@DetroitDan And people like Tabarrok are unhappy that authorities were so cautious, waited so long for evidence of safety and effectiveness rather than reducing mortality by accepting greater risk! (Perhaps Tabarrok would argue that the evidence was already sufficient long before the approvals, so the additional risk would have been mininal.) 1/
@DetroitDan Maybe a synthesis of your preferences and his would be to offer the vaccines earlier, but express more uncertainty about their safety and effectiveness? I’m not sure whether from a public health standpoint that wouldn’t be the worst of both worlds, with skeptics talking up every anecdote of adverse reaction leading to low uptake and a situation like China is facing now. /fin
“social media sites are always trying to optimize their mistreatment of users, mistreating them (and thus profiting from them) right up to the point where they are ready to switch, but without actually pushing them over the edge.” @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/ ht @SaintPeter @IraCogan
// with lots on the importance of low-cost exit to deter and to remedy this sort of “enshittification”
“Beyond the bromides of progress and technological liberation, what distinguished New Labour was its sanctionism: the belief that the market would provide carrots and government should provide the stick.” ~David Timoney (From Arse To Elbow) https://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2022/12/discipline-and-punish.html
// we often think of sanctions in international terms, but everything from a strike to the sack to benefits withheld or withdrawn can be understood in terms of groups directly or via the state sanctioning one another.
with money, the dose makes the poison.
i wonder if it is really constructive to ragetoot.
@econ_marshall i guess it was their fortune to make it cry out in agony…
"It’s about the central importance of vaccines in any plan to protect the vulnerable and about how we should be bolder and braver the next time." ~Alex Tabarrok https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/12/the-birx-plan-for-early-vaccination-of-the-nursing-homes.html
// i love how half the world is mad because COVID vaccines were an experimental treatment that would never pass a cost benefit test pushed on us for profit by for rapacious pharma, and the other half is mad because we wouldn't risk deploying them earlier. (i think we did pretty good, domestically, with vaccines.)
@deshipu i would rather they just passed gas.
I dislike it when people die.
@edaross that explains why i never seem to run into my favorite characters!
@besttrousers freedom ain't free, baby.
@Sanjuktampaul @darius @dreww I agree very much!
There are severe sociopolitical diseconomies of scale. There are also real economies of scale—due to fixed costs, mutual insurance capacity, and network effects—but they mostly exhaust themselves lots sooner than the scales we permit. 1/
@Sanjuktampaul @darius @dreww As you say, it should be high priority as a technical challenge to develop coordination mechanisms that let us enjoy the sociopolitical benefits of small scale with smaller costs in technical efficiency and mutual insurance, and an ability to retain whatever is actually valuable in network effects. 2/
@Sanjuktampaul @darius @dreww The best existing fediverse is a great example, albeit a work in progress, of reconciling a desire to retain the value of large networks with the benefits of much smaller scale. Now that we are free(er), there are so many things we might try! /fin
“I'd like to advance the notion that software does not have to scale, and in fact software can be better if it is not built to scale.” @darius https://runyourown.social/ ht @dreww
@DetroitDan you have more characters here than there at least! (i think we have more character here too!)
What if you have the power to turn fictional then back again?
@jik (on the web notifications page, i have a little check i can press to clear notifications, one click from fosstodon.org. though something’s up, right now i’m getting 500 Internal Server Error trying to follow back before clearing.)
not with a bang, or with a whimper, but with a giggle.
“I would like nothing better than to not have to know or care about these people.” ~Alexandra Petri https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/17/elon-musk-twitter-overkill/
// as always from Petri, cuttingly and hilariously written.
// i’ve lost the hat tip, my apologies to the unknown provider of the link.
@pkedrosky I am very pleased to find you here too!