Via Insty: Tyler Cowen is right. I have written something similar, but less succinct and clear about the current divide.
My new conclusion. We are seeing real-time evidence that many of us simply have to divide into two camps and cannot endure anything good or reasonable being said about the other side. It can't be a predominantly American thing. I am guessing that the Anglosphere in general is better at at least giving a nod to both sides. I am pleased that we have a fair number of folks who can say "On the one hand...on the other hand..." at this site and the circle of connected sites. Not that we don't each have some divisive trends of our own, but they are self-moderated by at least making an attempt to see some value in another way of looking at things.
Yet we are too few. I am more irritated at conservatives at present, mostly because I seldom read liberal sources anyway, and so am not encountering their things that irritate me. Yet I do know from those brief exposures that I would be at least as upset at them. Or at least more often. But I have to say that conservatives are not showing their best reasoning on this one. Even when I agree with them, I wish some of them would take an available opportunity to shut up.
There's a third consideration in addition to the two he offers. The UN has put out two reports in the last week warning about the loss of life globally from the economic fallout. One says 130 million additional people will be pushed into desperate poverty (or so, confidence intervals etc), and the other says that hundreds of thousands of additional children will starve to death next year (same issue with the numbers). So it's not economic damage vs. loss of life to COVID. It's economic damage plus loss of life from starvation (losses concentrated in the third world) vs. loss of life to COVID (savings concentrated in the relatively rich first world).
ReplyDeleteI don't think anybody wants anyone to die, or anyone to starve, or anyone to have their lives ruined. I'm willing to accept that my opponents are motivated mostly by perfectly valid concerns about health, and probably only a little out of considerations about political victory in November. I'm taking the position I have taken chiefly because it looks to me like there's a clear answer to the question of which of the hard roads we have to take. Even if death is the only proper consideration, one of these roads is more costly.
The knowledge problem he cites is why we should allow some local flexibility in all this. I was talking yesterday with a very sweet lady named Darryl who operates the county dump transfer station nearest me. She was telling me about friends who are weavers, have their own sheep, cut the wool, make the yarn, the whole thing. Most of their annual sales are in the spring and summer during craft festivals, many of which are canceled -- but they have to feed the sheep all year. At some point they can't afford it, so the sheep get eaten, and that means the entire business is gone until they get the capital to buy new sheep.
Another local Asheville business announced that it will not be re-opening after sixty years, because the majority of their revenue comes in the springtime tourist season. They could afford to continue paying rent and salaries for a while, but they can't afford to wait until next spring. A third announced it is closing permanently because they realized they don't have the ability to continue to pay even May expenses.
Each business has a point of no return that really only the business owner knows. The experts in the government may really be smarter or better educated people in many cases, but they don't have the picture that the guy running his shop does. (And saving his shop isn't their problem anyway, it's his.)
But I nod to the public health issues, and am willing to endure some measures to protect life from the consequences of re-opening -- masks, distancing, only opening outdoor areas of restaurants, no central air conditioning, other measures experts think will be helpful.
Anyway, I apologize if I'm one of those annoying you. It's not my intention. I talk to you because I respect you and want to engage your thinking. I'm not especially bothered by disagreement, either (half my friends are liberal/progressive/socialist philosophers), so I might not be irritated by it as quickly. I don't mean to be insensitive.
You are not remotely annoying.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points. American economic problems have consequences elsewhere. Even if the UN is biased and badly wrong, they are identifying something that is quite real.
Grim..."Each business has a point of no return that really only the business owner knows. The experts in the government may really be smarter or better educated people in many cases, but they don't have the picture that the guy running his shop does."
ReplyDeleteGovernment is inherently a blunt instrument. Someone at FB had a story similar to your sheep/wool story, only this one had to do with chickens. A couple of weeks ago, as GE Healthcare was working to ramp up ventilator production, they found that a small shop that they wanted to do some 3-D printing had been closed as "nonessential." They are apparently now giving letters to key suppliers, something along the lines of: "Dear Mr or Ms government official, we know that Johnny's shop doesn't look like much, but we need it to help with a project of vital national importance. Yours humbly..."
Someone else at FB...don't know him personally, friend of a friend...said that sometimes the only thing that will calm down his two autistic sons is a long drive in the car. But this is now forbidden in his locality.