Raz isn't a reason why the police exist. Raz is a product of a system where the police exist too much, which if given the proper social and educational services earlier in his life, his character and personality disorder exemplified here would have been nullified.
> This guy and his crew beat up and threatened to kill someone for a petty crime.
That's exactly what caused all of these protests.
> At what point are adults responsible for their own actions?
It's constantly of interest to me how much "free will" actually exists. The more research comes out about environmental factors, the more we realize that people who suffer {home, food, employment, physical} insecurity exhibit symptoms as if they had a lower IQ and stress which is correlated with increased mental illness, stress, blood pressure, and other health problems.
It also strikes me that the current legal corrections system really only works if we, as individuals, have significant ability to decide not to commit a crime as opposed to it being the most likely destiny based on our current {personal, environmental} state.
That doesn't sound like a good excuse for him. Sociopathic behaviors have existed since time immemorial, and the old approach before any form of formal law enforcement even existed was for tribes to enact social law enforcement and isolate or exile such undesirable elements-- and tyrants are born when you got enough armed people on your side to override societal rule.
Here is the very informative briefing Cuomo gave today [1]. Quick facts for the state of New York:
1. ~15,000 cases of confirmed COVID-19
2. 114 individuals have died from COVID-19
a. 70% of deaths were ages 70 and over and "majority" had underlying health conditions.
b. ~80% of those who died under the age of 70 had underlying health conditions.
3. 18-49 years old represent 53% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases.
4. hospitalization rate of 13% which is very good, flattening the curve works. Stay inside.
Cuomo has mandated the City of New York to hand over a plan in 24 hours (as of today) to outline how exactly the local governments will curtail overcrowding in parks and other public places. When asked why Cuomo can't do this himself, he stated in a fair manner that while he does have the power to do so, he would not be as apt to devise the plan as the local governments are. This is the right move.
Gov. Cuomo made a similar judgement when pressing the federal gov't to curtail fed regulations and to allow him to open over 200 labs available within the state of New York to provide faster testing than what the federal government was able to do.
This opening of state-wide labs is why NY has nearly 15x the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases when compared to the next highest, the state of Washington. NY also has a more accurate hospitalization rate because of this, which is a very important number to be tracking when figuring out how to "flatten the curve" which currently sits at 13%.
Governor Cuomo is following the playbook of South Korea as effectively as possible in this current political climate and has successfully deployed every move available to him and helped push federal barriers down to allow NY to attack this virus faster than any other state. He is showing leadership that everyone wishes to see at the Federal level.
Having all of these laboratories in the state of NY makes me grateful every time I think about how much I pay in state taxes. But I can't help to think about how all of the bloodshed is a direct result of the failure of leadership at the federal level to be proactive about the situation. There is nothing of greater importance than every individual human life. The federal government sacrificed these people and all the people who will suffer and die in the future in the name of better polling numbers, placating a fan base, and keeping stocks afloat for a mere month longer than they would have.
Edit: Moved 53% statistic into its own bullet. Don't know know why I had it as a sub-bullet of the deaths statistic.
The state tax rate in NY has nothing to do with this response (that seems quite good) to the COVID-19 pandemic. The labs that will be performing these extra tests are private labs, not labs funded by NY state taxes. I wish people could separate their criticism of the different governmental responses to this pandemic from their preferred stance on domestic tax policy.
We have a well-funded state university system paid for by tax dollars which provides these labs with competent, well-educated employees. But yes, these labs are not directly funded by state dollars.
yes private universities like stanford and harvard would have no way of creating competent well educated employees. do you have proof the employees even when to state schools?
The expenses involved in the response to the pandemic aren't in any state's budget. All the states are going to petition the federal government for aid and the Fed is going to print money to cover it. In other words, we're all going to pay for it through inflation. Honestly, that's probably not the worst outcome, but there's no way any individual state, high tax rate or not, was going to be in a position to respond to a severe pandemic like this.
The California and New York legislatures were already seriously looking at funding single payer healthcare in their states, largely pending a cooperative federal government. Covering the cost of hospitalization for at most 15% of their states would be a drop in the bucket. I wouldn't be surprised if California, Texas, and New York would be able to raise $100+ billion each in state bonds on rather favourable terms for healthcare expenses and direct stimulus despite the federal liquidity injections (or because of them, I can't figure whats going on there right now). It's not enough to keep the economic regions from collapsing and taking the rest of the country down with them long term, but it's probably enough for the people there until the federal response is adequate enough to take over.
If we're talking about the massive bailouts that'll need to happen for national security's sake, then I agree fully. There is no way any state can go it alone and at that point at least inflation spreads the pain a little bit more fairly, considering how bad multiple metropolitan regions collapsing would be for the rest of the country.
> a. 70% of deaths were ages 70 and over and "majority" had underlying health conditions.
> b. ~80% of those who died under the age of 70 had underlying health conditions.
Underlying health conditions is a very broad metric. It could mean something as simple (possibly I don't know for sure) as 'high blood pressure'. I think we'd like to think of it as more severe than what that category includes.
It's similar in a way when their is a fire and the local papers say 'had several building code violations'. Without knowing what the violations were (and if they even mattered to the fire) I don't think many conclusions could be drawn.
And this assumes things are even categorized correctly in the first place.
Of course 'age' is age so that is most likely an accurate metric.
I agree. I don't like having underlying health conditions listed as a statistic. I think it leads to people thinking "oh it only really affects people who are sick" and then those people go about their day as usual and spread the disease further. I didn't want to skip over it though out of fear of someone saying I tried to frame the stats to fit a narrative or something.
I don't get the "NY is testing more" claim. Based on the data I have seen https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en/test NY tested 61401 so far with 15168 positive for a positive rate of 24.7%, while WA tested 27121 with 1793 positive for a positive rate of 6.6%. NY testing seems very restrictive. CA is now limiting tests due to shortage of swabs and PPEs.
The NY governor in your video cited that 40-60% of people are going to get it (20 min mark) and the same thing was said by CA governor a couple days ago too (56%): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570
So it seems like there's a consensus within the top-level leadership that containment is impossible. I still don't understand why we've given up when China managed to do it.
My understanding of containment is that it is only effective when testing and tracing are radically pursued. There just are not enough resources at the state level (at this point) to do this with the effectiveness China has managed to do it. So we are left with one tool to fix this which is flatten the curve to not overwhelm the healthcare system and lead to further deaths. South Korea has been doing a lot of tracing and they are starting to see this as a great success, but mostly due to south korea's ability to track phones of people diagnosed positive.
I think they mean over the next few years. This virus is in every city in the world, we can't contain it everywhere. Eventually its just another endemic disease, but one we can vaccinate for and treat at a steady rate.
Nope most are private labs! But what do you think drew these labs to New York? Possibly a well-educated populace driven by a successful state university system funded by tax dollars? You better believe it!
> But I can't help to think about how all of the bloodshed is a direct result of the failure of leadership at the federal level to be proactive about the situation.
I feel like this is hindsight thinking and it is also a waste of energy and divisive at this point in the situation. We should all be focusing on what to do next. There will be lots of time for retrospectives afterwards.
WA resident here, I am quite happy with the response here relative to many other places.
UW has been running 2-3k tests per day for much longer than the NY testing apparatus has been spun up, we've actually run more tests per capita than NY (though I expect things to look more normal soon), with additional capacity coming online soon. Those tests have maintained a ~7% positivity rate, which is good news.
We were some of the first to report community transmission thanks to the hard work of our research community.
In addition, the business community in the Seattle area worked to push people to WFH long before other places, keeping hundreds of thousands of people from being potential vectors for spreading COVID-19.
Frankly I don't think now is the time to be making remarks like this. WA is not perfect, but it does not boil down to tax rate.
It’s interesting that you are “relatively” optimistic about the situation in New York. I’ve been watching Mayor De Blasio in the recent weeks, and, he seems to have become more and more nervous over the course. Almost desperate. Maybe he is just playing it or he is not as cool as Cuomo, who, granted, does a good job so far.
I will say that people get hell-banned for seemingly self-promoting on HN. Might be good to mix up your submissions with other articles you find interesting, so it doesn't appear as though you are only posting your own writings.
I have submitted a few news article that I've found interesting (from Bloomberg etc) that have also done well on here lately. But you're right. I will make an effort to mix up my submissions! Thanks!
The point of the article was if the person didn't lose their "perfect job" they would never have forced themselves to look for other, better, and more enjoyable opportunities.
I think that happens to a large number of people who have lost a job and found something else. Specifically, if you are laid off, and assuming the entire company / division didn't fold (i.e., they cut 15% from all departments), then chances are that you and the company weren't a good fit for each other. And it is during the job search process that you start to re-evaluate your skill set, what you can do, and what you want to do. Often that will then lead to a better opportunity in which you have improved (if from nothing else than a change of scenery).
What we ought to do—to tie into the "let's break up Google" story also being discussed right now—is make collecting and hoarding data about people incredibly risky. A leak of any size should be a "your company is finished" event. Much collection should simply be outlawed or at least placed under strict user control, GDPR-style.
It'd make the CRAs, various other financial institutions (credit card companies, banks), and the tech giants all stop doing a bunch of the most harmful crap they're getting up to. Or else actually pay what it takes to keep everything really secure, while ditching any data they don't absolutely have to have to operate.
It's the centralization, not the aggregation, that's the problem. If entities, even if under the umbrella of a single corporation, were organized based on datasets to aggregate this info, the risk and punishment could be commensurate.
There's some value in having a credit reporting system though. You don't want to make it too easy for someone to edit their credit history to make it look like they're more reliable about paying back their debts. (A good system might not look too much like our current system though.)
I will never unfreeze Equifax, regardless of what I do with the other credit agencies. I can't prevent them from collecting my information but I can prevent them from profiting off it.
I agree, but this is not a helpful point form which to start a conversation. It's lazy and below the standards many expect from HN.
A better way to start this conversation (imo) would be to make reference to the many mistakes Equifax has made over the years and ask what is preventing Equifax from facing real consequences, such as being shutdown?
It's the effort that people place into having genuine conversations that keeps me coming back here and not just hanging around Twitter and Reddit. If someone wants to be lazy and still get online validation, there are communities for that and if you want to have a real conversation here, but don't have the time/energy to start it properly then all you have to do is wait a few minutes and someone who does, will.
Yes, I'd like to see someone demonstrate that they put some thought into the idea of what happens when, say, credit reporting agencies are eliminated or curtailed. What would be the negative repercussions, etc.
In contrast to a low-effort farting of "break 'em up!" for karma. That doesn't bring anything new to the conversation.
It seems like you're arguing against a pithy call to shut down credit reporting agencies in general, when the comment at issue was specifically directed at the credit reporting agency that has the worst public track record for security and privacy. It's like if you had asked "but how will the economy function without accountants?" in response to the dismantling of Arthur Andersen, or asked how online banking could survive without Symantec SSL/TLS certificates.
The consequences of shutting down just Equifax are relatively mundane: lenders and other customers of Equifax take their business elsewhere, and Equifax's competitors have some motivation to be a bit better lest they suffer the same fate. The industry as a whole would get along just fine. The less realistic and more extreme hypothetical that you want to debate is irrelevant here.
My argument was in my last sentence, in response to the defense of pithy comments that millions already beat to death six months ago. I'm arguing neither for nor against the shutdown of Equifax.
We should really work on making personal data transactions illegal. I can’t think of a single company that I would be happy to hear that they sold my data to third-party. These companies provide no additonal benefits.
Equifax is the worst. You can call them and ask to buy lists of names, addresses and phone numbers of people matching certain financial criterias. Facebook would look dull in comparison if people knew the extent of the Equifax abuse of privacy.
> Equifax is the worst. You can call them and ask to buy lists of names, addresses and phone numbers of people matching certain financial criterias. Facebook would look dull in comparison if people knew the extent of the Equifax abuse of privacy.
Don't be silly. The long arm of Equifax has a finite length. We know where they get their data from and you have to at least pretend to "consent" to provide it to them by initiating a financial transaction. The Breach aside, there are federal laws (FCRA, etc.) governing willful dissemination of the data they have on you, and the scope of the data they collect is entirely financial.
None of this applies to Facebook/Google. There is no "consent" or opting-in to their lifestyle intelligence pool. You start building a dossier a few seconds after venturing onto the internet for the first time.
Your name ending up on a list of middle-to-upper-class sales leads is not a crime against humanity. There are many other ways to get the same data, starting with public records.
Your arguments seem to work both ways, for example: There is no "consent" with Equifax, they start building a dossier a few seconds after you venture into the open market. You at least have to pretend to "consent" to Google by initiating an HTTP transaction with a Google-associated property. And there are many other ways to get the same data (again, like public records)
They provide safety for lenders, which allows those lenders to offer you cheaper prices. Is that worth it? Not sure personally, but I don't think it's fair to say that they are totally without benefit.
