[anonporridge]

Perhaps because we've all seen firsthand the reckless social irresponsibility of a massive segment of the population.

Faced with this, it's not surprising to me that many people would see a more authoritarian government to be preferable to a laissez faire approach that requires the vast majority of individuals to make reasonably good choices for the collective and understand the wider implications of their behavior.

It would be ironic if the right wing shrieking for 'freedom' ends up backlashing on all of us because they've simultaneously demonstrated that we're not mature enough to handle that level of freedom.

[ryandrake]

COVID has convinced me that a functioning society can’t just throw its hands up and exclusively rely on Nash Equilibrium to deal with all problems. If you rely on everyone being rational self-interest-optimizing actors, you’ll never solve problems that require voluntary collective, coordinated action. It just ends up as a giant game of prisoner’s dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT.

[TillE]

Yeah, there's basically no way the pandemic is ever going to end without broad vaccine mandates. I would expect China to be one of the first countries to move in that direction, but we'll see.