[crispyambulance]

> A better alternative is the less sexy but more productive political action obviously with buy in from the power brokers.

That's the first thing that will be tried, but to be truly successful the "buy in" needs to happen equally as much from the people that are on the verge of picking up pitchforks. It also needs to be an authentic political action. Unfortunately our politics in the USA has gone into profound dysfunction. Something ugly is going to happen, I think. I don't know when, but it's been on the way for quite some time. That guy in the oval office is just a symptom of a really deep problem.

> Unrest is what happens in Venezuela or Yemen, etc

Not necessarily!

There are a number of really bad things that precede unrest, usually a collapse of systems that people rely on. The folks in Venezuela didn't want unrest either, but when your currency becomes worthless within a span of a couple years... bad things are going to happen.

[_bxg1]

Yes, this exactly. These problems are absolutely possible to solve through political action. But our leaders have had ample opportunities, spread out over more than a decade, to do so. And they've sent a clear signal that they simply won't.

[DethNinja]

Actually I believe they sent a clear message that they want problems to get even worse. It is not even keeping the status quo at same level, at the face of this pandemic almost all world governments decisively pursued enriching the 1%.

I only hope more people woke up to this fact and form a critical mass but I doubt it.

[mc32]

You can read if that way. What I see is them propping up business so that there are actual jobs to go back to once things stabilize.

It does little good to send people thousands of dollars if when that dries up, and it would, there are no above board jobs to go back to.

[lotsofpulp]

How nice of the governments to help businesses afford to eat instead of people.

There is no reason assistance to people has to go through business. The reason governments do that is because leaders own equity in the current hierarchy and definitely don’t want to disturb that by giving the lower classes leverage to demand better terms.

[tekknik]

Do you not understand that if there are not jobs to go back to there will be no eating tomorrow either? If businesses start to go under, and this cascades as it usually does, we could be seeing serious recession, or even economic failure? What do we do about food then? Also what happened to the economic stimulus checks and unemployment system? The systems are definitely taxed but that only shows you how big we’re getting hit atm.

[mc32]

If businesses employed robots you’d have a point. But most today provide people gainful employment. No businesses left means no one to hire you.

[Avicebron]

Except "gainful employment" has been quietly eroded year after year with things like institutionalizing contract work/gig economy/worship of hustle/eroding worker's rights to organize and bargain with employers...

[lotsofpulp]

The businesses don't disappear because the doors close for a few months. People will still have their colleagues’ contact information to be able to re hire and start again.

[jazzyk]

By buying up junk bonds the government props up irresponsible, mismanaged companies, which possibly spent money on stock buybacks and bonuses for executives, instead of product/service development.

The way to go is to protect workers during transition from one job to another by providing them with decent unemployment benefits, training, etc., not bail out lousy executives over and over.

[jessaustin]

When people die, they're dead. When businesses die, their assets are sold to better businesses and their former employees are hired by better businesses.

I swear I have yet to meet a capitalist who actually believes in "capitalism"...

[_bxg1]

I see that motion as the status quo. The velocity, maybe even the acceleration, towards enriching the 1% is the status quo. This is how things will continue to go if people leave the system alone, pandemic or not.