[eaandkw]

I have pretty much given up on everybody at this point. I have already pulled my kid from school and will not send them back. I am in a single income family and I am now working from home.

All actions and purchases at this point are to help us to become more independant from the system. Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable. I am also making longer term plans to move out of my current state.

So good luck everyone with the education system.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I think one of the things that has been so disheartening to me about the pandemic is that it has shown how we just can't really do anything anymore in the US.

I mean, just look at PPE. I understand being a little flat footed when the pandemic first started, but it's been nearly 6 months now. I would have expected mass mobilization to pump out N95 masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc. by the millions. I mean, look how many heavy military vehicles the US managed to build during WWII, and then consider we can't even build masks of sufficient quantity.

And this just follows an ever growing set of problems that the US has just oddly accepted without the political will to do anything, things like our totally f'd healthcare system, mass shootings, climate change, etc.

I disagree, though, with the sibling comment that says "Don't give up! Don't withdraw!" It's not like there aren't other functioning societies in the world that are way less broken than the US. Staying behind in some mythical "fight" is just misplaced patriotism IMO. There are other countries that live the ideals that I used to associate with America (real freedom, upward mobility, democracy, rule of law, etc.) much better than the US does these days.

[not2b]

All of this is a consequence of ideologies that have become popular in the US both in politics and in business. Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable. Having manufacturing capacity to make low-value products in large numbers in the US is bad business when poorer countries can do it for less. Having spare inventory is bad, because just-in-time manufacturing is more efficient. Accepting a reasonable profit at a time of crisis is considered stupid when a business can make windfall profits by pitting states against each other or signing a sweetheart deal in exchange for a no-bid contract. We're looking a lot like Russia under Yeltsin when the place was collapsing and people were stealing everything that wasn't nailed down.

Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who is committed to division, who's willing to undermine the efforts of those who work for him, who, even at this time of crisis thinks that nothing other than personal loyalty to him and that he should never make a mistake.

[jorblumesea]

While it's easy to blame Trump (and he deserves a heaping pile of blame), the corruption and destruction of a functional US government has long been the goal of those on the right. Since the 80s there has been a concerted movement to defund and destroy the effective ability of our government for ideological and personal reasons.

Then, when the water treatment plants break down or the education system is a mess they can privatize it and reap the profits. Or they can establish charter schools that teach creationism, segregate classrooms again, or reduce education to minorities.

This is just one chess move in a long game that has been playing out since the 50s. Within this context, the moves here are not surprising, especially with Betsy DeVos in charge.

Read her bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsy_DeVos#School_vouchers

[s5300]

Dear HN users:

I plea that you refrain down voting any comment that advises you to take a look at DeVos's Wikipedia page. I HIGHLY advise reading Betsy DeVos's Wikipedia page.

With no offense intended (truly) I've got the idea that quite a portion of HN users probably don't know just how much of an absolute shitshow the head of U.S. Education is. DeVos is certifiably insane

[morelisp]

I will third this. Please, just look. You'll need to go through decades of multi-level marketing scams, private military contracting, torturous approach to treating autism and other behavioral therapies, and multi-generational Charismatic Christian hate groups before you can even dig into her atrocious educational policies.

[DuskStar]

> multi-level marketing scams

As far as I can tell, not mentioned on that page.

> private military contracting

Only mention is this sentence: "Betsy DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, is the founder of Blackwater USA, a private military services contractor."

> torturous approach to treating autism and other behavorial therapies

"Betsy and her husband Dick are chief investors in and board members of Neurocore, a group of brain performance centers offering biofeedback therapy for disorders such as depression, attention deficit disorder, autism, and anxiety. The therapy consists of showing movies to patients and interrupting them when they become distracted, in an effort to retrain their brains." Reading that, and the following paragraph, it seems like the efficacy of the treatment is dubious... But torture?

> multi-generational Charismatic Christian hate groups

The wikipedia page mentions a number of christian groups associated with the DeVos family. As far as I can tell, these all seem like bog-standard conservative causes. But, judging by the hyperbole in the rest of your comment, those probably do qualify as hate groups to you.

Overall, not impressed.

[sv123]

It's the GOP motto: Government doesn't work, here let me show you.

[DuskStar]

As opposed to the DNC motto of "Government works, you're just not giving us enough money".

Both parties are dysfunctional.

[jorblumesea]

The government would function more efficiently if the GOP wasn't so dead set on blocking any form of reform or efficiency. It's not a coincidence that once any Dem gets into office the GOP becomes the party of No.

Try to reform healthcare? Nope. Try to cut military spending? No. Establish oversight over federal slush funds? Nope.

Having the government burn tons of money is absolutely playing into the hands of those arguing to weaken government for personal profit. The GOP are completely fine burning cash because they can just blame the Dems and use that as an argument to privatize core government functions.

So once again, much of it comes back to GOP obstructionism.

[panzagl]

So the thing is, since WWII we've switched pretty evenly between the 'left' party and the 'right' party at the national level. All administrations/Congresses have been quick to sell us out to foreign and corporate interests, whether it's Bush going to war for oil or Obama forcing everyone to buy health insurance.

[thirdsun]

Do you really think that sane health care, a problem the rest of the world has figured out long ago, is nothing more than a scheme to serve corporate interests? Or on the same level as intentionally going to war based on misleading, if not downright incorrect, justifications. I can't believe what I'm reading here.

[mistermann]

I'd describe it as roughly, both parties have been Neoliberals since the 80's or so (the Political Overton Window changed), but then within that there's the part that people only see: left vs right, but they're far less different than they seem.

[maerF0x0]

> A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable.

Personally speaking I'm all good with wearing a mask if they let me out of my house. The Shelter in place thing has been such an overreaction that I'm kind of primed to rebel just because I'm so incensed by the violation of rights...

Wearing a mask is like requiring wearing a seatbelt. Shelter in place is like saying no one can drive except a few exceptionals.

[mynameisvlad]

I don't believe there are any states currently issuing stay at home (which is different than SIP) orders.

It also has 100% not been an overreaction. It saved countless lives by preventing spread. That whole flattening the curve thing and how well countries that have actually followed through and did not open early should show you how effective it has been.

[maerF0x0]

It would be interesting to see the data of which is more effective. I'm currently biased towards believing that masks were highly effective and SIP orders mostly are not (because people still leave for groceries, for example) .

If we create the false dichotomy of Masks vs SIP I would recommend Masks

[mynameisvlad]

Stay at home orders work because they minimize contact someone has with others.

Sure, people might still go to the groceries or other essential tasks. Once or twice a week. But if they're otherwise obeying the order and staying at home then just by not travelling to and from the office, going on recreational walks/drives/etc, and in general being isolated with a few people is obviously going to drastically limit the spread. It's not going to cut it down to 0, but it's still far less than the other extreme of living life normally and interacting with random people and surfaces daily.

Why are you even trying to create a false dichotomy? Just stay at home and wear a mask, ffs. It's really not that hard.

Saving lives should not be this grand political issue it's become in the US. It's objectively very simple. Limit contact and limit spread, and you'll have fewer cases. You limit contact by having people stay at home, and you limit spread by having people wear masks. This isn't rocket science or anything.

[watwut]

Shelter in place works everywhere except in America, which is always special.

And if people go to buy food, that totally negates lack of contact everywhere else, including restaurants, concerts, offices, schools, sport clubs and so on.

[base698]

The median death rate is 80: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/new-da...

At best it saved a few people who would have died in a couple of years.

[jkhaui]

It's a fallacy to think that the only outcome of COVID is binary (i.e. death or perfect recovery).

Just browse r/covidpositive. There are so many "survivors" who say they still have so much internal organ pain 4 months after being diagnosed, and now they feel hopeless, have suicidal ideation, etc.

And from the sounds of it, a lot of these people are in their 20s-40s and could run a marathon pre-COVID.

[shreyansj]

Which right is being violated in your opinion? And why is that more important than others' right to stay alive?

[Pinguinsan]

Because I am selfish and, by and large, don't care about others. Selfish? Yes. Just being honest.

[mnm1]

Thanks for showing us an example of exactly the kind of stupidity the parent is talking about. The government is well within its rights to require shelter in place. If you don't like it, get your case heard by the Supreme Court and win, but until then, stop pretending you have a right to not be quarantined. You don't. This is exactly the kind of thought and culture that prevents America from doing even the simplest things, like protecting people in a pandemic. A grass roots anti-intellectual culture of stupidity.

[Pinguinsan]

You are part of the problem. Stop while you're behind.

[rayiner]

We’re not a “country.” We’re 50 different states with a federal government, which doesn’t have public health as one of its assigned roles.

This isn’t an ideological point, it’s a bare recitation of fact. Somehow, other federal republics like Germany managed to engage in an effective pandemic response while leaving most of the work to the states. For example, while Germany eventually had a mask order everywhere, the states all implemented them at different times. School reopening was all done on different schedules with different procedures. Merkel didn’t issue a national mask order, for the same reason Trump didn’t: she wasn’t legally allowed to.

This was not a surprise. Nobody thought pandemic response was mainly a federal responsibility. States, particularly New York, were just completely unprepared for a job they knew was theirs.

So I agree ideologies are the problem, but this is a problematic ideology too. Why would people use a pandemic to try and relitigate the basic structure of our government? Why can’t we just work within the system to solve problems?

[jennasys]

While the states may be responsible for what happens on the ground, it is certainly the role of the federal government to provide coordination in the case of a nationwide public health issue. Clearly, that was not done in this case. The CDC, NIH, FEMA, and the surgeon general should have all been playing a role in this pandemic. The states shouldn't have had to ultimately go about creating their own regional coalitions of their own accord out of desperation.

[rayiner]

The CDC issued guidelines, and Trump had regular calls with the governors to coordinate. It’s more or less the same thing Merkel’s government did. They delivered what federal stockpiles they had. What else were they supposed to do? It’s the states fault that there weren’t any test kits, tracing and isolation infrastructure, etc. Obviously it would have helped if Trump wasn’t a counterproductive buffoon that contradicted the guidelines his own administration was issuing, but I’m not really talking about Trump’s failings as a leader. My post is about the division of labor.

[mynameisvlad]

> It’s the states fault that there weren’t any test kits, tracing and isolation infrastructure, etc.

Why exactly is this the states' fault? This seems like something that would be far more effective at the federal level. It's the exact same argument as the parent comment, it shouldn't be up to states to create tracing and isolation infrastructure, test kits, etc.

Putting that burden on the states is exactly how we got to the place we are in. Without effective federal support and direction, no solution will be effective since inter-state travel exists and there's 50 different states that will come up with 50 different solutions, some more effective than others.

It makes zero sense to force states to individually do all this when a single entity would be far more effective.

[monkeyfacebag]

wait, what is the CDC then? I am not trying to argue with you. I haven't heard the take that the US government doesn't have a public health role and am looking to learn.

[rayiner]

So there is theory and practice. In theory, public health is a purely state issue. In practice, it’s a mostly state issue. But there is a real legal limit here: the federal government has no general police power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_power_(United_States_co...

> In United States constitutional law, police power is the capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of their inhabitants.

This is not an unusual principle. Germany has a similar principle, which is why Angela Merkel didn’t issue a mask order either.

The federal agencies are best understood as having a coordinating role for when inter-state issues are involved. This CDC PowerPoint (which predates Covid) explains: https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/phl101/PHL101-Unit-5-16Jan09-S...

See the first bullet on Slide 8: “State and local governments carry out most communicable disease surveillance and control under the police power.”

See Slide 10: “Most powers for public health surveillance, investigations, and interventions derive from state and local law.”

The federal government provides “expert public health assistance” and regulates “disease carriers who cross state lines.”

So when we talk about things like tracing protocols, where does that fit? The CDC can provide expert advice about what sorts of testing protocols are effective. But the state governments must actually develop and execute the surveillance and intervention: testing patients, quarantining them, etc. The federal government is supposed to assist insofar as patients might move between states.

This is how everyone has always understood the division of labor in public health to be set up. Countries like Germany have similar legal structures, and have managed just fine. Even countries like Japan, where the central government does have a general police power, still delegates things like testing because the local governments are more nimble.

Only in America would be ignore the clear division of labor that’s in place during a pandemic.

[dragonwriter]

> In theory, public health is a purely state issue

No, it's not. The federal government is, in theory, fully empowered to use any of it's enumerated powers for any purpose not expressly prohibited, which public health is not, and has quite emphatically adopted policy around exercising its power for that purpose, starting at least as far back as the establishment of the marine hospitals in 1798, later, in many steps, reorganized into the modern US Public Health Service.

[GeneralMayhem]

You haven't heard it before because it's patently not true. The CDC, the FDA, the NIH, FEMA, not to mention the droves of smaller groups you and I have never heard of that are embedded in other agencies - the federal government has a massive public health role. It's so clear that I have to seriously question the motives of anyone saying that it doesn't.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Given their new "4-6 weeks and its done" schedule it's now just a political mouthpiece neutered to prevent any negative messaging near November.

[timsally]

> We’re 50 different states with a federal government, which doesn’t have public health as one of its assigned roles.

COVID is clearly a national security issue, which is squarely a matter for the federal government. The prior administration made pandemic response part of the national security apparatus (i.e. the NSC). According to public testimony, this continues in the current administration despite a reorganization.

You claim a bare recitation of fact, but in my view that is completely inaccurate. There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. One of the first iterations of our government under the Articles of Confederation didn't have a strong enough government to respond to national security threats and we could have lost the war for it. Having a strong federal government that can accomplish things the states cannot is literally the reason for our government as it exists today.

As I mentioned, by our own government's admission pandemic response is a national security issue. There are two additional reasons why this is clear. First, what if the pandemic was started by a biological weapon? Would we still leave it to the states then? Certainly not, yet it would be the same exact pandemic whether started by terrorists or by accident. Second, COVID is going to cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. On and don't forget it literally took a nuclear powered aircraft carrier off the battlefield. It is then by definition a national security issue because of how weak it makes our country.

I generally enjoy your writing on these issues but I think you have the basic structure of our government completely reversed. We threw out the Articles of Confederation and created a stronger federal government because disjoint states did not have the ability to respond to massive threats at the scale of COVID.

One you throw out your designation of COVID as a public health matter and recognize it is an issue of national security (again by our government's own admission) I think a lot of your other arguments do not hold up. Some things that you mention as a matter of law are clearly correct with respect to masks. But the idea that "nobody thought pandemic response was mainly a federal responsibility" is completely false and counter to the ideals of our government after the Confederation Period.

[GeneralMayhem]

>a federal government, which doesn’t have public health as one of its assigned roles

Yes, it does. It may not be explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, but the federal government is absolutely tasked with responding to national disasters, of which pandemics are one example. What is the CDC? What is FEMA? What is the NIH?

>Merkel didn’t issue a national mask order, for the same reason Trump didn’t: she wasn’t legally allowed to.

Even if it were true, that would make this the very first time in his life that legal limitations ever stopped Trump from doing something.

[rayiner]

Even to the extent that we’ve long ignored the constitution on these issues, we still haven’t put the federal government in a primary role for public health. The federal government is not supposed to be the front-line response to a pandemic. CDC’s own documents make clear, for example, that it is supposed to provide expert advice and deal with patients that cross state lines, while states are supposed to handle actual testing and intervention: https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/docs/phl101/PHL101-Unit-5-16Jan09-S....

Same thing with FEMA. It’s not supposed to be front-line disaster response. It’s supposed to be a backstop for when a particular state is overwhelmed. That’s why FEMA is legally not allowed to act until a governor declares a state of emergency and asks for assistance. But every state is supposed to be prepared to handle their own disasters. FEMA is a backstop—it’s not supposed to have the resources to help every state at the same time.

The NIH is a research agency. It doesn’t have an operational role in public health.

Even if we overlook what’s “explicitly enumerated” and we look at the structure that exists today by historical accident, the federal government is still relegated to an advisory role, and dealing with travel. But those aren’t the things that went wrong with the pandemic response. Lockdowns are an operational role, and entrusted to the states. PPE, testing kits, having people in place to do tracing and isolation? All of that is operational, and was assigned to the state governments. Mask orders are an exercise of the general police power, and entrusted to the states.

Again, this is not an ideological point about how things should be. (Although, they are this way because that’s how the constitution sets things up.) It’s a point about whose job it was to be prepared. The states were supposed to be prepared for this, and they weren’t. By the time the pandemic hit, there wasn’t much the federal government could do. It could advise states about tracing and isolation protocols, but it has no boots on the ground to actually do any of those things. The states were supposed to be prepared to do all that.

[ghufran_syed]

So you think it would be better under a different political leader? I think it’s great that you’re still such an optimist

[scarface74]

On the state level, no sane governor would sue mayors for requiring face masks.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/16/georgia-mayors-bria...

On the federal level, no sane President would go out of his way to force states to give the CDC less information.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-cor...

[sfteus]

If you're trying to tell me that you think we wouldn't be better off with a leader that said this was a present and real threat and put out a mandatory mask order back in Feb/March, shut down travel and enforced travel quarantines, used the Defense Production Act to create and deliver PPE where needed, didn't confiscate PPE from states and re-sell it to the highest bidder, didn't publicly contradict the pandemic response team and CDC, implemented an effective national testing and contact tracing strategy, etc, then I'd say you're not here for an honest dialogue.

[shreyansj]

Different political leader - we don't know. A different political leader who was not divisive and dismissive of science - yes, it would have been better.

[chosenbreed37]

That's true. A counterpoint is Japan or Sweden where citizens changed their behaviour prior to any government action. Social distancing, avoiding bars, public transport, staying away from elderly relatives, face masks, etc etc. I think it's a sad state of affairs if people only take action under the instruction from a government.

[bjustin]

I do think more or less any other leader likely would have done at least a little better. But if the same events in late 2019/early 2020 had happened under President Obama in 2015/2016 instead, I think it likely that many people in the opposing party would have ended up taking the same anti-science positions we see now. Federal action would have made the pandemic less bad but individuals and other levels of government could still have caused problems.

[scarface74]

Only Nixon could go to China. Imagine how much different things would have been if Trump had embraced the CDC and science like the other nations did. His followers would have gone along with it.

[s5300]

Well, the last administration literally made something called

“Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”

AKA how to handle a pandemic for dummies

What did our current administration do? Claim it at first did not exist, and then definitely didn't look at it when they were informed it did exist.

Really, you're not putting any effort in your trolling/cynicism

[harimau777]

I think there would probably still be systemic problems, but I don't see how anyone could think that it wouldn't be better under another leader. Trump is overtly incompetent.

[jimbokun]

> So you think it would be better under a different political leader?

No US President in my living memory would have screwed this up as badly as Donald Trump has.

[mistermann]

> Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who...

Were all of these issues nonexistent under prior administrations?

Or, as for turning it around, are you asserting that Clinton both could have and would have done so? If so, how do you know this?

[greesil]

Interdimensional cable. You can't prove that I don't have it.

Ask yourself this, could the current administration's response have been better given what was known at the time? If the answer is emphatically yes, then perhaps another person is better suited for the job.

[mynameisvlad]

Why is this even a discussion we're having? Yes, literally anybody would have had a better response than what we got. Just looking at the current state of the US vs practically any other country in the world shows how cripplingly bad the response has been from the current administration.

Sometimes, I really hate the people in this country.

[erik_seaberg]

The US was never going to win a contest that calls for unity and obedience. I’ve usually found it admirable, though not right now.

[greesil]

I can take a guess. People consume different information sources, and have different ideologies. So, they may arrive at different conclusions than you. I suspect this is more heavily on the ideology side because it's hard to deny the body count.

[mistermann]

> Interdimensional cable. You can't prove that I don't have it.

@not2b pointed out a number of very valid issues in the United States. No disagreement from me, these are obvious and very important problems.

But then followed it up with:

>> Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause, but we chose someone who is committed to division...

"Now, all of this could be turned around quickly with good leadership" on its own could be interpreted as an abstract philosophical statement, but not when it is accompanied by "...but we chose someone..." implies a specific context (the last election), does it not?

In the last election, there were two choices: Trump and Clinton.

Trump was elected, leaving Clinton as the only other choice of a person who could have "turned this situation around quickly with good leadership that could rally the country behind a cause".

Is: "are you asserting that Clinton both could have and would have done so? If so, how do you know this?", requesting clarification and evidence of the claim, inappropriate in this context?

Is: "Were all of these issues nonexistent under prior administrations?" not appropriate, considering the claim was that a different choice could "turn this situation around quickly"? Is past performance of Presidents not relevant to the epistemic soundness of a claim that something is not just possible, but quick?

I'm thinking: perhaps turning things around in a country of 300 million people of vastly different cultures and ideologies is a bit more complicated than is appreciated by some forum commentators. Just an idea.

> Ask yourself this, could the current administration's response have been better given what was known at the time? If the answer is emphatically yes, then perhaps another person is better suited for the job.

Of course, just look around at other countries. There are surely thousands of people in the Unites States that could have handled this situation better, but we are only allowed to vote for the candidates that are undemocratically offered. And let's not forget, an election isn't about on issue, like "who would handle a pandemic best?". The reality is, each voter is (or should be) considering many thousands of variables, many of which have unknown values and all sorts of messy stuff.

The notion that ~"because President<A> is handling individual issue <x> poorly, therefore it logically follows that Candidate<Y> was the better choice for President" is not strongly logical. The answers to questions like this (or, what the hell is even going on, at any level of significant complexity) are actually not known - it just doesn't seem like it. I happen to believe that this phenomenon may actually play a major role in the underlying cause of the problems themselves.

[electriclove]

You are getting downvoted for your political statement. I really wish the parent comment kept out the last bit because the conversation then devolves to red/blue, left/right, white/black.

We, as a country, screwed the handling of this. It isn't just one person. It is the way our entire system works. How do we fix it?

[mynameisvlad]

Yes, the country screwed up, but ultimately, the country is represented by a single leader, and said single leader is responsible for the response of the country as a whole.

With great power (like presidency), comes great responsibility (like properly leading the country through a global pandemic) and with great responsibility comes great criticism where said responsibility isn't followed through.

They're not getting downvoted for a political statement. They're getting downvoted by implying that someone else wouldn't do a better job than probably the worst possible response to Covid.

Objectively, the response we've had from the leadership of the country has been terrible, and the effects are evident when you look at # of cases. Also objectively, any other response would have been better. Obviously, I can't tell with absolute certainty what other leaders would have done, but I can assure you it'd have been better than what we have now.

To say otherwise is ignoring the current state of the country and the response that has resulted in said state.

[mistermann]

> You are getting downvoted for your political statement.

Technically, I'm being downvoted for asking two questions that challenge someone else's political statement (that aligns quite nicely with the general politics of HN).

> I really wish the parent comment kept out the last bit because the conversation then devolves to red/blue, left/right, white/black.

Me too, I completely agreed with the first part. I have this thing about about people dropping dimensions of reality and pretending they are irrelevant, or predicting the outcome of events on parallel dimensions of our universe, and stating those predictions as if they are facts. I consider this sort of rhetoric as part of the problem, but most people seem to overwhelmingly prefer it nowadays, provided the proper claims are made of course.

> How do we fix it?

This seems like the important question to me as well. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be a very popular topic of discussion.

[rorykoehler]

Clinton isn’t incompetent with a long list of failures behind her name. I despise her but to think that she wouldn’t have been better at handling the pandemic response than Trump is delusional.

[mistermann]

> Clinton isn’t incompetent with a long list of failures behind her name.

This is subjective and necessarily highly speculative.

> I despise her but to think that she wouldn’t have been better at handling the pandemic response than Trump is delusional.

Predicting or thinking (about) that is perfectly fine and reasonable. Mistaking subsequent predictions for conclusive facts is what is actually delusional. There are many examples of such delusional behavior on HN every day: mind reading, future predicting (and stating the results as facts), you name it. I think it is fairly true to say that conspiracy theorists (for example) and "smart" people differ more in degree than in kind, although we do not have the means (or ambition, or epistemic skills) to determine the degree to which this is true.

Most of the time, what we consider to be true, is actually unknown.

[fsociety]

Right but you didn’t write anything about this particular situation. Instead you created doubt in the conversation because we don’t have 100% of the facts.

In leadership not making a decision until you have 100% of the facts, and truly know something to be a fact, will kill your ability to be effective.

Trump didn’t make a decision, instead he called the virus a hoax and prevented experts from providing insight to a situation where we didn’t have all the facts.

On the next sentence I’m going to write, no I don’t have 100% of the facts but I can certainly make an informed statement.

Trump fucked this country up and Clinton would’ve had a better response to this pandemic - regardless of who you identify as how could you not accept this.

[RestlessMind]

> Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable.

Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.

> ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, ...

I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov#Issues_during_l...

[GeneralMayhem]

Performance is in fact divergent by party; see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hso3sf/oc_.... Blue counties are doing worse than red in both state cohorts due to population density, but counties of either party are doing worse in R states. Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

Healthcare.gov was a shitshow, but referring to it here is a very silly false equivalency. It was not time-sensitive in the same way that COVID-19 response is. It involved getting the federal government to exercise new competencies that it hadn't done at scale before; responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government, and PPE acquisition, distribution, and even manufacturing are not new. It failed for reasons having to do with mismanagement of timelines, not outright fraud; COVID PPE shipments have been hijacked and sold off to the president's cronies.

But sure, both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

[jdminhbg]

> Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

The relevant metric is not "amount of time doing relatively better or worse." You can get all over with quickly like NY did, but they ended up with 8x the deaths of FL. NJ has 3x FL's. AFAICT, "leading responsibly" here means simply having (D) after their names, as these governors' policies were catastrophically bad.

[RestlessMind]

> responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government

I responded to your sibling comment about other examples about how D-dominated governments have failed spectacularly in areas which are supposed to be the core jobs of governments - public infrastructure. (ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875739).

> both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

I actually don't see much difference in the incompetence of the two sides. Presidents (or Governors) are simply impotent to get anything done in the US systems. At best (in terms of their powers), they can only stop something from happening.

[jimbokun]

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.

Maybe if it were also possible to lock down borders between states, making them truly separate sovereign nations.

A lot of states had a declining infection rate and looked to be getting things under control, then people traveled to other states and brought back the virus with them.

There are still things only the federal government can do or coordinate.

[panzagl]

You mean when all the New Yorkers left for Florida?

[divbzero]

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no?

It’s not so simple in that many states are miniature versions of our polarized country. For example, you have a Democratic governor facing Republican opposition in rural counties in Washington, and a Republican governor suing a Democratic mayor in Georgia.

[perl4ever]

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

It's very frustrating seeing people continually arguing that because some people screw up, learn from experience, and fix things, that it justifies others going in the opposite direction, ignoring experience, and breaking things.

Even before your metrics show that the destruction has reached a crossover point, the latter is fundamentally different because it's unnecessary. The former is fundamentally sound because there will always be mistakes.

It doesn't matter how bad you think government is, it's not an argument for making it worse.

[bshoemaker]

This is not true; a) more rural states have a much easier time with covid and b) blue states started off being hit the hardest, but red states are now catching up because their governors are incompetent

[gpapilion]

I think this is a misrepresentation. Texas has 85% of the infections as California and 74% of the population. California has had steady growth while Texas has been very quick with several days over 10k.

I think the reason the outcome is largely the same is this is a situation where we rely on our federal government to lead the response, and so far they haven’t.

[jimbokun]

> I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

This strikes me as a pretty passive-aggressive argument style.

Who, in your opinion, is the better leader? Which of Obama or Trump do you think would handle this pandemic better?

You are picking out one mistake, and kind-of-sort-of implying that makes them both the same, except you don't have the courage to directly state that. If you have a point to make, make it.

[RestlessMind]

> If you have a point to make, make it.

My point - a solo good leader is insufficient in the US because the systemic rot is deeper and bipartisan. (FWIW, Obama was an okay leader, though vastly better than Trump).

> You are picking out one mistake

Here are a few more: California High-Speed railway, which was being implemented when CA had D-dominated government under a very competent governor (Brown). Did that leadership or unified government control help? Absolutely not.

Another: 2-mile stretch of Second Avenue subway in NYC, which took almost a 100 years and $4-5B. Why? Were all the NYC leaders incompetent for a century? I don't think so.

[Proziam]

The problem is that people think the D's and R's are dramatically different. They both have similar statist agendas just marketing themselves towards different demographics. Neither party has many any substantial effort to rebuild our infrastructure, develop genuine disaster preparedness, reduce tax burdens on the middle class, and so on.

All of those things lead to what we're seeing now where the average person can't even afford to live on savings for a few months. If the average person can't keep themselves above water, how can they realistically contribute to their community efforts like we did in WW2? And if they're all going broke and risking losing their houses and livelihoods you end up with a massive backlash to anything keeping people away from work.

We need leadership that pushes serious reform initiatives to reduce government bloat and reach goals that actually benefit the people.

[RestlessMind]

I see that you are being downvoted, but I do agree with some of your points.

> people think the D's and R's are dramatically different

This is so true. Let's ignore fringe topics like Green New Deal or White Supremacy and look at what the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

But what are the key differences between tax policy or curtailing corporate powers or entanglements in various wars? You will have to squint hard. And please don't cite Warren or Sanders when it comes to corporations and D's - those two lost the primary handily and when D's controlled all the levers of the powers in D.C., they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008.

[Avicebron]

Yeah it's pretty obvious by reading by what is NOT being discussed and talked about that there is some serious disconnect from both the Ds and the Rs and the people that make up the US that is behind a lot of the current problems.

Sometimes the silence says more than the noise.

[Proziam]

The upvotes/downvotes I get are weird to watch because there's so much apparent disagreement and very little dialogue. This is the case on anything I post that takes a more 'conservative' stance.

> the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

I sometimes call these the clickbait issues. They get the most public attention but affect people's daily lives the least. Of course, that statement is going to upset some people because they will not immediately consider the net effect of trans rights legislation in comparison to taxes / corporate lawmaking / warfare / international trade.

Worse, some people take statements like the above and think that I don't want all humans to have truly equal rights, which I do.

> they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008

Very true. I've seen many people (including on this forum, which is better educated than average) make statements to the effect of 'democrats are better for the economy' without considering the fact that both parties have been complicit in creating and maintaining the systems that have led to massive government debt and economic collapses.

[spideymans]

The United States government is completely and utterly dysfunctional when it comes to serving the needs of its citizens. The government rarely goes out of its way to help its citizens, and the rare times it does something to help, it does so incredibly begrudgingly, intentionally making the process as painful as possible.

The pandemic payouts are a wonderful example of the government going out of its way to make helping its citizens as painful as possible. Millions of people still haven’t received their one-time payment of $1,200. Meanwhile in Canada, it took their government only two weeks to develop the infrastructure to send monthly payments of $2,000 to every Canadian.

The incompetence displayed by the American government isn’t because they can’t do better - it’s because they don’t want to do better. The same government was able to send massive financial assistance to huge corporations with very little delay.

It’s become totally evident that the United States government exists solely to serve its corporations, not its citizens. Anything it does to actively help it’s citizens is, at best, incidental.

[dhosek]

This is entirely at the feet of the Republican party. They're the ones who have declared states are on their own and have suggested (and this is not a joke) that the next round of "relief" must include a capital gains holiday. There have been missteps from the left, but the Democrats overall approach has been to serve the needs of citizens in general while the Republicans have been eager to continue their program of concentrating wealth.

[Avicebron]

This isn't quite true, yes the Republican party has some pretty clear pro-business idealogy that hurts the citizens. No doubt. But it was a Democratic party that pushed for the hollowing out of american businesses to overseas locations and bailed out a morally bankrupt wall street with no public consequences other than a federal reserve patch job

[tremon]

As long as you keep framing your country's problems in terms of D vs R, things will not improve.

[chosenbreed37]

It is true that the pandemic has brought to the fore some things that could be improved. I'm not based in the US but I think it has a lot going for it. We may argue about some of the drawbacks associated with the status quo but this is the country that landed people on the moon. It has brought us Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Starbucks, Hollywood, Disney, etc. In spite of the retoric from some quarters it still welcomes people from all over the world. And what is more they almost immediately identify themselves as American and embrace the values and start making working towards the American dream. I think you'd struggle to find a better place in terms of upward mobility. Certainly not in Europe. I think we have to see it in terms of trade offs. The things that some admire in other nations come at a cost. And in some cases can't really happen in the US because the policies don't scale as well. There may be other nations catching up in some areas. But I think America is still a great nation.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> I think you'd struggle to find a better place in terms of upward mobility.

Just going to respond to this. The US used to be a paragon of upward mobility. That is no longer the case: https://www.forbes.com/sites/aparnamathur/2018/07/16/the-u-s... . That is just one article, but you can search "US upward mobility ranking" and find lots of articles and evidence how many other countries now do much, much better than the US in this regard.

[mnm1]

Upward mobility is much lower in the US than most of Western Europe and likely most of Europe period.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.brookings.edu/wp-co...

[nickff]

If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks. Given the (very popular) laws against price gauging, it seems like the only viable option is to force some companies to manufacture more masks. Production capacity is available, but at a higher cost than is currently economical.

All that being said, your second point seems correct to me, and I doubt anything will be done (as a result of the political quagmire).

[thephyber]

> If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks.

Those aren't the only options. Some mask manufacturers could scale up manufacturing as long as they had a medium/long term contract to make the investment worth it. The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishing it (dubious claim), so there was exactly zero reason for this[1] to happen.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...

[chosenbreed37]

Curious. Is there anything stopping individual states from doing this? Surely a federal system should enable individual states to act independently to some extent. They must have their own budgets and are to determine how resources are allocated. No?

[ihumanable]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-admin-seizing-ppe/

There were three major disincentives for states to do this.

First, without a coordinated response there were dozens of high demand buyers and low supply. The market did its thing and State Governments were being forced to pay very high prices for PPE. States were bidding against each other and bidding against the Federal Government, this drove the price even higher.

Second, even when States could secure PPE, the Federal Government was seizing PPE and testing supplies to send it to Coronavirus Taskforce approved vendors who would then sell the seized goods back to the States at inflated prices. This got so bad that Maryland's Governor, after using his South Korean wife's connections to secure testing supplies from South Korea, placed them under the protection of the National Guard to prevent the Federal Government from absconding with them. https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/maryla...

Third, the State budgets are shot to hell. When the public health crisis started it was easy to say, let's do what it takes to keep people safe. Now a sizable chunk of the citizenry is refusing to wear masks or social distance, and the State coffers are running empty. State leaders are faced with deciding if they want to use the limited funds left at their disposal to try purchasing PPE in the face of a constituency that is going to spread and worsen the public health crisis regardless. It's lose-lose for the decision makers, so they are disincentivized to follow this path. They can spend the last of the treasury on PPE just to watch it evaporate as cases soar.

[evan_]

In many cases states have tried to obtain supplies directly from manufacturers and suppliers only to have the Federal Government step in and prevent them from actually taking possession of the needed materials.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-whi...

[msluyter]

IIRC, states are mandated against running deficits, and their budgets are set 1-2 years in advance (eg, Texas, whose legislature sets the budget every 2 years), which limits their maneuverability in this regard. Also, states don't have the equivalent resources and bargaining power of the federal government.

[dhosek]

States are resource constrained in ways that the federal government is not. Most, if not all, local governments are required to balance their budgets on an annual basis. Conservative politicians insist on tax cuts during economic boom times that prevent these governments from being able to withstand downturns without dramatic cuts in services (which is the real end goal of the conservatives).

[1123581321]

That’s the removing price gouging solution, just at the wholesale level. Unless the plan is for the government to tell the manufacturers what kind of pay they should find acceptable.

[mistermann]

> The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishing it (dubious claim), so there was exactly zero reason for this[1] to happen.

The claim is "dubious", so (therefore) there was exactly no reason for this to happen?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dubious - "questionable or suspect as to true nature or quality"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exactly - "in a manner or measure or to a degree or number that strictly conforms to a fact or condition"

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/08/donald-tru...

> One thing the stockpile clearly doesn’t have enough of is face masks. News reports found that the N95 face masks were not substantially replenished after H1N1 in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. (continues)

https://www.dailywire.com/news/obama-admin-allegedly-deplete...

> “The national stockpile used to be somewhat more robust. In 2006, Congress provided supplemental funds to add 104 million N95 masks and 52 million surgical masks in an effort to prepare for a flu pandemic,” Bloomberg News continued. “But after the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, which triggered a nationwide shortage of masks and caused a 2- to 3-year backlog orders for the N95 variety, the stockpile distributed about three-quarters of its inventory and didn’t build back the supply.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/828303817/surgical-mask-manuf...

> KELLY: I mean, I have read that since that experience, you have been sounding the alarm. I know you wrote to President Trump. I know you wrote President Obama before him, warning that it wasn't going to be if but when that there would be another...

> BOWEN: I'm not. No. No, no, no. You know, I have been off and on. Of course, I've been selling this message for 14 years, but I'm really not angry. I'm puzzled. And I think what I've been fighting is not the government, not President Obama, not President Trump. I think it's human nature. I think since everybody ignored it - I mean, reporters ignored it. Pandemic experts ignored it. Our government ignored it. Hospitals ignored it. Everybody ignored it. So to me, it's a human nature problem. So I'm over my anger.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XMOzAY...

> “Prestige Ameritech is presently the lone voice warning of the insecure U.S. mask supply,” Bowen wrote to President Barack Obama in June 2010. “Apathy and inertia are our biggest hurdles.”

(Note that this is from The Washington Post)

I don't disagree that there's no GOOD reason for this to happen, other than the unfortunate reality that human beings are not very good at thinking, at least compared to how well we perceive ourselves to think. As far as I can tell, almost all humans are living in some sort of a severe state of delusion at all times, our minds and societies haven't had nearly enough time to evolve to accommodate the massive increase in complexity in the last few hundred years, let alone the last 20.

[thephyber]

The "dubious" claim (I was imprecise and meant to credit it to the president's quote, not the "without replenishing it") was basically affirmed by your Politifact link.

More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2020/04/02/trump...

[mistermann]

> More importantly, the current president didn't spend the first 3 years in office replenishing the stockpile and didn't take an offer from a former mask manufacturer very early in the outbreak to increase the production rate.

Obama behaved no differently.

[not2b]

That's why we have mechanisms like the Defense Production Act. Under normal circumstances the free market works well, but sometimes in a crisis it isn't enough. We are in a crisis.

[vb6sp6]

> seems like the only viable option is to force some companies to manufacture more masks

This doesn't have to be complicated: We can subsidize masks.

[nickff]

The manufacturer prices would be higher, thus triggering price gouging laws.

[sfteus]

Price gouging is based on a reasonable price and is subjective. If the present situation results in inflated prices due to lack of materials or needing to run at a higher capacity, that's still reasonable. California, for example, has this written into their penal code, limiting it to a 10% increase in price of the total cost of manufacturing, which includes the increased cost of production, transportation or storage.

If those companies decided that they were going to stop selling their current stock of masks completely until they sold for a higher price, that would be price gouging.

[nickff]

Would you take on the cost and risk of additional machines and employees for an ephemeral market and small margins?

[pantaloony]

You’re missing a whole world of how governments can get market actors to do things, unless you’re putting “incentives and guarantees” under “force people”. In fact that approach of using market actors to the benefit of the country used to fall under the umbrella of conservatism, in the distant past of 3ish decades ago.

[thaumaturgy]

HN really needs to be more aggressively critical of comments like these, that try to construct arguments on ideological foundations without any deeper investigation of the relevant facts.

First, production capacity is not available, as the VP of Prestige Ameritech tried to explain to everyone months ago [1]. The equipment required to manufacture suitable PPE is big and expensive and there isn't enough demand to offset the capital or the maintenance costs for the equipment, except when there's suddenly a pandemic and everyone wants PPE yesterday.

Despite this, Prestige Ameritech -- having foreseen this scenario a long time ago and spent over a decade begging different administrations to prepare for it -- offered to ramp up production early this year. The Trump administration said no [2]. The issue has now been made even worse with everything reopening nationally, which has not only caused a huge spike in hospital demand for PPE, but has also caused a huge spike in demand for masks specifically [same article].

And these are just the immediate, short-term, direct issues that should be easy for outsiders to grasp. There are many other related, harder-to-solve problems:

> The blame, experts agreed, goes beyond any single person or agency but is the culmination of decades of change in the nation’s manufacturing capabilities, a worldwide shift in how goods are delivered and the country’s long battle with medical costs. Warnings about how these factors set the stage for shortages during a worst-case scenario went unheeded, leaving the country unprepared for a pandemic.

> By the time the coronavirus arrived, it was too late. The nation was left with massive shortages and a ruptured supply chain that won’t be an easy fix. [3]

Furthermore, prices did rise dramatically, and -- gasp! -- this did not magically fix the supply chain [4].

Allowing unregulated price gouging would not (and did not) change the supply shortage. It would have just been a pinata party in the shape of the US, and would have left front line medical workers without necessary PPE while wealthy people hoarded supplies.

An effective, less corrupt federal government could have dramatically increased PPE supply just by taking the pandemic seriously at the start and putting competent people with relevant expertise in charge of oversight and response. There still would have been shortages, but they would have been far less severe and they would largely have been resolved by now.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/05/8113874...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/10/21319960/n95-masks-shor...

[3]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/07/01/coronavirus-u...

[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/21/why-dont-h...

[jackcosgrove]

I would argue that the high salaries in the software industry have siphoned technologists from other industries that make physical products. Some of that is intrinsic, since making stuff has smaller margins than pushing bytes. But a lot of it is hidebound business practices. For example, should a manager always make more money than their reports? In many industries the answer is yes, which is a rejection of supply and demand in favor of a social hierarchy. There is also incredible bloat in supervisory roles, again because of the artificial money and prestige. Some companies would seemingly prefer to slowly die than pay needed employees a market rate, market being a national market spanning industries (some skillsets are fungible like that).

[jdbernard]

Personally I think it's more likely that the low salaries in other areas of technology (particularly physical products) has pushed people to software, rather than high salaries in software pulling them. Same effect in the end but I think the race-to-the-bottom in manufacturing, machining, and physical product development began the cycle. Soaring software salaries followed.

[partyboat1586]

Which countries are you thinking of?

[tzs]

I have no idea about N95 masks, but surgical style masks (which are what most people need) seem to be readily available.

I bought 50 for $30 at Newegg in mid May. I just ordered another 200 from there at $15 per 50. There are similar offerings immediately available on Amazon.

Same for face shields.

[electriclove]

Please share what countries you are referring to. This is not meant as a challenge, I genuinely feel the same way and want to evaluate things.

[eaandkw]

Honestly I think the government is too big and centralized. At this point is isn't much different that Soviet Russia back in the 80s and 90s. I think the reason the government can't do a good job is because it wasn't designed to operate the way it is now. We were supposed to be 50 states all doing what is best for them and not dictated by the federal government. The right decision for New York will probably not be the right decision for Wyoming and so forth.

To your comment about WWII. We had a common enemy and a common effort. This "wartime" economy pretty much envolved the entire economy and I would argue wasn't much different than what communism would be. Meaning that the central government pretty much controlled the means of production.

[int_19h]

As somebody who actually lived in the USSR in 1980s (a reminder that it ceased to exist in 1991), that's not even wrong.

[eaandkw]

I’m not being sarcastic here but do you mean that my comment was correct? At least mostly.

[int_19h]

I mean the opposite. The degree of government centralization and intrusiveness in US today is nowhere even close to what it was in USSR circa 1980s. And it's still one of the most decentralized countries in the world in general.

[Fargren]

I think you are bringing your own biases to this problem. The US is not as decentralized as it once was, it's true. And that has pros and cons. But many countries that are more centralized than the US have handled this crisis better, and the same is true for countries that are less centralized. It's not clear at all that the reason for the US failure had been the level of centralization.

[Oxx]

Good. The current state of the world is incredibly unnatural when you compare it to even 50 years ago. Everything is too connected. We are so much more efficient, but so much more fragile. The best thing you can do to save the world is save yourself and your family. Less fragility, more robustness at the personal / local level.

I am mid twenties, and was homeschooled my entire childhood. My father owned a technology company, and brought me to work with him most days. People talk about homeschooling being damaging due to the lack of exposure to the "real world", but I have had more exposure to reality than most, due to the constant exposure to actual working life.

Don't be afraid of "sheltering" your children by not having them be part of the system. There is so much more out there than the system. Your kids will turn out weird vs other kids raised in the standard environment, but its a good kind of weird.

My family was very involved with the homeschooling movement in our state, so I am more exposed than most to the sub-culture. Feel free to ask me any more specific questions.

[thephyber]

> but its a good kind of weird.

This isn't guaranteed.

A counterexample is Tara Westover[1] who grew up in an extremist version of what you are describing. She ultimately became successful but it was mostly despite her parents isolation from "the system", not because of them.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/02/20/587244230/memoirist-retraces-...

[ghufran_syed]

In what education system are outcomes guaranteed?

The story you linked to is pretty interesting, but she clearly states she was allowed to learn (just not forced to), she obviously understood what a university was, and had the desire and ability to apply and be accepted to university at an age when her parents would have had the legal right to stop her if they so wished - they obviously supported her application. Her outcome was clearly a lot better than many students who go to public school.

[marta_morena_25]

This story is fascinating (you really should read the whole book). But using her as example is completely misleading. She is a genius (I think). Very similar to the movie "Good Will Hunting". She got accepted into Cambridge with little to no education whatsoever. Even if you are a genius, this is not easy, since you just have to understand the system to some extend, no matter how smart you are, to be accepted into it.

Suffices to say, millions would fail under similar conditions, where she succeeded. Odds in normal education are much better than that.

[thephyber]

I interpreted "the system" of your GP as wider society, not just the normal public education system, because of the first paragraph.

Also, yes Tara was given lots of autonomy early in her education, but she was completely unprepared for the world even at BYU (her undergraduate university), she struggled through many years of therapy, and she claims she was admitted to Cambridge because of luck (on top of lots of talent and hard work) because she still needed lots of remedial coursework to catch up. One interesting quote from a (TED?) talk she gave is that her early childhood was spent reading early Mormon scripture, so she spoke and wrote with the character of a mid-19th century LDS prophet when she arrived at university.

[dmm]

I went to public schools for 12 years and I still turned out weird. No guarantees either way.

I think the view that homeschooled kids are weird is caused less by homeschooling and more by the fact that weirdos are more likely to homeschool.

[AnimalMuppet]

Let's say your kid is "weird" - on the autism spectrum, or ADD, or has severe allergies, or whatever. That can often cause problems in school, because children are often cruel. Parents of such children may be more likely to homeschool them than parents of kids that better fit the "normal" pattern.

Let's say the kid turns out a little weird. Would they have turned out better going through the public school system?

It's not necessarily fair to blame the homeschooling if the kids come out different. What were they at the start?

[eaandkw]

At this point I am even sure that being more efficient is better. From the context of economic opportunity the only ones that benefit are the rich and well connected. Now, I'm not one to bash "rich people" but think about it. If I was looking for a good deal for some land I could probably find one if I looked hard enough. Today it is pretty difficult to find land that isn't insanly expensive or too far away. Everything has already been bought up. The people that are well off and connected already learned 20 or 30 years ago where the land development were going to happen and they already bought the land.

As far as homeschooling is concerned. I spent 20 years in the military and the only thing that I observed that was a little awkward about the people that were home schooled was how they were around "authority". Meaning that they weren't as submissive to authority like everyone that went to a normal public school.

[cortesoft]

> At this point I am even sure that being more efficient is better. From the context of economic opportunity the only ones that benefit are the rich and well connected.

I think you are really underselling how awful life has been in the past.

Just look at things like child mortality rates.... historically, nearly HALF of all people died during childhood. That is insane. The global rate is now about 1/10 of that.

Similar changes have been made to starvation and malnourishment, with today's rates so much lower than historically.

This would not be possible without the improvements in efficiency over the years. Because we need so few people to grow enough food to feed everyone, we can spend the resources on medical research and advancements that have allowed our health outcomes to improve so much.

Are the gains of an efficient society unequally distributed? Of course. But let's solve the inequality problem by sharing the gains, not destroying the gains.

Yes, if we got rid of our efficiency gains, we would be more equal... because everyone would be much poorer.

We would still have people exploiting others, though. That happened way before we were efficient.

https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past

[eaandkw]

Don't get me wrong about the efficiency gains. To a point I think it is great. But when everything is maximally efficient there is nothing to gain. Sure we could disrupt yet another industry but for every winner there is a loser.

Starvation and malnourishment are drastically lower due to industrial farming. But that was to the detrement of destroyed ecosystems, pollution, and greater government regulations. Heck, I believe that I was Michigan that was trying to prevent people from purchasing seeds to plant their own gardens.

Don't worry. I'm not actually all doom and gloom. I just don't think we are on the right track and we are heading of course. And this has been going on for a lot longer than 2016.

[diogenescynic]

I don't think homeschooling is usually like you're describing. Most of the people I have met who were homeschooled were not social adjusted or developed and didn't seem 'normal' by most standards. Most of them had parents who were either extremely religious or some other ideological tendency (survivalist, etc).

[slowhand09]

My nephews kids are homeschooled. They have a rigorous curriculum, specific goals, etc. They also have regular socialization activity with other homeschoolers. They just choose to not settle for the mediocrity, nor accept the indoctrination pushed by the education system.

[diogenescynic]

No offense, but this is where it starts getting weird and into the whole "society is bad!" that seems pretty extreme:

>They just choose to not settle for the mediocrity, nor accept the indoctrination pushed by the education system.

Most people I know who went to public schools came out fairly well. I refuse to share this elitist/ideological attitude towards them. What indoctrination? Don't you think that's a rather general and blanket statement considering how varied each school district is? Maybe that's more of a criticism of how schools are run in your area.

[sv123]

> Most people I know who went to public schools came out fairly well. I refuse to share this elitist/ideological attitude towards them. What indoctrination? Don't you think that's a rather general and blanket statement considering how varied each school district is? Maybe that's more of a criticism of how schools are run in your area.

That's exactly what someone who has been indoctrinated at a public school would say!

/s

[tremon]

What indoctrination?

Is the Pledge Of Allegiance still a thing at schools?

[dragonwriter]

> Most of the people I have met who were homeschooled

The people you have met are probably not a representative sample of the population you would like to generalize to from your experience.

[jyounker]

The same can be said of those on the other side too.

[diogenescynic]

One anecdote counters another.

[rahimnathwani]

The ideology is the common-causal variable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

[amanaplanacanal]

If you as a parent are grappling with the idea of homeschooling, know that you don’t have to do it the way those parents did. What you saw is not an indictment of homeschooling, but of those parents that decided to do it that way.

[diogenescynic]

I took the GRE in 9th grade and started taking classes at a community college. There are alternative paths out there where you can still socialize. There are more MOOCs and online schools, but I still think learning to deal with others is a real skill that you have to develop and is immensely important in life.

[kyrra]

How many people have you met that were homeschooled but you just didn't know it? Hard to really quantify something unless you ask the question of every person you've met.

[Oxx]

See my other reply [0] for more. I think the word homeschooling groups together to many different things. Something like "distributed schooling" feels better for my experience, and the people in my community.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874714

[nopinsight]

How do parents help their kids learn once they reach middle school or high school level and the materials get more challenging?

I understand that many good online courses exist but they are not full substitutes of in-person discussions and personalized feedback for essays, for example. It can take quite a bit of time to understand or even review materials. Some families might not have the necessary background as well.

[Oxx]

Personally, my mother was good at writing, so she taught that subject until I was 12. After that, there was a local writing teacher who taught an equivalent of comp 1, and comp 2.

My father taught math and programming. We did a mix of typical tutoring, and self study. Lots of self study since I had a natural aptitude for it.

From my experience, the horror stories you hear about kids being stuck in the middle of nowhere with only a bible to read are not the norm, and not what most "homeschoolers" advocate for. Even the word homeschool is a misnomer, a large amount of my time was spent at a local co-op with other "homeschoolers". My wifes youngest brother spends 4 out of 5 days split across two local co-ops. Her eldest brother is in a PhD program after the same experience. Most of the homeschoolers I know are more than able to function in modern society. Homeschooling simply allows for a much more tailored and less systematized schooling experience, making each family educational experience more akin to a startup in its ability to be nimble and respond to individual needs.

[nvahalik]

You learn with them, basically. Or you find other people in your community that can help. I’m not sure about others but most people don’t homeschool in isolation.

[cortesoft]

> Or you find other people in your community that can help.

But that is school.

[AnimalMuppet]

It may be "school", but it's not at a public school building. It's wherever the co-op meets, or wherever your mentor is.

[cortesoft]

So a private school

[stainforth]

Can your dad take every other kid to work with him too?

[cool_dude85]

Not sure where you're from, but in many places, "society and government" has not failed people the same way it has in the US. Even within the US there are some places where local and state government have performed much better than places like Florida or NYC.

That is to say, the problem is not, conceptually, "society and government", but instead, the American society and American government we have today. Don't give up! Don't withdraw! Organize and fight to improve the systems that are exacerbating this crisis.

[hosh]

It's my conclusion that the system has failed as well, and it comes from things that are intrinsic to the system itself. Our civilization and systems are set up for failure. When "success" and "wealth" is determined by how much resources you can extract from the land and people, and how much control over access to those resources, it incentivized centralization and control over basic necessities. This would be food, water, shelter, warmth and clothing. Every one of those require money and participation in the economy. There is no fixing it, as every single possibility moves us towards eventual collapse.

The alternative is having the basic needs (food, water, shelter, warmth, clothing) be met by being a participant in the ecology. Where these things can be provided through decentralized means as part of regenerative processes. When these things are provided by regenerative cycles, families can live off of that across many generations provided that they are wise stewards of the land. This is better than Universal Basic Income. You can't eat money, and UBI still relies on the fragile global supply chain to meet basic needs.

Furthermore, because these systems are decentralized, it does not require collective action. It does not require organizing, or fighting against the system. It does not require waiting for leaders to Do Something About It. It is more like letting the weeds grow. Pioneering into depleted soil with tenacity and resilience. It requires a mindset shift, and connecting with the local ecology and local community.

[vlunkr]

This argument really doesn't work for me because you have nothing to compare the system to.

> Our civilization and systems are set up for failure.

I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation.

> fragile global supply chain

Fragile compared to what?

> Every one of those require money and participation in the economy.

Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

> There is no fixing it, as every single possibility moves us towards eventual collapse.

Citation needed.

You can point out problems with economies, government, etc. all day long, but if the system you're comparing it to is pure fiction, then what's the point?

[analbumcover]

> I mean, it's succeeded so far. There have been and will be growing pains, but so far the standard of living has increased over time. To declare failure is just speculation.

Industrialized society has been reducing the long-term carrying capacity of the earth for over a century. These effects, until recently, have been masked by intensification i.e. continually increasing consumption of resources for use as inputs of various processes (e.g. agriculture) that improve the standard of living. In the absence of infinite resources this method eventually reaches hard limits. Also, in a closed system negative externalities can eventually reach levels where they negatively affect carrying capacity.

> Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies. The accelerating Holocene extinction, ongoing for millennia now, has obviously made this harder. Climate change is making this considerably harder as biomes, generally, shift poleward at rates that negatively impact biodiversity and hence carrying capacity.

> Citation needed.

Not sure what the other poster had in mind here, but the CMIP6 models taking into account cloud dynamics (which also happen to most closely fit historic data) show climate sensitivity of 5-7C, i.e. doubling preindustrial CO2 levels will entail to global average warming of 5-7C. Do you think warning in this range unlikely to occur because you see the necessary immediate societal change as likely? Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse?

[hosh]

You're welcomed to jump in there with the citation. I had no intention of citing anything because it was my personal opinion. And mainly because, I think the system is complex enough that no single model can definitively prove that it will always tend towards collapse.

I am going to add, what I have in mind isn't a move backwards towards hunter-gatherer, but a move forward, into a post-industrial sociey. And I think post-industrial means becoming decentralized, and in alignment with natural processes, and one where people largely follow ethical principles to live within the ecology.

Food forests are a good example. They can be created with perennials or self-seeding annuals that regenerates itself, even when harvested by the residents.

Family sizes will probably have to increase, or at least, we may be talking about pooling the resources at a neighborhood level. A nuclear family alone doesn't have the time or resources to really pull this off well, but a nuclear family is also the product of the industrial idea of "success" and "wealth".

Careful use of technologies can make this a much different experience than hunter-gatherer, or even horticulture. Among the biggest difference is the presence of the Internet -- specifically, allowing people exchange practical information and barter for things from beyond the local area. (So I am not talking about the current Internet dominated by Big Tech and aggregators, but more of what Tim Berner-Lee had in mind with permissionless architecture, and Richard Stallman's views of Free Software).

The biggest thing we'd have to give up is this notion that wealth comes from extracting resources from the ground and controlling access to them. As long as we continue to use that as a means to rank ourselves against other people, we will continue to perpetuate a mindset that takes resources beyond our fair share, without regard for the earth or for the people. That one mindset is harder to give up than the extra cars, eating out, cheap fossil fuels, indoor plumbing, because we feel that we are entitled to all of it, and we get jealous when we see others have when we don't. Wealth inequality is intrinsic to this model of wealth. It will always be there, no matter how much resources we keep extracting.

[vlunkr]

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies.

So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize?

> Or do you think that given that degree of climate shift occurs it is unlikely to entail a societal and/or biosphere collapse?

My guess is that society wouldn't collapse, but again, this is so speculative.

[analbumcover]

> So is it a coincidence that 99.9% of hunter-gatherer societies have chosen to industrialize?

I don't think there is much evidence of this. Would you say that hunter-gatherers in Australia, Africa, or the Americas chose to industrialize? It seems more that agrarian society was forced upon them. Likewise, industrialization isn't much of a choice once you are already in an agrarian society as failing to adapt to it will see you outcompeted and displaced or extirpated.

Your question is like asking "why do 99.9% of people choose to have sex with me if I hold a knife to their throat?" It takes some serious mental gymnastics to construe that as them wanting to have sex with you.

[int_19h]

99% haven't chosen to. It's more that those few that did, quickly wiped out or assimilated their neighbors. The ones that are left today are those who lived in regions too remote for that to happen (but it's still an ongoing process, e.g. in Brazil and Papua).

[fnovd]

> Hunter-gatherer societies have routinely been found to be happier and involve significantly less work than industrialized societies.

Yes, grasshoppers are typically happier and less hardworking than ants. There's an old fable that comes to mind...

[analbumcover]

Yeah, I didn't expect that to go over well on a distinctly techno-optimist site.

[hosh]

I have describe systems. There are demonstrator sites all around the world with people living with less dependency upon the system. It does not require 100% self-sufficiency to make a difference, and even 50% self-sufficiency with reslient and regenerative processes makes that family much more survivable.

But if you really want some case studies, the best one I have come across is this: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/cubas-urban-farm...

After the fall of the USSR, Cuba had trade sanctions, cutting them off from the global supply chain. Locals had to come up with something to survive, and they started building a number of local, decentralized food systems. This was all grassroots, though they were eventually supported at the policy level. These were the same people who developed a sneakernet, passing contraband information from the Internet via disks and thumbdrives along the gossip channels.

So no, this system is not pure fiction. There are working examples. There are practices in place that people have been developing for 50 years now. There are people who are living that way.

More to the point, I am already implementing these things at my house and working my way towards that. I don't need to convince you. I'm not here pointing out problems with economies and governments. I have come across solutions, and they don't require large scale changes in policy for me to start taking action.

> Sorry, but this is just the reality of being a living creature. You can go fully off the grid if you want and make all those things for yourself, but most people don't do that, because, spoiler alert, it sucks. It's more work than participating in an economy.

No, it is not the reality of being a living creature. We can do better than that and we have the technologies and practices developed. There are some conveniences we have to let go, but there are a lot of the "work" is not as hard of a work as you think. It does not require a sudden change in going completely off the grid either. Small changes, over time is the way to go, one that works with the social customs and culture of the people involved.

[pdfernhout]

Thanks for your comment. To expand on your point, a healthy society has a good mix of subsistence, volunteer/gift, exchange, and planned transactions. And when those are strong, theft is reduced.

I made a video about that about a decade ago: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

Hoping more people understand that over time.

[centerthiz99]

Centralization? In America?

You mean how the tax authority distributes the work to Intuit and HR Block?

How housing is distributed to private owners, financiers, and realtors?

The problems we’re experiencing are due to the opposite of centralization. Arguments against it are ideological conservatism.

Post office was a model of efficiency and distribution for an org that size until the GOP saddled it with debt.

In fact MOST human need centric social services in the US historically did great work on a dime budget.

And consider how much duplication of effort we get instead. Instead of NOAA sharing accurate weather data, we get Accuweather who takes NOAA data and wraps it in story mode for the innumerate masses who still believe in literal human hierarchy dictated from top down.

Utilitarian centralization of needs can and has in recent history, worked fine.

It’s limbic systems riddled with memes of the past, that can’t express motor agency outside a restricted norm that are the problem.

The concepts themselves are just that.

Connect to the mindset of local and you’ll see central shared effort is how local thinks. It’s where those broader ideas of federal centralization grew from!

Centralization can work. What we have is a terrorist political organization fighting against the end of their ideology in the form of Republicans and Democrats who prefer fealty to the past story they know and read about all day. Not the emerging one thanks to shifts in technology and social agency.

Imagine just getting a slip of paper in the mail with taxes owed?

Or not pricing 5 different package carriers?

This uncentralized waste playing ideology whack a mole is infuriating. It’s to prevent the centralized work habits, to enable authoritarian desire to grift on our work and game our agency.

“If the public were allowed to collectively build agencies that were successful, I might not be a rich important person!”

[hosh]

Yes, centralization.

Let's start with housing. We have this idea of property laws and property rights. Before the rise of civilization, we didn't have such laws. People squatted and lived off of the land as needed. There are also blended model. The Homestead Acts allowed people to claim territory, which, after certain requirements are met, would pass into their hands as legal ownership.

Property, then, is an example where the registration of ownership is centralized to the legal mechanism of the government.

Or, let's take a tomato. Like the kind I can get from Wendy's. That tomato probably came from California or Mexico. (Or during the winter, from the hothouses in Canada). It is grown there and then shipped unripen across country. There are multiple actors involved. You can argue that, because the government is not involved, this is not centralized.

The kind of decentralization I am talking about is a tomato that I grow in my backyard. That can be watered from rainwater harvesting. That can be fed by compost from other parts of my garden. Whose seeds I can save, and I can replant. Every generation, those tomatoes become more adapted to my biome (low desert). After the initial setup, there is no money involved to intermediate between me and the tomato. It is between myself and the land, and the local ecology.

> Connect to the mindset of local and you’ll see central shared effort is how local thinks. It’s where those broader ideas of federal centralization grew from!

I have no idea what you mean by this. I don't consider shared effort at the household or neighborhood level to be that centralized. That speaks more about coordinating efforts, and cooperating together.

[RestlessMind]

Let's see - US government instituted reasonably prompt lockdowns. They mailed one-time stimulus checks to everyone, gave 600$ unemployment insurance boosts, ramped up hospital capacities, opened up other support measures for businesses and allowed 50 parallel experiments (at state level) to see what works and what doesn't.

Was the response perfect? Certainly not. Did some other countries do better? I'm sure we could find a handful. Does this make the US a "totally failed shit-hole state"? HELL NO!!

And in case you think that the US is indeed one, it just means that you have only been exposed to Scandinavia and/or Singapore, or you have consumed too much of biased media which wants to maximize your anxiety and partisanship for their profits, or you are just trolling here to intentionally sow divisions. Assuming you are not in the last category, please go and learn about how things are in Brazil or India or sub-Saharan Africa. You will realize that the US is in a much better shape and things are handled far better than the media narratives.

[avz]

> Was the response perfect? Certainly not.

No, it was not perfect. According to [1] the US has 27% of all cases of COVID-19, 24% of all COVID-19 deaths and 29% of new cases yesterday. For comparison US has 4.3% of world's population [2].

> Did some other countries do better? [...] it just means that you have only been exposed to Scandinavia and/or Singapore

Did some countries do worse? Italy is often cited as a badly hit country (and is not Singapore nor in Scandinavia), but if you look at their total cases curve [3] you'll see it has become nearly flat and new cases have been suppressed to near ~200/day from the peak of ~6k/day. For comparison, the corresponding plots for the US show a bungled attempt to flatten the curve followed by renewed exponential growth [4]. Daily new cases were only suppressed to ~1k/day from the peak of ~2.7/day.

> Does this make the US a "totally failed shit-hole state"? HELL NO!!

Well, what are the inclusion criteria? I'm asking, because when it comes to COVID-19 the US is doing so badly that now only 26 other countries have had more cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic than the US added yesterday (73,388) [1].

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

[3]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

[4]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[RestlessMind]

> the US has 27% of all cases of COVID-19

has 27% of all the known cases - FTFY! Do you honestly believe the reported number of cases from the populous developing countries known for their corruption and a lack of functioning systems (I come from one, so I know first hand how they work)?

> I'm asking, because when it comes to COVID-19 the US is doing so badly...

so badly in terms of what? Reported number of cases, which is miserably under-reported due to a lack of testing / credible systems in the majority parts of the world (at least by population)? I know that people are losing jobs in the US, businesses are bankrupting but where I come from, people are starving and a 12 yo was begging for food when my sister went for grocery shopping, since his family hadn't had enough food in 2 days.

If you are in the US and haven't experienced a poor society first-hand (beyond a 2-3 week vacation in the tourist spots in such places), please count yourself lucky and appreciate what you've got!

[jimbokun]

The US has handled the pandemic worse than any country in the world, except maybe Brazil. Otherwise, I can't think of a country that has handled it worse.

Which countries are doing a worse job than the US in handling Coronavirus, in your opinion?

[RestlessMind]

Apart from Brazil (which you mentioned), the US is doing a far better job than India and Bangladesh in terms of supporting the economy and social safety nets like one time stimulus payments, boosting unemployment benefits, aid to businesses etc. [Source: close families / friends living in those two countries].

[nine_zeros]

The fact that US being compared with India and Bangladesh should already give you a hint about where the US stands.

[sigotirandolas]

Spain and UK all had a fair amount of drama and government incompetence, still have worse death/1M stats than the USA by a fair margin, and are forecasted to be hit harder economically (-11% vs -7% USA in 2020 GDP). It's still way too early to tell if they are actually going to end up worse, since this is still going at full swing in the USA, and there are a lot of uncertain factors, but I think there's a fair chance they end up being as bad or worse than USA.

[int_19h]

Russia did very badly. First, lots of denial. Then, lockdowns so harsh in some places, Chinese could be jealous. And the burden was placed squarely on the businesses - the government effectively declared universal non-essential paid leave, but didn't subsidize it.

Oh, and the government successfully managed to use the epidemic as a cover-up for heretofore unseen levels of electoral fraud in the not-really-referendum on constitutional amendments.

[analbumcover]

The US had, by far, the poorest response to covid of any developed nation. Which is to be expected when the US is only a borderline developed nation.

[colinmhayes]

Not really true. US had a terrible response at the start, made worse by the CDC test not working, putting us weeks behind ever other country. Then Trump decided wearing masks wasn't important and tons of people followed his lead, ensuring our case load stayed consistently high.

[antepodius]

Withdrawing and becoming independent from state systems isn't giving up; it's probably a first step towards a more organic, liberated society.

[clairity]

the action can have a variety of impetuses, but @eaandkw literally stated they're giving up.

[eaandkw]

The context of what I mean by saying that I am giving up is that institutions, government, and corporations are unreliable. I can't make decisions based on conditions as they are today because as soon as I do the rug will be pulled out from under me and leave me on my butt. This means that if I had a great idea for a business I will decide not to start that business. That vacation that I was planning won't happen anymore. Certain cities I may have been inclined to visit I won't enter anymore. Heck I even have to self-censor myself now for any thoughts I have because who knows who is going to get offended and try to prevent me from having a job, credit card, or even an opinion.

That is mostly what I mean.

[antepodius]

Giving up on one approach vetsus another, because the incentive balance has shifted. From a consequentalist point of view, the impetus is secondary- if you think people would be better off being less reliant on the state, then any time they take actions towards that, it's good.

[dlivingston]

What we need is a plan and a leader that will pull us out of this gridlock and death spiral that we're in. We need a diagnosis of what exactly is going wrong, a concrete plan of action, and mass participation.

My diagnosis:

- Hyper-partisanship is causing politicians and the electorate to harden into uncompromising tribes. This hyper-partisanship also serves to increase the size and scale of the fringe wings of both parties, leading to events like the infamous white-supremacist Charlottesville rally.

The cause(s):

- 1. News as a business, particularly if that business is publicly traded, is not in the 'truth-telling' business. It is in the 'maximizing profits' business, as all (publicly traded) companies are.

  - 1.1. Therefore, truth is ancillary to any for-profit news business. This will manifest itself in different ways depending on the monetization scheme of the business. 

  - 1.2. In the case of 24-hour news networks, like Fox and CNN, they are advertisement driven and therefore seek to maximize 'eyeballs'. Therefore, a constant stream of engaging content must be produced: for both Fox and CNN, the result is hyper-sensationalism. The creation of outrage, controversy, and even facts that don't exist. Further, because Fox is so partisan, it has effectively forced CNN to become partisan too. 

  - 1.3. The above is also true, and *especially* true, for ad-driven online news sources. Clickbait is a well-known phenomenon for, again, maximizing outrage and controversy for ad impressions. Visit an average article on CNN, Fox, or Breitbart and count how many ads you see. Now ask yourself: is it *really* in their best interest to be partial and nuanced?

- 2. Twitter and Facebook allow us to create echo chambers of politicians, pundits, news organizations, and peers.

  - 2.1. The 'like' and 'share/retweet' mechanisms incentivize divisive, emotional, and simplistic posts/tweets. 

  - 2.2. And given that a small subset of users actually tweet or comment or post, those that do tend to be more radical, which lead people to believe that the majority opinion for ${POLITICAL_PARTY} is reflected in the comment section. This leads to a true 'Overton shift' for those in ${POLITICAL_PARTY} and opposite polarization for ${OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY}.

There are another dozen reasons, I'm sure, including: money in politics, constant campaigning, a genuine uptick in racism/anti-semitism, and many more. I think exploring the idea of a crowd-sourced website listing these reasons and proposed solutions would be quite valuable.

[mistermann]

> I think exploring the idea of a crowd-sourced website listing these reasons and proposed solutions would be quite valuable.

100% agree...a crowd-sourced website that does this and a whole bunch of other things is desperately needed.

I believe with strong certainty that the current state of affairs (in Western countries at least) is that our political, corporate, and media structures, combined with the "collective consciousness" of our population, have basically brought us to a point from which these same organizations haven't a hope in hell of undoing the mess they've put us in. I think something outside the current system, a completely new grassroots approach to decision and sense making is required to get us back onto a sustainable path.

How might we get such an initiative underway?

[CuriousSkeptic]

A really deep dive of this topic can be found here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html

[m0zg]

> has not failed people the same way it has in the US

Not yet. It ain't over yet though, even though it might seem like it elsewhere. Basic facts are: herd immunity is prohibitively expensive from the fatalities perspective (although it may be our only long term option), a vaccine is not guaranteed to ever exist, and C19 is now endemic, so it will come back. Oh and also, for the society to function people must be able to work.

To poster below who said that no vaccine == no herd immunity. That's actually not true. For a vaccine to be approved it needs to be safe. Herd immunity will just happen eventually, no approval needed as the virus itself doesn't care if it's "safe" or not. Paradoxically, the society will likely prefer to tolerate higher body count due to not having a vaccine at all, rather than smaller body count for a vaccine that is unsafe in a small, but not completely negligible percentage of cases.

[ben_w]

If a vaccine cannot happen, neither can herd immunity.

I read it has been eliminated in New Zealand, so elimination is possible with good government: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/new-zealand-coronavir...

[twblalock]

> elimination is possible with good government

Good government, plus living on a small island that can close itself from the rest of the world. Most countries aren't in that situation.

[vkou]

Most of the vectors of COVID spread in the US have little to do with failing to close itself off from the rest of the world. If you have the political will, you can implement quarantine for international travelers, which will catch the overwhelming majority of externally-sourced cases.

The US did not do so, because it was too disruptive to business, and because good, sober governance has been an explicit non-goal for the past few decades, on both state and federal level - but especially in the last few years.

[jt94mf90d]

How did nyc mess up? I can just think of the nursing homes, but that was due to cdc guidelines, which coumo had to implement additional guidelines.

[jackcosgrove]

It was the subway.

Extensive use of the subway is what sets NYC apart from all other cities in the US, and it was the main vector. NYC should have been much more diligent about cleaning the subway and limiting concurrent access. I understand due to the sheer volume and necessity of subway use the chosen policies may have been the best. But the subway has been overcrowded and near the breaking point for years and little was done to maintain the system before COVID.

[Wowfunhappy]

I've been in a lot of subway cars where you're so packed in, you can't move an inch. Even if the NYC subway was twice its capacity, I don't think you would have had the level of social distancing necessary to do much about COVID. Maybe it would have been less bad, but I think it's hard to say.

And remember, if the subway capacity was increased, subway ridership would likely increase as well, as it becomes a more appealing mode of transport.

What NYC really should have done is shut down businesses on March 1 instead of March 15. But... I don't know, I think that's a lot to ask of politicians. The public would not have responded well to schools being closed and restaurants being shuttered. We needed a wake-up call.

By contrast, I feel like Florida, Georgia, etc have really had that wake-up call, and have chosen to flout it anyway. I don't have much sympathy.

[jt94mf90d]

"If transit itself were a global super-spreader, then a large outbreak would have been expected in dense Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people dependent on a public transportation system that, before the pandemic, was carrying 12.9 million people a day. Ridership there, according to the Post, fell considerably less than in other transit systems around the world. Yet Hong Kong has recorded only about 1,100 COVID-19 cases, one-tenth the number in Kansas, which has fewer than half as many people. Replicating Hong Kong’s success may involve safety measures, such as mask wearing, that are not yet ingrained in the U.S., but the evidence only underscores that the coronavirus can spread outside of transit and dense urban environments—which are not inherently harmful."

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/612979/

[jt94mf90d]

But those increase were before mask wearing requirements were in effect.

You have other countries where subways service are still running with no major breakouts. ny has resumed service, and no major breakouts either.

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/612979/

[amanaplanacanal]

This seems to be a widespread problem. Nobody wants to spend money on maintenance. You can always find a grant to build new stuff, but maintenance you have to pay for yourself.

[kenned3]

"Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable."

Take a look at the covid19 infection rates in the country a little north of you.. as others have posted, not all governments / society has failed.

You need to ask why you have so many people who are proud not to wear a mask simply because it limits their "Freedoms"??

Maybe if they wore a mask, and excersized social distancing things wouldnt be this bad?

[charwalker]

A uniquely American view of independence and rights has become a uniquely american problem with helping our neighbor, unfortunately. Nations with more collective oriented values appear to have done much better.

Just sucks to not have a solution for people who spend their lives teaching (and babysitting, managing, mentoring, and more) our youth.

[gimmeThaBeet]

While I do worry to myself if that's making monoliths, I think you're right. One way or another, this situation tests a country/culture's ability to implement collective behavior/protections where the benefits don't accrue to the person taking the actions.

Social distancing has its obvious social costs, and my feeling (I couldn't definitively call it understanding) with masks is that it's more about protecting people from you, and not the other way around.

I think no matter how you break it down, the USA has proven so far it's poorly suited to do carry that out for each other.

[Press2forEN]

We're currently looking for a new home and this disaster has completely changed what we're looking for. Before it was clean suburbs with great schools close to the city. Now we're looking for more property much farther out and even considering states that didn't lock down so tightly. Good schools are no longer a consideration as we will home school as well.

The social contract theory has failed, and we're preparing now for a future without it.

[heimatau]

I've felt this way from the get go.

Albeit, I'm not a single family (we have two parents) but...I'm an advocate for homeschooling. I have been for about a decade now. I've noticed a lot of different parenting styles growing up and education matters tremendously but not just book smarts, but emotional intelligence, dealing with various people, skills, and even high valued skills.

As I've lived my life and looked into multiple system, I feel the American education has failed it's students for well over 30 years. The student that succeed? The ones that knows that school is more than 9am to 2pm (or whatever depending on the age). I feel it's best taught in the home.

As the child ages and more skilled studies are required, yes they'll learn from teachers but parents can get very far with a child, if you encourage them to learn and foster their curiosity.

Finally, I'll conclude with this. I feel very grateful for this covid19 because this will now help more resources to improve the quality/efficiency of homeschooling. I look forward to using these new resources that will rise up.

[redthrow]

Economist Bryan Caplan (who wrote the book The Case Against Education) has been homeschooling his kids for 5 years and shares his thoughts on the topic:

https://www.econlib.org/emergency-homeschooling-a-how-to-gui...

There's a video interview where he talks about social aspects as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN_qg27UubM

[mayneack]

I think Matt Stoller makes some good points on this sort of topic.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-cant-america-handle-t...

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-new-york-city-is-on-t...

[dv_dt]

I am lucky enough that the local school district and university my kids go to are either outright online, or offering online options. But if that were not the case, I would be where you are, and I would also support teachers striking over the lack of fundamental workplace safety of in person teaching right now. From the rough impressions of my reading of research, indoor transmission in groups is the easiest way to pass an infection.

[jorblumesea]

This is completely intentional and the natural growth of right wing political ideologies that has been building since the 80s.

There has been a concerted effort by some to make the government unreliable. There are vested interests in getting the government out of many things it does, and lots of profit to be made taking over what the government provides. The right has, for awhile, been ideologically opposed the government funded education, for example.

If the government is unreliable, it's because the US has elected people that make it so. Government works fine in many countries around the world. Canada, Europe, Australia... all seem in far better shape. We're just intentionally crippling it for ideological and profit reasons.

US voters who voted Trump into office are also largely to blame. No one to blame but ourselves. Projecting anger onto "the system" is missing the picture. To put it another way, if you want your government to work for the people, stop voting people into office who are very obviously breaking the government because they are zealots or greedy.

[Florin_Andrei]

The real illness is on a different level - it's the way the main culture in the US sees and understands the world. It makes some spectacularly wrong assumptions there. But those assumptions were never seriously challenged (no enemies nearby, dominance after WW2), so then why change, right?

Now those assumptions are being challenged. And of course a lot of people, rather than change and give up their cherished "identity", would plow ahead blindly, consequences be damned. Everyone who is protesting masks, I am looking at you and your beliefs.

This has happened many times in history. Societies get their beliefs challenged by reality. Some adapt, fix their stuff, and go on. Some don't.

There is still time to change. But not much.

[antepodius]

Your only example here is 'masks'. The rest of your comment could equally be applied to the american left or right, depending on your perspective.

[ashtonkem]

Masks were also protested in 1918, so this isn’t a post-WW2 phenomenon.

[timmytokyo]

There were pockets of resistance to mask wearing in the 1918 flu pandemic, but it was not widespread.

https://www.history.com/news/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-r...

Also, they didn't have government leadership publicly questioning the wisdom of mask wearing.