The Coronavirus Thread

People are going crazy man. Here my local supermarket its out of eggs, alcohol and cleaning cloth. Maybe they are doing some vitamins juice with eggs , alcohol and other stuff. Hope those times goes away soon.

 

The U.S. Constitution and our whole form of government and social order is not based on Judeo-Christian values no matter who would like to claim it is. Rather it is based on natural rights and the social contract. John Locke's texts were the most influential on our Founding Fathers. They were /also influenced greatly by the writings of Thomas Paine and Charles Montesquieu.

On the other hand, our law are greatly influenced by William Blackstone, who in turn, was greatly influenced by Mosaic law.

 

Take out the theocratic tendencies, keep the humanist core.

The U.S. constitution is pretty okay in that regard. One problem, the Puritans were kind of influential as early settlers. You can blame Europe for that. Europe was still at war with itself so fanatical factions rose up. Damned Feudalism and Rome's greed of all things.

Too bad some people still inherently doubt the progress of science because of their "culture." Without science we would still be stuck in fearing "miasma"...

P.S. I will stop here. I skipped some major points but I detest how the progress of science is often considered a toy or a threat until push comes to shove. This is the 21st century.

 

I'd prefer Agnostic.

 

Humans are too smart to be so stupid. We have the faculties to KNOW what needs to be done but do nothing except follow our emotions. I do not know the way around it, especially when the MEDIA is driving the bus using emotions to make sure we are along for the ride.

 

Boo boo beee booo booo my feeeliinggs are hurt i'm scared and anxious and crying waaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. I'd bring the hammer down on these places if I had the power to do so (not literally kill / harm people, but something more akin to China lockdown where you aren't leaving the region). I'm much more libertarian leaning than big gov / big state leaning, but there's also the 2nd part of what is probably a or the core tenant of libertarian thinking - "Do as you wish as long as it DOESN'T INFRINGE UPON OTHERS and isn't done through coercion (i.e. no fraud/cheating/strong arming/etc.)." I would argue that spreading deadly disease everywhere would count as "infringe upon others" and hence this is where the strong arm of the law needs to come in, for the sake of the people / society as a whole and for whatever else secondary things we want to argue for like economy, etc.

Granted, with how dumb everything else is going and how fast this is spreading, maybe this wouldn't help anything long term and I'm talking out of my poopy hole.

edit - grammar

 

Worth reading
https://hbr.org/2020/03/lessons-from-italys-response-to-coronavirus

 

Not sure if this has been shared here but these are daily updates from the chair of surgery at Columbia's Irving Medical Center. I've found this to be a nice antidote to current coverage. There's a resilient optimism here despite an increasingly sobering situation. It's worth something to know that's possible as more of these epicenters are nucleating now.

https://columbiasurgery.org/news/13691/

 

I met plenty of Singaporeans who leave the island and come to America. Then they realize that for the cost of a flat on the Island that will get you a nice size home with land in Florida. On top of that, THEY CAN OWN A CAR.

Security and cleanness of a city or owning a car? Mmmmmm.

 

I would have thought cost of living of Florida to be higher. The car is a plus, but from what I understand Singapore is a beautiful place without much crime.....too much crime in the US.

 

True libertarianism is the government only doing the bare minimum in order to uphold the Constitution. Which doesn't include the "right to not get sick." That guy in Kentucky that got put under a force quarantine w(as in, he couldn't even leave his house to get basic necessities) and they never tested him before putting him under house arrest, basically. It turned out he never caught the disease.

The majority of the founding fathers were agnostic though. They had Christian loyalties, but didn't believe in God or anybody the miracles. They followed the teachings and morals. A lot of them were influenced by Deism (the belief of rationality and enlightenment over super natural beliefs.)

The majority of religious stuff on the anthem, dollar bills, etc were added in mid-1900s iirc.

 

Well I have been under home quarantine for past 1 week since I traveled to India from NY. However they made sure that there is someone to take care of me and I don't need to go out myself for getting basic necessities. If that wasn't the case they would have put me in state sponsored quarantine facilities. Also under no circumstances should I come out of my home otherwise I face jail term.
All this looks draconian but is the need of hour

 

You should study up Singapore. You need tons of $$$$$$ to live there.

 

Not knocking you, but I've never read or heard this before. That sounds more like minarchy (sp?) from what I understand. I initially tied the two philosophies together but later on realized that in practicality they'd still be different (but not a different as say dictator vs democracy).

Heh - I wasn't thinking from needs of many vs few / society vs individual per se but this made me chuckle anyways. I was thinking even more basic - someone doing deliberately dangerous things that have chance of directly killing someone - potential victims have a right (or at least should) to do something so they don't get killed. In a weird way, it's kind of like people breaking into your home and the right to self-defense (not necessarily via shooting someone etc) - break in for my TV and bounce never to return - I'll probably let it slide b/c risk greatly exceeds value of an old crappy TV. Break in while armed and start doing life threatening things (even if I don't die) - not going to let it slide.

Been to Singapore but only for a week (to see extended family, not live as a "rich or poor tourist") - while it's clean and orderly, things work well, in many ways is nicer than many nice parts of the US, decent stability for majority of population, has good healthcare, has fewer apparent social ills due to good planning and administration, seems closer to an actual mixing pot of cultures and ideas (and not a balkanization, far right racism, or lets become swedistan mentality that seems to pervade the western world), at the end of the day, I would still call it "Dictatorship Lite: Benevolent and Practical Edition". I could live there for a while, but wouldn't want to be there forever as I value freedoms more than all of the above combined with the continuous air conditioned shopping mall / consumerism that seems to be the primary offering there.

Also my understanding was anyone can own a car there if they can pay/afford taxes on it (which are usually 4-5x the value of the car IIRC). I probably wouldn't but would probably still have a motorcycle or scooter - public transportation is pretty good there and there doesn't seem to be any real inconvenience or social stigma/problems caused by it (not like say NYC where it seems straight up dangerous at times).

Disclaimer - I have no idea why I'm mouth crapping all of this. This is obviously not corona virus. But after sitting at home so much for so long - you may end up having a drink or two

 

Well, if that's all Singaporeans want, there's Malaysia lol.

 

@YMO Sharia ain't got shit on the English Bloody Code. That ain't got shit on pre-modern law codes that nobody gave a damn to follow. Go back to classical antiquity. Roman judges did not know the law, they mostly did not care about the law, and consulting the jurist about the law was optional. They liked the standard horrific civil and legal punishments. Bankruptcy? Debt slavery? Flogging? Crucifixion? Hell yeah.

People weren't worth shit. If you told pre-modern man that we have 7 billion people and we believe all of them have inherent supernatural rights, they'd think you were batshit insane. They'd ask you what you do with the criminals, "we give them a fair trial and don't horrifically kill them." "We're doing God's work. Killing them sends them to hell faster!" "The death penalty costs too much and violates human rights!" "Swords are reusable." and then they'd drive him out of town or chain him to the wall in an insane asylum.

Buddhists though. The Japanese and Mongolian Buddhists I've found to be very moral. Just don't f**k with the latter. Mongols are some of the only East Asians who will openly just knock someone's block off.