I hadn’t been in the comments as much last week because of work/life stuff, but I did catch a snippet of some cross-thread discussion that began with Mexi’s Thursday PM Beer Review (Thoughts-on-a-COVID19 infected person and the NAP). This naturally follows the recent link where the police barricaded a known-infected man in his residence. One commenter raised the issue of tort law as a place to sort out some of the thornier moral/ethical and legal questions raised. Some others also brought up the specter of criminal liability for someone who, for example, went into a nursing home and spit/sneezed in everyone’s green jello right before lunch. (SF is hereby prohibited from offering his “for example” in the comments to this article.) Because of the current pants-shitting over COVID-19, I thought this was a good time to break out our One True Libertarian™ and run xer through the gauntlet of hypotheticals and some analysis to see if perhaps we can’t tease out some principles that might help guide the personal conduct of the Glibertariat and add to the wider understanding of the “tragedy of the commons” – a topic that is so often brought up in response to libertarian political thought that it should eventually make the medical texts as a reflex reaction, the political discussion equivalent of the doctor hitting your knee with the little rubber hammer.
These kinds of questions around the coronavirus are at the heart of any serious course on jurisprudence, even beyond their similarities to other sticky areas of the law involving the other usual “tragedy of the commons” suspects, such as pollution, riparian rights, fishing/coastal waters, etc. In a more general sense, all of law – even religious law – has been principally concerned with the problem of “externalities” i.e. of when one person’s activities/actions cause a measurable harm to another person. The key word (of course) is always “measurable” because measurement, as a scientist will tell you, is simply a “comparison to a known standard.” Unfortunately, the “standards” for what is a legally actionable “harm” – and how it can be measured – vary widely across cultures, and even subcultures within a single culture or legal system. Wiccans, BernieBros, and tort lawyers all measure the “harms” of various actions, government or private, with different standards in mind. Which also partly helps explain why they are all perfectly certain that they are right about every issue of public policy on which they disagree: each is (probably) logically “right,” but only if we use the standards of measure that are at the heart of their philosophy. Therein lies the rub. In case it’s not clear, I believe that this “standards of measure” problem is at the heart of a lot of intractable disagreements; people argue right past each other using different “rulers” – standards of measure – for the same event(s) and no one can understand why the other person doesn’t “see” the error of their ways. (I get an image in my head of a Frenchman – measuring in metric – arguing with an American who is using feet, yards, and inches. The two have veins bulging in their necks and neither understands why the other has a different ‘number’ as the answer.)
I note at the beginning that I am not going to lean on the cases that deal with an HIV positive person knowingly having sex with an unwitting victim. While those cases are useful for the extreme hypotheticals (like my Jello examples) I don’t think they add much to the discussion because the answers are too obvious. I’ve defended and prosecuted these kinds of cases in the military, so I’m fairly familiar with the case law. It seems to me that these kinds of cases provide a kind of outer boundary of the discussion, but the real meat of the conundrum is in between the extremes. It is from there that I deploy my legal perspective, using a framework that I believe covers all of the competing interests, while also addressing the legal problem of consistent standards of measure.
It seems an impossible conundrum to resolve, this argument over “standards” – even worse than English versus Metric system – yet somehow, in the pluralistic society that is the United States’ melting pot, we’ve managed to provide some degree of certainty in dispute resolution for several hundred years… Or even thousands of years, if one is willing to trace our legal history back through the British common law to the medieval/early Germanic (Anglo Saxon) weregild, then further back through Alfred the Great’s Doom Book, to the courts and complexity of the Roman law, from the Twelve Tables through the Justinian Code. Adjudicating the vast array of problems that can arise between large groups of people living in close proximity in pluralistic societies is not a new concept in human endeavors; this thumbnail sketch is just a brush through the Western legal tradition.
In all of that jurisprudential tradition there are certain figures that stand out for their contributions to helping our understanding of certain thorny issues, distilling what looks like nothing more than convention into articulable, legal principles. Judge Learned Hand certainly falls into that category and I believe one of his cases provides a nice “jumping off” point for some elucidation on the question Mexi and the Glibertariat raised: what are the duties of an infected person to “society?” Is going out in public while you have the Wu Flu – and know it – an NAP violation? What is the measure of the “harm” and how do we provide recompense for it? I’ll attempt to answers these (and other) salient questions.
Justice Hand’s opinions are a staple of law school casebooks and United States v. Carroll Towing, Co., 159 F.2d 169 (2d. Cir. 1947) may be his most famous. Hand achieved fame as a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and is considered by many to be the best judge who never made it to the Supreme Court. Learned Hand is the most quoted lower court judge… of the United States Supreme Court. Carroll Towing concerned itself with a legal concept known as “consequential damages,” but in the context of the sinking of a barge, the Anna C., and her cargo, while at a Manhattan Pier. Before we drill down on Carroll Towing, however, we need a little legal history and background. The archetypical case regarding consequential damages, the contextual legal history in which Carroll Towing takes place, is another staple of the law school casebook, Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Ex Ch 341 (1854).
Hadley and his partner owned a mill which ground grain into a meal and processed it into flour, among other products. One of the steam engines in the mill had a crankshaft break and Hadley contracted with W. Joyce & Co. company to replace the crankshaft. W. Joyce required the broken shaft be shipped to them, which Hadley did, using Baxendale’s shipping firm. The essence of the case is that Baxendale’s firm failed to deliver on schedule as he had contracted and Hadley sued for what he paid for the promised shipping, as well as consequential damages – his lost profits/commerce for the days that the mill was out of service, in excess of what the promised delivery schedule would have yielded. IOW, Hadley wants the revenue for the days he was shut down because of the shipping delay.
Now we think the proper rule in such a case as the present is this: Where two parties have made a contract which one of them has broken, the damages which the other party ought to receive in respect of such breach of contract should be such as may fairly and reasonably be considered either arising naturally, i.e., according to the usual course of things, from such breach of contract itself, or such as may reasonably be supposed to have been in the contemplation of both parties, at the time they made the contract, as the probable result of the breach of it.
This principle is frequently referred to as the “foreseeability” test of HvB. Okay, so far, so good (seemingly). On the surface this seems a sensible rule in which the consequential damages from a contract can only be imputed as those which can be reasonably deduced from the commercial context in which the contract occurs. This isn’t very far off from contract formation; the opinion goes on to repeat itself about what might be in the contemplation of each party in the “great multitude of such cases occurring under ordinary circumstances.”
At its core, however, it is really (in my opinion) the creation of a new unit of measure: the commercial actor, a special form of homo economicus. Behold! The businessman, to whom the Law will impute knowledge of the surrounding circumstances under which a contract is made. We can call this another variant of the Law’s ubiquitous “reasonable man,” who pops up in other areas of the law, like criminal law, quite frequently. While this has some virtue by providing some limitation on damages in contract cases, like many judicial decisions, it has been well-criticized as being nothing more than justifying what the judges in the case already believed.
For instance, the wiki on Hadley v. Baxendale points out this issue regarding the “principle” enunciated in the case; because it doesn’t seem to turn out the way it should under the rule announced. Wouldn’t a commercial shipper be on notice that every day over its promised delivery date is a day of lost revenue for the business awaiting the items of repair? If you have doubt about your ability to ship commercially and meet promised dates, then maybe you’re in the wrong business? In other words, this issue doesn’t seem like some far-fetched, hidden outcome for a commercial shipper. It looks rather like “the great multitude of such cases occurring under ordinary circumstances.” OTOH, should the shipper be liable for days of work that haven’t actually occurred? Due to a shutdown by events that the shipper had nothing to do with? For now, let’s leave Hadley’s rule aside and simply live with the questions it asks in the back of our mind and return to Carroll Towing and Justice Hand.
The facts of Carroll Towing don’t appear to have been much in dispute even at the trial level. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company chartered the Anna C from Conners Marine Company. The Anna C was moored at Pier 52 on the North River along with several other barges; a load of flour belonging to the FedGov was in the Anna C’s hold. It was winter (Jan. 4, 1944) in NY Harbor, and the water conditions were choppy, with a fair bit of wind. The barges at Pier 52 were tied together by mooring lines and one barge at Pier 52 was tied to another set of barges at the adjacent Public Pier. On the day of the accident the tug Carroll was sent to remove a barge from the Public Pier and in the process of removing the barge, the line between the barges at Pier 52 and the barges at the Public Pier was removed. After the removal of the line, the barges at Pier 52 later broke free and a whole bunch of barges and their cargo went catawampus. Among the casualties was the Anna C, which wound up on the bottom of the harbor with the United States’ flour. The US sued Carroll Towing Co., owner of the Carroll tug who removed the line between the two piers in an indemnity action.
The crux of the legal issue was (again) consequential damages, except in this case it was in the context of a tort suit for negligence, rather than an action on a contract. (I submit for the lawyers and legally educated that the distinctions between contract and tort law are largely irrelevant legal fictions. See, e.g., Grant Gilmore, “The Death of Contract,” (1974). Tort law deals with civil wrongs for which the law recognizes a remedy; Contract law is merely a specialized subset that deals with which promises the Law will recognize as enforceable and which ones it won’t. Wills and Trusts and Property transfers all deal with the exact same question.)
In Carroll Towing, there didn’t appear to be any gross negligence on anyone’s part, but just to review, the Western legal tradition has a fairly well-developed (‘black letter’) body of law regarding negligence as a tort. The formula is (generally) that there is an existing legal duty that a person breaches, which can be shown to be the proximate cause of a harm to another, from which there is some damage. Various jurisdictions expand on these, but legal negligence generally involves a Duty, a Breach of the Duty that causes Harm to another, and Damages. Each of these aspects has (literally) tomes dedicated to picking at the particular thorny questions of each, and all have difficult questions around standards of measure at every step. Who decides what the legal duties are between individuals in a Constitutional Republic (and when did that happen)?? How do we decide if my actions are the proximate cause of someone else’s harm? And what is the measure of damages – a subject with which we’ve already had a preview via Messrs. Hadley and Baxendale.
The standard to which we are all held is, as noted above, the “reasonable man,” or “reasonable and prudent” person, or some variation on the same yardstick. This “reasonable man” standard has been justifiably criticized along the same grounds as Potter Stewart’s more honest formulation regarding pornography: “I know it when I see it.” How would any of us know, for example, that a tugboat captain had been negligent – had failed – in his duties? Setting aside the procedural and evidentiary questions, we can imagine that there is some body of professional custom and knowledge, not unlike our own vocations and avocations, to which we can turn and inform ourselves, and then make judgments about whether or not someone has lived up to or missed the mark. That seems a straightforward enough proposition, but the problems of competing, alternate reasonable decisions can make even this an exercise in arbitrary line-drawing (pun intended). For example, was it unreasonable for the harbormaster to order the extra line that joined the two piers cast-off? That line was not normally there. How abnormal were the sea conditions? Is the duty of a commercial carrier, like the commercial shipper M. Baxendale, higher than that of the average person? Do we impute a higher standard of care to people who handle the goods of others, especially people handling ships?
It is into this maelstrom that Judge Hand waded and offered, I believe, a lantern to help illumine the murk around these issues.
Judge Hand’s opinion begins in earnest with a survey of the existing caselaw surrounding barges, tugs, and similar previous maritime mishaps. He engages in the exact work mentioned above, attempting to tease out the “body of professional custom and knowledge” that governs the conduct of each of the various parties: from the harbormaster, to the deckhands, to the absent barge handlers who had gone home for the evening. Another aspect of the law that impinges is the obligation to mitigate damages. That is to say, the law imposes affirmative duties on plaintiffs, too, and one of them prohibits what I call “wallowing in ongoing harm.” For example, the landlord who loses rent because a tenant breaks their lease the day before the lease begins must attempt to fill the now-vacant apartment; she cannot simply leave it empty and claim damages for month after month after month and presume that a court will now give her the entire year’s lease as the measure of the “loss.”
Likewise, Hand’s examination of various parties’ obligations includes the duty that even plaintiffs or their agents had. It raises interesting questions all over again about who owes what obligation to whom. For example, if the weather was bad enough that a court says the harbormaster breached his duty of due care by casting off a certain line, are the individual ship-owners and their crews also not on notice of the same exact conditions – and therefore responsible for taking mitigating actions to ensure their own ship’s and cargo’s safety? Hand covers this in the early paragraphs, but it is his discussion of the interrelation of these factors that has become a lighthouse for law students and practitioners – and even shitty, amateur, libertarian philosophers – to provide some firm ground by which to navigate.
It appears from the foregoing review that there is no general rule to determine when the absence of a bargee or other attendant will make the owner of the barge liable for injuries to other vessels if she breaks away from her moorings. However, in any cases where he would be so liable for injuries to others, obviously he must reduce his damages proportionately, if the injury is to his own barge. It becomes apparent why there can be no such general rule, when we consider the grounds for such a liability. Since there are occasions when every vessel will break from her moorings, and since, if she does, she becomes a menace to those about her; the owner’s duty, as in other similar situations, to provide against resulting injuries is a function of three variables: (1) The probability that she will break away; (2) the gravity of the resulting injury, if she does; (3) the burden of adequate precautions.
This is the setup for what would become Hand’s most quoted, and likely most famous, legal pronouncement.
Possibly it serves to bring this notion into relief to state it in algebraic terms: if the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i. e., whether B > PL.
Let the mathematicians, and other certainty-demanding knaves, rejoice! A formula – an actual mathematical &$%^ing formula! – in a legal opinion. Praise be!
Hand’s formulation of this legal rule for negligence cases represents (IMO) something so profound that it may be counted among those rare opinions that eventually pass as wisdom.
Liability for negligence is an inequality in Hand’s formulation. First, we calculate/discern the likelihood (i.e. the probability) of a harm coming to fruition. Second, we measure the gravity of the harm. We then multiply those two items and compare it against the burden of the defendant taking sufficient precautions to prevent the harm from coming to be. Zut alors! Le voilà!
Here is Hand’s own application to Carroll Towing, for everyone’s consideration.
Applied to the situation at bar, the likelihood that a barge will break from her fasts and the damage she will do, vary with the place and time; for example, if a storm threatens, the danger is greater; so it is, if she is in a crowded harbor where moored barges are constantly being shifted about. On the other hand, the barge must not be the bargee’s prison, even though he lives aboard; he must go ashore at times. We need not say whether, even in such crowded waters as New York Harbor a bargee must be aboard at night at all; it may be that the custom is otherwise, as Ward, J., supposed in “The Kathryn B. Guinan,” supra; and that, if so, the situation is one where custom should control. We leave that question open; but we hold that it is not in all cases a sufficient answer to a bargee’s absence without excuse, during working hours, that he has properly made fast his barge to a pier, when he leaves her.
Now, I do not for an instant want to suggest to anyone that there are no unanswered questions left by Hand’s opinion. In fact, in part 2, I will put that framework to the difficult test of our COVID-19 example and hope that the resultant red meat in the comments will be something that adds value to all, even if it includes disagreement. My ultimate goal is to offer at least a better understanding of the “standards of measurement” issue that I believe underlies the constant tension between individual rights in a connected society, and the competing demands of collective solutions to various “tragedies of the commons.”
* pours coffee, settles in, rubs hands expectantly, begins to read *
Unfortunately, I think this one might be the internet debate equivalent of dry-humping, Don. It’s the set-up for the second article, which is where the real fun is. (That article is already done, submitted, and slated for this slot next week.)
don’t sell yourself short, judge !
If you knew my height (or rather lack thereof) you would appreciate how funny that comment struck me. (I’ve had people use that exact line on me as a height joke and it’s pretty good when delivered unintentionally to a room full of people… there’s a pregnant pause, I raise my eyebrows or scowl, and usually everyone gets a good laugh).
Scowl like a dwarf or a giant? Or wizard or warrior?
My nickname is still “the angry dwarf.”
How do you measure yourself against other golfers?
Great start! I’m continually amazed by the talent this site attracts.
Yeah, don’t you have more important stuff to do? Do you think in six-minute increments on here?
Coming to this very interesting article a week late (as usual). But, Don’s comment made me immediately think of this scene from the great Caddyshack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is5ZtJpO_TI
known-infected
There’s a mea culpa of sorts in the Daily Memphian about a nurse who rambled all over town, drove to Louisiana and back, went to restaurants, begged rides with friends, and did all the other normal, pre-shut-down stuff people do during our please-stay-at-home order, infecting doG only knows how many people before being diagnosed herself. The case of what the (presumably) uninfected owe each other is as interesting to me as what the infected owe society.
the real meat of the conundrum is in between the extremes
This law professor I had told it this way: the first tort case was a big dog bit a guy, and its owner was found liable . . . what an asshole, you obviously knew it was dangerous, the act foreseeable and preventable with ordinary care . . . PAY UP! The second tort case was a little dog bit a guy, and its owner was not found liable . . . what an asshole, you mean to tell me you couldn’t outsmart a little dog or punt it across town or just step around it or outrun it or contribute to your own care in any way . . . YOU GET NOTHING AND GET OUTTA MY COURTROOM!. And most tort cases since have simply been haggling over whether a guy was bitten by a big or little dog.
Another principle the professor impressed upon me was that the only rule of juries is get the jerk. They are moved a little by evidence, but in civil cases they just can’t concentrate for more than 90 minutes, so DON”T BE THE JERK because that ten step proof of why it’s not your fault just won’t stick. This notion really moved me and has been reinforced constantly every outside the courtroom: prejudice and confirmation bias explains much more of decision-making so far as I can see than any truly neutral truth-seeking.
Don – my practice has mostly been in front of juries, though not as much lately. IMO, there is a reason the founders included the jury trial as a bulwark against tyranny. I was also once lucky enough to be selected for a criminal jury – and i told both the prosecutor and defense attorney my background, was questioned about it, and back I still went. A trial attorney’s research dream!
All I can say is that I have a lot more faith in jurors than I do in a lot of the other people in that system, but I must admit to being an optimist and generally having faith in my fellow Americans to do the “right” thing. In my experience, juries get it “right” at a very high percentage. And when they do get it “wrong” it’s because of information asymmetries. i.e. The system has either withheld essential information from them or given them information that it shouldn’t have.
One man’s opinion.
I’ve been on juries and on the receiving end of juries. My experience is certainly not as broad or as extensive as yours, but it suggests that people’s judgement varies widely based on perceived injustices and their impressions of the characters involved. A case between two parties where the likability/envy index is roughly even may generate a fair result, but a case where one party is personally unlikable and the other not can certainly influence judgements of fact.
I can’t remember the book I “read” this in (audiobook). It was Outliers or Freakonomics. Bad doctors who had GREAT bedside manners got sued less than fabulous doctors with HORRIBLE bedside manners.
The formula is (generally) that there is an existing legal duty that a person breaches, which can be shown to be the proximate cause of a harm to another, from which there is some damage.
Begins convulsing and sobbing.
Seriously though, good read! Us Glib lawyers should do a regular series on legal principles.
That’s a great idea, Trashy. I had to write this one because despite our numbers, not all Glibs are lawyers, and I didn’t think I could just jump in at Carroll Towing and go from there. I had an idea for a series like Animal’s on guns, except I was thinking of major (liberty-affecting) SCOTUS decisions. Some obvious, some sneaky important ones.
Twas a good summation. My tears and shakes are from remembering torts class and the unnecessarily tortuous route we took to understanding some very basic concepts.
I had an old school Socratic method professor for Torts I, 1st year. It was… it was a bit like OCS again and by law school I was already a Captain with a deployment under my belt. I didn’t think I had to go through that again, so I (unjustifiably) hated that professor. I would later come to see it all in a different light, but yes. The intentional torts – and his style – made that one of the longest hours of my life – every class.
I actually didn’t mind the socratic classes. Most of them were phased out by the time I was there, except for a couple old stalwart profs. Contracts was taught in the socratic style, and I excelled in that class.
Torts, for me, was taught by a new prof who had every bad habit of a shitty CLE. Long winded, overreliant on the textbook, unable to distill themes out of the cases. Nice enough guy, but didn’t really have his teaching legs yet.
That was the first class where I learned that formatting my outlines based on the table of contents of the textbook got me 90% of the way there.
I’m pretty sure the reason the Athenians made Socrates drink Hemlock was that he annoyed the fuck out of them.
Checks Out
“BUT- MUH DEMOCRACY!” they scream.
“Just drink the hemlock and STFU, Socrates,” is what they don’t understand about it.
Mistah Haht !
nice.
(but that was contracts)
I hope you got to fuck his hot daughter Lindsay Wagner.
Appreciate it Ozy. Some of us still have brains full of mush.
Fill this room with your intelligence.
Dueling is the answer.
I have very… unorthodox thoughts on the value of dueling, kinnath. For the hockey fans, you can guess which side of the “fighting vs. no fighting” line I fall on.
I used to deal with sign makers. They would agree to a completed project for a certain date. Often they would over-estimate their shop’s capabilities, either knowingly or unknowingly. To me it didn’t matter, I had agreed to a particular date, always asking to insure that my time frame was reasonable . We would be open for business before the Grand Opening and selling merchandise and the sign was important.
After a couple bad experiences I started writing in a penalty for lateness and a bonus for early completion. I never had a bad experience after that.
And good article, OZY.
“We do what we say we’re going to do, even if we take it in the shorts”
The Marine Corps burned that into me, 4×20. I didn’t have that as a “civilian,” but my instructors imprinted being a man of my word on my soul: in business, in relationships, in life. “If you can’t do it or aren’t sure, don’t say you can. If you say you will, you’d better damn well do it.”
Agreed. On both counts
Interesting read, although I may have to go back a few times to parse it. I may be reading but wrong but is this contradictory – whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i. e., whether B > PL written out says less than but the formula say greater than. Typo or am I missing something?
all I read was P.i.e.
Notorious P.I.E.?
hmmm
It may be a typo, TH, but I don’t think it matters because you can say the sentence to make it correct. The important point is the comparison between the burden of avoiding the product of P*L. You can switch the words to make liability point the right direction.
Ah, I was reading Liability to mean “you are liable” in that case the direction of that angle bracket matters, makes more sense if I think of liability as “the question of if one is liable”
Bingo. I think the = sign should be in there too for the really close questions.
What happens if one’s burden is identical to the P*L – who gets the benefit in that case? And I don’t think the answer is as easy as the precautionary principle.
Thanks, really looking forward to part II.
The standard to which we are all held is, as noted above, the “reasonable man,” or “reasonable and prudent” person, or some variation on the same yardstick.
We have a step better in patent law.. The “person having ordinary skill in the art”. This fictional person has not one drop of creativity, but has a wide grasp on technical concepts and techniques. It’s the same issue. Is a district judge in Delaware or a jury in Tyler TX in any way capable of grasping what a PHOSITA would or wouldnt have done at the time of the filing of the invention? Even with expert testimony, it turns into a pissing match between “shiny issued patent” and “come on, anybody would’ve done that”
I deal with these legal “rulers” in the next one a bit more, but yeah, the same “reasonable” guy keeps popping up all over the Law.
Who is this “Reasonable” fellow, and why does he get the final say?
Sounds like a bit of an asshole. Probably some puritan preacher
Do you want unreasonable people having the final say?
I mean we already let Judges have the final say….
I was hoping for my standard to be applied.
So, yes.
The saying we used to have in Law School was “The reasonable person isn’t.”
a person? yeah, we knew that.
damn cliffhangers
Well, it’s better than falling.
That’s a big sack of flour to unload.
Nobody had to unload it; it went to the bottom of the harbor.
Fishies did.
Although reading about the case I am not sure who was guilty…
My shuttered Romanian friend, generally “guilty” = criminal matter; “liable” = civil matter
Not 100%, but in legal parlance, that’s how it goes.
Fine. Who was liable? The company who owned the barge or the company who owned the tug?
A bunch of people had to pay, Pie, and it’s parsed out in the opinion and a quick type would probably give you the exact split. Since multiple barges sustained damage, and varying parties were involved, including lessees, cargoholders, workers, it would be a bit much to spell out in a comment.
well that is anticlimactic
Legal decisions are usually anti-climactic. You get this interesting story set out, sometimes very well, by the judge, then instead of moving on to the denouement, you side step into analysis of legal principles, quotes from precedents, application of legal tests and rules (which to a lay person look almost always look like lists of every possible factor that could relate to the decision, with no actual rule or weighting (to a lawyer they look the same, but since we get paid to fudge that weighting we don’t see this as a flaw)), then finally you get to the decision (ok, the decision was literally the first thing in the story, but it gets restated at the end), The thing is published decisions come from courts of appeals, so the decision is almost never Party X is bad and must give Party Y $1,000.000. It is usually, the appeal is granted/denied because (insert esoteric sounding rule here).
more sobering and boring for me: a judgment doesn’t ensure recovery
a judgment doesn’t ensure recovery
Tangentially related is my semi-formed opinion that limited liability is not libertarian. I’ll have to think more about it and write an article.
I am also of two minds on limited liability, although i can see some utilitarian advantages … though I am not utilitarian…
Tangentially related is my semi-formed opinion that limited liability is not libertarian. I’ll have to think more about it and write an article.
I’m curious, as i don’t know how any liability issues couldn’t be resolved by saying: You’re lending money to a LLC, and as such may not get money back from the owners of the corporation but only from the corporation itself. You know the risks etc.
Hey, at least you have come to that feeling while working in IP law. I have come to that feeling, and even worse, a belief that limited liability for active participants produces injustice, while working in small business and real estate law. I console myself with the fact that our tort system is a mess and itself produces unjust judgments and that therefore the ability to limit liability is necessary, but it ends up feeling like two wrongs not making a right.
You’re lending money to a LLC, and as such may not get money back from the owners of the corporation but only from the corporation itself. You know the risks etc. – for me that is not the problem. The problem is an LLC does some damage and you cannot sue the owners if the LLC has no capital… Something frequent in Romania with all sorts of shady LLCs. Then again if you do business with an LLC you can assume you may not get paid.
os
That is contract liability, and in that area I have no issue with limited liability, a lender is free to demand a personal guarantee. (see the voluntary part really matters) But what about the kids of the poor schlub who gets asphyxiated by the cracked heat exchanger you knew about but tried to fix with duct tape because it cost too much to replace?
poor schlub who gets asphyxiated by the cracked heat exchanger you knew about but tried to fix with duct tape because it cost too much to replace?
Ahhh i see. That makes more sense.
limited liability for active participants produces injustice
Indeed it would, if it worked that way. Good thing it doesn’t. Limited liability is extended to owners in their capacity as (passive) owners. It is not extended to officers, directors, employees or others who actually participate in the liability event.
But what about the kids of the poor schlub who gets asphyxiated by the cracked heat exchanger you knew about but tried to fix with duct tape because it cost too much to replace
Vicarious liability – the dolt who botched the repair is personally liable, and so is his employer. The employer’s (passive) owners – no.
RC Dean, You work in a world of large well funded companies. I work in a world where the employer in question probably has assets of 2-3 mortgaged rental properties. An LLC does not shield you from the liabilities of your personal actions, but it shields you from vicarious liability quite effectively. The schlub in my example will end up with a judgment against the LLC, probably not the owners of the LLC absent some foolishness on their part.
Jarflax – small LLC owners who are also operators can theoretically be held personally liable, depending on what they knew about/did as operators. Limited liability for investors does not displace personal liability for actions a person actually took.
So, if the owner/operator knew of the crap repair and did nothing, he can be held personally liable. Theoretically. If he didn’t, then no.
The issue in tort cases is always – as between the parties, who should bear the loss? Somebody will – it doesn’t go away if the plaintiff wins, it is merely shifted to the defendant. Should a passive investor bear the loss for something they knew nothing about, and did nothing to cause (beyond investing, of course)? That seems contrary to principles of personal responsibility, which generally require some active contribution to the liability event.
So, you’ve got an injured party who, through no fault of their own, suffers a loss, and an investor, who has no fault in causing the loss. At this point, the common law said that the loss lays where it fell; we need something more than nothing to allocate a loss to a party who is not responsible for it. This assumes that funding a business, without more, does not create responsibility for what it does.
RC Dean
“Indeed it would, if it worked that way. Good thing it doesn’t. Limited liability is extended to owners in their capacity as (passive) owners. It is not extended to officers, directors, employees or others who actually participate in the liability event.”
Enron disabused me of that notion. Perfect example where after the D&O cover was exhausted those folks’ second and third homes and car collections should have gone on block. Didn’t happen.
Only small business owners get to play here.
Carroll Towing was liable for the crash damages to Anna C., and not for the sinking damages, because the Anna C’s bargeman was absent for almost 22 hours, including during daylight hours “without excuse” and he lied at trial about it; Hand made specific note of it in the opinion.
thanks that clears it
Really interesting and a particularly thorny question. At it’s heart it seems is that of Risk, and how much we can make other people liable for risks that exist in everything we do.
I could be misunderstanding this completely, so let me know. But way to think about it is that life caries a certain amount of “Background” risk, or a “Baseline” level of risk. You can’t get away from it, and so trying to sue over something that is a background risk is somewhat silly.
To take it to an extreme, if a Meteorite crashed into the barge rather than The Carol it would clearly be a risk that really cant be mitigated against. I Guess thats why “Acts of God” exemptions are staples of contracts. The question is then, if i hire someone, I’m doing so in part because they have better experience to mitigate risks that i might not have, and as such might have a higher standard of mitigation.
I’ll have to chew on this one some more.
leon – I believe you have cut right to the heart of the matter. This is the setup for the real guts of the discussion, which is queued up for next week.
background risk
Maybe the JDs have something to opine in this area. My way of thinking agrees with this, but there’s still an invisible line, big dog / little dog flavor to what ordinary care, foreseeability, and the reasonably prudent opinion.
A normalizing experience of my early childhood was reading a business law text Dad had ordered from Cornell. The kindergarten law I took away was people expect to be able to walk across a lawn, so, invited or not, you’re liable if someone breaks a leg in your yard: that might be arbitrary and not agreed by every property owner, but it’s the standard you’ll be held to. The other notion was attractive nuisance: kid falls off a ladder you left in your yard, you’re on the hook for that as well; if the ladder was standing up against something, you might as well staple your nuts to the check.
To me, the lines could have been drawn more or less conservatively . . . it’s arbitrary but useful.
hmmm. I have gut reactions to that of “Don’t want your legs blown off by my land mines, don’t walk on my property”. But i can see that if you don’t have a good fence around your lawn, how that could be perceived as a bit careless.
That’s where the Duty and Breach come into it. Did you have some implied responsibility? Did you fail to live up to that responsibility?
Grandma’s hip gives out in the produce aisle from osteoporosis, store isn’t liable. They haven’t failed in any implied responsibility.
Grandma slips in a puddle that hasn’t been cleaned up, store is liable. They were negligent in their duty to keep the walkways in the produce aisle passable.
The head scratching outcomes most often happen when there’s negligence on both parties’ part.
Which was the case in Carroll Towing (and life, usually).
It was a Saturday. Well, the days are rolling together for me too while on house arrest.
Saturday is the one you are most drunkest.
That certainly applies to me…
Apologies, Mexi. I meant to go back and check that and forgot to. Thank you.
Nah. I am serious about the days rolling together. Its like groundhog day.
I agree wholeheartedly. Even the kids are rubbing their eyes, like, “Oh, it’s Tuesday? Huh. Wow, I thought it was Sunday.”
Who died and made you Father Time?
Grandfather time?
Could i as for a Favor? could you make today Friday?
I can’t make days disappear, what do I look like, the pope?
No idea… do you shit in the woods or do you wear a big hat?
So that was YOU following me around? Good to know.
At least I’ve got my work calendar to keep me straight.
Suthen – saw your post on the last thread about your meds. Your doctor being out of the country should not be a break in the chain – he should have somebody covering his practice for situations like this. Ask who is covering his practice.
If nobody is, well, I’m not sure what you can do. But if he left the country without getting coverage for his patients, you should fire his ass.
I just got off of the phone asking about it. Actually the guy did set it all up before he left.. He sent the prescription to the pharmacy. The pharmacy got in touch with insurance company and they said it was the annual bean counting time, so pharmacy faxed a n authorization request to the doc. Doc’s office sent off to the insurance but they say they lost it so they all did it again…..round and round. I think I described that cluster F correctly.
Doc is a super good physician. I went through about 5 rheumatologists before I found him and he has done wonders for me. I cant be mad at the insurance company, they didnt create the coronapocalypse and when I got dog mauled they paid out an astronomical sum for my care. They did not hesitate or challenge it. They came through for me.
There is just no one to be mad at. No negligence, no malice. It is just an absurdly overly complex system. Besides that, the doc’s office said if I have any symptoms return to come down and they will supply me with a sample to tide me over.
I will be alright, no symptoms yet.
Nobody to fire. Nobody to curse or throw darts at and I have the safety net of the samples. I didnt get one yet because I have no symptoms and someone else is likely having the same problem but is having symptoms. I will leave it for them until I start getting in trouble myself.
No negligence, no malice. It is just an absurdly overly complex system.
With one player (the insurance company) incentivized to delay and deny.
I would agree that Estate Law is largely a subset of Contract law. I would dispute the idea that Contract is a subset of Tort, and I oppose the efforts to bring that, or the flip side of that (ie. treating Tort law as cost/risk shifting) to pass. Tort is concerned with behavior regulation. Ideally Contract is not. I see the law as more or less a hierarchy of rules ranked according to the amount of force appropriate to implement, and inversely proportional to the area in which it can operate..
Criminal law is about punishment and deterrence of behavior that crosses bright lines of good and evil. Ideally it should only concern itself with a very limited area (direct violations of the NAP), but within its proper sphere it should bring the full power of the State.
Tort law is about deterrence of behavior that inflicts harm on innocent parties, and redress of that harm. it concerns a much broader area of action in which one person’s acts impact another, but the use of State force in this sphere should be minimal, restricted to that needed to bring the parties into court and mechanisms for collecting judgments.
Contract law should have an unlimited area of action, anything agreed to by voluntary participants. There is not really a question of deterrence here, merely enforcement of the terms of the contract, and even the methods of enforcement are valid subjects for contract, so the State’s role here is limited to solving disputes IFF the parties have agreed either explicitly, or implicitly by failing to specify a non-governmental arbiter, to such intervention.
I think the movement away from this model, which I think represents the traditional common law view, has been a movement toward tyranny and away from liberty/justice.
Contract law should have an unlimited area of action, anything agreed to by voluntary participants
I do think it’s interesting to think of cases where you couldn’t persue a breach of contract. Obvious cases (IMO) would be you couldn’t sue a Hitman for failure to complete a contract. But are there other, less obvious cases?
contracts for illegal acts are null and void
Lies. They just have extrajudicial enforcement mechanisms.
Are you able to sell yourself into slavery?
not per 13A
People do on a regular basis…..every voting day.
Which raises, for me at least, the question of ‘where do you come down on the “principled non-voter” issue. Thoughts?
Its still a vote. Not eating your spinach is still a vote.
just like sex, can’t sell but can give for free.
In my wildest dreams I can give it for free.
You can, but you can still break the contract. The courts couldn’t force you to do work, at most they can charge you for damages for violating the contract, and you are probably judgement proof anyway. At most a bankruptcy away.
Jar – what did you think reading “Death of Contract?” I presume we all had to read it ‘cuz ABA. I would like to read it now in retrospect and see how I feel about it. I had no context as a law student (or too little to matter, anyway).
What do you think of quantum meruit/unjust enrichment in contract law? And what about promissory estoppel? Just curious.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but in the broadest sense, I see contracts as a cultural decision about which promises will be legally enforceable and which ones won’t. I’m not sure how different that is than decisions about which acts are tortious and which ones aren’t.
My sense is that you have “Contracts” defined in such a way that it includes only the things that work in the way you think of Contracts – and I don’t take that as a shot at you. If contracts are strictly commercial vehicles, you and I probably feel the same way about them and the common law, I suspect.
I believe we did read Death of Contract, but I am ashamed to admit I don’t recall it at all. I am not necessarily saying there are no similarities between Tort and Contract (and even Criminal) law. I am really just being an old curmudgeon and objecting to the trend toward borrowing concepts between them, because the distinctions are important (basically voluntary participation is the core of Contract law, and voluntary participation is traditionally a bar to Tort recovery). I’m really arguing tangentially to you, because something you didn’t touch on at all, and which I doubt you support at all, namely using tort law to shift burdens and risks to “those who can best bear them” infuriates me.
as to the quasi contract ideas. I am not sure how to handle them. They don’t really belong in law, because they mostly did not originate in law, they originated in equity. My conservative side says bring back courts of equity, but that is not very libertarian.
OMG. I suspect you and I could spend a LOT of time talking legal history and the writs. I’m a HUGE legal history nerd, at least in terms of the origins of causes of action, and especially on the subjects of equitable and legal remedies. The merger of Law and Equity may have been necessary (those competing systems did complement each other quite well in England, though) for the US, but the downside is that most lawyers don’t care and don’t understand the differences in powers and remedies and the “why” of all of that.
That would have been more true years ago, now I barely remember any cases by name, forget the holdings and facts. It is a downside to transactional work, I’m hardly doing ‘law’ at all, but yeah i love the history of these things. Common law is probably the purest example of emergent order being applied to governance and is the root of liberty and libertarianism IMHO. So of course we are discarding it…
*Nods sadly*
wah-wah-waaaaaaaahhh
/sad trombone plays sadly
Common law is probably the purest example of emergent order being applied to governance and is the root of liberty and libertarianism IMHO.
I agree, even though it is also “rule by judges”. Its saving grace is largely that a judge can only rule over the parties in front of him, and not every subject of the government.
Tell that to the recent crop.
As noted, we don’t play by common law rules any more. Not really.
Although the festival of unilateral decrees with national scope by trial court judges with very limited jurisdiction has gotten some pushback from a couple of the Supremes. I note also that the 9th Circuits last foray into governing (revoking an immigration executive order) was limited to the 9th Circuit.
+1 Paper Chase
He was a reedier version of Houseman, with a Maine brahmin accent. An amazing legal mind and a good man.
*snuffles*
No pay stub in the post.
I’m not getting paid this week.
*note – I have plenty in savings, I’ll be fine.
Sorry about that but… pay stub? post? week? weird
‘post’ for alliterative effect with ‘pay’.
I’m actually paid every other week, but this was supposed to be a pay week.
A pay stub is the codument that tells you how much you’re supposed to get and how much the government stole when the employer does a direct deposit instead of sending a check.
check?
Have you never been paid? Poor man.
I just don’t get the various concepts. When the general pay day comes I look in my online banking to see the money came in.
A check is a negotiable instrument, it represents a promise by the issuing bank to pay a given amount to the listed recipient from the accounts of the emtity who wrote the check. You can take it to a bank and either get alternative negotiable instruments (cash) or desposit it into your own account. It is what is given to cover salary or wages when direct deposit has not been agreed upon.
Whether or not direct deposit is set up, the employer will issue a document with information about your compensation and witholdings for that pay period. If you are issued a check, it will be attached to the check, and is torn off before processing the check, leaving a ‘stub’, hense, pay stub. If direct deposit has been arranged, the employer simply sends a stub sans check to the employee.
simply sends a stub – physically? I can ask for something like that at HR if I need it but it is not issued all the time…
yes, physically.
For me it arrives in the mail tuesday before payday.
I get the ‘stub’ electronically.
*defensively hugs giant pile of accumulated pay stubs*
We never had the concept of getting a check. In general pay moved from cash to direct bank transfer. There was never, as I recall, a check phase. But then again I started working after bank transfer was the norm.
Ozy, excellent work.
I wanted to tell you that since Mr. Mojeaux got sent home with pay last week (and is now working from home; I suspect he will be forever working from home now), I set him to proofreading Anthrax. He’s a little (a lot) miffed at the gummint now. He didn’t realize how crooked it all was.
LOL! Saving souls and making converts one at a time, Miss Mojo!
He was a political blank slate when I got my hands on him, and have converted him to the Gospel of Pot and Prostitutes.
He’s not a vet, but has always held a deep (for him) opinion that vets should have first pick of everything the government hands out, the finest there is. I am of the opinion that I would ALMOST be okay with how little soldiers get paid IF they got top-notch healthcare for the rest of their lives and didn’t end up homeless. But that topic is one of his little pet interests.
Speaking of homeless vets.
If I had fuck-you money I would fund this in perpetuity.
The stats on veterans who are homeless are not good, no matter whose you use.
I can totally see how the service can break a man.
Last night I watched a documentary on the invasion of Okinawa and it was incredibly difficult to watch.
I didn’t realize that General Buckner was also KIA there.
Watch “The Pacific.” And read E.B. Sledge’s incomparable war memoir, “With the Old Breed at Okinawa and Pelelieu.” I’ve walked Shuri castle and been to a lot of the battle sites on Oki. It’s hard to get your head around it.
Which documentary?
The Pacific War in Color.
I can only get through about one episode a week.
Seen that. Will probably rewatch at some point.
Yeah, it can be tough.
Very informative Ozzy. I look forward to part 2.
Thanks, Mexi. I really enjoy your “beer reviews” even though I’m not much of a drinker. I love the format and what you manage to sneak in there.
Tonio’s ongoing Pistol Selection Decision (paging Not Adahn ) – Looks like my best option is CZ 75B 9mm 4.6″ Pistol, Black. This is driven by what is available at the moment. I know that the 75B is an older model and that newer models such as the CZ 75 SP-0
newer models such as the CZ 75 SP-01 (not currently available) have better features. Realize this is not a carry-friendly gun but that can come later. Any thoughts?
The SP-01 has a forward rail and slight frame differences. Mine is a single action no-decocker model, which recent ones appear to be also. That’s all that’s materially different from a regular full-size CZ-75
They make a polymer version of the SP-01 called the Shadow, if I am not mistaken. The SP-01 is an absolute beast of a pistol but is definitely worth the hype it gets.
Not the Shadow. SP-01 Phantom Same thing with a polymer frame, so its quite a bit lighter.
The P-09 is basically the same full-sized pistol with a polymer frame.
Except beaten with the same ugly stick as Glock and HK.
They’re all the CZ-75 family. It’ll be nice.
^^ Agreed
Nice. Is it at your local gun shoppe or will you have to wait for delivery?
Online with delivery to LGS.
Is the B model the decocker only (not phrasing)? They aren’t all necessarily “old” models since people like the original lines.
B is the post-80s-whenever model. It includes a firing pin block.
Hmm, so no available Omega trigger? I’ll pass.
Ceska Zbrojovka’s naming conventions are only slightly less annoying than their habit of (mis) marking their guns.
Most (but not all) decocker models have a “D” in their name. Unless the decocker is standard on the model (such as the P-01)
Except the SP-01 model with a decocker is the “Sp-01 Tactical”
Their naming convention while annoying, is still dwarfed by finding a holster that fits their guns. I found too few back when I owned a CZ.
I’ve not tried to find one for conceald carry, though they seemed to be plentiful for the P-10C.
I was extremely surprised how hard it was finding a left-handed holster for my Beretta. I finally got one I’m happy with from Ghost.
P-06 was not supported well at all, unless you went custom. I gave up, sold it to another Airman and bought an XD.
That surprises me with the Beretta, although there are multiple frames for that. 92FS vs. M-9 vs. M9-A1. The difference between the two being round trigger guard, “hooked” trigger guard, and hooked trigger guard + rail. I’m pretty sure they make a 92FS with a rail too…
No one needs 75 CZs
The Czechs would disagree.
/runs away giggling
What you did there…
I have the P-07 and have shot the 75 – absolutely delightful pistol to shoot. It is big and heavy so probably not a concealed-carry piece but great for everything else.
Here’s Hickok 45 working one out better than I’ll ever shoot.
I do carry a CZ-75 Compact (which is hardly smaller than the full-size version). It IS pretty heavy, but I like the 14+1 capacity and smooth shooting… I’m not a fan of the snappy compact guns I’ve shot so far.
The only thing wrong with the 75B is that it doesn’t have a decocker, which means you’ll need to manually lower the hammer if you’re going to going to carry/stage it that way. This isn’t really a problem, you just have to be really, really careful doing it.
Classic Firearms just sent an ad out about all their CZ75 models they currently have, but their prices seem awfully high.
And not to make your decision any more difficult, but Arms Unlimited is running a legit sale with Beretta 92 Inox for $539.
https://www.armsunlimited.com/Beretta-92FS-Inox-Italian-9mm-Pistol-p/js92f520mle.htm
Also in the compact version
https://www.armsunlimited.com/Beretta-92FS-Type-M9A1-Compact-Inox-9mm-Pistol-p/j90c9f22.htm
Thanks again, everyone, for all the advice.
If someone has the normal flu and goes into work, are they violating the NAP? Does the government have the right to force them into quarantine?
That is the question I take on in the next part, Broche. I apologize for the build up and having it in two pieces, but the need to provide a framework for that analysis merited this initial cut on it.
That for me is the ultimate question and the analysis of that is the next one. I’m happy to offer my own more literary cut on that question that I wrote and posted on my website yesterday. I don’t think TPTB will mind and it may help the discussion without ruining the next article.
For your consideration: https://www.theabjectlesson.com/2020/03/30/the-essential-way-to-destroy-peoples-rights/
The title might be a bit of a giveaway.
I don’t get it?
/sarc
Thanks for the link and great read !
Tips ?
Just the tips?
is recklessly riding a bike the same as recklessly driving a truck?
Is there actual evidence that the corona virus is a truck? Models that already don’t appear to match up with reality based on bad data? Does someone with the flu know what type they have and how likely it is to kill someone else? There are years where tens of thousands die from the flu here in the states. So, the whole attempt to assess risk seems out of whack to me to start with.
Well there is sufficient evidence for now to warrant at least some extra care and it is clearly worse than the flu. But this has nothing to do with the argument “the flu”. This is not the flu. When data comes in, it may not prove to be much more than the flu. In the meantime it is a novel disease.
So every time there is a novel disease, it’s warranted to shut down large swathes of the economy and mass violate basic civil rights until the data comes in? Is that your argument? Because even then, we’ve had novel diseases that were threats that didn’t result in this sort of reaction.
I don’t see much argument that this is significantly worse than the flu. I see bad models and a bunch of hacks like Fauci who get to have their moment in the spotlight spreading hysteria.
That is not my argument. I am saying this is not the flue and some extra care is needed for a novel disease that is highly contagious and with potential high mortality, which does not come that often. The argument is not about closing down the economy, but when you have this disease, and know you have it, can you be compelled to quarantine.
I don’t see much argument that this is significantly worse than the flu. – higher mortality rate as of the existing data, even assuming significant spread over known cases.
The only way you can calculate the mortality rate is to know how many people have been tested – a number that is NEVER reported.
If important data is being withheld, I’m not withholding doubt.
Well there is sufficient evidence for now to warrant at least some extra care and it is clearly worse than the flu.
Is it, though? So far there are not excess deaths being recorded over a typical flu season.
then again many countries imposed many restrictions. Which halted the spread of both the virus and the regular flu season.
As I keep saying we do not have clear information. What we do indicates a likelihood it ca be quite worse.
Do you have something to support that assertion? Honestly asking. I would like to see evidence to support such a claim. And then I would like to know how we determine that the “lockdowns” worked, as opposed to the huge swath of confounding factors/variables like individual behavior that occurred irrespective of govt diktat.
We have to watch Sweden and Belarus. What happens there will give us the answer.
I had a coworker who was “apparently” (his words) Belorussian.
He was a Soviet who came over for grad school and never went back.
He came over in 1988, to have the quote make more sense.
Do you have something to support that assertion? – what exactly could I have a window in an alternate reality? I think it is generally a fact that fewer crowded places reduces the spread of contagion…
It can get weird when the country you were born in becomes something else.
I don’t recognize this country anymore either.
Pie – maybe my question wasn’t clear, but you have asserted some things that I do not know to be true.
To be clear, I am questioning the evidence to support that the govt’s issued orders somehow magically stopped the virus. Even if I assumed what you do, you’re still engaging in reification – where you’re confusing the map for the actual dirt. The govt issued orders – okay. So what? The govt issues orders all day every day. It’s the behavior of the people in following the orders that matters, though, isn’t it?
And I’m not asking for an alternate/counter-factual reality – I’m asking for proof of the reality that you’re asserting exists. Let me just throw one wrench more into your assertion: what if some of govt’s actions led to more people being in close quarters and being infected? For example, the panic buying that led to mobs of people in close proximity in stores? Or the “testing” that had to be done in airports that led to my daughter being stuck in a room in Toronto with 150 other people who were waiting on their screening results? There are tons of examples like this and you’ve really shortcut all of it and just assumed that govt said something and that worked. QED. I have to disagree and ask for evidence to support such a bold and strong claim.
I did not say government magically reduced contagion. But fewer people gathering in crowds most likely did. Just because government bad does not mean such restrictions do not have effect. This does not mean restrictions are waranted, but they do have an effect. Fewer people in crowded subways, halls etc will lead to less contagion. Unless disease travels magically.
Stoping flights and closing borders, whatever you think of the measures, will reduce passing the disease around.
+ vodka sauna
Some people crowded more than usual in airports, but many more never went to the airport in the first place. At least here there were not massive crowds in stores, and most stores anyway implemented limits to the number of people going in. I think that some crowding due to restrictions enhanced risk, but overall the restrictions reduced time spend in crowds. There were better ways to do it, sure.
So let me make a less strong assertion the restrictions rather more likely than not reduced contagion.
Pie, even the statists are only claiming that they’re flattening the curve OVER TIME, not that they are going to reduce overall infection.
Invisible we are not talking overall infection. We are talking february march 2020
I am trying to figure out how CV is different from H1N1.
I think the results are going to look about the same.
Final estimate for H1N1 was about 50MM Americans infected.
There are years where tens of thousands die from the flu here in the states.
That would be every year.
I don’t see much argument that this is significantly worse than the flu. – higher mortality rate as of the existing data, even assuming significant spread over known cases.
I do. The actual mortality rate is how many people who actually get it, and die from it. The known mortality rate is how many people who test positive for it, die from it. There is always a gap between actual mortality and known mortality. With a new disease, that gap is always, always overstated at the beginning, generally by at least one order of magnitude. This is because testing is always very limited initially for new diseases, and always goes to very serious suspected cases first, gradually broadening out as testing capacity comes online. Our testing capacity for the CCP Virus is expanding rapidly, but is still pretty limited.
Some wallahs at the Oxford Institute of Evidence-Based Medicine looked at the historical record on new infections, compared it to the CCP Virus, and attempted to correct for the inevitable early overstatement of mortality. They came up with a mortality rate equal to or perhaps slightly higher than the flu.
So about equivalent to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
From what I remember, there was a lot of talk and we changed absolutely nothing about our lives.
Well, we were already dealing with a recession.
But did they attempt to correct for TDS?
Pie, this is the “L” in Hand’s formulation (the injury). Of course a runaway truck (or recklessly driven one) has a potentially higher harm, but even that isn’t absolute. A truck going 10 kph into a crowd isn’t as dangerous as a car doing 100 kph, for example. And as mentioned below, the CV may or may not be a truck at all.
To bring it back to Hand’s formulation, there is also the question of what knowledge we can/will impute to someone with the CV. And given that people are contagious for some time while asymptomatic, how will we run that to ground?
If you dont know you have the disease and are asymptomatic contagious no one would argue you are liable.
No one? But what if you’ve violated some social distancing order AND later learn you’re infected?
Well as far as i remembered this though experiment began with someone who has the disease and knows it. This is at least what i started from.
They rightly get dirty looks and hopefully told to go home by the boss. I’ve outgrown the bs of “gutting out” an illness and infecting other people in the process. Work at home or use sick-time.
As someone over 60 with asthma, a coworker coming into the office with influenza (not just any old respiratory illness) is definitely a threat to my well-being (and potentially life). I abhor people that come to work sick.
That’s great and all for office workers. There are people in various jobs who don’t get the luxury of having someone cover down for them.
As do I, kinnath. But here’s the big question: do you think you should be able to call the cops on them and have them thrown in the pokey for it?
That’s the crucial issue.
What do cops have to do with this. The question is whether or not my next of kin can find the bastard and run a sword through him/her while I am tied to a respirator.
When my rent’s on the line, I’m coming in sick.
This is always how it went for me, retail or office, if I was hourly:
“You’re sick, aren’t you? You look terrible.”
“Yep, and thanks.”
“You should go home.”
“Can’t. Need the money.”
[Pregnant pause while I wait for boss to offer to cover my salary so I can go home.]
“Oh. Okay.”
Don’t blame the poor schlub trying to survive.
poor schlub trying to survive
All day every day. The nail you ran over because the roofers are just slinging stuff as fast as possible, the pallet you ran into when it fell off the sloppy pile of crap some hobo has piled into the back of his truck on the way to the salvage yard, the car that slid into you because they’re running slicks (I’ve had a lot of car issues, haven’t I ?!?).
If it doesn’t kill me, I count it overhead and just keep on trucking.
Exactly right, Mo.
‘You’re Bacon Me Crazy’
That is a new Hallmark romance movie just advertised. A movie about bacon. And romance.
I guess there are just so many ways you can spin the Cinderella story. They must be running out of ideas.
Linky?
Oh, I dunno. I just overheard it and wife was laughing about it.
I thought a crowd that always makes jokes about bacon would think it is funny.
There was (is?) a trend going around Romancelandia that historical romances, primarily or completely Regency period, would come with trendy, contemporary titles like “Ten Things I Love About the Earl” (I don’t know if that’s real) or contemporary song snippets. I avoid those like the plague because generally they’re full of contemporary sensibilities, mores, and speech and I hate the anachronisms.
So the title might be a gimmick hiding a really good story. Hokey titles are meant to catch the eye and ear, and it was obviously successful.
*Starts to write snarky comment about Romancelandia, looks at current reading list of schlocky MilSciFi, shuts up.
Wise, wise man.
It could be worse. You should see the military romance genre.
You reveilled?
@Mojeaux – OT, but I saw your post about your daughter/trade school (congratulations BTW). Have you checked-out Walmarts employee online education programs – very inexpensive and may be a nice augmentation? My son just (today) accepted a Summer jobs with them and I was reviewing benefits and thought of you.
https://walmart.guildeducation.com/partner?auth_redirect=true
Thank you!
I know XX has looked into Walmart’s college tuition reimbursement program, but I don’t know if she’s seen this. I’ll send it to her.
It’s on Friday at 9pm eastern. Don’t ask how I know.
Last time I was at my mom there was one about two people who were kind of opposites who inherit a bakery together and they cannot sell it cause it is a historic building and such reopen the bakery together. It was very hallmarky. Although in Romania the chanel is now called Diva, it used to be Hallmark
No country can escape the scourge!
A movie about bacon.
I haven’t got a problem with this. Some of the best sex I’ve ever had has happened after a bacon-forward meal. Every woman I’ve ever dated loved bacon. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I think the writers of this particular Hallmark romance are geniuses.
GENIUSES, I SAY ! ! !
Saturated fat is bad so have less sex to live longer
And here I thought you spoke excellent English. That entire sentence makes no sense at all.
I still giggle twice a day imagining Jesus trying to hit a curve ball
Scout 1: That Hey-soos… *spits tobacco, puts hand on backstop* Some kinda swing…
Scout 2: Reminds me of Strawberry’s swing. Came up outta the DR; they say he can handle the heat…
Scout 1: But can he see the deuce? Can he handle a big league change-up?
Scout 2: Jesus? Jesus knows the curve is comin’ before the catcher does…
Saturated fat + heat = unsaturated fat
You got a source for that because I don’t think so…
Saturated fat + heat = tasty. Citation not needed.
Saturated means that all available bonds on the chain are bonded with hydrogen. Since all of the chains have a hydrogen skin they dont stick to each other, thus liquid.
Heat drives off some of those hydrogen atoms so…unsaturated.
It has been more than 30 years since I had organic but I do remember that. the debate over it was just getting cranked up and Dr. Keller (Killer Keller) would get red-faced mad about it. She complained that half of the people pushing the saturated fat scare would get off of their soap boxes and go have a shrimp lunch.
Some of the best sex I’ve ever had has happened after a bacon-forward meal.
Uffda. Just spring for some store bought lube you bumpkin!
The apple pie with bacon lattice that I made was particularly effective.
^This woman GETS IT. (A lot, I’d wager . . . 😉 )
I don’t know why if her husband is so chatty she just doesnt make him sit under the desk. Or do the temple garments get in the way for that sort of thing?
I will sign autographs at 3:30 on … wtf day is it? *wanders off to ponder the meaning of time
Some of the same debates going on in the UK. Nice to see they haven’t all lost their minds.
Yeah, but did you read the nut punch in the last sentence?
B-B-But the people are asking for the boot on their face! We HAD to give it to them.
Actually the water is so poisonous that nothing can live in it. It is a trash dump and full of garbage and poison. Because the water is so clear people go swimming in it at great peril. That’s why they dye it black. To keep dumbasses alive. I dont approve.
Lord Sumption continued: “The tradition of policing in this country is that policemen are citizens in uniform, they are not members of a disciplined hierarchy operating just at the government’s command.”
BRO. do you even “Stand Down Civilian?”
Since he is Lord Sumpton, I don’t think he is accustomed to the jackboot.
“Sumption must be done! . . . dammit, Lord Sumption, put your pants back on!”
I heard the right thinking brit internet lost its mind over the Toby Young Article I linked in the … links.
Fredo has the big CV.
Isn’t the extent of his Curriculum Vitae pretty much “Do you know who my father is?”
Another member of the “ruling class” who are there only because of who their parents are rather than any merit.
A corpse, last time I checked.
You can read the disappointment in the voice of the doctor and of the reporter.
https://news.yahoo.com/study-shows-middle-age-covid-19-mortality-risk-100840947.html
You mean it’s not going to get rid of Fredo?
.66 is still really high though. Take heart!
*draws flint sacrificial knife*
Whose?
How much do you feel like working? I have a long list at this point.
Yeah, another way that last could be written
Also, calling it the Wuhan virus is racist.
I wonder how many of these pundits suffer from the French disease?
Communism? A lot.
Technically, isn’t Communism the German Disease?
Also, calling it the Wuhan virus is racist.
Which is really the most dangerous part of the it.
Thankfully the Chicom propaganda arm is helping to avoid it!
Wu-han Flu aint nuthin’ to fuck with!
“But have no fear, we will continue to write front-page headlines about every such death for the foreseeable future.”
Ozy, you da man. I love your contributions.
Thank you very much, Q. That’s kind of you. I enjoy your contributions as well – even the non-breastage ones. 😉
hA bigger/more interesting question ous whether the government can force us, or indeed, if we have a duty to quarantine ourselves if we can reasonably assume we are not sick…
That’s what I tackle in the next one, Lack. In my mind, I had to set up a framework for “judging” whether someone has violated their “duty” (the NAP, what have you) and Carroll Towing suggested itself. I apologize for having to break it up, but I hope that next week will deliver.
Although, since it’s already written and I know the punchline, I’m dying to fast forward to see how people react to the “rest… of the story” as it were.
Maybe I misread it or you plan to do both, I thought you were saying some who knew they were infected.
also, onward excuse tips, my phone hats me.
*now just intentionally leaving it as is*
I can’t stop laughing, and I feel horrible about it. Decency tells me that it is the height of bad manners to laugh at the woes of someone as intellectually challenged as this person, but i just can’t help myself.
Maybe I could stop laughing if she had actually learned from her horrible experience. But nope!
I can’t figure out which part is bottom. Maybe that she was convinced that Trump was and is the devil AND still listened to his supposed words.
This reminds me of when I was about 5 years old and the AIDS crisis was just starting to hit its stride. I remember asking my Mom why people who had it didn’t just drink bleach since bleach kills germs. She told me that if people started doing that, they wouldn’t have a problem with the disease anymore.
I mean poisoning yourself to get at Trump…. That is some nose to face hatred.
It’s one thing that this woman is retarded, unless she deliberately murdered her husband. It’s much worse that this story is treated by the media and at least some part of the public as something that can be blamed on Trump. Together with the efforts to dismiss the chloroquine treatment for COVID-19 that’s both stupid and evil.
LOL. I also immediately thought that this gal poisoned her husband after reading this story. None of it makes any sense at all.
My favorite part is that she gave a “pro-science resistance” PAC. She needs to be the keynote speaker at the next “I ❤ Science” convention.
She absolutely murdered him.
Yeah, with my knowledge gleaned from watching all of the original Forensic Files several times, … pauses and pours libation to the spirit of Peter Thomas … this screams foul play.
Because she didn’t lie about the substance, proving foul play might be a little more difficult, but I expect she isn’t going to be getting the life insurance payout she was hoping for.
If she gave it to him, she’s guilty of manslaughter, at a minimum. She is deemed to have knowledge of the warning “not for human consumption” and gave it to him anyway. He is dead, whether from malice, recklessness or negligence doesn’t matter except of defining the level of murder/manslaughter and her punishment.
Hopefully they didn’t have children
And since this was by one of our resident Devil Dogs, here are some ladies in uniform.
http://archive.li/sEJof
#2 is heartbreakingly gorgeous.
The only problem with the WM’s in those pics is (as any of the other ex-Teufelshundes will tell you is that odds are they are just as interested in gals as you are Q.
I served back even before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and it was an open joke about how many WM’s were lesbians. Wasn’t much of a secret. Now the Air Force gals…..
The unclosed paren above is grating at the core of my being!
I dont know why but those links load a page but no photos. I just get frames with little question marks in them. It just started acting that way one day.
Maybe your wife paid for a Platinum Tier subscription to Glibs? The Platinum Tier includes a Q Filter.
*redacted*
I get the same behaviour with the built-in browser on my iPad. My default PC browser is Firefox, and the images load normally.
I see the format of the images is a new one…webp
Ugh. I am on a brand new iMac. I bought the damned thing because my 12 year old one was failing at reading new formats online. I figured 12 years old, no surprise. But this fucker is new and I am too lazy to figure out how to load a new format capability just to see T&A.
I’ve gotten the same thing on my iPad for weeks now, Suthen.
If you’re using Safari, it won’t work. Try Firefox (if you care).
We care about dem tittays and booties.
Its you and me, Q, I just called the recruiter.
I think they need a grandpa’s attention
OT I guess — Chris Cuomo’s been diagnosed with the Wubonic Plague:
https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1245011366211203073
Although mebbe drugs are gonna fall out of someone’s ass soon enough?
How many diseases has this man caught? Quarantine the son of a bitch.
Ah, searched for “Cuomo” before posting bu never thought to search on “Fredo.” My bad!
Some on the right have been pretty classy:
Others, have a harder time:
lol
Mayor finally closed the parks
which thrills me because he closed the golf courses two weeks ago which is total BS and I want everyone to be as miserable as I am.
An hour ago I drove past our park; we’re on the river, so it’s terribly popular, elbow to elbow normally. This morning there were only seven folk in the park; I met a police cruiser rolling by; they can see the folk in the park but said/did nothing about it. So I guess it’s like everything else: an unreasonable rule that is ignored to some reasonable threshold (no one cares if people walk in the park suitably separated SO LONG AS THEY AREN”T CARRYING A FOUR IRON). So in Memphis we have the latest version of driving 6MPH over the speed limit.
I got serious stink eye from a local cop today. I was out jogging and went through an intersection where I had the green light (but not the walk signal) just as a cop pulled up. I kept him from taking a right on red.
Luckily I was wearing my Secret White Male Power decoder ring and flashed it at him so he had to let me go without a beating, but you could tell it grated him.
This exact phenomenon relates to my question to Pie above (and in anticipation of all the people claiming when this isn’t very bad that it was our leaders’ fascism that saved us). If the orders aren’t being followed and people aren’t actually sheltering in place, how do you “know” that these orders are what stopped/slowed/ameliorated this version of the plague? If there are uncountable numbers of people who have had this, were asymptomatic, infected others, didn’t know, and then went on their way, how do you know that these orders did anything at all?
Because our TOP MEN told us they worked and that only by obeying them did we avoid complete disaster. Duh.
A year from now when we are getting into the real fun of Great Depression II we’ll know that the orders did ‘something’.
Remember when the O’ administration would pull unemployment numbers out of their ass and when challenged on them answered ‘Jobs saved or created’?
Consider the phrase ‘climate change’.
It is a favorite tactic of shitweasels – making unfalsifiable claims.
Are you actually on the Mighty Mississippi? I have fond memories of roaring around Meeman Shelby State Forest when I was at NAS Memphis.
When I was going to Memphis State, my wife and I knew a couple with a place on the Wolf river out near Shelby Farms. That was nice.
Absolutely.
I’m sure he mentions it, but GREAT patients also cause GREAT bedside manners. There is some element of nice people projecting their own niceness onto others that saves a lot of HORRIBLE bedside manners from being sued.
I think it’s great, this enthusiastic and optimistic projection, and if I ever get so much as a thimbleful of it I’m sure everyone will notice the difference.
ugh: meant for Mojo above
I think it’s unreasonable to expect people who are sick and in pain to be awesomely chipper. They shouldn’t be assholes (although I am sometimes if I’m in a great deal of pain), but expecting GREAT!PATIENTS
Fucking squirrels.
I think it’s unreasonable to expect people who are sick and in pain to be awesomely chipper. They shouldn’t be assholes (although I am sometimes if I’m in a great deal of pain), but expecting GREAT!PATIENTS to keep you from being sued because you’re a shit doctor or a shit human being is a non-starter.
yeah: we live about as far north on the Wolf Lagoon as possible, maybe a furlong as the crow flies from the actual river
We hike around Shelby Meeman all the time, and I still carry the same USGS sectional topo from over 30 years ago.
It’s purely pandemic theater. I bet that closing outlets like parks that people can use without getting close, actually encourages more clustering activity.
At our little small-town city park (nice one, though), they took down the basketball hoops and put yellow tape around all the exercise equipment (e.g. monkey bars, rings). Kids nicely climbed under the tape without breaking it to play on the equipment anyway.
Yesterday I asked the storekeeper about the shortened hours. He assured me that its the way to solve the problem. Then I asked doesn’t that encourage the same number of customers in a shorter time frame being closer together.
Then he told me it saves payroll ’cause won’t need anyone for the closed time. So, if the edict comes out from the authorities and all stores have to shorten their operating time it takes away any advantages to a store that might want to stay open later. Good for the big companies, may hurt a small mom and Pop. Actually makes more crowding likely.
Political theater. First create a problem, then pretend to solve it
I’m gonna start a separate spot about this because i have question for the lawyer types. Jarflax talking about common law generally strikes me as true, however I then have to remember that it was the courts that gave us Absolute and Qualified immunity. Which leads to my question: Why have the legislatures not kicked the courts in the balls over that? Is it merely because there is no political will to go against the FOP and the Prosecutors? or is there a deeper reason why legislatures haven’t dismantled QI?
When I am talking about common law as a root of liberty, I’m talking about the development of law from local custom upward as a counter balance for top down rule. It isn’t a magic bullet. Courts can certainly be tyrannical. That said, immunity of the sovereign goes back as far as their have been sovereigns. Qualified immunity is common law pushing back against a statute just as it should. Unfortunately in this case the statute is more favorable to liberty than the precedents which are based in the older more absolute view of the immunity. I guess at the end of the day all knives cut both ways.
there not their. At some point my typos begin to look like illiteracy.
I’m the last person to get worked up over spelling. Generally I find people who get worked up over grammar of casual conversations, to be the smallest and most closed minded people who have a chip on their shoulder to prove how smart they are.
But I might just be saying that to justify my torture of the English language.
leon – my more direct answer is that sovereign immunity survives because the people who interpret it benefit from it. It’s really that simple. Courts and judges see themselves in the same vein as cops do (to a lesser extent, but still…). A rule that immunizes them from even having to answer questions about their “official” acts has fertile ground for purchase among govt types, courts included. I have a rather old, lengthy draft of an article on sovereign immunity that I will someday get around to.
I guess my question is, why haven’t the legislatures recoiled at the abuses that the courts have allowed to go on? Qualified Immunity is an abomination. So is it just because legislatures aren’t willing to say “This shit is wrong and not tolerated” or is there a deeper legal reason why they won’t/can’t do that. I have a hard time believing that the legislature couldn’t strip all officials of qualified immunity, there is certainly no constitutional right to it.
why haven’t the legislatures recoiled at the abuses that the courts have allowed to go on
Because legislators are fine with armed enforcers of their edicts having nearly unlimited scope to enforce compliance with their edicts.
So it is just a matter of political will.
:begins foundation to abolish QI:
My take also. Judges, cops, bureaucrats, etc. are all on Team Ruler, and they look out for each other. Human nature.
Aaaaagh!
I fucking HATE cliffhangers!
(Great job, Ozy! I had to read it a couple times, but it was worth it)
Mea maxima culpa to everyone for “just the tip.” I wrote it mostly as a single piece and then chopped it after I looked at the word count. I didn’t want to inflict that kind of “length” on everyone at once.
/Oh, these euphemisms are so fun!
Just don’t slip it in twice.
*wild applause*
At least you write the whole thing and then split it. I need to make myself do that rather than continually finishing one section then getting distracted from writing the rest.
OT: I wish I could talk about some of the creepy covid stuff my company (and others) is in the process of enabling governments to do. I believe the main initiative was linked in the morning lynx, but we weren’t mentioned by name.
Turn off your GPS chip in your phones, people!
(not that turning the GPS off helps all that much, but it does reduce the granularity to which they can track you)
As soon as I saw the line “cellphone data shows which cities are social distancing and which ones aren’t” my blood ran cold. They wouldn’t dare, I thought. Then I realized, “Of course they would.”
They are not even hiding it.
Government Tracking How People Move Around in Coronavirus Pandemic
Okay, I’m going to tell a story that could get me into trouble, but here goes…
When I was involved in the GWOT, I was in training at a facility that had a SCIF. This was back in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. We had these crazy ass rules regarding cellphones. Not only did we have to leave them outside of the SCIF, we had to turn them off AND pull the batteries – which seemed like complete overkill.
One day I was musing on this and said something out loud to the effect of, “Why would they make us leave our phones outside AND turn them off AND remove the battery…” As soon as I verbalized it, the people I was in the SCIF with all stopped, and we all looked at each other, and were like, “Oh… OH, that’s not good.”
I have no idea how to do that.
iPhone 8 +
I am guessing if I turn it off someone will just turn it back on remotely. I am nearly at the point of wanting to ditch cell phones altogether. I never use it for much other than word games when I need to kill time, look up recipes and talk to my immediate family. I really dont need 99% of the crap on there.
A better solution would be for someone to come up with a hack that would scramble the info the gps tracker sends out to give out a fake location.
On mine, there’s a location services toggle. however, all of the starred running services can theoretically be (and are practically) used to track your location. Mobile data is the least granular, but wifi and Bluetooth can be used to track you down to a few inches if you’re on a public network.
How much location data is being sent back to the mothership without your knowledge? I dunno. Frankly, they don’t need active data pulls to figure out where you are.
I always keep my GPS off unless I’m using it to get somewhere . . .or for Tinder or Bumble.
Leave it at home when you go out.
Thats my MO.
I get yelled at often for not having my phone with me, but I refuse to remain tethered to that tracking device.
But at that point, why not just have a landline only?
cant send dick pics over a landline, duh
Well, unless you fax. Hello, 1990!
I have no idea how to do that.
Place the device containing the chip on a hard, flat surface. Grasp a hammer firmly by the handle. Check the alignment of the head – you want it facing directly forward. Eye protection is recommended.
Etc.
Dropping it off of a tall building/cliff also works.
I have a better idea.
And dry, no less! Impressive. I would have allowed an ice cube or cup of water.
https://youtu.be/s3poKUuvtyM
It’s cut off before he learns to fly, but still mostly relevant.
Yep. That’s not science fiction anymore. Closer to science faction.
Some company that makes internet connected thermometers (which of course are a thing) has made graphs showing the percentage of people with a fever compared with a typical one.
I accept the invasion of privacy from my phone because I need the damn thing for what I do.
But why would you have an internet enabled thermometer or fridge or whatever?
So you don’t have to manually load firmware updates for your fridge and it can reorder your groceries for you.
I’m beginning to think the New Normal’s slogan should be “We are two weeks away from flattening the curve. And always will be.”
There is a cure but they need to develop desktop nuclear fusion to make it work.
Surely you meant “room temperature desktop nuclear fusion.” Amirite?
I perfer a nice 75 degree Fusion. any cooler and it starts go get chilly in the shade.
Yes, the one that’s only 10 years away.
We’ll pretty much be dead from global warming by then, tho.
look to June,at a minimum, that’s what my work told me when all this started a month ago.
What appear to be the most realistic models show this thing peaking in mid-April, and being pretty much gone/dormant by late May.
The best expectation right now is that when the data rolls over so we know the peak is behind us, we call of all the economy-killing restrictions. So, probably beginning of May, best case.
If the simpering nancies and their power-mad enablers have their way, of course, we will be under lockdown until there is not one single case of it in the country. Probably, mid to late June.
Great read, Ozy, and thanks for posting it at noon. I miss a lot of stuff on here. Also, I’m glad you chopped it. It helps semi-literates, such as myself, process it.
My gratitude to TPTB for the forum and all of the Glibs for reading and snarking. 😉
Spot the fallacies:
Here’s Why Herd Immunity Won’t Save Us From The COVID-19 Pandemic
I’ll start with this one:
Its actually a two-fer. First, leaving aside vaccines, immunity is what you have when you used to be infected, but are no longer because you developed a sufficient immune response. Second, it assumes (which we know is wrong) that everyone “infected” (that is, has the virus) is “sick” (that is, has the actual disease process actively ongoing). We know there are people who are apparently asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic. To conflate someone with the sniffles, with someone on a ventilator seems . . . tendentious.
All necessary (lies) for the cause, Comrade! The Peoples must learn to obey their betters and if we have to lie to enable that, well, that is the price we must pay for TOP MEN!
The fact that a supposed epidemiologist doesn’t know that “infected with” and “immune” are mutually exclusive, and conflates the two to make the key leg of his argument, makes me despair.
I saw that link via Instapundit. He’s really gone all in on the sky is falling with this.
Disappointing. As a tenured professor, of course, he is quite well insulated from the unfolding economic disaster. Which probably informs his extreme risk aversion.
I used to like that guy.
When the objective is to peddle a particular political agenda, you tend to ignore important shit like facts in order to create the largest amount of emotional response.
What’s the goal? To minimize the total number of infections or to minimize the impact from the total number of infections?
He’s using the first metric, which is largely unuseful.
I’ve noticed a LOT of the media using the largest numbers, regardless of how pointless they are.
Breathless Newsreader: “It’s a sad day, Helen. The U.S. has just passed 150,000 people infected with Covid-19. Dark times we live in.”
I despise these people.
Functionally, the author is making a stupid argument. The only way to completely stop this is to freeze everyone in place for a month. That’s not achievable, so there’s always going to be a compromise position. What can we tolerate is the real question?
Same way they add together the maximum sentence guidelines for crimes instead of what the likely sentence along with the likely concurrent sentence.
That’s not going to generate views or clicks.
Selling these authoritarian measures merely to delay or prolong the pandemic, rather than stop it or win the war on coronavirus, is a bit harder.
Unless your purpose is stirring up shit for reasons other than public health…
NY Legislators proposing a 3-month rent CANCELLATION for those who have lost income as a result of Covid-19, including some small businesses. Gianaris is behind the bill (recall him from the Amazon reversal) and says landlords can handle this through Federal aid.
In other crazy NY news, DeBlasio is also asking the city’s human rights commissioner to investigate Amazon over fired worker.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/31/nyc-mayor-orders-investigation-of-amazons-firing-of-strike-organizer.html
Amazon is claiming they canned the guy becasue he was violating their social distancing guidelines.
Which, true or not, shows some chutzpah.
He should have been fired for organizing a strike. Bite the hand that feeds you and get bitch slapped.
I saw someone talk about how The Government should let everyone not pay their Rent/Mortgages and let the Federal Reserve handle it with the banks.
Magic Hat Economy.
So simple!
How could it not work?
Look i’m all for letting banks hang out to dry, but the idea that using the Fed to “handle it with the banks” won’t somehow screw over the people you are trying to protect is outrageous.
I suppose private landlords get to settle it with the Fed too.
The entire mortgage market is on the verge of collapse. Of course, they were doing stupid stuff like using their tranches of loans to secure other loans to make risky bets. One might have thought that effective regulation of the financial markets after 2008 would have prevented that kind of behavior, but instead we focused on the Dodd/Frank bullshit.
Step 1) Virus shows up.
Step 2) Shut down most businesses; people don’t get paid; people can’t pay rent/mortgages
Step 3) Cancel rent/mortgage obligations for N months; Landlords can’t pay mortgages; banking crises sets in
Step 4) Too Big To Fail Part 2 (Electric Boogaloo); etc etc etc
But I don’t know why she swallowed the fly . . . .
Remember… She’s dead at the end of that rhyme….
Of course.
Yeah, we are well down the path that will lead us straight to the financial crisis that crippled the economy in ’08.
The punchline: we have no tools left to address it. We’ve already fired up unlimited money-printing, interest rates are already at zero or barely above.
There is a non-zero probability that our panicked reaction to a fairly ordinary viral pandemic will set off a global depression that will be very hard to get out of.
The worst part: my plan to retire in two years is in serious jeopardy.
My plan of retiring in 4 to 7 years looks bad too.
It took 8 years (and getting rid of the big O) to recover from the last banking crisis.
On the bright side, CV does seem to be helping me in keeping Social Security Solvent for a few more years….
We just inflated ourselves out of it.
Eventually, Ron Paul is going to be right and it looks like that day got much closer over the past couple of weeks.
The most important thing is that we punish Thomas Massie.
Well duh. Him and that other curly haired freak Rand should be beaten to death for not supporting Boeing!
What a grinning smirking little shit stain at the end.
My husband’s 401(k) tanked. It’s half the value we declared on our court paperwork. So much can change in so little time it’s frightening. Usually things have a lead-up and you can point to the timeline and go, “And it took about 4 years, but…”
I said that from day 1. Hello, 1929.
This is all very sad and I am very angry about why it’s happening and the ultimate result of it (me planting vegetables and I don’t even like vegetables), BUT–and this is a big BUT–my family is in a very unique situation that, if my husband’s company (a very big bank starts with C) doesn’t lay him off, this only benefits us. Worst case scenario (barring a layoff) is that he goes back to the office, which will commence gas and mileage costs. I won’t belabor the point by listing what’s good about it for us, BUT I wish it hadn’t happened.
No, I don’t believe it was a conspiracy, but boy, it didn’t take long for the left to turn it to its advantage.
Prediction: Trump 2020. Still landslide.
a very big bank starts with C
CoronaBank?
Huh. The other day I mentioned that occasionally I see things in Louisiana I have never seen before….wild things. I mentioned the hummingbird moth that was trying to steal bee food.
My entire yard is covered with these:
https://uswildflowers.com/detail.php?SName=Tradescantia%20virginiana
I dont cut my grass when they bloom as the bees and other critters love them. The ones here are not as pale as the one in the photo. They are a darker blue. Rarely I see purple ones but I have never seen pink ones before. I was out strolling around the yard and found pink ones.
File under: Completely pointless info
Dandelions are the springtime scourge here, and I have a friend who’s yard looks like a dandy lion farm cause he keeps bees.
I have to side with your friend on this one.
The kids are all gone and I realized one day I am the only one that goes in the yard and the only time I do is to cut grass. Except for the fenced in dog yard (half acre or so) and a patch in the front by the driveway I am letting it all go back wild.
I planted several hundred nuts in the go back wild part….pecans, red oak and white. oak.
I think the damned squirrels got every single one of them.
I found if you dig out the entire dandelion plant the very moment they appear in the spring, they won’t be much of an issue the rest of the year. When they start to appear, I spend about 15 minutes out there digging them out with a paint scraper (stick it down under the plant at an angle so that you get as much of the root as possible, then just lift it out).
… Or you could just spray them.
Me: *applies RoundUp liberally*
3 days later, neighbor: Your lawn looks like it has chickenpox.
Me: Yes. Yes, it does.
I’m a “just spray them” kinda guy. When we still lived in the Lower Rainland™, assiduous and early spraying every spring (always targeted — I never liked the broadcast method) resulted in the nicest-looking lawn in the neighbourhood. Then we got smart and moved one province east to a “senior’s” HOA, where someone else does that and we just get to enjoy the results.
Jealous!
It’s the COVID! Of course the spiderworts are turning pink — the COVID’s making them gay! It’s making the friggin’ ‘worts GAY!
https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/lehighvalley/man-upset-over-losing-job-shoots-woman-in-back-before-fatally-shooting-himself-monday-wilson/article_fa199c78-737c-11ea-a3ac-87c1b3ac8219.html
Sad. (no snark)
Really is sad.
<<<END OF NO SNARK <<<
it's a good thing we are practicing social distancing, or this could have rapidly spiraled into a mass shooting.
ALSO: 9th grade Leon laughs at 69 News.
??
Awww.
I’m glad the lady survived. I hope she doesn’t have any permanent disability.