[laurent92]

Let’s take time to discuss this, as it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system.

I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA. As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

[rtpg]

Talks about how magic money doesn’t exist but then printing out checks for everyone and it materially helping loads of people was definitely an Overton window shifter as well.

There are principles and a status quo, and it always stays the same… until it changes.

[makomk]

There was no magic money tree. It took a while for the effects to spread to the whole of the economy - perhaps because people were in lockdown and limited in their ability to spend money - but throughout the western world people's incomes have been dropping in real inflation-adjusted terms. There's no way that they couldn't; a large chunk of the economy was shut down and producing nothing, so there's just plain less stuff to buy which means people can't possibly be able to continue consuming the same amount. Printing and handing out checks just redistributed where in society the economic pain was felt for a while.

[evocatus]

So if magic money exists... what's stopping us from printing out 100x the amount of money? Why not continue this policy indefinitely?

[jokethrowaway]

It's because our own political apparatus is not that different from the Chinese one. We just like to pretend we still have a choice with our "democratic vote".

You won't be able to dismantle it or even to reduce the huge amount of money it consumes.

You won't be able to escape its rules. We should be thankful we're still able to leave for the least worse country.

The real disease is called statalism and we're seeing the symptoms of that.

[nonrandomstring]

In WW2 we had Lord Haw-Haw (the defector William Joyce). He is mocked in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" as the deranged voice yelling from the ruins

"The Statue of Liberty is kaput".

That's disconcerting.

[nonrandomstring]

> it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system.

I'd say it's actually harder, because one cannot compare like for like. But of course that shouldn't discourage one from careful analysis.

> I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA.

I think those making condescending remarks about China were not realists, and perhaps a little racist. Of course similar authoritarian responses were applied around the globe, some less heavily handed than others, and some with better results than others. And in some places there was a liberal response that put choice and civic responsibility into the hands of citizens, again some with tragic outcomes, and some with joyful results. Quite a mixed bag.

> As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

It certainly is. I think the results surrounding disgust and disease that Jordan Peterson and his group of researchers talk about , as well as the theories of Adorno etc on the "authoritarian mind" should now be checked against data we have from the pandemic. There will surely be xome confirmations and surpises.