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Dear Jeff Bezos, instead of firing me, protect your workers from coronavirus

(www.theguardian.com)
174 points jbegley | 2 comments | 03 Apr 20 15:20 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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0x262d ◴[03 Apr 20 16:43 UTC] No.22771183[source]▶
Huge indictment of capitalism that we have an unbelievably high level of productive capacity and can't do any of these things: make hospital equipment including ventilators; produce enough masks; keep hospitals open (there has been a steady trend of closures brought on by financialization (profiteering) and mergers); train adequate numbers of hospital staff; and the most ridiculous so far is every business is desperately trying to stay open even for non-essential things, like Amazon.

Profiteering is undercutting every possible thing. The profit motive over a democratically planned economy is horrible most of the time but really becomes a mess in a crisis.

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lliamander ◴[03 Apr 20 17:06 UTC] No.22771528[source]▶
> The profit motive over a democratically planned economy is horrible most of the time but really becomes a mess in a crisis.

Why not have bread lines only in a crisis, when you can have them all the time instead?

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ardy42 ◴[03 Apr 20 17:25 UTC] No.22771800[source]▶
You know, there's a vast spectrum of economic policy options between central planning and laissez faire, and you don't even have to be consistent about which gets picked for each industry. I think the OP was advocating for a different spot on that spectrum for certain things, not one of the extremes for everything.
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lliamander ◴[03 Apr 20 19:02 UTC] No.22772894[source]▶
This is not a "hey, maybe we should require some stockpiles" like they do in Switzerland (didn't stockpile enough masks, sadly enough).

The OP was literally advocating for a centrally ("democratically") planned economy. Having production dictated by the political process as the default is the extreme position.

Developed countries all find some balance between central planning and laissez faire, but they do so by assuming the free market as the default. Intervention and central planning is only applied to specific cases where there is a concrete public interest in doing so.

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ardy42 ◴[03 Apr 20 20:20 UTC] No.22773569[source]▶
> The OP was literally advocating for a centrally ("democratically") planned economy. Having production dictated by the political process as the default is the extreme position.

No. You just seem to have reacted reflexively seeing the word "planned" placed next to the word "economy," without seeking any clarification or understanding or even really putting it in context.

The OP was clearly focused on criticizing prioritization of profit-seeking over all other interests, and the corrosive effect that has had on our ability to respond to this present crisis.

> Developed countries all find some balance between central planning and laissez faire, but they do so by assuming the free market as the default. Intervention and central planning is only applied to specific cases where there is a concrete public interest in doing so.

And you know what? This crisis is uncovering a lot of areas where less laissez faire and more government intervention would have been "concretely in the public interest."

The market system is an imperfect means to an end, not an end itself.

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lliamander ◴[03 Apr 20 22:15 UTC] No.22774465[source]▶
> No. You just seem to have reacted reflexively seeing the word "planned" placed next to the word "economy," without seeking any clarification or understanding or even really putting it in context.

I don't how one could see the phrase "planned economy" and not think the OP meant something other than "planned economy". One can criticize profit motive and not promote a planned economy. The OP is literally a self-professed Trotskyist[0].

> And you know what? This crisis is uncovering a lot of areas where less laissez faire and more government intervention would have been "concretely in the public interest."

Please do tell.

> The market system is an imperfect means to an end, not an end itself.

No one said it was an end unto itself.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22698823

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1. ardy42 ◴[03 Apr 20 23:28 UTC] No.22774913[source]▶
>> And you know what? This crisis is uncovering a lot of areas where less laissez faire and more government intervention would have been "concretely in the public interest."

> Please do tell.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-v...

> Thirteen years ago, a group of U.S. public health officials came up with a plan to address what they regarded as one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators....

> Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway.

> And then things suddenly veered off course. A multibillion-dollar maker of medical devices bought the small California company that had been hired to design the new machines. The project ultimately produced zero ventilators....

> The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis....

> Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business....

> In 2014, with no ventilators having been delivered to the government, Covidien executives told officials at the biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.

That's just something I read recently.

There's also the general fact that capitalists love efficiency and hate excess capacity, which means they tend to sacrifice resiliency. There's no profit today in maintaining capability to handle a disruption in a socially beneficial way, so they specialize for their hothouse environment. Heck, if some apologists for price-gouging had their way, such a firm could even profit handsomely from a crisis they failed to prepare for.

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2. lliamander ◴[04 Apr 20 08:35 UTC] No.22777001[source]▶
> There's also the general fact that capitalists love efficiency and hate excess capacity, which means they tend to sacrifice resiliency.

I do actually agree with this criticism.

> There's no profit today in maintaining capability to handle a disruption in a socially beneficial way, so they specialize for their hothouse environment. Heck, if some apologists for price-gouging had their way, such a firm could even profit handsomely from a crisis they failed to prepare for.

So here's an interesting question: if charging extra for items in high-demand during a crisis (price-gouging) were legal, would there be enough?

Consider that housing inventory can be a cost, and that for many companies controlling costs is a necessary step if they want to stay in business. They might even want to have some excess inventory to handle shocks in demand. But if they can't charge more for selling goods that are in their reserve inventory, then they won't be able to cover the costs of holding onto that inventory for so long.

Those costs exist, and society has to pay them, even when the government is the one holding the reserves. Now, if we don't want consumers to have to pay the extra cost during a crisis (which is fair, because many people might have lost their jobs) we could just have the government step in and pay the difference.

It may seem like it would be rewarding price-gouging, but all it would be doing would be to delay government paying the cost to warehouse reserves.

What's more, is that the government would only be paying for those reserve goods that it would actually need. There are an endless number of goods that could possibly be needed in a disaster; stocking up on them all would be untenable. Allowing corporations to do most of that work would drastically reduce the burden on the government (and the average citizen).

Lastly, even when government's prepare, they don' know all of what those needs might be (again, the example of Switzerland not stocking up enough of masks).

NOTE: I am not saying I am OK with people price-gouging for goods already on the market. I'm just talking through a situation where a legal change might allow corporations to have better incentives with regard to disaster preparedness and redress the flaw we both see in the current system.