Some Covid-19 thoughts
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 29, 2025 18:59
VIEWED: 301579
PAGE 21 of 384
So, do you agree that the US 'should' be deployed all over the planet for 'national' defense?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
So, do you agree that the US 'should' be deployed all over the planet for 'national' defense?
Not at all.
Just easy to sing the Canadian national anthem and shit on American foreign policy when you live in Canada and don't have a single worry in your head that you're going to get invaded by a foreign power even though you have near zero for a defense budget, is all.
It truly must be nice.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Who Will Bear the Costs of Coronavirus?
Posted on Monday, Apr 6, 2020 1:45AM by Thomas Wells
www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2020/04/who-will-bear-the-costs-of-c
oronavirus.html
Among other things Covid-19 is a moral crisis. It requires suspending the usual rules about who deserves what, firstly because it is impossible for many of us to pay what we owe in these conditions, and secondly because of the priority of the humanitarian duty to save as many lives as possible. Nevertheless we must not forget about justice. In particular we must make sure that the costs of this crisis are not born disproportionately by the poor, those least able to afford the burden but also least able to escape it.
An economy is a complex web made up of the promises we are continually making to each other. Those promises may not always be perfectly fair, but they are generally quite precise. They tell us what is expected from us and what we have the right to expect from others, from what time to take our kids to school to how many months of unemployment insurance we can count on if we lose our job. The trouble is that our ability to keep our promises depends on other people and organisations keeping their promises to us. If any particular link fails, it can be repaired, compensated, worked around, and so on. But if multiple links fail at the same time we are plunged into a moral crisis wherein our usual moral scripts cannot provide guidance. We need suddenly to look up from our tidy little life-worlds and think from the perspective of the whole (even global) society.
Many people, including leaders of government agencies and firms, have clearly struggled to get their heads around this breakdown of business-as-usual morality. They still see things in terms of what is fair or not under the old rules about what people deserve. Hence their slowness to recognise that gig workers need unemployment benefits even if they never paid the premiums, and that the uninsured need to know their medical care will be (almost) free. This is perhaps not so strange. As leaders well know, humans are very sensitive to promise-breaking and free-riding, and in normal times there is nothing more toxic to the functioning of any organisation or community. Fortunately most governments and even some businesses have recognised the need for a more humanitarian moral compass.
But capitalism has left us unused to thinking in simple human terms, about meeting people’s needs simply because their needs are great. It is not enough to bail out the companies for the sake of the economy if we lose the people the economy is supposed to support. There is a grave danger that without even thinking about it we will impose disproportionate and even unbearable costs upon the poor.
While the virus rages, the poor are the least able to protect themselves. They are less likely to be able to work from home; less able to access protective masks and gloves; less able to afford care if they fall ill with it. Moreover, the very measures we take to increase our safety make them disproportionately worse off. Shutting down the economy shuts them out of work, and hence out of food and shelter since they often lack the luxury of savings. Having to compete with hoarders leaves them with reduced or more expensive access to basic goods and hygiene products. This is not a state of affairs that can be sustained for the many months needed until the virus can be contained.
It is bad enough for the poor in rich world countries. In the densely populated urban slums of India or Sub-Saharan Africa the prospects for the poor are many times worse. Many poor countries spend a couple of dollars per year per person on public health and have effectively zero virus-testing and intensive-care capacity.
Moreover, the problems of the poor are not merely their problem. Containing the virus is a global collective good. If we force the poor to choose between going to work sick and staying home unpaid and hungry we should not be surprised that they cannot afford the sacrifice we are asking of them. Negl
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
No. Now is not the time to even think about discussing border-crossing, unless we're talking about putting up more wall.
Article fail.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I assume you are offended by this quote, since it mentions border-crossing:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No. Now is not the time to even think about discussing border-crossing, unless we're talking about putting up more wall.
Article fail.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Quote:The "border" is between the rich and the poor. But if you are fine with the way things are, so am I. I will keep my land, my business, my wealth all for myself and you can keep your poverty all for yourself. It is the way things have been for thousands of years. Why change just because of covid-19?
Radical border-crossing measures are needed and quickly, probably including something like a global basic income as well as an enormous expansion of medical care and ambition. Covid-19 is a crisis in another sense. It is a moment when we get to choose one path or another.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I assume you are offended by this quote, since it mentions border-crossing:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
No. Now is not the time to even think about discussing border-crossing, unless we're talking about putting up more wall.
Article fail.
Do Right, Be Right. :)Quote:The "border" is between the rich and the poor. But if you are fine with the way things are, so am I. I will keep my land, my business, my wealth all for myself and you can keep your poverty all for yourself. It is the way things have been for thousands of years. Why change just because of covid-19?
Radical border-crossing measures are needed and quickly, probably including something like a global basic income as well as an enormous expansion of medical care and ambition. Covid-19 is a crisis in another sense. It is a moment when we get to choose one path or another.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I'm pointing out that there are a million and one other ways to phrase it.
When you use that term to something like this that isn't related to what the term actually means in the cultural vernacular, you are speaking to an audience that you're trying to sell ad revenue to, and you're not trying to appeal to a large audience and change minds.
Whether it was an intentional thing, or the author is just so pre-programmed with such phrases he learned in college makes no matter.
He is not going to change any minds using charged terms like that.
My charge is that the author never had any intention to.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
6IXSTRINGJACK:
How many aircraft carriers does Canada have again?
Easy to sit in judgement of the US when you can sit back and not worry about foreign powers messing with you because big brother is just a few clicks south of you.
Quote:
1KIKI:
So, do you agree that the US 'should' be deployed all over the planet for 'national' defense?
Quote:
6IXSTRINGJACK:
Not at all.
Just easy to sing the Canadian national anthem and shit on American foreign policy when you live in Canada and don't have a single worry in your head that you're going to get invaded by a foreign power even though you have near zero for a defense budget, is all.
It truly must be nice.
No witty retort, Kiki?
I mean, it really, truly must be nice to live in Canada and afford to have your government pouring all of that tax money into healthcare because your military budget couldn't even afford to buy a cup of Starbucks coffee everyday.
Truly, it must be really, really nice.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It must be nice, indeed!
It's pretty easy to virtue-signal when most of your defense needs are covered by your neighbor to the south. (Altho, to be fair, Canada DOES have a military budget, it's about 0.5-0.8% of their gdp)
The same goes for the EU (NATO) which free-ride on the USA military budget. Also, Australia, Japan, etc.
But then, it WAS the USA politicians' decision to "defend our borders" in Serbia, Kuwait, Grenada, Ukraine, Australia, Vietnam, Nicaragua etc. And apparently with the blessing of the US population because every time I mention our wars in faraway places I get called a "Russian troll" or people wonder why I worry about "brown people" so much or I see knee-jerk support of our "deep state" which brings us these wars.
It is a SERIOUS flaw in the American political psyche to only think about "bread and butter" issues at home, without realizing how significantly an aggressive foreign policy limits our domestic issues.
USA military spending as a percent of gdp:
Has actually FALLEN a little, under Trump (data up to 2019) from 3.2% to 3.16%
Under Obama, was HIGHER (range 3.2%-4.7%) ... not because defense spending went higher but because gdp reduced.
Steadily dropped under Clinton (4.7% to 2.0%) the "peace dividend"
In 1962 was as high as 8.9%
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spend
ing-defense-budget
Anyway, I thought it was interesting, there were no clear differences between Democrats and Republicans. High under Kennedy and Johnson (as low as 7.2%, as high as 9.1%), reduced under Nixon and Ford (starting at 8.3% and steadily dropping to 5.0%), somewhat raised under Carter (from 5.0% to 5.4%), significantly raised under "star wars" Reagan (as high as 6.3%) and then dropped under Clinton.
You know the rest.
It's not like Democrats were all peaceniks and Republicans were all warhawks.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#STAYTHEFUCKHOME
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Thank you Sigs, for not misinterpreting my point here.
I've always been against our military budget, our policing of the world, our imperialism, our interference, as well as ANY money and/or aid we give to any other country with either our tax dollars or firing up the printing press and destroying the value of the USD with it, dating back here to my original posts in the RWED under GWB.
But it NEEDS to be said that it's VERY easy to sit in a country outside of the US that is friendly with the US and judge our foreign policy when they get a free military ride out of us.
I'm glad you agree. It's bullshit. Both the fact that WE do it, and the fact that a bunch of whiny little bitches that don't live here complain about it and don't even consider the many possibilities of how different things like borders on the globe might look in a parallel universe where we didn't do it.
I'd reckon they wouldn't be huge fans of many of those alternatives.
What percentage of those parallel universes do you suppose they're sending their children to school to say the Chinese or the Russian or the German pledge of allegiance while gazing up at a much different looking flag with their hand over their hearts?
The one thing that I'm not at all concerned about right here right now is being invaded by a foreign power in the US. How quickly do you think all those virtue signalers would start balling their eyes out if we completely shut our borders, withdrew all troops, lined up our aircraft carriers and entire Naval fleet on our east and west coast, and stopped any and all foreign aid to them?
I think in 2020 the answer to that question is how fast would Xi take advantage of his new situation.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
How many aircraft carriers does Canada have again?
Easy to sit in judgement of the US when you can sit back and not worry about foreign powers messing with you because big brother is just a few clicks south of you.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Jack, I don't want to start an argument but I was talking about this WORLD WIDE HEALTH CRISIS, not military or national defense policies.
I think most of us in Canada know we don't have a large military budget and I am sure that some Canadians wished that we had a bigger one. But our economy and population will not necessarily support that. So we pick and choose where and how we get involved in other areas of the world.
And since we are still involved with "Commonwealth" then we are duty bound to help out Australia, UK and other Commonwealth nations if possible. Like WWI and WWII, which in both cases the US was late to the show.
So don't pitch a fit at me because Canada is handling this crisis better or so it seems than the US is.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME