[blululu]

In 2020 during the largest public health crisis in a century, non-woven respiratory masks were found to be an effective intervention. The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so, but you can avoid this scenario repeating itself in the future.

[throwaway173738]

The US had manufacturers of melt blown masks, but instead of giving those manufacturers long guarantees to build up capacity they decided to just wait for China to build up instead.

[mmooss]

> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so

Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good.

In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist crowd argues that others should make sacrifices for the greater good of 'the economy' (i.e., for the good of the extreme capitalist). Musk has argued that people need to sacrifice so the economy will be better in some unspecified future.

The new commonplace phrase that 'you can't blame them' is an embarassment. I don't blame you for using it because it's so common, but it's like a core, fundamental belief that humans should not and cannot care anything about anyone else, (or often, anyone but their family). Obviously false and entire, widespread moral beliefs are built on the opposite.

[blululu]

Fair enough. During the pandemic there was an acute shortage of medical supplies and there were really not enough to go around for everyone. It would be a tough sell to convince the person who is actually making these supplies to put the needs to an arbitrary person above the needs of their immediate community. I didn't really enjoy having to be the one to go without on that round, but I would have been pretty angry in a hypothetical situation where my neighbor has needed medical supplies and refuses to provide them to the local fire department because he is trying to sell them to a foreign country for the greatest possible profit. In any case I don't really hold much personal animosity to the people and organizations who made these decisions during the pandemic. I do however want to make sure that we can avoid repeating that the next time around.

[mmooss]

> trying to sell them to a foreign country for the greatest possible profit

First, to clear things up, I don't at all mean doing it to maximize profit. Notice that we expect a great degree of selflessness here - they should not be maximizing profit during the pandemic. We require it - we put them in jail otherwise.

It's all hands on deck.

> It would be a tough sell

There are definitely challenges here; I agree about that.

I think what sells to most people is to appeal to fairness. Democracy's foundation is fairness - rights to all, all get a vote. Fairness actually sells very well everywhere, despite the modern authoritarian's false critique. Law of the jungle is highly undesireable to most people; they like having civilization and rights.

But not universally; some will fight it. You need leaders and neighbors standing up for what's right. Also, enlightened self-interest can be convincing - help those in need, and you'll get help when you are in need.

You also need a way to determine what is fair; good leaders build consensus and navigate the politics - that is their job definition. Probably you put supplies where they do the most good. Start with hospitals and nursing homes, where contagion and vulnerable patients combine for the greatest risk. Then other vulnerable people (e.g., elderly or ill in private homes), then the first healthy recipients being front line workers like firefighters.

I think most healthy people would happily give up their medical supplies for those who need them more. There are always some malcontents, but we can't hold up society and progress for them.

> convince the person who is actually making these supplies to put the needs to an arbitrary person above the needs of their immediate community

Manufacturers provide them outside their employees, and health care professionals help strangers all the time. If we asked someone in downtown SF to provide them to someone across the Bay, would that be too far? To LA? NY? Rural Georgia? What about from Seattle to Vancouver? Belgium to the Netherlands? To Germany? To Turkey? To Japan?

My probably obvious point is, ''community' and 'us' are amorphous, changing concepts. Of course people in LA and Toronto and anywhere deserve the medical supplies as much as people next door.

[tastyfreeze]

No country has any moral obligation to help any other country. It is anarchy between nations. Every government does have an obligation to its own people. If China didn't take care of their own needs before other nation's they wouldn't be a very successful government.

The only logical way forward is to ensure that your own nation is taking care of its own needs before helping others.

I have always found it interesting that if everybody focused on improving their own conditions first then helped others locally the world would be objectively better for everybody. The better you make the lives of those around you the more you can expand the reach of your goodness.

[mmooss]

> No country has any moral obligation to help any other country. It is anarchy between nations.

You just made that up. First, what defines morality? Second, by what morality are you not obligated to help others? That is amorality, greed, evil. And empirically, countries have long felt, talked explicitly about, and acted on, sometimes at great cost, the moral need to help other countries. Leaders have long made that argument to their fellow citizens (or subjects).

The parent claim is a transparent fiction of nationalists. You can do better!

> I have always found it interesting that if everybody focused on improving their own conditions first then helped others locally the world would be objectively better for everybody.

An even more obvious fabrication with not even an attempt basis. As is often the case with this stuff, the only 'basis' is saying it like it's a fact.

[WalterBright]

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless.

A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless.

But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts.

(In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

[jocaal]

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman

[WalterBright]

Good one! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote something similar:

Enforcing equity means nobody has freedom. When people are free, there is no equity.

[mmooss]

You might want to read up on Solzhenitsyn. Wrote some very important books, but not someone you want to quote on ethics.

[WalterBright]

He's right on this one.

[mmooss]

Everyone is both selfish and selfless, to different degrees at different times and in different situations, including the people you apparently believe to be completely selfish (you don't really believe that?).

(Obviously a simplistic binary system, but appropriate for HN comments where time and space is limited.)

The religion and worship of selflessness is a cult - who ever followed such an ethos; even what great American? Did Washington? Lincoln? King? Eisenhower? Who before Trump? Who anywhere at any time is admired for it? Any religious figures? Saints? Moses/Jesus/Mohammad? Siddhartha Gautama?

Step back, stop drowinging in Internet ideology, take a even slightly broader view than the immediate tide of ideology - the concept is an absurdity for its simplicity and morality. Wake up sooner, rather than later.

A functioning society can't be built around either extreme, and because no human fits either extreme, it's a pointless debate about science fiction.

Markets are great tools and work with a mix of selfishness and selflessness - markets are destroyed by the too selfish, parasites who, for example, undermine the essential trust, safety, and integrity of the market for their own profit. The tools of selflessness are also great and built a society of freedom, which creates markets, innovation, opportunity, and social stability - universal education, for example; much healthcare is funded that way; many people wouldn't have effective rights without pro bono legal help and advocacy.

They are different tools each relatively better for different problems. Obviously 'free markets' leave a lot to be desired; obviously we can't function solely on selflessness.

> (In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

C'mon; that is a silly point and you know it (though it actually supports my claim in this comment).

[WalterBright]

The US has done quite well with a mostly free market.

[mmooss]

> The US has done quite well

Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all.

> with a mostly free market.

We both know there are massive social programs, and the market is unfree in many ways - powerful participants often make markets very non-free for others, and of course some are highly regulated to the point of distortion.

I actually favor using the free market whenever possible, most importantly because of the first word - people should be free to do as they like in business too, as much as possible - and because it works very well for the great majority of things.

I think we need freer markets - open to all competitors. Extreme capitalism is destroying the free market because capitalists are driving out competition. It's become capitalistism - an economy allocating things for the capitalists, not for capital.

[WalterBright]

> Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all.

Some people don't like ice cream, too.

When one makes general statements, replying that it isn't 100% is pointless.