MedEwok wrote:
Money is only real because we accept the concept of it and the face value of coins, bills and digital currency. This value is arbitrary however and can, in theory, be changed or even nullified by both deliberate and indeliberate human decisions at any given time.
Thread about the books 
“Sapiens” Harari
Money, companies, economy, borders, countries, nations – all these things (and more) are actually a fiction, product of our consensus and trust, they only exist in our minds but at the same time they heavily influence our physical world.
JasonC wrote:
What do you mean when you suggest public debt is “purged”?
To write of the public debt that states take on to deal with the current crisis. Since the entire world is affected by this, it would only be fair, as Covid-19 is nobody’s “fault” in a narrow sense of the word.
Emir wrote:
Money, companies, economy, borders, countries, nations – all these things (and more) are actually a fiction, product of our consensus and trust, they only exist in our minds but at the same time they heavily influence our physical world.
Let’s stick to “real things”: death & taxes
MedEwok wrote:
To write of the public debt that states take on to deal with the current crisis. Since the entire world is affected by this, it would only be fair, as Covid-19 is nobody’s “fault” in a narrow sense of the word.
Who do you think lends the money to states for their public debt?
Exactly.. It’s no that simple. Just one example. Imagine how pension funds would be completely wiped out. So ‘’oldies’ would either die of the virus or left without a pension. Hmm.
And now you may understand why I keep only about 20% of my life savings in bonds… I left university 30-whatever years ago with to the best of my recollection about $120 in my account. Since then I’ve been working and saving – I have never claimed one day of benefits from anybody. For some reason I don’t like the idea of having any large fraction of my life’s effort being subject to the impulse to “purge”… I’d rather own things that I can rent or sell versus owning government debt that has been spent on nonsense, gone forever except for a fragile paper trail back to me
We have a new data point for antibodies here
So they got about 20% having antibodies, of people in a high density urban situation, falling to 3% outside there.
This report is slightly different.
This one has more detail while confirming the uppermost one.
I suppose this is amusing. Ischgl is moving upmarket to get rid of its boozing/shagging image after it became notorious in the media for spreading the virus to so many people.
OTOH there is a big market for that type of resort.
more and more probable that mismanagement of care homes is the main reason why we have a high number of deaths compared to other Nordic countries.
The problem with care homes is the workers bringing it in. If Sweden has a high incidence of the virus in the population (which clearly it has; there was an interview with the State epidemiologist yesterday) then care homes will get that pretty fast.
Peter wrote:
The problem with care homes is the workers bringing it in.
Exactly. But that problem can be mitigated or exacerbated. In the Swedish case there are several exacerbating factors and the intended mitigations largely didn’t happen.
In short, the authorities expected that care home managements would handle this responsibly and largely they did or could not. This was mainly for structural reasons that have been the subject of debate in Sweden for at least 10 years and could not be fixed quickly. I expect that when the dust has settled, we will se major changes in the way care homes are run. (And not just care homes…)
MedEwok wrote:
So what we as a civilisation must ensure is not that money keeps its current value or that we have “enough” of it…because that’s really just a completely artificial, even imaginary thing…but that we keep the “real” world intact, first of all by securing food, water, energy and medicine supplies and second by keeping the flow of real world goods and resources intact.
That’s actually economics you are talking about :) As a science (when not being used as a convenient excuse for unpopular political decisions or to justify plain exploitation etc.), economics is substantially not about money or wealth. It’s about well-being of societies – measured not in dollars/euros/pounds/gold, but in fulfillment of people’s needs (looking throughout the whole hierarchy of needs, from the very basic you mention).
I am just an armchair economist, but I’m in defense of the “concerned about economic effects” camp. I think most people who dismiss arguments coming from this camp outright because “it’s sacrificing lives for money” have limited grasp on economics and would benefit from reading a proper book on the subject (maybe Sowell’s “Basic Economics”? ;). It’s in fact at least as “simple” subject as flying aeroplanes. Sourcing your knowledge about either just from folk tales/media/politicians doesn’t take you far ;)
