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by causi 1066 days ago
I think the lockdown concept as implemented in 2020 was a great illustration of the problem of scale.

This is not a popular opinion but I think the fundamental mistake of lockdowns, at least in North America, was starting from a top-down approach instead of bottom-up. People are going to act like selfish assholes. We ordered them not to. I think instead of threats, we should have aligned their selfish interests with the public good by making it easy to sue someone for infecting you. Could you prove that in court? 99% of the time absolutely not. But the fear that killing other people might hit them in the pocket book would, in my opinion, have made a lot of the assholes put on a mask or skip that concert.

2 comments

Agreed, the cost should have been borne by those who did not take sufficient measures to reduce transmission. Similar to how, when you do something dumb in the ocean and need a rescue, you pay the coast guard back if they determine negligence.

It was negligent to live as if there weren’t a huge pandemic.

How much easier could it be? It's my understanding that you can sue anyone at any time for almost anything in the US.
I was thinking a legal framework analogous to the one used in Texas where regular citizens could obtain ten thousand dollars by suing women who had abortions. Sort of a "turnabout is fair play" approach.