Although the idea that “crisis” and “opportunity” are represented by the same Chinese character is “fake news”, it is nonetheless true that the two often go together.
As we stew in our respective lockdowns, let’s think about Corona-chan may make the world better:
- For the first time, many older people will be sufficiently incentivized to finally figure out how the Internet works, to submit utilities payments, order food online, etc. This will make all of our lives much easier.
- Decline in in-store retail thanks to expanded e-commerce will open up more green spaces in our suburbs. Will anybody truly miss GameStop?
- We may realize that many bureaucratic procedures are useless, or may at least be performed just as effectively online, so accelerating the move to lighter, more efficient e-government.
- Accelerate digitization of elections, referendums, political processes will expand citizen influence on city planning and other issues.
- Fewer pointless meetings (but I repeat myself).
- Less cash, more electronic payments lead to reduction of gray economies (particularly relevant to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe) and greater tax intake.
- Less stigmatization of work from home, allowing people more flexibility. Perhaps even a mass transition – right now, we are seeing a mass experiment on how this affects productivity.
- Fewer crowds in city centers thanks to more work from home.
- Recessions are not all bad – one can compare them to bouts of fasting, which clears the body/economy of useless or unsustainable clutter. Purging them regularly is in fact good, as it’s the weaker ones that’ll die first (e.g. bad restaurants without loyal clienteles). Easily replaceable.
- Journalists will have to learn to code. It’s no longer even just a meme.
- Unemployment spike will, in the short-term, produce large pools of native labor that can be hired to upgrade infrastructure and public works. Forward-thinking states should take advantage of this.
- Across Europe and the US, it is almost certain that this will accelerate “reshoring” of vital industries from China. This will increase resilience to future shocks.
- Normalization of the idea of Universal Basic Income – now openly discussed across the political spectrum, from Bernie Sanders to Mitt Romney – will make us better prepared for extensive automation down the line.
- Germaphobes can celebrate as handshakes may go out of vogue.
- Normalization of wearing masks in Western societies may reduce the incidence of the flu and other diseases, as it has in East Asia.
- The world will be much better prepared for a more serious pandemic.
- Gives us space to set up stronger buffers against existential risks, especially biological ones. COVID-19 pandemic isn’t any kind of X-Risk, even in the worst case scenarios. But what if it had the virulence of MERS? Better prepared than sorry.
Finally, there are three more expected changes: One of them is “good”, but won’t happen; while the other one is the opposite – ostensibly “bad”, but inevitable.
(1) Perhaps the most common hope professed by people who overstretch historical analogies such as the Black Death is that COVID-19 will increase incomes if lots of people die off. First, the Black Death killed a third to half the population of Europe, not the <3% that the novel coronavirus will kill even in the most pessimistic scenarios. Second, it happened in Malthusian societies, where most people lived at the edge of subsistence and where land was a constraining resource – obviously not valid since Industrial Revolution! The lesser claim, that COVID-19 will reduce strain on pensions system, is true but only to a very limited extent. Pensions entitlements account for ~10% of GDP across most of the developed world. So assume 10% of retirees die off. That’s a 1% point reduction in that load – that’s hardly a major reversal, and may in fact be partially counterbalanced by future costs of treating morbidities (e.g. destroyed lungs) that arise as a consequence of the coronavirus sweep.
(2) Fears have been raised, especially on the libertarian right, that the crisis will lead to expanded surveillance and erosion of privacy protections. In principle, this is a respectable view. But it presupposes that there is a choice. In the long-term, there will be more crises, and crises tend to select for things that make polities more effective. “Digital Gulag”, as one might call it if negatively disposed, is too useful to not to be introduced and universalized at some point during the first half of this century. I would make the comparison to the introduction of passports. Optional before WW1; compulsory in most states, even non-warring ones, afterwards. Or cryptography. There was opposition in the US to setting up a cipher breaking unit before WW2 on the basis that “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.” Now America’s polities towards the world’s privacy is rather different, as Snowden might tell you. The tools already exist, and it is only a matter of time before they are rolled out on a large scale in the Western world, where they will be used to serve the reigning ideology just as surely as “social credit” in China promotes the “harmonious society” vision of the CPC. In the meantime, it is surely preferable that they at least do some unambiguous good – namely, improve track and trace capabilities, identify quarantine violators, and so forth.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
You mean GameStop, I think. That is a retail store. GameSpot is a video game magazine (still?) or website.
A very interesting post. Some comments:
“First, the Black Death killed a third to half the population of Europe, not the <3% that the novel coronavirus will kill even in the most pessimistic scenarios. Second, it happened in Malthusian societies, where most people lived at the edge of subsistence and where land was a constraining resource – obviously not valid since Industrial Revolution! "
You are correct, the coronavirus will be demographically irrelevant, whatever death toll will be quickly erased by just a year or two of population growth. And indeed, the Black Death did massively cull the population of Europe, but even that wasn't enough. In many other historical circumstances, a population cut of 30% or so by plague only temporarily increased living standards, with more food the population would shoot up and within less than ten years it would hit the old limit and lack of food would flatten the population again – what was unique about the Black Death was not so much that it culled the population a lot, but it came in multiple waves and held it down for generations. THAT was unusual.
And sorry, but many 'modern' societies are indeed right at subsistence. Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Syria, Yemen, … And even for societies not at subsistence, supply and demand still operate. Lower the supply of labor and you DO increase its value.
Other random thoughts:
"We may realize that many bureaucratic procedures are useless, or may at least be performed just as effectively online, so accelerating the move to lighter, more efficient e-government." Haha! Just like computers have made our tax laws simple, right?
"Accelerate digitization of elections, referendums, political processes will expand citizen influence on city planning and other issues." ROTFL.
"Less stigmatization of work from home, allowing people more flexibility. Perhaps even a mass transition – right now, we are seeing a mass experiment on how this affects productivity." That's not a bad thought. But there is a reason that, back when they still cared about wages and such, unions were so opposed to "piecework." One remembers how a young Teddy Roosevelt did an about-face, and ended up opposing "piecework." "There was no division between work and home, only a grinding labor of 16 to 18 hours a day…" Again, we shall see.
"Unemployment spike will, in the short-term, produce large pools of native labor that can be hired to upgrade infrastructure and public works. Forward-thinking states should take advantage of this." And when pigs will fly… In my own industry, I see growing top-down pressure to slash wages and benefits – "because its an emergency!" – because they can, and I don't see that bouncing back even when the "emergency" is over.
Won’t work like this in USA where FED is trying to save literally everyone. Can work in Russia actually.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/5780113.html
Some people have mentioned the idea that quarantine might directly increase ethnocentricism. In effect, people are removed from diversity by staying in their homes. The faces they are imprinting on are the faces of their family, instead of the faces they see in their commute into the city.
It’s an interesting idea – sort of a mental reset on diversity, instead of a gradual boiling of the frog. But I don’t know if it works. A lot of proles are mass consumers of diverse media. In theory, they might be consuming more than ever.
Good piece.
However, I have not so far observed a net increase in overall deaths from all causes in Wales which has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infections in Europe in the steel district of Gwent. Emergency admissions to hospital for non Covid-19 reasons are down 60%. I suspect death rates from other causes are too. So, there may be NO discernible demographic effects, even on pensions.
We don’t know what’s happening in India and Indonesia yet. They have huge populations. Brazil too. The effects could be huge but they are also young populations. Maybe nothing noticeable will happen. Fewer old diabetics.
There is community transmission in tropical and Southern hemishpere countries but it doesn’t seem as strong.
The bounce back will be vigorous. $20 oil will put the intensive oil importers at the top of the heap. The EU27, Turkey, India, Japan, even South Africa will all surge. The less intensive importers, UK, US, China, UAE will stutter. The oil exporters will have to undertake major readjustments. Russia will manage. Oil prices over $35 have been taxed out of the Russian economy since 2004. It has a giant piggy bank. Only Norway will manage better.
In the UK, Scottish nationalism will sink with the oil price and Welsh nationalism will rise (Wales still has energy intensive industries – massive gas based electricity exports for example).
Opportunities … but for whom?
Death to small business, ¡Viva Amazon!
With voting digitalized, it won’t matter if there finally is some credible initiative (say, a national ID card) to restrain voter fraud. The usual suspects can simply write any old numbers they like into the election computer game, and who can say they are wrong? Recounts are no longer possible.
With every single purchase of a bubble gum leaving a paper trail on everything from the purchasers and seller’s names down to the minute and second it was bought (and where, to the square meter), the government/corpocrats/usual suspects will have even more complete dossiers on all our lives than they already do.
Government bailouts for the poor little megacorporations that are Too Big To Fail ensure that only the worthy survive the storm of steel. That is, not the racist, sexist and overall horrible small businesses that are owned by human beings.
One small step for the destroyed family business, one giant leap ahead for the narcotherapeutic nightmare of generations of basement dwelling video game players on minimum existence doles with marginal-to-zero prospects that Andrew Yang wrote about.
I’m not one of the people who think Corona-chan is a conspiracy, but looking at the likely results of all this, it’s pretty clear who will be coming out ahead. And it’s not the people, at least not in US (or most of Europe).
Perhaps technology does make dystopia inevitable any which way, as AK pessimistically assumes. I would still like to hope that mankind is somehow better than that, despite much recent evidence to the contrary. That there is at least a slim chance for our children not to grow up in a world that makes Nineteen Eighty-Four look like pre-Federal Reserve America in terms of freedom and sanity.
Nothing of any meaningful consequence in that list, here is a list of things that would really make the world a better place if people are so scared to get out their homes
– the destruction of the US economy and the subsequent implosion of the USA
– the end of the EU
– the end of mass immigration and reliance on non white labour
– then end of the annual Davos meeting
– the end of gay pride parades (because gays are generally more afraid of getting germs)
Some believe that the modern idea of a handshake as a greeting (not making a deal or peace) had its origin among Quakers as a gesture which was more egalitarian than a hat-tip or bow.
I find that theory really interesting. I used to like handshakes as I saw them kind of as a Western or European thing. They are in the Iliad, I believe, though there is some 9th century depiction of them among Assyrians. I’d say that they were basically popularized by Europeans, and some like Germans, like them more than others.
But if it was the Quakers who popularized them, then they were pretty crazy people (for instance, Mary Dyer), and maybe we should rethink handshakes. But we will need a new European gesture I think. Or an old one: the Roman salute? Or bring back hats?
I am skeptical of this premise for obvious reasons.
1) they’re all gonna die off eventually in 10 years, so who cares about that stuff. old people who can’t use a computer will be swapped out for millennials who can’t write in cursive or fill out a check. fair trade. the real benefit is that the people who watch television are dying off. when the people over 50 are gone, television will be completely gone, and it’s damaging effect on society will decline.
2) the opposite. crushing the small businesses via forced economy shutdown will drive consolidation of many markets by the big players, who will still be in business 6 months from now, and can watch their small competitors go out of business, or swoop in and buy them up cheap next year.
3) the government was useless so we’ll get less of it? when did that ever happen?
4) absolutely, positively no digitization of elections, period. paper ballots IN PERSON on election day ONLY. screw mail in voting. screw early voting. screw ballot harvesting.
5) instead of meetings, superfluous white collar people will just jerk off at home, showing that their 40 hours a week cubicle jobs can actually be done with 15 hours a week of actual work. real guys who do real work can’t work from home, so nothing will change for the nuts and bolts guys.
6) the bureaucratic state dream. seeing every single transaction you make and taxing it every time. tracking your every move. knowing exactly how much money you have. no wealth hidden anywhere. also, it’s vigorously resisted by Democrats who are making it illegal in some cities to not accept cash at your business, because their vibrant pets don’t have plastic.
7) LOL. yeah, when Democrats open the borders there will be smaller crowds in cities.
8) my dad and my brother run their own small businesses. having Democrat governers tell them to shut down at will – no thanks.
9) who cares if they all disappeared. unfortunately, they won’t. since wealthy leftists will fund their continuous existence. the propaganda must continue.
10) only good if the government shuts down work visas and immigration, which they won’t once Biden is President.
11) no chance at all of reshoring in the US. Democrats will resume, then accelerate the dismantling of the US. cars won’t even be made here eventually. white collar Democrats and their vibrant allies have no use at all for industry or nuts and bolts jobs.
12) not merely a disaster, a catastrophe. by far, the single worst idea in the history of politics. no western nation can sustain UBI for long. get ready for it under Biden. come to think of it, UBI is accelerationist.
13) handshakes? Democrats will open all the borders and let in all the diseases. handshakes won’t be the issue.
14) westerners will never wear masks, eat insects, or live in shipping containers. asians might. some do.
15) LOL. you don’t know Democrats that well. they’re experts at not being prepared for anything other than spending other people’s money. asians are already prepared for eipdemics, because Asia is a dirty disease ridden place. why should we have to live like them? constantly on guard for new viruses and bacterias that THEY create?
Part 2, Point 1:
killing off boomers will, indeed, upon up jobs and real estate. anybody who thinks otherwise is just wrong. Christ, everybody running for President is over 70. get out of the way already. unique in history, this one single generation has locked up more wealth and real estate and jobs than any other generation in the history of the world. and they won’t pass on gracefully.
reduce strain on pensions? the economy shutdown just CRUSHED state budgets. especially the big Democrat states who just blew gaping holes in their yearly pension budgets. that’s why they want the Fed to print them free money.
Part 2, Point 2:
‘fears’ of expanded surveillance and eroded rights? that’s EXACTLY what Democrats have planned. anybody who can’t see that is blind or a rube. Democrat Governors are walking around with erections 24/7 right now. they can literally tell you whether you are essential or not. we’ve never seen anything like this outside of actual Communist nations.
Doctors in the UK nationalised health service have had it confirmed that a number of their regular visitors to ICU are certainly panicky malingerers simply claiming to be unable to breath who don’t turn up if there is any cost to it. The cost being now the chance of getting Coronavirus.
I’m also sort of hoping that the everyone young and intelligent goes to major cities to get paid lots but spend even more on living expenses and remain eternal adolescents model is broken. It just doesn’t suit most people.
Part 2, Point 1:
killing off boomers will, indeed, upon up jobs and real estate. anybody who thinks otherwise is just wrong. Christ, everybody running for President is over 70. get out of the way already. unique in history, this one single generation has locked up more wealth and real estate and jobs than any other generation in the history of the world. and they won’t pass on gracefully.
reduce strain on pensions? the economy shutdown just CRUSHED state budgets. especially the big Democrat states who just blew gaping holes in their yearly pension budgets. that’s why they want the Fed to print them free money.
Part 2, Point 2:
‘fears’ of expanded surveillance and eroded rights? that’s EXACTLY what Democrats have planned. anybody who can’t see that is blind or a rube. Democrat Governors are walking around with erections 24/7 right now. they can literally tell you whether you are essential or not. we’ve never seen anything like this outside of actual Communist nations.
So I just read that tuberculosis vaccine can improve survival rates for coronavirus. Apparently, US, Italy and Spain do not have a universal vaccination policy. Japan, Russia and other ex-communist Europe have it. China, Iran and other third world countries started doing it late.
IMO, Anatoly needs to investigate this.
https://www.mdpi.com/applsci/applsci-10-02632/article_deploy/html/images/applsci-10-02632-g001-550.jpg
It is my (perhaps mistaken?) impression that when the West German state introduced the DM after the war, they repudiated the domestic debt developed during the NS-Era, at the cost of what people had left of their savings, in a move functionally similar to the Weimar republic’s action.
Considering how many governments were already massively indebted before Corona-chan, who will be the first to try and get rid of it? Or perhaps they will just continue with ZIRP/NIRP and endless zombification?
I was also thinking about carriers. Doesn’t this make them less attractive? I’m not thinking about Corona-chan specifically, but about bioweapons.
I honestly don’t know how they operate, but I’m thinking that since there is such a large crew, that there’s a lot of rotation in and out – at least on a small scale. That they aren’t like nuclear submarines which are in relative isolation for months, while on tour.
Ideally, I think you would want smaller ships with smaller crews that operated on a principle of semi-isolation. At least at three month intervals or something.
Theoretically plausible but it will take time. First off, unlike 1930’s where you just gave shovels to people, modern construction and infrastructure works are done by specialists with heavy machinery. That requires a lot less people per project. More importantly though, people getting unemployed the most are bartenders and Starbucks baristas and such. I wouldn’t trust them with with cement mixers and power lines or whatever without training. That will take time.
This is why I support Basic Income over lefts’ Green New Deal vision – there is nothing wrong with what they want – everybody likes cleaner air and water and soil. But I am skeptical of their ability to rally office plankton to rush out and change broken wind turbine blade off shore on Lake Michigan in the middle of January.
Not saying office plankton is dumb or incapable, but it would require a bit of a mindset change. And you can’t really force it.
How about we rethink social hugging between any and all for all reasons and occasions? Who the hell ever thought that was a good idea? It was foisted, not taken up willingly.
Totally, agree. I hate social hugs – they are so fake. It is like the common American greeting “How are you?”, only 10,000x worse.
IMO, women who will socially hug you are often slatterns who will ask you if you are gay, for not hugging them back, even though they are near total strangers to you.
I agree. The purchase of junk bonds is disappointing (if expected)
UBI is awesome. Canada is giving out $2000 to anyone who asks and checking later if you really needed it. If this is how UBI is supposed to feel (free money) it feels great! Now… do I get one $2000 computer or two $1000 computers?
Getting rid of cash is bad. Gray and black markets are a vital part of any healthy society. It’s also offers the illusion of freedom. To stash away a (relatively insignificant) sum of money that the government doesn’t know exists. Small business owners love “cash no tax”.
And while I’ve seen homeless beggars accept electronic payment on a chip through their phones and marijuana dealers accept credit cards I’ve yet to see cocaine dealers work outside of cash or Bitcoin/altcoin.
This can be extended to buying unregistered firearms. Buying hot goods. Financing a mistress (cash is always safest). Doing work on your house without permits. Off-the-books general labor. “Gifting” (bribes). Or my personal favorite, making car accidents go away without the notice of insurance companies.
What is with governments hating freedom?
What about crypto signature? And Bitcoin related technologies?
God, I thought it was just me. Even worse: social pecks on the cheek.
As an ancient sage observed, if voting made any difference, we wouldn’t be allowed to do it.
That said, validated, secret voting is the technically easiest problem to solve. Here is a rough protocol.
Step 0) Freeman generates a public-private Liegekey pair, and presents his public Liegekey to be signed by His Krypterial Majesty’s Chancellery. (Anyone incapable of using public key cryptography is classified as either a child or a retard and made a dependent of a freeman, who generates and manages Thrallkeys for his dependents.)
Step 1) His Krypterial Majesty’s Chancellery generates one electronic Votekey for every Freeman, signs them to make them official, writes them to usb plugs and to a public, distributed Votechain, and sends random batches of the usb plugs to Regional Voting Registration.
Step 2) Freeman appears at Regional Voting Registration, verifies his free status with his Liegekey, and pulls out a usb plug randomly from a bin. In private, he signs it with his anonymous private key (not his Liegekey, which is recognizable), writing the result to the usb plug and the Votechain, so that he can later track the activity of his Votekey on the Votechain.
Step 3) Freeman goes to the voting booth, activates the voting machine with his usb plug, and chooses Syphilis or Gonorrhea for Prime Minister. The result is written to the Votechain, where Freeman can verify with his anonymous private that his vote has been counted correctly.
Step 4) His Krypterial Majesty wants neither Syphilis nor Gonorrhea administering his realm, so instead appoints an able Prime Minister of his own choosing.
Already discussed in the comments. Wishful thinking.
Kathleen Turner said that in a more expansive way, back when she was hot during the Romancing the Stone days, mid-eighties or so. In Rolling Stone or the like, she said when she when entered the party wherever she was, she just knew that every male head in the room that wasn’t dazzled by her presence must simply be gay. Vanity and hubris, they’re fickle bitches. But that was back then. Dunno if she says such things anymore. Ever see her lately? There’s a reason, heh.. Here she is now, and this is a kind rendition:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xNHenMCdlglCXWDHNno5b3lZ5a0=/0x0:3769×2764/1220×813/filters:focal(1549×289:2151×891):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65703611/GettyImages_878005718__2_.0.jpg
The verdict of doctors sounded like a death sentence: in the near future Hollywood star, 80’s sex symbol, Kathleen Turner was expected to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. At the peak of her acting career the Oscar and two-time Golden Globe winner, Kathleen Turner, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kathleen-turner-against-a_b_10012774
Cash is freedom, national identity, privacy, dexterity, encourages good arithmetic and encourages discipline as plenty of people are easily manipulated into overspending online on their card
It’s a safety net for many things- typical of Karlin to be against it.
Those idiots working in grocery shops /supermarkets who are complaining about handling cash are basically killing their own jobs.
This is a virus that is killing between 1-3% of those it infects. Grocery shops/supermarkets lose 1-3% each year from expired goods, theft, damage of food in warehouse or in the shop. Their bosses can use the same obscene overreaction by many countries to the Coronavirus, as a pretext to forcing everything to be paid by card. This will make them eliminate many other types of “wasteage” eliminating shops/supermarkets and all the shop workers because that is the source of 1-3% “waste”, if you can get everyone to use their card online and get the food shopping delivered instead.
I’ve been fine – able to go to most of the places/people I wanted or was intending to visit in the last 2 weeks–but for many others, no shops around for getting food would mean literally nothing to do and nowhere to go in the present circumstances – a complete police state if everything is done without cash.
People who take UBI as a serious proposal need to take it a step further and insist upon a restricted UBI. If it is not restricted, then it will just be another layer of welfare atop the existing bureaucratic monstrosity.
This article reads like a PR piece for the NWO. All working from home and automation will result in is mass unemployment, and it isn’t likely these people could be employed on infrastructure projects because 1. most of these jobs require engineering degrees or at least engineering qualifications of some sort, and 2. if most people are working from home and no longer cramming into city centres then will there be any need for major infrastructure upgrades?
I suspect what the West is more likely to end up with is a more unequal, divided society like South Africa or Brazil where the middle and upper classes live in gated compounds with electric fences and the poor masses live in slum type areas or are completely homeless.
I can’t see any other consequence of making a large percentage of the population obsolete from the job market, unless Western governments plan to pay the unemployed a “Living Wage” for doing nothing, but I can’t see that happening and even if it did for how long would that be sustainable?
I can’t see that Western countries are going to reshore things like call centres or low cost manufacturing either, because the reason they were put offshore in the first place is not because of a lack of labour to do it, but because the labour costs and running costs are much lower in third world countries. So unless Western countries plan to abolish minimum wage laws then I can’t see an incentive for companies to reshore, and if they did abolish the minimum wage to achieve this then Western countries would just turn into third world countries even quicker any way.
“this will accelerate “reshoring” of vital industries”
Ahahahahahaha
Ahahahahahaha
Ahahahahahaha
Fundamentals did not change, on the money front. Factories will move, yes, but to other Southeastern Asia countries, and eventually to coastal Africa.
Also, people of WASP origin still hate actual work. They would rather be waiters. Hydroxychloroquine must still come as a generous gift from Modi, or else. They went to college, you see.
“Less cash,more electrical payments … more tax” Yes and more money for governments to waste !!
On the one hand, I lose anonymity, because in stores I pay for pretty much everything with cash. OTOH, I will be caught behind fewer elderly women paying for things in tediously counted-at-the-till five- and ten-cent pieces, and I won’t have to dispose of the hundreds of Euros of small change my wife is too busy to count and spend herself (I work hard to keep her from becoming one of those old ladies).
I find this myth that Anglos are lazy very odd. Lazy as opposed to who, French, Spaniards and Italians?
The temporary brain drain reversal in Eastern Europe could be useful, if the Governments find a way to keep the useful ones from emigrating again after the crisis ends
Russia could perhaps leverage the one in Ukraine, iirc the Polish Ukie workers voted for Zelensky over Porky
Zelensky vote was not a pro-Russian anti-Western vote, just because the few pro-Russians in Ukraine also voted for Zelensky because he was clearly a lesser evil for them.
The idea is to cancel all other welfare payments and to liquidate the bureaucracy handling welfare, since the U in UBI makes it trivial to administer: every Liegekey receives an automatic payment.
In some ways I find it odd that Scottish nationalism is stronger than Welsh nationalism, as it’s the Welsh who have the stronger claim to being a separate people to the English, not the Scots most of whom are arguably just northern English historically.
The claim that Scots are a different people to the English is tenuous at best. Scottish nationalists have tried to invent a historical revisionist Celtic past, but Gaelic was only ever spoken by a minority in the highlands and is an import from Ireland any way. Also, there are parts of England that historically spoke a Celtic language, so using the same logic you could argue that England is Celtic.
It was a pro-Peace vote
I don’t believe most governments are that benevolent that they would pay a “Living Wage” to everyone in the country by default as some sort of compensation for automation putting millions of people out of work.
In Britain a lot of people have big problems simply trying to claim the welfare benefits that they are entitled to, so the idea that the British government is suddenly going to just pay everyone a “Living Wage” seems laughable when they are reluctant to even pay the minority of people who are entitled to benefits at the moment. I suspect that in reality the idea of UBI is a myth promoted by the media to make the public more accepting of automation and the prospect of losing their jobs, in reality UBI will probably never materialise.
What about CRISPR and the IoT? If you had to write about one 2018 cliche (blockchain), why leave out the others? AI, drones, VR, socialsocialsocial.
… Good Lord, I just realized I am talking to people who take elections seriously
South-Americans if we are talking about US. Ukrainians / Bulgarians / Romanians, if you meant Europe. Essentially, poorer people. French, Spaniards, Italians do not qualify.
https://bnr.bg/en/post/101257115/bulgaria-s-social-ministry-urges-seasonal-agricultural-workers-not-to-travel-abroad
https://www.thelocal.de/20200410/romanian-seasonal-workers-head-to-germany-despite-covid-19-pandemic
https://www.total-slovenia-news.com/business/6033-arrival-of-romanians-at-hop-farms-cancelled-govt-looks-to-domestic-workers
It was primarily a rejection-of-the-old, an anti-corruption, and an anti-oligarch vote (yes I know this is ironic given that Kolomoysky was behind Zelensky). The Zelensky movement brought in all sorts of deliberately non-political figures such as the wedding photographer who defeated a powerful local oligarch:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-23/wedding-snapper-ousts-tycoon-as-ukraine-purges-oligarchs-in-vote
“In one of the most high-profile upsets, 45-year-old mining billionaire Kostyantin Zhevago, who enjoys significant influence in regions where his plants provide thousands of jobs, lost to a 25-year-old civil servant focusing on fighting corruption in state procurement. In the south-eastern Zaporizhzhya region, 29-year-old Serhiy Shtepa, a wedding photographer, defeated 80-year-old millionaire Vyacheslav Boguslayev, the owner of engine maker Motor Sich PJSC.”
And while Zelensky’s platform was not as pro-war as that of Poroshenko, he wasn’t a “capitulation” candidate either. Naturally, those who wanted peace no matter what, or who were pro-Russian, did vote for Zelensky in the second round, because he was clearly better for them than was Poroshenko. But those weren’t his voting base. They didn’t even vote for him in the first round, rather they tended to vote for Boyko or for the Opposition Bloc.
Pro-Russians who read into Zelensky’s victory a desire by Ukrainians to reorient to the East are being extremely and unrealistically optimistic. And demonstrating that despite the displayed “sour grapes” deep down they just don’t want to let Ukraine go.
This is the Austrian Economic point of view.
Work from home, on-line shopping, and similar such stuff will likely be permanent. That’s because these things are desirable to begin with and COVID-19 was the impetus to wide-spread adoption.
Bars and restaurants will be the biggest losers in all of this. Unfortunate for us since my wife and I like to eat out a lot.
I don’t know if UBI schemes will take in the U.S. Certainly temporary support is called for. The current COVID-19 checks are a repeat of Obama’s 99 week “unemployment” compensation 12 years ago. Certainly there will be a period of adjustment and we will need a repeat of the “99 week” free money we got 12 years ago in order for the economy to transition away from jobs that involve lots of face to face contact between people, particularly strangers (retail sales).
I do not expect “globalization” as a whole to go away. Certainly U.S. and other countries’ companies are going to move their manufacturing out of China. But this trend started 6-7 years ago. COVID-19 is only accelerating the existing trend here. Redundancy is the key to robust supply chains (take it from some one who has actual experience in this..too much rhetoric about globalization comes from the mouths of people who have no experience and thus don’t knwo jacks**t about manufacturing and supply chain management). Redundancy means being able to source from as many places as possible, both domestic and international.
As for surveillance and tracking goes, there will always be opportunities for hackers to screw with such systems.
You want the competent people to stay? Make it attractive for them to stay (no taxation, increased personal and economic freedom, etc.). Incentives matter. Societies that make themselves attractive for the competent seem to have no problem retaining such competence. Funny how that works.
Work from home isn’t desirable. It’s incredibly wasteful and everyone forced to do it hates it.
Then those governments will collapse or commit national suicide and fade into irrelevance (see Japan, the biggest worthless losers on the planet, with South Korea being a close competitor).
People can rant about welfare leeches and masturbate about “muh productivity” all they want, but the reality is, we live in a consumption based economy driven by credit growth, aka digits in a spreadsheet. We must have credit growth or bad things happen (unemployment skyrockets and pensions go bust). Even if you view yourself as productive worker, the only reason you are alive is because you are collecting spreadsheet digits from unproductive ones. If spreadsheet digits stop moving, economy dies, and productive workers get fired just like everybody else. It is irrelevant where those digits come from, private banks or government, as long as they keep coming.
We are currently bailing out corporate sector again, but if corporates don’t find customers soon, it will do nothing – they will fire the workers again which will crush demand, and depression will result. Corporate sector is too dumb, greedy, and irresponsible to manage fake digits on a computer. So government must step in.
You don’t want to be Japan. They are famed for crazy work hours, but at 300%+ debt to GDP ratio their national balance sheet is worse than a homeless bum in California who never held a job in his life. Their stock and bond markets are on the way to full nationalization. They haven’t even been an exporting powerhouse since Fukushima. If that’s your plan – amass countless $trillions of debt, you can do this on a beach sipping a margarita rather than hiding in office cubicle 20 hours a day. Much healthier this way.
Based on their fertility rates, Japanese use work to hide from their wives. Which is understandable, but it literally kills their consumer base. With 300,000 net population loss, that is like a Hiroshima bomb going off in Japanese shopping malls every year, and people wonder why Japanese economy fails to grow. You can’t grow economy if you are dead. Dead don’t care to buy stuff.
This is the future that awaits us all. It needs to be avoided. If doorknobs could buy cheeseburgers and haircuts, i would advocate Basic Income for doorknobs. It doesn’t matter as long as it grows credit and consumption.
Why are Asian women sweet and submissive in the West but harridans in their home countries?
In supposed “response to coronavirus”, Japan plans re-source some of its companies from China, and Japan’s government is providing $2 billion of subsidies for this.
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1248070712079699968
Moving out of China, will be a trend in the future – however, of course, nothing to do with coronavirus, but the fact that China’s income levels are increasing, and therefore the cost saving of using Chinese labour falls a little each year.
China will have some of the problems of middle income trap in its manufacturing. While Japan will not be able move its manufacturing back to high income Japan, without then becoming uncompetitive in terms of price of its products. Such companies if they re-source from China, will presumably not resist the offer to soon re-outsource to even lower income countries like India or Cambodia.
Japan has the most skilled and conscientious workers, but international consumers mainly respond to price, and do not value quality and reliability as much as in former decades.
Even a medium luxury German companies like Bosch and BMW, have to produce their products in poorer countries like Romania and Hungary, as wages are so high in Germany.
And luxury brands created sometimes the weirdest labour flows: e.g. Chinese slaves illegally imported into Italy – then manufacture in factories in Prato the products of Italy’s fashion brands, which is then exported to China to sell with expensive prices to Chinese bourgeoisie on “made in Italy” labelling.
Captain Obvious
Height and build difference.
If you want to know more relationship between men and women, go to a farm and watch a herd of cows. Bulls fight, cows throw themselves at the biggest one, with the juiciest patch of grass. Losers don’t fare too well with the ladies, even though they are available and willing. That is literally all you need to know.
I partly agree with you. I like a balance of both. I like to work from home about 30% of the time, with the balance split between the office/shop and customer sites. I’m an industrial automation engineer.
Instead of work from home, I’m thinking that satellite offices will become more common. These would be in commercial office parks where people would work in small groups and would not have to commute far, say, a mile or two from home.
That’s incredibly optimistic: our leaders opened the door to Africa. Our future is objectively worse than Japan’s.
I think the key measure is productivity per worker.German car makers do final assembly in East Europe but final assembly is like less than 10% value addition and require medium skilled blue collar labour the remaining 90% of value addition at the sub component level remains in Germany which require higher skilled labour that have undergone a rigorous apprenticeship program.
The blue collar worker who is responsible for forging car axels at Thyssen krupp AG is much more skilled and productive than a final assembly line blue collar worker at BMW.
There are shirt companies which make high quality 100% Made in Japan shirts for surprisingly little (kamakura shirts),Staedler and Faber castle make wooden pencils in Germany, The swiss make a lot of affordable chocolates (Toblerone etc.) in Switzerland and supply 100+ countries.
Given the correct mix of capital goods and productive well trained labour there is no fundamental reason that low tech goods cannot be competitively produced in high income countries.
I disagree. Current situation is a typical “legal lag”, where technology develops sometimes decades faster than the populations understands its implications, and balances those implications to its other preferences.
If we look at the 20th century American history, there are rather more extreme lags. Automobiles are popular for years before there are traffic rules – and decades before there are safety belt requirements. This is despite a fact that it is not especially idiosyncratic to want to balance our preference for personal transport, with preference for not dying.
A desire for convenience of the internet, with a desire for personal privacy when we want it – are both very common ones, and also not particularly difficult or expensive to balance (unlike automobile or aviation safety of the 20th century).
Sometimes this can be very slow, though, when there are business interests – e.g. where it was most of the 20th century to resolve: cigarettes, asbestos, lead in petrol.
Reasons for slow speed of resolving lack of balance now in privacy in electronic communications, is a bit interesting though – many private companies and government security agencies benefit from the “legal lag”, and unresolved situation of status quo, so prefer not to publicize these problems. However, consumers will slowly become conscious, and laws will be inevitable, if not necessary soon.
<
blockquote>ntroduction of passports. Optional before WW1; compulsory in most states,
<
blockquote>
I think this is in the opposite in the last century. It was very difficult bureaucratically to travel between countries in the 20th century. There were very strong demands on paperwork, even for citizens of Western Europe. And to move objects and money, was even more.
Today, with a Schengen visa, moving between countries is almost not requiring any bureaucratic demand. Moreover, EU citizens, can travel and live between countries, with only a need to show a passport on certain borders. This is obviously, has disadvantages as well as advantages (the former, especially in some of the immigration dynamics).
https://16rg79206p914dhzdf2tvfcm-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/thai-atm-meme-2-girls.jpg
https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3289/3031241783_fe273d8977_m.jpg
https://sweet3mango.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Thailand-handsome-man.jpg
Africa itself will do great. They are very tribal, so if “youths” start acting up over there like they do in Sweden (throwing grenades etc), then the tribe of the victim will get together and take the “youths” down. If “youths” don’t get the message, their own tribe will get massacred in retribution.
Russia also does well with tribal management. In Chechya, Kadyrov represents the sensible tribes. The less sensible tribes have to deal with Kadyrov at their own peril and expense.
I would recommend Europe to brush up on their tribal management skills, and place less sensible tribes in cheaper housing so it is easier to rebuild when it burns down.
ATM? Yes, I see a green juicy patch of grass already 🙂
Although productivity per worker is usually increased in many industries by more capital intensive production – as is the common trend since the Industrial revolution.
At the initial stage, more capital intensive production, can also allow you to more easily to outsource the production, as the quality of local labour becomes a smaller influence. You need the local knowledge and talents of workers, to weave carpets in a traditional way, but not to press buttons on carpet manufacturing machines.
On the other hand, reducing size of workforce by increasing its productivity, means that workers’ salaries is a smaller cost in your business, so the comparative advantage of poor countries is less. If your factory of robots, only will hire a few workers – then their salary is not a large component of your products’ final price. So the trend of automation, which at a lower level supports outsourcing, at a more extreme level, can start to support insourcing.
I think even those large Japanese companies are sometimes also being scammed in China with counterfeit components. Perhaps they had good experience with the components at first, and then later a lot of bad version of the same components enter their products. .
Historically local Japanese manufacturing, is apparently using small family companies for its components. “High-trust society” of Japan has probably also resulted in naive businesses, which simply trust that such components will have good quality control, and this attitude does not have good results when outsourcing your component purchases to more “low-trust societies”.
I guess some factories, are already looking like half-way that in 2020.
It is not just the cost of labor but other factors as well. The price to build spacey workshops. The environmental regulations, ie., can you pollute the neighboring land at ease? Etc.
I find it bizarre how the Scandinavian countries have basically got away with not having a lock down, or a very limited one. Sweden didn’t even enter lock down at all and Denmark plans to lift their lock down next week. Britain was internationally condemned for attempting to deal with this crisis in exactly the same way that Sweden is, and was forced to follow the rest of Europe into lock down but Sweden didn’t get anywhere near the criticism for doing the same, in fact most of the media is portraying Sweden positively.
I wonder if it’s because the Scandinavians are already very controlled and culturally inclined to be highly compliant with the state and authority so there is less need for highly authoritarian measures there unlike many other countries where the authorities have to impose very hard and authoritarian measures to get total compliance from the public.
Perhaps Karlin would like to add widespread asthma and allergies as an excellent consequence ensuing from the obsession with germs that will inevitably become a permanent feature of the human race. The higher incidence of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is another.
Also, he didn’t mention the improvement in air quality and the disacceleration of global warming. Oh I forget: these concepts are considered taboo by rightwingers.
I think I will save this article for future reading in case I survive the pandemic. It sure will be an inexaustible source of hilarity to counter my future bitterness.
Anyway, you forgot to mention the main silver lining on this cloud: if anyone had any doubts about who is sane and who is completely nuts in this world, I think this crisis has settled it for good.
Asthma ought to go down because of the huge impact of children spending less time in heavy pollution
I’ve heard that there’s hard data that indicates that women’s standards have dropped. For those that don’t know women on average only rate the top 20% of men as being above average – at least on dating sites. These numbers have changed. Possibly due to economic insecurity.
It don’t think it is really all that meaningful. Probably temporary, but any sociological change is always interesting.
Some are also predicting a baby boom. The idea being that uncertain times often lead to one – there was a baby boom even in the wake of WW2 in Germany.
I wonder if this quarantine might cause a rise in autoimmunity in children.
In theory, a lot of asthma isn’t really caused by air pollution. It is just exacerbated by it. It’s really caused by genetic factors in conjunction with modern hygiene practices, which limit our exposure to infectious organisms. The hygiene hypothesis.
In the future we are all going to have health passports which will give us access to UBI (an incentive).
Stay away from virus areas and keep your vaccines up-to-date and enjoy a passive income. I think many would go for it… especially if the sum is something like $1,200 to $2,500.
All the ladies that love masks here can even throw in stipulations demanding masks be worn in public for a health passport to be valid.
LOL considering you hadn’t even heard of Zelensky before January 2019 and can’t speak a word of Russian or Ukrainian to save your life…… its laughable and despicable for you to do this charade of pretending to follow ukrop politics or being any authority on it.
Ukraine is a failed, dying, prostitute, Nazi state that doesn’t have a mind of its own. Its fairly useless to ascribe ideologies–certainly from somebody as fraudulent as yourself, and in a state where the SBU are rampant and plenty of pro-russian people have taken “flying lessons” off the top of buildings.
To any non clown, a clear part of Zelensky’s election campaign was that trade with Russia had to improve….. by definition that makes a reason why people voted for him of being pro Russian. That’s not pro Russian to the point of being anti western- (of course he is the typical ukrop parasite /snake who has turned out to be another fraud) but certainly “rebalancing” less against Russia.
Add in his words against the language laws and restarting flights to and from Russia (which of course he has done nothing on both issues) and you have huge sections of the population voting for him for pro-russian reasons. These are reasons that will practically improve their quality of life. Not the placebo, garbage reasons which sums up the entire “pro western” sector.
LOL, what stupidity
A. Consistently pro-russia poll 16 percent in Kiev’s fake polls, in a country where a large proportion are apathetic to this freakshow
B. You certainly aren’t in any position to have any idea what is going on in ukraine
C. 16 percent without polling in DNR/LNR, in a state with a completely undefined population number…is at least 20%
D. Putin is more popular in Banderastan than several of their high profile domestic politicians
E. Soros polls in a police state are irrelevant
F. Jews are more popular than”Ukrainians” in Ukraine it appears
There will be some resistance against this in the United States where there is a toxic brew of politically motivated middle-tier online media personalities who excuse every bad policy of the reigning orthodoxy pitted against a mass of middle-class libertarian & religious fundamentalist conspiracy theorists who interpret ANY government mandate as oppressive.
In the long run, I wonder whether or not the West really will adopt the face-mask custom. The United States has a very influential media complex capable of shaping views across the world, so unless there is a government mandate requiring sick people to wear masks while out in public, it may be abandoned under U.S. social pressure — sadly, as there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the suggestion.
Already some on the libertarian conspiracy right are advocating against it in no uncertain terms:
The United States has had a long history of being paralyzed by this brew. Much of the country’s illegal immigration problem could have been solved back in the 1990s with then available national identification cards and a few government mandates requiring their use. Fringe conspiracy theories and fake freedom enthusiasts chose to do nothing, instead preening about muh freedom and muh black helicopters.
Judging by the media coverage of Coronavirus deaths in the UK, you get the impression that it’s almost entirely blacks and South Asians who die of Coronavirus in this country. It’s rare to see a white face reported as a Coronavirus death on British news.
I’m not sure whether this is because blacks and South Asians are significantly more likely to die from Coronavirus, or because the British media simply regards the deaths of non-whites as more of a tragedy so mostly reports them rather than white deaths.
Sooo much butthurt by the stalker.
Did you cut something off when you became “Ms.”?
You did manage to write one correct thing though – pro-Russian support in Ukraine is about 16%. Not much at all.
Have you learned Russian yet?
Effect of industry on global warming is often exaggerated, and global warming is not necessarily all negative (still from a precautionary view, it would be better to avoid contributing further to the risk involved in it).
But direct health effects of pollution – release of toxic materials into the air by industry and burning of fuel, is something unambiguously bad. I don’t understand idiots who condone air pollution, to the extent they don’t derive some economic benefit from it that can compensate for effects on their lungs.
I don’t imagine such people are a large group, but I remember angry responses on this forum when I said we should reduce coal burning, or explained that Poland has tens of thousands of deaths from coal burning every year.
Now if you are an oligarch invested in the coal industry, then I respect your self-interest. We can respect the dudes who own Uralasbest, to publicize about how healthy it is to mine for asbestos. Similarly, Igor Altushkin, will say his new copper mine will not add to suffocation of Chelyabinsk. Owners of Nornickel, publicize their effect on the city’s air is harmless. The same Deripaska can deny that his aluminum plant is the worse polluter of Krasnoyarsk. Koch family can fight against regulations to reduce benzene levels in America.
But people who don’t have investments in these particular sectors – how can they not oppose such pollution? In the weird way politically people in this forum talk about “cucks” – here are some “cucks”.
Sweden is still talking about “herd immunity”, as their strategy. Although doesn’t sound especially rational, considering how little is known about COVID-19, and what proportion of people might have long-term damage. (e.g. https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-10/coronavirus-infection-can-do-lasting-damage-to-the-heart-liver )
At least culturally, perhaps Scandinavians have a better starting position to reduce the speed of spread of epidemics. Sweden has the highest proportion of people living alone in the world. And in public life, there is socially distancing in normal times.
And jokes about Finns are similar –
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-bzG9tpqVL.
Maybe, although I was surprised that obedience to the lockdown, doesn’t necessarily seem to match how advanced the country.
For example, in an advanced civilization like the UK, people are disobeying lockdown, and viewing it as like a free vacation. While in third world Ukraine, the population is responsibly behaving, following lockdown, everyone wearing masks, and now started reporting neighbours who violate the lockdown.
Although people are exhilarated at the improvement of the air quality in some formerly problematic spots, I am sure this will turn out to be ephemeral. When this lockdown is over, the recession it will have provoked will force people to employ whatever means they have available to resuscitate the economy. That will mean all environmental concerns will be put aside, and we will make environmental problems even worse than they are now.
This is more likely due to #MeToo than economic insecurity. Men have become much less aggressive in their advances, not sure of what is currently acceptable behavior and afraid to cross the line. Hence, lowered standards by their targets.
Take it one question further, who is the ultimate loser/winner here, the bull who gets the cows or the master who owns him?
As long as we are all thralls to the jews, we all collectively losers.
That presumes that American politicians had any desire to curb illegal immigration, which they did not.
While we can judge already that generally, people in Russia are locking down better and more well behaved, than in Western Europe.
Morons in church for Palm Sunday, which have not been closed strangely, despite that most parishioners are old people vulnerable to this virus. In Ekaterinburg – in the academic district there are reported around 100 people, which are not following any rules of safety.
https://static.ngs.ru/news/2020/99/preview/f1cf9042a9f3ee0fe996865bb09fa947212ce782e_623.JPG
https://static.ngs.ru/news/2020/99/preview/78c54c0a3bf60f4962902cc8573830fd21b788cb6_623.JPG
Similar report in Novosibirsk.
https://sib.fm/storage/article/April2020/NRLo9vBk0rX4C8PSOhmK.jpg
There’s nothing magical about Sweden.
https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1248664536078483462
How about Corona CRUELTIES? Zionist-controlled US is a real monster.
US denied, People died.
https://www.rt.com/news/484999-iran-sanctions-coronavirus-oliver-stone/
You seriously think social media is less harmful than television? You think a world in which people are told how to think by social media instead of TV would be an improvement?
We’ll be told that if we want manufacturing brought back we’re going to need a massive increase in immigration. Because there is absolutely no way to bring manufacturing jobs back without dirt-cheap labour. It wouldn’t be viable and even if it was employers simply have zero intention of paying people decent wages. And yes I agree, it would mean abolition of the minimum wage and would hasten the transformation of the country into a fully-fledged Third Wold nation.
And most of the new manufacturing would in any case be so automated that there would be few jobs created anyway.
The idea that the factory jobs are coming back for ordinary Americans is pure fantasy.
You seriously think social media is less harmful than television?
The PTB haven’t figured out how to control social media as well as they control television. Social media give more opportunities for subversion. It gives the LCD a great way to present itself.
pay everyone a “Living Wage”
I don’t know about any other countries, but I’m pretty sure that I could do a restricted UBI in the US with very little if any increase in total “welfare” expenditures. Capturing the waste, fraud, and bureaucratic ineffectiveness would probably provide a 50% increase in “real” welfare spending.
And it’s not even Ramadan yet
The Daily Mail currently have a despicable, blasphemous headline about Boris Johnson’s recovery, saying “He is risen!”. They are comparing Boris to Jesus Christ, on Easter Sunday to make it even worse.
I’m not sure if it’s just their nasty attempt at humour or whether these Tory freaks actually see Boris as God.
One way to avoid facial recognition is to wear a mask, and Corona-Chan just normalized it across the globe
I don’t get why people are panicking about getting chipped, your phone is almost always with you, you already have a tracking device on you
And you also regularly imput personal information on it, including some of the most personal and sensitive stuff in private chats
I wonder if in the future we could replace Credit Cards, Personal IDs, drivers licenses, medical IDs and other Wallet space occupiers with Apps on our phones (China already did it with Credit Cards in places like Shenzhen afaik)
Er, because your phone is not physically implanted in your skin as a chip would be? I find it interesting how on board all you Russian types seem to be with technocratic NWO agendas, transhumanism, etc and to think Western conservatives think it’s Russia who is going to save them, Russia is all for it.
Average in the colloquial sense is not the same as average in the mathematical sense. You can be sure the word is not used by those women for “50th percentile” but rather for “neither handsome nor ugly based on vague personal preferences and current fashion standards.” In this meaning, 20% above average is probably an accurate picture of dating site guys (who usually have trouble charming girls in real life, or they wouldn’t be on the dating site). It doesn’t help that they put up unflattering photos of themselves. Just paying a professional photographer who knows how to use lighting and angles can pull almost everyone “above average.”
Are you sure that this pandemic will deligitimise libertarianism, I mean even in countries like Brazil where this pandemic is poorly handled, the death rate, at 2 to 3 percent, will still be low enough, and it will still tend to strike groups that can be rationalised easily, like obese people, or old people, and people can still hand wave it away credibly, and it will not shift the opinions of enough people to deligitimise libertarianism to any significant degree. It is sort of like climate change, the changes are happening slowly and gradually enough to not change a significant amount of people’s opinions quickly enough.
To sway opinion significantly you need something as easily transmissible as this thing, with a death rate similar to SARS or bird flu, that hits all demographics pretty much equally.
Too bad Russia has no national lockdown policy. Morons are congregating in church, because nobody told them not to. Moscow is the place in the country with a partial-semi-kinda lockdown, though many non-essential businesses continue to operate as normal.
I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing. On the one hand, I think hypergamy is a real phenomenon.
On the other, I think that some of these studies don’t mean much on an individual level. Such as, I recall one where they had a woman put on a red-haired wig in a bar, and based on the number of men that approached her, they came up with the idea that red haired women were the least attractive. They don’t even say what sort of men were in the bar. Anyway, whether it true or not on average, I think they are the most attractive, all other things being equal.
And why do you assume it will be that obvious? They could simply make it illegal to not carry your smartphone with you, without much fanfare, just fine violators and 99% start obeying the rule
Or simply make life too inconvenient to not carry one
Desperation drives people to all sorts of crazy ideas, even if Russia wasn’t technocratic it was never going to “save the West”, just as the West never bothered to “save Russia”
It isn’t all bad, especially when you live in a dysfunctional country, in Russia for instance Mishustins AI taxing helped lift a lot of bureaucratic burden off the people
Perhaps one day AI systems could be used to partially bridge HBD gaps, probably no tho
One thing I will give the sinister Karlin credit on, is posting an excellent link about electricity consumption in Europe and Russian regions.
Scandinavia, except for 1 or 2 weeks out of the last 7,have not decreased consumption relative to last year, Italy and Spain have decreased from 25% to 40% depending on the week, Ukraine has been decreasing the most after those guys! Russia has been fine apart from the last 2 weeks–where Siberia, Far East and Urals have been 100 %+, but the rest have been 8-10pc down (South most affected, Kavkaz + no tourists allowed?)
Russia with Germany, UK and Italy are the only countries that were susceptible to mass infections from both waves- from China and within Europe.
True, most of the major European countries are more interconnected than Russia – but I would not include the Scandinavian countries, Baltics, Poland, Ukrop, Greece and most of the Balkans in that list, at best you are talking about one-way traffic.
South Korea and Japan don’t have anywhere near the same levels of travel in Europe as does Russia, and they are both democratic-authoritarian countries (not a contradiction hence the mixture of hyper-western freakshow mixed with obedience and traditionalism)
We also have most of the largest, population-intensive cities in Europe and diseases spread at a rate much higher than linear, when measured against population number.
Ukraine shut down everything, the most antidemocratic and antifreedom measures of any white country on the planet. The population has zero faith in their health system, zero faith in the “statistics” they are giving, slave-like mentality from parts of society after euromaidan and a genuine fear about the numbers coming in from European countries they respect….. plus obscenely low testing (RF goes 3.5 times more CV tests in one day, than Ukraine has done for the ENTIRE period) could explain why they are following curfew.
Korenchkin is a Serb, and in any case, it’s pretty dumb to think that few Russians on here are representative or speak for Russian opinion. The Russian state, like most states, wants to make itself more efficient. The people, like most people, tends to assent to the extent that it makes its life easier.
Dreams of technocractic progress, are mainly first in French culture. Afterall, Saint-Simon, is from Paris.
As for your sample from Unz comments sections. If I recall, Korenchin is from Serbia, which is probably an opposite of organized technocracy – but more a kind of country where people are expected to miss an early morning in the office, to drink olive oil and sing to their girlfriend from balcony. People from warm relaxed countries, are often dreaming of the opposite, as part of the nature balancing habit of mankind. National slogan of Brazil – “Order and Progress” (i.e. Saint-Simonian technocracy), in the country famous for chaos and lack of progress.
As for Karlin’s dream about “transhumanism” – it’s possible this is because he lived in San Francisco and London. I have not read this word before I joined his blog a few years ago.
But important people in this avantgarde seem to be English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pearce_(philosopher)
https://life.ru/p/1317895
I must admit a big “congratulations” is in order.
15% of “official statistics ” infected in Banderastan are doctors. I’m in awe at yet another peremoga to boast to the rest of the world. That is just doctors I should emphasise – not nurses or any other medical staff.
Sure, they are at high risk, but 15%,is that bad it makes deliberately infecting people a better option health and finance-wise, than taking so many medical staff out of operation. Italy, for comparison is 8% infection for all medical staff.
As for your post- the usual “green is pink” lies typical of yourself. You know I speak it, you know that I know that you can’t speak the language and that you proved it multiple times in succession (LOL)…. even Mr Hack didn’t bother to go with your BS on that! Typical North American pseudo-ukrop tactics.
16% Pro-russian, which is in fact 20% because of the population not included in polling–is good and larger than Poroshenko’s support. Much of the population is apolitical. Still, the same degree of contempt/extreme skepticism I have for the joke census that claims Ukrainians after 1991 suffered no demographic collapse of “Ukrainians” but only Russians…. I have for these ones of political affiliation
Moscow should have been sealed months ago – and spread to regions could have been at least delayed better than is now.
In China, there were already 24,600 officially recorded deaths from coronavirus by 4 February according to tencent- i.e. it was a much more significant epidemic, than China says now. However, virus was rapidly prevented from spreading inside other areas of China, due to interregional sealing of internal borders, and never came significant way in many parts of the country. This is verified by a fact Chinese visitors did not carry the virus into Russia in late January, before the border was closed (even while thousands of people were dying from this virus each day in Wuhan).
For example, Ekaterinburg is semi-locked down – police talk to people in the street about their reason to be outside, and check their documents.
Lockdown of many Russian cities, is already more strong than in the UK, where people are viewing it as a kind of festival. English are behaving so relaxed about the epidemic, even though it is a lot worse in England with almost a thousand deaths each day.
Here’s photos of London today:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/12/14/27099788-8212021-image-a-70_1586696674466.jpg
If you look at how Londoners are queuing in a video from today, they pretend they “socially distance”. But watch at 1:30 in the video, how closely they walk past each other. So standing apart in the queue has little benefit, when you walk like this closely to people in that queue.
It won’t.
Realize that it was government suppression in China and bureaucratic overreach and ineptitude (FDA and CDC) in the U.S. that created the problem in the first place.
That, and the DIY stuff I’ve been doing, and we are all libertarians today.
I’m very proud to be included in that group! I havent got the flu in the last 7 years.
Anyway, the only people who benefit from Coronavirus…. are the majority of the people who heavily get it.
Most of these people have multiple-health problems. The best thing for them is to have long period of controlled and closely monitored medical observation and testing in a hospital. It is a million times better than going to the clinic or seeing a specialist for your kidneys, your blood, heart, hip or whatever separately as they have been doing – because it is impossible to get the correct dosage of medication for each of these conditions together, to enable their body system to work at its best level. Often the secondary effects from this uncoordinated use of different medications get undiagnosed or have even bigger bad health effects.
Don’t worry – I will be in church next week for Easter also.
Does the master have children? From the evolutionary perspective, in the medium term, the winner is whoever is still around a few centuries from now in the form of genetic lineage. In the long term, both the master and the bull will evolve into something unrecognizable, and the question is moot. Such is the game of life.
It is a debate I had with my vegan relatives. They want to end animal suffering, and call for people to stop eating meat. Fair enough. However, if demand for meat collapses, farmers will slaughter their herds, it will be a complete genocide, baby cows, everything. Yeah, that will end their suffering, but I’m not sure cows will be happy about it. Is genocide to end suffering a moral angle here?
I don’t do the whole jew thing, but yeah, they are overrepresented in the finance sector. That said, it is a financial sector organization that is the problem, if somebody else replaced the jews in finance, that would still be a problem.
Around 2:15 looks like people in the background just walking less than 1 metre past some of the people in the queue.
London still has such an optimistic attitude, that washing your hands while singing “happy birthday”, and queuing in a slightly longer line, will stop an epidemic of partly airborne transmitted viruses. (Hopefully this true though – if UK’s weak “semi-lockdown” is successful, the virus is easier to control than we might have been scared about).
In general it seems to be Anglo conservatives who are the most resistant to authoritarianism, technocratic policies, etc, and who are most likely to believe in conspiracy theories related to that sort of thing.
Like when Tony Blair tried to introduce biometric ID cards in Britain, there was huge opposition to it and the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition scrapped it in the end when they came to power in 2010. This is despite the fact that biometric ID cards are basically the norm in almost all other European countries.
If Russia restricts travel between regions, Western media might call it undemocratic, and Russian government is highly sensitive to this kind of criticism. That’s one possible explanation for their passivity.
It is also possible that Kremlins do not have an accurate picture of the situation in Russia, living inside a bubble of FSB reports and conspiracy theories.
Another possibility is that Russian officials simply hate work and responsibilities, they wish for this situation to go away on its own somehow. Putin’s health minister Tatyana Арбидол Golikova spent the last month denying that Russia is facing a crisis. Now, she is already eager to proclaim it to be over.
Good weather in all the UK videos and photos make it an unfair comparison I think. In fact, I can only see one guy wearing a coat- which is abnormal for the UK in March/early April.
From what I hear, police cars are patrolling far more in the UK, than in Russia. Also I hear that many dog walkers in the UK are mass trespassing on other people’s property whenever somebody is coming towards them on the pavement (even at safe distance) as part of some OTT paranoia at the dog or them being infected.
One thing I noticed is that they are making use of the ban of mass activities by using conference centres and stadiums as huge, temporary,1000 bed hospitals. For Russia we have gone the other way – used the time to build big, permanent hospitals that will initially be used for treating coronavirus. Both approaches are to be applauded – but policies were set-up pre-emptively, unlike other countries.
The UK seems to the one whose curves are flatenning out the least despite the lockdown.
Coronavirus converted the city I live, into a kind of paradise.
I live next to a lot of ancient historical buildings, famous views, and gardens. The problem it is usually polluted with cars, and flooded with thousands of tourists and noisy students, and such floods of thousands of people everywhere means you never really appreciate the great architecture and history of the city.
Now for the last couple weeks, eliminated all the tourists and students, reduced the number of cars, and the city became one of the most beautiful places in the world, where you can imagine you are walking in a quiet morning in the 17th-18th century. People will be nostalghic for this, probably for years after.
Nice, logical guesses, but wrong.
(1) No, it doesn’t have much to do with that, given that I discovered it via Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge when I was still in Northern England. There is a complex of highly interesting and stimulating ideas there, to which I tend to be attracted; most likely, I would have maintained an interest in things like AI safety even had I not lived in the Bay Area.
(2) Incidentally, the precursors to transhumanists were the Russian cosmists a century ago, and Moscow has a reasonably vibrant scene – perhaps the second most so after the Bay Area itself, though overly narrowly focused on Life Extension. So it is incorrect to say that it is a singularly Anglo obsession. London for its part is thoroughly unremarkable so far as the transhumanist scene goes. So far as the UK goes, the Oxford scene is more interesting (it hosts the Future of Humanity Institute and some others) but is highly rarefied/elitist, not generally open to the public.
I doubt it, Western countries have been hugely encouraging other countries to fully lock down and prevent all national travel. British people who continue to travel nationally, like to their second homes in rural areas, have been heavily criticised for it in the British media.
The Russian government is much more likely to be criticised for not locking down and still allowing national travel than it is to be criticised for banning it.
Don’t be stupid, Hubei quarantine was heavily criticized as a violation of freedoms and basic human dignity. Double standards form the basis for Western messaging strategy.
I was also thinking this might be a singular opportunity to film scenes of deserted city streets for post-apocalyptic movies. You know, like go to the financial district or someplace with not a lot of residences.
But maybe that is not the case, at all? Maybe, you would be better off shooting after sunrise on an early Sunday morning, when this quarantine is all over, and when all the bars are open late at night, etc. And nobody is trying to spread out their activity to avoid others.
From what I’ve seen in the British media, China’s response and lock down of Hubei has been highly praised and regarded as the model Western nations should copy.
At most I’ve seen journalists suggest that China’s authoritarianism made it easier to implement a strict lock down than it is in most Western countries, but almost no British journalists have criticised the response itself as far as I can see.
Actually it’s Somalians, no one has any authority there
So doctors have greater access to tests in Ukraine than others do.
Nope, proof is here. You don’t even know what the Russian-language word for “clock” is:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/god-truly-does-have-a-sense-of-humor/#comment-3472492
Your quote: “chas” is “hour” in Russian..i.e a period of time, or in a time, not to mention also meaning “watch/clock”
Latvian woman had to point out to you that the Russian word for clock is not chas but chasy.
I speak Russian well enough to get by in Moscow. Obviously not like a native, but not like a Westerner either – when asked about my nationality by friendly natives, I’m usually confused for a Russian-speaking Czech, Polish or Baltic tourist. AK heard me speak some Russian to our waitress at a cafe in Moscow.
In Kiev I am mistaken for someone from Lviv. In Lviv – they know I’m from abroad.
As a civil “engineer” in Sovok you don’t know math, so we’ll stick to 16%. Even 20% is a small number. And they are largely concentrated in the eastern fringes of the country.
If Sweden is currently run by its political center, it is downright frightening to imagine what a government by its feminist left would look like.
Lviv must be like that now. It was like that in the 90s and early 00s, before its revival. At that time, there wasn’t even any electricity at night. One could see all the stars in the center of the city, as one does in the mountains, or as had once been the case in Europe of the 18th century. I suspect locals aren’t so nostalgic for those day though.
I don’t know the numbers, so it’s just an impression, but there are certainly high value added activities offshored to Hungary. Audi builds many parts including engines and transmissions in Hungary, and moved some R&D to Hungary as well. Bosch has an R&D center in Hungary, too. Rumor has it that the latter actually developed the “defeat device” chip resulting in all those troubles for Volkswagen.
I don’t think those are not productive, it’s the rest of the Hungarian economy which is not very productive.
It’s possible. Meaning that women were hit hardest by #metoo.
How dangerous that all those people are in Richmond Park, >5 metres from one another
Maybe countries that do the worst job in terms of controlling this pandemic should be subjected to travel, finance, and trade embargoes, or at least travel bans? Since they may end up spreading the disease to countries that have already controlled theirs, would be funny to see the UK being subject to an EU travel ban, payback for Brexit?
This is cumulative so of course it looks like skyrocketing exponentially. Daily new cases are not skyrocketing to the sky
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
I thought it was already some good trolling, when they made in charge of raising national birthrate, a woman who is childless despite three marriages. At least, her latest marriage gave birth to a lot of golf courses apparently.
In countries that opted for herd immunity, and do not test mild cases, deaths is a more reliable metric. Sweden has very high rate of deaths per capita population, way above its Nordic neighbors. This is what Karlin’s chart was showing.
If f(t) is exponential then the daily new cases df(t)/dt must be exponential. If df(t)/dt is not exponential then f(t) is not exponential. However df(t)/dt is burdened with noise which when integrated: f(t)=∫df(t)/dt to large extent cancels, so that’s why f(t) looks exponential even though df(t)/dt does not. And then obviously there is a difference between “it looks” and “it is”.
How many EU countries are just counting coronavirus deaths as pneumonia or respiratory diseases?
It is not that Sweden is worse than countries that implemented the countermeasures. Sweden is a fraud because it is much worse than it says it is.
Florence and Venice, would be where I would like to be able to walk around for an afternoon now, as in normal times historical atmosphere of these cities is a little ruined by the vast flood of tourists.
They are still quite populated cities, so won’t be empty even with lockdown – but without the tourists and cars, to walk in the city it will be probably the most historical atmosphere for decades.
And if the traffic car levels are significantly reduced in Rome – imagine how much nicer it must be to walk there currently, than how it is normally.
Joggers are breathing heavily and moving fast, covering a large area along their path. At least that’s what Austrian researchers found. Cyclists are even worse. The 5 meter distance cannot be kept always. Sometimes it’s broken, and then the virus can spread.
China had the state capacity to stop an already large scale outbreak. We in Europe are apparently incapable of doing so. We think we know better – like “it’s not very dangerous to walk in moderately large crowds.” When all is finished and done, it will be clear that, despite its middling income, the ascendant Asian power (and basically all East Asian countries) are way more competent and better at dealing with emergencies than we Europeans. I was actually surprised by that. I thought that the Achilles heel of East Asians was their lack of flexibility and slow response to emergencies. Apparently we’ve fallen so far that we are now worse even in this.
I would be interested in your answer to JL’s point in the other thread.
If Covid-19 is just the flu, then why would you want to gain immunity to it (but not the flu, which you avoid)? If it’s worse than the flu (as I believe), then why are you going out of your way to catch it (and thus gain immunity), and would you do the same with something even worse, like the bubonic plague? If not, why not? Your germophobia (and germophilia in the case of Covid-19) doesn’t sound like some sound or logical behavior, rather the manifestation of some strange mental illness.
WASPs work the hardest of any group. Protestants in general.
It’s just more 3rd worlder (and European Ethnic) jealousy.
I wouldn’t say post-apocalyptic atmosphere, in the city I work and now trapped with lock down to. Just unpolluted and far nicer.
At the moment, I only go outside a little early in the morning, at 8am, when it is still totally empty during coronavirus, and therefore I don’t need wear a mask outside, and am often the only soul in the area.
Before coronavirus, there is a lot of noise from cars and full of tourists or students walking at this time in morning, so you won’t enjoy that much.
But now it more something like you have trespassed into some empty elves’ city, or Harry Potter have become really expensive with a new film set.
https://i.imgur.com/QHRLRlk.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/PScXiSh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WeVuGgr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xqy6FLa.jpg
IMO the ratio N(with covid)/N(from covid) goes in the following order: Sweden>Germany>….>Italy, where N=N(with covid)+N(from covid) is the number of all deaths associated with covid. Sweden minimized N(from covid) to get their target of the lower than seasonal flu disease: “we slash the death rate to well below 1 per cent, perhaps even lower than seasonal flu.”
https://youtu.be/WpJyRZ1nd3w
This is being managed more effectively so far in Russia/Ukraine, compared to Western Europe.
It’s still incompetent response to the epidemic in Russia (compared to Soviet anti-epidemic policy), but at least it’s not the relaxed aristocratic attitude of North-Western Europe, where they seem to think that panic about the virus is more dangerous than the virus, and that to worry about things like epidemics is a sign you are some inferior village cowards.
In the case of “neoliberal” governments in Europe, like Hungary, Baltic states, Czech Republic, Slovakia – seem to be managing effectively as well. Also in South-Eastern Europe – especially Orthodox countries like Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece.
What psychological or cultural factors explain this? France and Spain seems to have gotten the handle on this, so has Canada, it seems that UK and Sweden and some parts of the US are the problem areas. Would we see places like New York and California closing their borders to prevent people from red States, particularly from Iowa et al, traveling there?
New Zealand seems to have done very very well for an English speaking neoliberal country, maybe we can thank Jacinda Ardern’s maternal instinct here due to having a toddler?
Covid-19 could become more virulent after sheltering in Syria, Yemen etc. The Spanish Flu killed most on the 2nd wave.
The Backs without tourists! No cows either though.
Judging by the news reports, 80-90% of Coronavirus deaths in the UK seem to be non-whites or non-British Europeans, particularly Southern Europeans.
This makes me wonder are non-whites and people with non-white admixture, such as a lot of Southern Europeans, more susceptible to dying from Coronavirus than ethnic Northern Europeans are?
Are you the retards who think that Italians are 40 percent black?
Funny, when I’m in Ukraine a lot of natives think that I’m from Zakarpattya (actually, this is a compliment, because as you know I was born in the US and only got some semblance of Ukrainian grammar knowledge by studying Russian at the University, although my Ukrainian is better than my Russian). 🙂
I’m sure that my Russian could pass in most any restaurant situation, as I use it often enough when visiting Russian grocery stores here, with little to no problems. I would think that with your wife being Russian, that your command of this language would be quite good.
My wife, who spent half her childhood in Sweden, watched a couple of Swedish language news programmes about coronavirus deaths, said that almost every fatality referred to was a Somali. Of course, this could be the usual ‘blacks hardest hit’ stuff we get from the MSM but I thought that was interesting.
Last I checked England had much higher fatality rates than the rest of the UK, with London the worst hit area. Hmm…
Gwent in South Wales, particularly the city of Newport has the UK’s worst outbreak in terms of intensity. Not as many as London but a much smaller city. 50% infection rate amongst the staff at the main hospital because the Uk government took tests ordered early by the Welsh NHS for England.
Re: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/485520-covid19-weight-gain-unhealthy/
Not after the lock down exclusively, but during as well. Not everyone has the luxury of good alternatives to pool and gym memberships – a pointed note to Bill Gates and some others.
Many of those swimming and/or using gym cardio units can’t run. It takes a lot of walking to come close to getting the same benefit. Another crisis is brewing, with little if any effort to better reach a fine line between protecting those most greatly at risk in the present and preserving the rest of the population.
Cows not in this particular area near the photo. But sometimes few black swans sometimes on this river, and lots of gooses living on the grass, which I was told last year not to go near to (ironically now) because they have dangerous viruses.
So the bourgeoisie, complaining about English health services.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2061778250632855
Spain were as stupid as the UK, originally.
Spain had 17 deaths and 673 infections on 8 March, while in that day the government was organizing mass political rallies (against violence on women) in Madrid. https://web.archive.org/web/20200308212634/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Now Spanish media think the deaths in Spain are far higher, than are officially counted, because the lack of testing materials and low number of tests, and they don’t count the deaths as being from coronavirus without the positive tests of dead person before they died ( https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-04-08/espana-incapaz-de-contar-a-las-victimas-del-coronavirus.html )
Compared to the UK, however, Spain then locked down far more strictly – one month ago. My superficial impression, is that it sounds like for the last month, Spanish citizens are also more seriously self-obeying lockdown rules. For example in Spanish cities, there are supposedly groups in the balconies, who shout insults at any people who violate the lockdown or enter their area.
The most heavily infected area is Newport
I believe the correct, and particularly apt for this context, term would be “blowback”.
It’s a chilly day in England, so you can stop worrying Dmitri
I was referring to the joke “women, minorities hit hardest.”
In which case closing the borders to these would be the correct answer. Would it not be that a nationalist should be advocating right now?
Is Newport particularly ethnically homogeneous? I doubt it, because it’s located close to and between Cardiff and Bristol, two of the biggest cities in the UK, and is also a small city in its own right.
I would have thought that area would be by far the most ethnically diverse in Wales.
I don’t think he was ever worrying from inside his hazmat suit to begin with. But he was correct that masses outside is a perfect recipe for a new wave of infections.
The rant of a dilettante:
https://www.rferl.org/a/former-u-s-ambassador-power-chides-initial-global-response-to-coronavirus/30545516.html
Note how she spins China versus her spiteful comments when it comes to Russia. Typical neolib hack.
She deleted that Facebook post. It was writing that English doctors will allow you to die, and that because they were scared of coronavirus all oligarchs (except a few with arrest warrants in Russia) have evacuated to Russia from London. Some were sending personal planes to evacuate their adult children from London, like it was World War Z. She was also saying English doctors are refusing to use drugs to save patients with coronavirus, unlike in Russia.
Author is an histrionic bourgeois idiot. However, I guess she would know personally about oligarchs escaping London to go to Russia.
But if you were Abramovich and have a boat, there are probably better options to evacuate. Abramovich childrens’ media, just reads like they were all evacuated away from London somewhere. https://www.instagram.com/p/B-fFgojB0Ag.
Yes and it is not young gastarbaiters, who are in risk of paying a serious health cost if lockdown is not sufficiently strong or precautionary.
That feeling you are trapped in a country of children – today is good news because cold weather prevents the natives running around outside, lockdown can be effective now for a few days.
Even in primitive Ukraine, they are locking down more carefully. Ukraine’s professional comedian President became less a comedian than Prime Minister of one of the world’s most advanced and civilized countries.
^ Now after it goes viral, she edited the post and made it public agai, with some of sentences about oligarchs removed.
The daughter is unlucky that she got her father’s nose genes. Although the mother is also oddly unattractive.
Geese also peck you very hard. You will be bruised for weeks.
Ah well. In Brazil they made a small preliminary trial with chloroquinine. Of 41 patients in the test group, 11 died from heart complications. The NHS is right to be cautious about untested cures.
Cardiff is the most ethnically diverse place in Wales as befits the biggest seaport and largest university. Newport is 90% white including English immigrants, about 5% Asian and the rest mixed.
The main initial infection was almost certainly a rugby match against a north Italian side which was amplified by a Stereophonics concert in Cardiff.
Most Western countries seem to be reporting the same thing, non-whites are making up the majority of deaths – especially in Northern Europe and the US.
A few days ago there was an article on the Daily Mail about the NHS openly admitting that blacks and other non-whites are dying at a much higher rate, and media outlets in the US are saying much the same thing. Predictably they put it down to discrimination and inequality meaning that non-whites are less healthy than whites on average, but of course they’d say that, they would never even consider the possibility that the difference could be racial.
That makes the treatment much much more lethal than the disease.
I agree. But you can’t reason with the people who want to believe it’s a miracle cure.
This may be true, we had to go through backchannels to obtain plaquenil despite having a prescription for it, pharmacists refused to dispense it, whining about nonspecialists prescribing it for family members and friends. In Russia it wouldn’t have been a problem.
Also, according to a supervisor I once had, who had worked for NHS, that system is really terrible. During my rotation he had a habit of pointing out which of our patients would simply not have been treated had we been in Britain. The percentage was staggering.
Ukraine is no more primitive than poorer parts of Slavic Russia. Ukraine’s current HDI score is the same as was Russia’s in 2005. Was Russia a “primitive country” in 2005?
I suspect there is more of a “community spirit” in Ukraine. I remember when I was in Kiev several years ago, someone built a kiosk in a park. The residents of the neighborhood were angry, made posters, protested and the kiosk was removed. I don’t recall such grassroots civic activism in Russia at the time where people just grumbled about yards having those cheap metal garages in them but didn’t stop them.
The community may throw bricks at infected foreigners being sent into their small town, and it may also stick to lock-downs.
So the lockdown was probably too early in some regions. In Siberia, a large proportion of businesses are restarting already, before an epidemic even has begun.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4321242
People have to go to work and not have a business collapse.
Again, Moscow should have been sealed off months ago, with military checkpoints preventing their escape. Any travellers from abroad should have been locked into hotels or camps in Moscow, for 3 weeks of quarantine. And the rest of the country would have not have to begin a self-isolation in April, and the economic effects would have been less significant.
She is an attractive girl for me – but only if you didn’t know what the father is. Fact she looks the same as the father makes it worse.
With Putin’s daughter, even more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvnQDAE-Ofc.
Not saying similarly attractive to Putin’s daughter lol, not that anyone could misread that about the latter cursed with fathers’ face – but rather similarity of the father, Putin’s daughter even the same hand gestures exactly as the father when she speaks.
It’s partly, different approach of the government.
In Ukraine, governent reacted relatively early, and start to lock down not just before the epidemic, but before the UK – where was the epidemic was more advanced at the time. In the UK, powers told for months the people to relax, wash hands and sing happy birthday. Then when the epidemic was already well brewed, and after dreaming about herd immunity, they finally decided to lock down, although without enforcement, and after too many messages to the population about not panicking.
There’s obviously also a different cultural attitude of the citizens. For willful English gentlemen, apparently it is womanly to worry about epidemics, and during such disasters you should have a festive spirit – afterall it is the time to drink a lot of beer, and relax in the park.
In Ukraine, people seem to be just behaving better in the epidemic, from what I heard and saw. Still I don’t like how close they walk together in the supermarket https://youtu.be/AqNl0h8bpek?t=1037.
Could it be the higher frequency of 3 generations of family living together in the same house for negros and Indian subcontinent people that is the explanation?
Italy has that same issue
Care homes in much of the west are more white than the general population, so blacks and Asians are more likely to have their grandparents living with them
India subcontinent ethnicities definitely have higher proportion of non-obese diabetics
As the family’s designated hunter/gatherer, I’ve seen different patterns of personal protection. The nearest grocery store to my house is a Wholefoods, which has high quality produce (fruits/vegetables) and meats and fish (we grill a lot of salmon). 90% of people wear masks and distance is maintained by staff and customers. I went to an Aldi on the edge of a ghetto, where the public was about 2/3 people of color. Only 30% wore masks, people crowded near each other, even half the cashiers wore no masks.
The latest news in the USA is that Covid-19 is hitting black and Latino communities harder than white communities and that this is “racism.”
The public at the “normal” grocery store was similar to that of Wholefoods but not quite as careful.
For Easter I visited a Polish grocery store to buy kielbasa, babka, etc. The Polish off-the-boaters were as bad as the blacks in terms of safety. It was ridiculous. Of course many of their grandmothers are probably back in Poland, so their carelessness might not be as deadly.
You know little about the USA, just as you don’t know much about Ukraine and Russia.
Blacks are more likely to end up in nursing homes and less likely to be living with their families than are whites.
In the USA, among people age 65 or older, blacks are 9% of the population:
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2018/acs/ACS-38.pdf
However, blacks are 14% of the nursing home population:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/717618/percent-of-nursing-home-residents-in-us-by-ethnicity/
The only reason a higher % of people in care homes are whites than in the general population is because that generation is a lot more white. But older black people have a much higher % chance of getting sent to a care home than do older white people.
Hispanics are more likely to be cared for at home (8% of the older than 65 population but 5% of nursing home population).
LOL – you know your BS arguments and “links” have the credibility level of absolute zero.
I see you don’t go anywhere near the Indian subcontinent topic- obviously because its true…. just like I’m sure the Negro point is.
I was thinking much higher chance of 40 year old Negro grandmother’s and 55 year old great-grandparents, the increased absence of fathers also making it likely of older generation living with and looking after kids. Negros not as good at paying back the mortgages – so having their parents with them also helps with the payments.
Bizarrely you both admit that whites are higher percentage in care homes – then deny it in same BS comment!
Try not to be a coward as usual, hiding behind tag team partner Karlin – let me reply to 3 of your delinquent comments by lobbying Karlin to lift the ban on my accounts that you lobbied for, so that I can defend myself in the appropriate way from comical nonsense.
US census data and nursing home data.
% of Indian elderly in the USA is negligible, it doesn’t matter.
But you are a fool when it comes to blacks in nursing homes. Everyone knows they are over-represented relative to other older folks.
Sovok “engineer” doesn’t know basic logic and basic math.
Among nursing home residents there is a much higher % of blacks than among the general population.
9% of Americans over 65 are black, but 14% of nursing home residents in the USA are black.
That’s your mistake. You are incapable of thinking, as we see once again.
Example of Sovok “engineer” trying to think. The type of people who have to end up in care homes are usually not capable of looking after children.
Have you learned the Russian word for “clock” and the Ukrainian word for “myr” yet?
US census data and nursing home data.
% of Indian elderly in the USA is negligible, it doesn’t matter.
But you are a fool when it comes to blacks in nursing homes. Everyone knows they are over-represented relative to other older folks.
Sovok “engineer” doesn’t know basic logic and basic math.
Among nursing home residents there is a much higher % of blacks than among the general population of people who are that age.
9% of Americans over 65 are black, but 14% of nursing home residents in the USA are black.
That’s your mistake. You are incapable of thinking, as we see once again.
Example of Sovok “engineer” trying to think. The type of people who have to end up in care homes are usually not capable of looking after children. They are often demented and/or can’t walk.
Have you learned the Russian word for “clock” and the Ukrainian word for “myr” yet?
From your description, it gives an impression that the American bourgeoisie fortunately are more cautious about the epidemic, compared to the Northern-Western European representatives.
Maybe some “transferable skills” from avoiding the other “dangers of urban life” prevalent there. I predict they are also more cautious type of people, representatives of the bourgeoisie of more dangerous countries like Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Israel – where they often have metal bars on the windows of their houses.
Where I’m locked down, I was always feeling there is perhaps too much civilization and safety. Utopian levels of civilization, that you experience in bourgeois parts of Western Europe, is almost a bit unhealthy, and probably contributed to creating these naive and incautious fellows like Boris Johnson.
In the supermarket near me (at least when I was last there more than week ago), almost no-one customers of them has masks or gloves, people stand close to each other. The only people with masks are some lost Chinese researchers. Also old couples in my road are talking to other old couples, without much distance.
There is a classical concert hall near, and they were allowing students mass choral Mozart and Beethoven concerts until the middle of March. This is despite the fact, we already knew in February, that the virus is transmitted in the air, by people singing – as Korean church all infected each other by their singing,
That said, my generalization about the political leaders, don’t match well to this epidemic – when you think Trump (habituated to avoid “certain problems” of New York streets) was not much less incautious than a naive Boris Johnson.
Your singular obsession with the party lives and dubious attractiveness of the daughters of various members of the elite may be your most charming point yet.
Please erase this duplicate (I didn’t place the reply accurately)
To contrast, which neoliberal Western country has the strictest Corona measures, and enacted them the most early? New Zealand? Which has the loosest, Sweden? You can compare both of them, and then compared them to a middle case with looser measures, like the UK, it helps that all them are basically Anglo culture countries. And compared to the UK NZ’s medical services are still doing quite well.
New Zealand currently has 1349 cases of the virus, and has recorded five deaths. On Monday, only 19 new cases were announced, down from the peak of 89 on April 5. The average number of tests undertaken daily over the last week is 3230, a significant increase on two weeks ago, likely reflecting the Ministry of Health’s decision to broaden testing criteria.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/04/coronavirus-new-zealanders-shouldn-t-assume-lockdown-lifting-next-week-jacinda-ardern.html
But then South Korea is pretty much testing everybody too and they have a 2% death rate.
I think that you’d first need to present some evidence that you’ve undergone a reversal of your sex change operation in order for Karlin to lift your ban. I’m not even sure if that’s possible? If it is, I hope that you had your severed penis and testicles freeze dried in some sort of cryogenic container, otherwise…
Trump is over 70, in his case it’s an age thing.
Less cash, more electronic payments lead to reduction of gray economies (particularly relevant to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe) and greater tax intake.
Surely you jest? If anything, the black market or gray market will only expand.
I think that it’s more of a great imposition of his reelection campaign. Things were looking quite good for his reelection bid, and then all of a sudden a few clouds began to appear, and then a complete storm that has put a lot of damper on his successes. He just felt good about things, and then didn’t want to deal with something that could possibly upset his apple cart. When the economy is going strong, most voters stick with what seems to be working at that time, and now? The stock markets tank, unemployment soars to unheard of levels (and is rising), and businesses of all sizes are closing their doors, obviously all of this is not good for Trump. And it’s legitimate to try and criticize him for lagging behind. I’m sure that you’ve seen this ad on TV, it’s very effective and be prepared for more of the same:
https://youtu.be/bkMwvmJLnc0
“Japan has the most skilled and conscientious workers, but international consumers mainly respond to price, and do not value quality and reliability as much as in former decades.”
But international producers very much do value quality and reliability – which is why Japan is such a huge player in “producer goods”. Machine tools, production robots, silicon fabrication masks/steppers, tiny electric motors, batteries, bearings, specialised ‘raw materials’ like ultra-pure silicon, carbon fibre.
Israel is a dangerous country in terms of violent crime? I didn’t realise that, I always assumed violent crime levels there would be similar to Europe.
Seems that way.
America is quite segregated. There are no “urban dangers” where I live. There are such dangers 15 minutes away. I am able to leave my house and car unlocked for days at a time.
As I wrote, the people used to urban dangers such as blacks aren’t taking safety precautions. Nor, as I have noticed, have the off the boaters from Eastern Europe who live in worse areas than I do.
There is probably some other explanation for Euros’ stupid behavior.
BTW, it looks like the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine is a major vector for the coronavirus. It is rife at the Pecherska Lavra in Kiev, which has been cordoned off and quarantined – police keep people from entering or leaving. Media is showing Moscow’s priests in Ukraine urging parishioners to stop watching the news and to come to church for Easter.
It seems the virus was hitting western Ukrainians more because they were coming back from Italy but I guess the Russian Church is doing its part to catch eastern Ukraine up.
There are even conspiracy theories that the Russian Church is acting as an arm of the Russian state and deliberately trying to spread the infection in Ukraine, using its own believers as the vehicles for this plot. The narrative is that Ukrainians need to thwart Russia by wearing masks in public. So anti-Russian sentiment and public safety are rolled into one.
“East Asian… more competent and better at dealing with emergencies than we Europeans” – Where does this competence come from?
People
Discipline vs. recalcitrance
Cohesion vs. atomization
Solidarity vs. individualism
Politicians
Technocrats vs. BScrats
Substance vs. image
Pro-Nationalist vs. Globalist (feeling contempt for their own people)
-Assuming the above, a re-evaluation of how this might further undermine the ‘dependency ratio’ argument for mass immigration
I feel like most of Israel is very safe in terms of normal crime (outside the place with illegal immigrants, or some Arab areas like Ajami – but Arab gangster crime is usually against other Arab gangsters). I don’t feel it is dangerous, from my experiences of walking in Israel.
But Israelis perceive it as a dangerous environment, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and people are worried about terrorists going into their house. In a lot of apartments and houses, there are metal bars in the bottom floor’s windows. Personally, I’ve only been inside one house of wealthy Israeli people (and they could be unrepresentative as a nerdy family), but their house was like a high-security bank – with a screen in the main room collating images of different security cameras outside the house.
On average, from everything I hear, ordinary people in Ukraine and Russia, are behaving mostly responsibly, even when this epidemic is still much smaller. Slavs – not the worst in epidemics. If only the governments was more competent, this could have been managed like in East Asia.
Anglosaxons, on the other hand, – every day I see more and more of a totally incautious, general attitude, in the ordinary citizens.
I wonder about the behaviour of Germans though. Germany and Austria, as a countries on a political level, are managing the epidemic better so far, than either the UK and the Latin countries (where only Portugal is not among the world leaders in terms of infections).
I get the impression that Americans are much more “crime aware” and security conscious than most Europeans, in that they usually know which areas are safe and which are not and would avoid certain areas.
British people and probably Europeans, perhaps naively, tend to assume everywhere is more or less equally safe and tend not to think of their local areas in terms of safe districts and non-safe districts like Americans do. In Britain if you said you were frightened of a particular area, most people would probably laugh and think you were being overly melodramatic, while Americans would be more likely to see that as a sensible and understandable precaution.
This is because crime is more spread out in Europe, and more concentrated in the USA. Safe areas in the USA are safer than safe areas in Europe, but dangerous American areas are orders of magnitude worse than the worst places in Europe.
So Americans are indeed more geographically aware of where to go or be, but could be less personally wary, particularly when not around black males. They might not expect to get pickpocketed or hit in the face in a pub full of white people (was that scene in Trainspotting with the Scottish-American realistic?).
For example, Livonia Michigan (population 94,000), middle class but not wealthy upper middle-class, has had no homicides for the past 3 years. Since 2010 its average homicide rate has been .96/100,000 – slightly lower than that of Germany, and lower than that of the UK, France, Denmark, and Finland.
Livonia is a 5 minute drive to the Detroit border and 23 minutes drive to the center of Detroit. Detroit has a homicide rate of 39/100,000. Higher than that of South Africa.
Well, it makes sense – as the UK is a very safe country (in terms of crime, not coronavirus lol), while the USA is closer to world averages in terms of personal safety. In general, the only dangerous thing you will find in the UK from a crime perspective – even if you walk around the streets of London for days -, is some drunk people fighting at night.
People talk about “dangerous areas” in London. But the most dangerous areas in London, will be less dangerous, than some (of course not all) of the safer parts of America. The worst gangsters in the UK, are probably a lot more gentle and less dangerous than the police in certain cities in the USA.
That said, even the trend in the USA, is becoming a lot safer in terms of crime, with recent years – so probably we will see a change in cultural attitudes, and Americans becoming less streetsmart. New York, was famous for crime in the 1970-1990. While today it is considered a quite safe city, with little risk to tourists and hipsters.