I sure don’t want the people who are supposed to be balancing the electrical grid to panic and stay home to keep themselves and their families safe. Or the police, or the government employees in charge of coordinating everything, or the waste treatment plant workers, etc.
I don’t want people to have the emotion of “panic” when they’re told to isolate themselves to protect the community. The logic of panic is: “Who cares about “the community”, I’m doing what’s best for myself!”
That certainly makes sense when it comes to core infrastructure, but it’s not clear to me that core infrastructure would actually be compromised.
With panic I’d think the government would be able to get a ton of funding to fight this. Perhaps that can be used to pay workers in core infrastructure 2x their normal wages. Would they still stay home? More than 75% of them? What if it were 3x their normal wages? Are there no other incentives that would work?
Along the same lines, it seems that some of the panic causes declaration of national emergency and placing restrictions on various normal activities is not the full story.
I think, and a lot depends on the how it is done and perhaps when, declaring national emergencies can help to limit panic, provide a structure where most see they have a coordinating rule in place so end up trusting that others will act as they will (e.g., we get an equal share of the scarce resources and not some asymmetric distribution unrelated to a utility type allocation).
I think this might also have some implications for the claims about how the west could not possibly be successful in limiting the spread like China, Singapore or Taiwan have done. The West will simply do that in a different manner. It is not clear to me that only one way to accomplishing the same goal is possible (gross as the metaphor is cats do get skinned many different ways).
What I was suggesting is that the western democracies do not have to use the same tool set as more authoritarian government seem to have used. Quarantines may well be imposed (on significant geographic areas) but might not need to issue commands for related supplies like waste disposal or resource deliveries. They can (and a lot more easily based on above comments than most seem to think, in terms of just pure governmental powers) but that might not be needed or even the most efficient way for western societies to do so.
Could people resist or resort to violence to resist such policies? Maybe but that will depend on a number of factors, including what what might be called something of a path effect—the war could have been avoided but some early actions lead to a situation neither side could back out of so war ended up being the path of least resistance.
I sure don’t want the people who are supposed to be balancing the electrical grid to panic and stay home to keep themselves and their families safe. Or the police, or the government employees in charge of coordinating everything, or the waste treatment plant workers, etc.
I don’t want people to have the emotion of “panic” when they’re told to isolate themselves to protect the community. The logic of panic is: “Who cares about “the community”, I’m doing what’s best for myself!”
That certainly makes sense when it comes to core infrastructure, but it’s not clear to me that core infrastructure would actually be compromised.
With panic I’d think the government would be able to get a ton of funding to fight this. Perhaps that can be used to pay workers in core infrastructure 2x their normal wages. Would they still stay home? More than 75% of them? What if it were 3x their normal wages? Are there no other incentives that would work?
Along the same lines, it seems that some of the panic causes declaration of national emergency and placing restrictions on various normal activities is not the full story.
I think, and a lot depends on the how it is done and perhaps when, declaring national emergencies can help to limit panic, provide a structure where most see they have a coordinating rule in place so end up trusting that others will act as they will (e.g., we get an equal share of the scarce resources and not some asymmetric distribution unrelated to a utility type allocation).
I think this might also have some implications for the claims about how the west could not possibly be successful in limiting the spread like China, Singapore or Taiwan have done. The West will simply do that in a different manner. It is not clear to me that only one way to accomplishing the same goal is possible (gross as the metaphor is cats do get skinned many different ways).
Why wouldn’t the west be successful in that sort of socialist role? Would citizens resist? With physical violence?
What I was suggesting is that the western democracies do not have to use the same tool set as more authoritarian government seem to have used. Quarantines may well be imposed (on significant geographic areas) but might not need to issue commands for related supplies like waste disposal or resource deliveries. They can (and a lot more easily based on above comments than most seem to think, in terms of just pure governmental powers) but that might not be needed or even the most efficient way for western societies to do so.
Could people resist or resort to violence to resist such policies? Maybe but that will depend on a number of factors, including what what might be called something of a path effect—the war could have been avoided but some early actions lead to a situation neither side could back out of so war ended up being the path of least resistance.
Ah, I see.