Sam Lowry said:
Bearitto said:
Porteroso said:
Bearitto said:
No one listens to petty tyrants. Fatties and Oldsters should have locked themselves away. The rest of Iowa is just fine. You are responsible for your own health if you are concerned.
Doubling down on screwing the old people I see. Typical repub behavior. Screw anyone but me!
Typical Libertarian behavior...leave me alone and I leave you alone. Mind your own god damned business you petty leftist tyrants and lock your own fatasses down into your own cellars because you are scared of catching a cold.
Thoughts on what, if any, powers the state should have during a pandemic?
The State should be able to destroy business by creating an arbitrary distinction between essential and nonessential. The State should be able to interfere in private contracts because... well, because, ... well, because the State's response to a disease exacerbated problems and responding to the problems the State created, the State will make it all better.
The State should be able to determine how restaurants operate because no one knows how to run a restaurant better than a Governor or a public health "expert." The State should refuse to protect landlords by not hearing eviction cases. The State is exempt from its most basic roles in protecting private property rights and enforcing contracts when a lot of people catch a respiratory illness.
The State should borrow trillions of dollars to distribute to the people it put of out of work. In fact, the State should design a system whereby many people get paid more to stay at home than they were getting paid to work before the government shut down their employer. That will help ensure that if their employer is allowed to reopen it will be hard to get those employees to report to work because they will actually earn less to not collect unemployment and the supplemental benefit.
Yes, the government should arrogate as much power to itself for as long as it wants when people start getting sick. It makes people feel better. But most of all, it makes the rich richer and the powerful even more so. The State need not be rational in its approach. After all, people are catching a respiratory illness.
The government should lie about what it is doing. It should start with a modest proposal that sounds reasonable. Something like "15 days to flatten the curve" or "15 days to save our healthcare system." Then around 30 to 60 days later, the State can change the objective to something not reasonable like eradicating the disease altogether. And if people don't like it, then you can shame them by saying they are selfish or granny killers. That is the way a free society should relate to its government.