shaken then it seems to be; there's been an awful lot of big layoffs in our core going on, you'd think at some point there'd be a bit more concern about indefinite lockdowns. The gestalt is acting a great deal more secure than the evidence available to it justifies. I suppose we have the way the question of what should and should not be opened up going from a scientific/public health question to a political question to thank.

This. US has not seen empty shelves since great depression and I am not sure many Americans understand what it means to an 'average' person living here. I am going to throw in an anecdote here just to spice it up a little. A pawn store owner I am acquainted with bartered ammo for masks recently. UBI means nothing when value comes from things that people want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com