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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 0:44:26
so...
it's hard to tell...
but by the seems of it...
the coronavirus is more about a global shift in economic policy than about anything else.
restrictions on the movement of people inter-nationally.
restrictions on trade.
to help local economies develop.
to help make the supply chain more transparent.
to try and increase accountability for where the money goes (e.g., to the workers or the administrators) when it comes to contracting things out.
i got a 'we will respond to your query within 2 days' from Otago.
for a query i sent in 2017.
i sent an email to a course convenor of a physiology paper. i said that previous years examinations asked students to reproduce cardiac graphs from memory on examinations. i wanted to know whether studnets would be supplied with unlined paper -- or expected to draw the graphs on .7mm lined rule of the examination book.
they didn't respond. i guess because there was no shortage of students.
no shortage of students who would not ask such in impertenent question.
i'm not doing a course that requires me to learn to draw to f*ck*d up axes / ratios / that sh*t so very very very very very much harder than it needs to be.
i didn't enrol in the paper.
i didn't enrol in the major.
no longer interested in the degree.
now there's a shortage of students.
i see.
Posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 0:45:53
In reply to economic policy, posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 0:44:26
the Coronavirus has been hitting the elderly, mostly.
the children have been spared.
that's unusual. usually the young children are not spared.
Posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 1:00:45
In reply to Re: the children have been spared, posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 0:45:53
According to a slogan of Frédéric Bastiat (18011850), "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."
doctors without borders...
and disease.
wikipedia tells me 'free-trade good protectionism-bad'.
only that's just not so.
boom -- and then bust.
it isn't Hong Kong that was doing boom-bust it was the NY of China.
The growth was not sustainable.
Posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 13:25:34
In reply to Re: the children have been spared, posted by alexandra_k on March 6, 2020, at 1:00:45
and of course freedom vs protectionism in trade is a matter of degree kind of thing and there are different kinds of goods that one could have differnet policies about.
i think the world is tired of the over-production of low value consumer products that nobody would voluntarily choose for themseleves. the crappy wages and working conditions of people employed to produce vast volumes of what is effectively rubbish.
the real problem is that the prevalence and proliferation of bad business threatens to undermine good business everywhere.
if you put in a good and fair bid for a contract. one where you make good choices about the products. to support producers who are paid a fair wage. to support producers who provide good working conditions for their employees. then you will be underbid by someone who gets away with treating employees like garbage. cutting corners. substituting fit for purpose products with not fit for purpose products. or perhaps holding up the things once it is too costly for the other party to back out. then demanding 2x the price.
the proliferation of that kind of business. by people who don't want to do business at all. by people who aren't doign business. by psychopaths passing themselves off as something they are not.
and you get a few people collecting up all the money because they know / see that 'it's only temporary' and the bust is coming. they just think that so long as they huddle in with a herd of psychopaths and aren't themselves the worst offender then they'll get away with it. get to lie and cheat and swindle and ruin things for us all for yet another day.
you gotta close your borders to such people. not do business with them. it is too f*ck*ng costly to do business with them. to trade with them. to have to check up on them, check up on them, continually check up on them and babysit them and so on to make sure that thingsa are as they say they are. all that time and energy and effort to babysit them when one could simply have done it one self.
or paid a fair price to a fair bidder.
we don't have good systems of idenfifying who the good people are.
but it's this sort of sh*t that holds back development.
can't do good business with us. the people with the power are not fairminded, at all.
f*ck*ng stupid idiots f*ck*ng ruining things for us all.
This is the end of the thread.
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