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Right now the poorest under-the-API types are being thrown under the bus. Expect the shit level line to slowly rise and that you will be thrown under the bus too when it rises to your class level. Maybe not via higher Covid risk, but other risks like hunger or destitution
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Never thought I’d live through this level of breakdown, but I’m now making post-money plans, as in when money is not the primary form of risk insurance needed. There’s going to be a pretty bad rice shock within the year I think, which will make the meat crisis look like a joke.
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We just hit Great Depression levels of unemployment... except this is way worse because that was *merely* a financial crisis. There wasn’t a pandemic doing the rounds and half the civilizational machine in a dangerous unplanned shutdown mode it wasn’t actually designed for.
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I suspect a lot of the people who are optimistic right now believe the laissez faire part of the economy is much bigger than it is, and don’t realize how much bigger the planned part is. By which I mean both state capacity and the innards of large corporations.
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This planned part is not some sort of magical self-healing, self-regulating emergent stochastic magic show orchestrated by money. It is more like a precisely engineered machine that runs in somewhat deterministic ways via explicit coordination.
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And it is MUCH bigger.... “laissez faire was planned, planning was not” — Polyani. We’re about to see the biggest natural experiment in actually free markets. A sample of the world free marketers want, as regulatory reins fail.
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Find your generalized green zone now. Not as in virus-free, but as in resilient — high local basic sustainability — global logistics connectivity — varied, digitalized local economy — good healthcare — good law and order — medium density — communitarian spirit — blue >> red
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What I hear of red states (outside of newsworthy stories) is that people are community minded. My main concern with them is widespread rejection of science. I'm in Australia – I suspect both rural and very progressive communities will pull together more than most.
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Speaking of which, I tend to think that San Fransisco is more 'blue' than Los Angeles right now. What with the SF mayor's action n' all. Though of course the obvious caveat is that I'm an Indonesian living in Indonesia thus I don't know anything about any of this at all.