To be fair our capitalist hellscape contemporaries in east Asia have fared much better. This thing doesn’t seem to be driven as much by a particular economic system as much as a total lack of empathy and deep culture of selfishness. Of course capitalism primes the pump for these conditions.
I think economic concerns can explain why e.g. South Korea had a better response, in the same way economic concerns explain why Nordic social democracy was conceded due to the USSR being right next door
Same with Taiwan. They want to be as good as the mainland/CCP in managing it. There’s real pressure even in just the optics (they also benefited materially from China’s lockdown early on)
Crazy seeing "urgency of normal" libs attack blue state policies, as if their policies were any different from red states. Every state in the US fucked up. The federal government fucked up. But now a narrative is being pushed that blue states were basically fully locked down while red states did nothing; and since our overall response was so bad clearly we should have just let 'er rip then.
I live in a blue state but have a lot of family and friends in a red state. I would have difficulty explaining how there was any difference between the two responses, practically speaking.
Pretty much the only "restriction" that still exists is mask mandates and those will be gone in 6 weeks.
I keep seeing libs light up on the CHUDs about masks when that's the bare minimum. I'd even say it's below a minimum effort if you aren't mandating N95 grade masks (or above, I suppose) and supporting the manufacture and distribution of them on an international scale like the vaccine. People can't "zoom out* and see that it's been 2 years of failure, and that wearing a paper mask to your table in a crowded bar where you take it off (I have done this myself) is useless "virtue signalling" (generally a yuck term but it fits here).
Very similar to having large discussions about recycling while making no effort to reduce or reuse first. You've skipped 2 or more of the most important steps!
What we see during COVID-19 is stark operational differences between nations where politicians are the top authorities, and nations where Capital is the top authority. We are endlessly told that nations with activist governments are unfree, and that any support for these governments must come from either a pathological culture of obedience or the threat of state violence. And yet socialist nations plainly outperformed capitalist ones in terms of fighting the virus. [12]
This analysis does not imply there were simply two modes of response: capitalist and socialist. Market domination is not a binary affair, and Capital doesn’t rule by decree. As Roberts puts it, the market doesn’t tell capitalists what to do — rather, they have to guess and prognosticate and forecast and hope. Capitalists don’t find out whether they did what the market wanted until after the fact. [13] People around the world defended themselves from the virus, repressing the political will of Capital, in proportion to what they could get away with politically and economically. In socialist states, resources were deployed as deemed necessary to meet the challenge. In capitalist states in the sphere of influence of socialist China, such as South Korea, capitalists offered a decent response, perhaps because catastrophic handling would create a domestic political shift in favour of socialism. In the imperial core, where white supremacy reigns and there is no political will whatsoever to look to China for a good example, self-assured capitalists simply allowed the plague to spread essentially unopposed. In fact, imperialists succeeded to a great extent in turning the ensuing resentment into a foreign policy weapon. [14] This isn’t isolated to the most proudly capitalist nations; the kind of political power, infrastructure, and resources needed to enforce a tolerable quarantine has been completely eroded in social democratic havens like Canada and Sweden. No notable political force in the West referred to socialist successes in their efforts to affect domestic COVID-19 response policy, and I attribute this mistake to chauvinism.
It cannot be understated how fucked up the covid "response" that capitalist countries "did"
To be fair our capitalist hellscape contemporaries in east Asia have fared much better. This thing doesn’t seem to be driven as much by a particular economic system as much as a total lack of empathy and deep culture of selfishness. Of course capitalism primes the pump for these conditions.
I think economic concerns can explain why e.g. South Korea had a better response, in the same way economic concerns explain why Nordic social democracy was conceded due to the USSR being right next door
Same with Taiwan. They want to be as good as the mainland/CCP in managing it. There’s real pressure even in just the optics (they also benefited materially from China’s lockdown early on)
It is the most depressing aspect of my daily life these days. It has been a lot harder to keep pushing forward.
Crazy seeing "urgency of normal" libs attack blue state policies, as if their policies were any different from red states. Every state in the US fucked up. The federal government fucked up. But now a narrative is being pushed that blue states were basically fully locked down while red states did nothing; and since our overall response was so bad clearly we should have just let 'er rip then.
I live in a blue state but have a lot of family and friends in a red state. I would have difficulty explaining how there was any difference between the two responses, practically speaking.
"Lockdown" = "I saw someone wearing masks"
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Pretty much the only "restriction" that still exists is mask mandates and those will be gone in 6 weeks.
I keep seeing libs light up on the CHUDs about masks when that's the bare minimum. I'd even say it's below a minimum effort if you aren't mandating N95 grade masks (or above, I suppose) and supporting the manufacture and distribution of them on an international scale like the vaccine. People can't "zoom out* and see that it's been 2 years of failure, and that wearing a paper mask to your table in a crowded bar where you take it off (I have done this myself) is useless "virtue signalling" (generally a yuck term but it fits here).
Very similar to having large discussions about recycling while making no effort to reduce or reuse first. You've skipped 2 or more of the most important steps!
reminds me of this
from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
"Sure, a million people will die, but hey! No one told you what to do! Muh FREEDUMZ!"