[xiphias2]

I'm from a country that just made dictatorship official (Hungary), took away most money from the opposition, raided hundreds of big companies with the Hungarian military while keeping the companies secret, distributed more PPE outside the country than inside for us.

In US the states are fighting for getting PPE for the doctors (fighting over millions of dollars), while the FED increased the balance sheet by more than 70% (trillions of dollars) to prop up big zombie companies that were already highly overvalued, bailed out Blackrock investments instead of paying salaries for people who they want to stay home.

I'm right now in France, where people are getting their paychecks every month normally, just not from their employer, but the government.

Regarding south Korea, I read an earlier interview where he doesn't understand why the western world doesn't use masks (basically he called us stupid, just didn't say the word).

Masks were working 100 years ago, and everybody had one, I just don't believe that the government couldn't have ramped up production if they really wanted instead of just thinking of their investments potentially losing value.

[jariel]

+ Hungary is obviously problematic but most Western countries are not relevant.

+ Your comment about US PPE is completely wrong: the issue is not a lack of money, it's the scarcity of the resource.

+ France is teetering on real bankruptcy, and will have vicious unemployment, low wages and not a lot of opportunity while the US will rebound quite well (inequality notwithstanding). PS I lived in France as well. Their socialised medical program is obviously good, but France is broken and poor. I now live in Montreal where there are tons of French citizens flooding in looking for jobs.

+ The masks issue may or may not be relevant - it's certainly not the primary factor. Absolutely without question the aggressive contact-tracing/testing done by the South Korea teams is 'the gold star' in terms of Covid response.

Contact-tracing is the only known solution to the problem and frankly it work well, people have to work together.

As for Hungary ... there are 20 other problems you get to before the problem of 'the government has my location'. First - the government already knows where you already knows where you are if you're there -> you're at home! Second - you need a functional and intelligent governmental apparatus to do the 'contact tracing' system. Lots of people, lots of procedures. Hungary probably doesn't have the capability. FYI they probably don't have the capability to do a whole lot with location data anyhow.

[xiphias2]

> FYI they probably don't have the capability to do a whole lot with location data anyhow.

I thought before that Hungary won't be able to implement a survaillance state that fast, because the government doesn't have any IT capability, but what's happening is even scarier: they started outsourcing it to Chinese companies, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continuing.

[xiphias2]

I believe that Palantir is behind China in surveillence software (especially gathering data about people from public cameras, but of course using GPS data is much easier.

Of course the funniest thing is that the name of the surveillence software is SkyNet, because the CEO of the company loves Terminator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo3e1Pak-Y

[jen20]

> FYI they probably don't have the capability to do a whole lot with location data anyhow.

The only “capability” required is the ability to pay a Palantir invoice and ship data to them.

The UK is another good example of a western country which has attempted to use the COVID-19 crisis to extend government power - it is naive _in the extreme_ to believe that every other western government is not doing the same when this behaviour has not been demonstrated in the past 20 years.

[jariel]

It is naive _in the extreme_ to sit locked in one's home, in the greatest curtailment of civil liberties in human history, while the economy is a patient with heart failure, about to die, with the largest bailouts (Trillions!!) in history and then only enough to hold on for a 'few more weeks' - and then have as a 'primary concern' some, specific umbrage with the privacy of data by some gov agency, which is secondary in the first place because it has nothing to do with contact tracing, probably would be illegal for the gov. to use it, and even if they did, it probably won't cause any short term harm.

It's completely irrational to the point wherein the issue of interest really boils down to how people could have such a perspective in the first place.

Though there are 'concerns' obviously, and certainly 'some' impropriety will take place, and 'some' government will behave poorly, it's conspiratorial _in the extreme_ to suggest that 'every other government' is going to turn their country into China and to illegally and inappropriately just turn their countries into Big Brother.

The 'game has changed' - fundamentally and existentially.

For the next few years at least, there is a completely different context for everything. Everything.

People are going to have to adjust their thinking.