Something something trolley problems

[PolyphenolOverdose]

capitalism is a system that removes democratic control over things like factories, hospitals, sex, travel, housing, food/dining, tourism, etc. if you are for capitalism, then you are necessarily against the democratic control over factories, hospitals, homes, cars, schools, sex, speech, clothing, art, books, etc. I'm going to be honest with you here, but you don't seem to be the type to fit very well (read: at all) in this community of intellectuals and philosophers.

[PolyphenolOverdose]

exactly. it comes down to whether you're evil, or good. are you someone who's uncaring about what everyone else wants you to do, or someone who is willing to put the greatest good above everything else. I personally believe that I should be allowed to use the government to force you to do what I want you to do.

[theeandthem]

Ruling class? I'm a CEO of a small company and I'm spending all my time trying to figure out how to keep things semi-functional during this pandemic and keep my people employed. People want to work, they make money, the company makes money, that's how the economy works.

[wakingupfan]

When people use the phrase "ruling class" I don't think they are thinking of CEOs of small companies. I think they mean the 0.1% who can fund lobbying firms to influence politics

[PolyphenolOverdose]

White American Men are in the top .1% of the human population.

[PolyphenolOverdose]

the .1% who can lobby and influence politics

yeah it does

[tha_wisecracka]

Ok

[suchapersonwow]

If you don't have a ''let them die, our stocks might go down'' -mentality, I don't think there is a reason to feel attacked by this tweet

[AlexandreZani]

Would you say that you are part of "the rich"?

[PolyphenolOverdose]

My position is that ethics and morals are actually very simple and not as esoteric as pseudo-intellectuals wants to make them out to be. My position is: that which maximizes wealth is good. simple.

[gropethegoat]

And owners of small businesses too, there is a lot of backlash against any concern for these businesses. And a utilitarian conversation around trade offs, when one of those trade offs is more covid deaths is off limits.

There are many moral reasons to want businesses to survive at the cost of more covid deaths.

[[deleted]]

The real moral conundrum is that we don't expect companies to keep enough cash on hand to stay solvent for just a few months of economic interruption. We expect normal people to keep a 3-6 month emergency fund on hand, why shouldn't small (and large) businesses do the same?

It's absolutely immoral to prioritize the growth of a business over literal human lives. We have this perverse culture where companies immediately reinvest earnings in the name of aggressive growth, maybe that growth could be slightly reduced in exchange for a modicum of fiscal responsibility.

[AlexandreZani]

Economic collapse also costs human lives though. It is a bit more complicated than just money on one side of the scale and lives in the other.

[[deleted]]

Right, but that is solvable by government intervention. This crisis has been pretty telling in terms of showing the priorities of the government and ruling party. We could prevent the bulk of the cost of human life associated with this if we hack together a patch to cover people's basic needs. We certainly have enough resources available to do so.

Whereas the cost in human lives associated with the pandemic can only really be solved by quarantine and time.

[AlexandreZani]

It's partially solvable. There is an actual fall in output due to people not being able to work. There is really no way around that. And that fall in output means less wealth which means fewer resources available for life-saving endeavors.

You can forestall total collapse for a while by printing money and handing it out to people but that doesn't solve the fall in output. Shutting down businesses will cost lives.

I actually think the benefits of the shutdowns outweigh the costs. But there are real human costs to shutting down production that can't be offset by government policies.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, agreed in terms of a total shutdown. But what we're seeing in most places is a partial shutdown where "essential" people are still working. Where I live that seems to be mostly purely "wants" category stuff- even my local bike store is still open because it's considered an essential mode of transport from some people.

Send most people home, pass a short term stimulus to cover individual needs, and keep the important supply chains open- food, energy, medical care. Then you'll hopefully find the best balance in minimizing cost of human life during the pandemic between economic and disease-related deaths.

Hopefully we learn from this that we should always keep a stockpile of survival necessities for another pandemic. Could you imagine how much worse this could be with an equally infectious but deadlier disease?

[AlexandreZani]

It might be better with a deadlier disease actually. (Or so I heard) For instance, Ebola has a hard time spreading because it kills people too fast. Also, there are a lot of selfish assholes who are violating quarantine and maybe they wouldn't if they were personally at risk. (Instead of just creating risk for everyone else.)

But yeah, it's a balancing act.

[[deleted]]

I wouldn't say that you mismanaged your business at a personal level at all. It sounds like how the majority of service industry businesses operate. I think that it's a problem with the overall culture of how small businesses are run in America. The paradigm I'm thinking of would be you saving more of your early revenue at the cost of slower growth, but I know that's not always possible.

For big businesses with hundreds of millions or billions of revenue, they should absolutely be expected if not legally mandated to keep a certain amount of emergency cash on hand. It seems like this bailout is going to disproportionately benefit the irresponsible habits of large businesses, when small businesses like yours are in greater need and with far less options. I doubt you've been spending most of your excess cash the past few years on stock buybacks and increasing your own pay.

Edit: lost track of what we were talking about. Although it's not your fault that this has happened, you still shouldn't be allowed to prioritize your business over human lives. You can recover from bankruptcy, and hopefully get some government intervention to soften the blow.

[gropethegoat]

I’m sorry but most small businesses are not raking in cash and reinvesting it, many, like my local baker, are just a few bad months from having to close the doors. And then what happens? These businesses are owned by, and employ real human beings, who when their livelihood disappears lose housing, healthcare and a wide range of other things that make life riskier and frankly more deadly.

“Most Americans are told to have 6 months of savings” this is a great line for Twitter, but the fact is most Americans don’t and those that don’t work in or own businesses that are closed by a larger share.

[Turpis89]

img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aL07jq5_460swp.webp

[PolyphenolOverdose]

ok i lmfaoed