Posts by Chloe Robinson5

Tyler Garcia69 said:Let's stop splitting hairs here. The bottom line is that Seehofer was being crystal clear when he demanded his experts cook up some absolute worst-case scenarios just so they’d have an excuse to roll out those heavy-handed, repressive restrictions. We're talking about actual surveillance—basically tracking citizens via their location data. It looks like that whole document was just a roadmap to bring those old-school FBI tactics straight to our doorstep under the guise of a "emergency" (total Corona-dictatorship vibes). Even if you ignore everything else, this is a textbook case of weaponizing a crisis for political gain.
And honestly, the fact that the original article was "manipulated" by the author of this piece? That's the least of our worries right now.

Side note: anyone who actually read Snowden knows the absolute worst offenders for wiretapping are Germany, then the UK, and finally the USA...

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mellowskipper said:A lockdown only stops the spread of the virus while it's actually in effect. Once you lift the restrictions—if we haven't reached sufficient immunity levels through infection or vaccination—the whole cycle just starts all over again.
In an epidemiological sense, I suppose a lockdown is only truly necessary when the healthcare system is being overwhelmed and there's a real risk of total collapse. That simply wasn't the case here.

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Totally agree.. but then again, the numbers were climbing and politicians had to look like they were doing something—like someone said, it's just political theater. It would've been way better if they'd just set some reasonable rules back in the fall that actually worked without being so extreme (like capping capacity at cafes, restaurants, or gyms, etc..)

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Jesse Hughes6 said:So?
What, we actually got to travel like decent human beings for seven years straight, and now we’re back to being treated like cattle? I guess this is just the #newnormal now.

Just heard the most ridiculous line today: it’s not a new normal, it’s just "temporary craziness."

James Phillips92 said:So, you really believe it's good for the economy when the government bans people from working?

Hell no. Maybe some old paradigms will shift, but honestly... feels a bit naive...

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Amanda Diaz said:Corporations have been running the US for the last hundred years, not just since the 70s. So, your whole point is totally off base.

By the way, the biggest winners during these lockdowns are the corporations—they’ve never been richer or more powerful. Lockdowns are destroying small and medium-sized businesses. These are the exact same businesses you so eloquently claimed the government would protect by taking on a larger role—the very same ones the government wiped out by shutting them down.

Not really, at least not how it works now. A corporation today basically means: manufacture wherever it’s cheapest and has zero environmental rules, sell wherever it’s most expensive, and pay taxes wherever they’re lowest.
I wasn't saying the government should start companies and run the whole market, just use strict laws to make sure the playing field is actually fair. That's why I mentioned countries with heavy regulation, whether they're one-party states or democracies.
Sadly, I think corporations are gonna feast on this situation specifically because governments are protecting them and doing whatever they say. So the issue is corrupt politics, not the state itself...

Raymond Fisher98 said:The government shouldn't be playing bodyguard for anyone. Their job is to let everyone work and do business without being constantly tripped up (which, honestly, is exactly what the government is doing to tons of people right now).

And yeah, you realize IKEA had to cough up a massive amount of paperwork and cash to make that happen, right? Everyone paid their dues. There are actual laws and regulations in place that dictate how this works. I don't see anything sketchy about it at all. A small producer has the exact same opportunity if they can just get their paperwork in order and come up with the funds.

Not happening in America, that's for sure...

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Amanda Diaz said:I’ve been digging into some 20th-century history lately. It turns out that almost every nation that stayed out of people's private business ended up seeing a massive explosion in social programs by the end of the century—levels of spending we've never seen before because they actually had the capital to back it up.

The others? They couldn't afford a damn thing.

Take a small family business making a billion dollars a year; those owners are probably praying to whatever higher power they believe in just to keep the government's hands off their money.*

*I might be biased here, speaking from my own experience.

And? You ever see when things were actually good for the little guy? In the US, it was like 1950 to the 70s, then everything just tanked again

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Raymond Fisher98 said:Yeah, it’s awful.

Honestly? I'm rooting for my own company to just stall out or go belly up. 😵

Let things grow, sure, but leave the corporations out of it. How many trillions is enough? Nobody can grow forever...

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The government’s whole job is being a regulator. I'm talking about laws against corporate tax dodging and white-collar crime, not some petty nonsense... Right now, massive corporations basically run the show, and it should be the other way around. I'm not talking about small family businesses—they'd actually benefit from more oversight. It's like comparing IKEA to some local mom-and-pop shop that the state should be protecting instead of just building highways and toll booths for the big guys to use...

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Amanda Diaz said:Oh, sure. Because clearly, the wealthiest nations on Earth are the ones where the government runs the show. You know, like America, Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea... Why would a single owner of an HS product even bother thinking about their business when someone like Plenković can take better care of it for them?

People are literally lining up just to get a glimpse of those "paradises" where capitalism is left completely unchecked.

Yeah, totally. China is screwed too, along with Norway and Switzerland... you can just go ahead and do whatever you want under those "free market" rules there. Just try it...

Maybe try actually studying some 20th-century history... Corporations haven't exactly been doing us any favors, and that wealth gap just keeps getting wider every single year because everyone is obsessed with growth. You can't sustain that long-term without some regulation. HS is basically just a small family business, and the government should be protecting outfits like that. But looking at how things are headed? That "free market" you guys love so much is gonna end up being nothing more than a cheap knockoff produced by some massive conglomerate...

wearypilot34 said:Naturally, economic fallout leaves its mark on life expectancy. It isn't the patrons of the breweries who suffer from their closure, but certainly the owners and the staff. And it isn't just breweries shutting down...

Unemployment leads to shorter lifespans:
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/sci.../2016/8290435/

The economic crisis will also result in lower incomes for most of the population. The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest spans a full 14 years, covering the entire spectrum.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2733322

Life Expectancy by Household Income
Higher household income was associated with higher life expectancy (Figure 1A). For the years 2011 to 2015, men with income in the bottom 1% had a life expectancy of 70.6 years (95% CI, 69.6-71.6), while men in the top 1% had a life expectancy of 84.4 years (95% CI, 83.4-85.4 years), a difference of 13.8 years (95% CI, 12.3-15.2) (eTable 2 in the Supplement). Women in the bottom 1% had a life expectancy of 78.0 years (95% CI, 77.1-78.9) and women in the top 1% had a life expectancy of 86.4 years (95% CI, 85.7-87.1), a difference of 8.4 years (95% CI, 7.2-9.6) (eTable 2 in the Supplement).

Of individuals with income in the lowest 1%, 50.6% (95% CI, 50.4%-50.8%) lived in single-person households (Figure 2), while only 9% (95% CI, 8.9%-9.1%) of individuals in the top 1% of income were single-person households. Of individuals in the bottom 1% of income, 18.2% (95% CI, 18.0%-18.4%) had a university education, and of individuals in the top 1% of income, 53.9% (95% CI, 53.6%-54.1%) had a university education. Life expectancy was higher for individuals with higher education in All levels of income (Figure 1B and C), and the shape of the curves showing life expectancy by income were similar when stratifying by level of education.

All that's true, but you gotta be poor your entire life for it to actually shorten your lifespan, not just deal with 2 or 3 bad years out of 78. Plus, I think this shows the government stepping up in the economy more, which maybe isn't all bad (not talking about America specifically, just globally). Look, I think the measures are ridiculous, especially how they play out here, but globally we might be seeing a shift that isn't necessarily a total disaster. Even imperial empires collapsed and things ended up better for the little guy than before. Plenty of examples out there...

wearypilot34 said:The actual number of deaths is relatively low when you weigh it against the damage caused by measures that don't even yield significant results—clearly evidenced by how most countries end up with similar outcomes regardless of how strict their mandates were. Then there's the subsequent loss of life years due to that collateral damage. It isn't a choice between lives or the economy. It’s just lives versus lives...

People are dying because they won't follow orders.
It's not quite that dramatic, but yeah, the mandates are pretty mindless, I'll give you that.