The COVID humbug thread (2021 edition)

[yyy]

@finley

@yyy

Joe Politician may or may not own shares in Big Pharma, or Little Pharma, or Big Mask if that’s a thing now, but his main concern when weighing options is _how does this affect my reelectability?

Ah, but governments have now solved that thorny issue: mind control. Politicians who get with the programme have a whole raft of absolutely reliable tools at their disposal to make people think the right thoughts and vote for the right people. The only problem with this is that you (Joe Politician) have to hook into the Machine: if you want what everyone else wants, then you can ride the wave; good luck trying to use the same techniques as an outsider.

That’s exactly why your argument fails: you’re still presenting everything in absolutist terms. If these tools were really so infallible, they would have succeeded in enslaving the world long ago.

@finley

Watch what happens to that Canadian guy who opposes vaccine passports. He thinks he’s taking a brave stand, but I reckon he’s just lost his seat when voting time rolls around. Because brainwashing.

I was already predicting his demise before Covid. But by all means, let’s revisit this next year. People “on both sides” will nag him about his handling of Covid, for sure, but refusal to endorse vaccine passports will be a footnote for most people (though some of his right and/or libertarian leaning supporters who will hold it up as an example of his awesomeness, and the more extreme germophobes will try to use it against him, unsuccessfully).

@finley

@yyy

Stricter laws against conflicts of interest could help to deter this sort of thing btw

Wait, what? Governments are constrained by what laws, exactly? The general principle of Sovereignty is that governments can do whatever the feck they like within their own borders, with the only real law being “You and what army?”.

Um, your point is what exactly? My point is real conspiracies happen (in general) when politicians have conflicts of interest, usually involving money (or family, but that’s usually just to get them jobs i.e. to get them money). This used to be considered proper, but over time enough people complained that rules to limit conflicts of interest were devised, which of course have loopholes and workarounds, so there are more rules about those, and so on. There’s no perfect solution, but at the very least you can have FOI laws to reveal these things, and it is at the very least embarrassing when they do get revealed, and embarrassment often leads to electoral loss.

COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

In early March 2021, members of the German parliament Nikolas Löbel and Georg Nüßlein resigned from the ruling CDU/CSU party over a scandal that had broken about them having allegedly earned six-figure sums from brokering sales contracts for face masks. Löbel also resigned from the parliament.[455] Later Alfred Sauter [de], a lawmaker in the Bavarian state parliament, was embroiled in the same scandal and resigned from the CSU. The scandal (which came to be known as Maskenaffäre , “mask affair” in Germany) led to a public discussion on transparency and ethics for such dealings. In response to the scandal, the CDU/CSU party tightened its pertaining rules. The previous day, it had performed poorly at two state elections, which observers saw as being connected to the loss in popularity due to the scandal.[456]

@finley

The experience of 2020 was pretty clear on this aspect. Governments will simply rewrite national laws as they see fit, to make whatever they want to do legal. If they can’t be bothered debating and constructing an actual law, they’ll just make up “rules” instead (see the other thread).

Oh, that’s your point? I don’t think we’re covering any new ground here, then.

@finley

It happens, sooner or later. It can be done well or badly or in between. Humans are still not ready for planetary government, but they’re not going to stop having global institutions, because why would they stop? They’ve had them in one form or another for a long time, and abolishing the institutions would in many cases be more hassle than keeping them going.

So you’re saying that what’s happening now is inevitable, and we may as well just get used to it?

No. False dichotomy again. I’m saying the interconnectedness of things on the planet – call it “globalism” if you want, though that’s a loaded term – is inevitable. How it happens is something people have a say in, to the extent that they have political (i.e. democratic) and economic power.

@finley

When they fail spectacularly, it may be worth it to abolish them, but in general the way forward is to improve the institutions.

The general theme of this thread is that they have already failed spectacularly.

Once again, you’re setting the bar… spectacularly low. For me, a spectacular failure is along the lines of the League of Nations.

@finley

just like western countries having lockdowns isn’t the same thing as China “winning” Cold War II (as you said it had not that long ago).

Sorry, still looks to like China is the big swinging dick in 2021, and everyone else is bowing and scraping like the court eunuchs.

What, because Big Whatever goes out of its way to avoiding hurting the feelings of the Chinese people? That has limited relevance to Joe Human. For me, the test is, does the average person who can choose to live where he wants choose to live in X or not? If China were facing an epic immigrant/refugee crisis, I think we would have heard about it by now.

@finley

This is one of those things again, like the EU is the new RE. Okay sure, whatever. So if empires are automatically bad, the EU must be bad too.

You’re reading too much into my statement, which was merely this: global empires exist, and are/were quite common. If someone has the intent to create a World Government (for whatever reason) it would be pathetically easy today - particularly given the high level of public compliance with silly rules.

Then why hasn’t it already been done? You’re essentially saying evil geniuses have all the power and will succeed no matter what. And yet…

@finley

You’re still giving them too much credit. They have more information than they know what to do with, but they have huge blind spots and are a long way from Borg-like real-time large-scale data processing.

I agree that they’re being misled by the data. They look at their silly dashboards of “cases” going up and down and imagine that their actions have something to do with it. So it’s lockdown on, lockdown off, important media conference, etc etc. But the problem is that they believe they are in control, and they’re performing drastic actions that have drastic results.

The fact that those results are completely disconnected with the thing they think they’re controlling is neither here nor there.

…the evil geniuses are incompetent fools who can’t get anything right, not even their own wrongness.

That reminds me of my own species. Like I’ve said before, we have the best technology and vast resources, yet every time we try to invade your pathetic little planet, it turns into a farce.