Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.

[Pat]

As for your position, Pundit... You say that "the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away". I'm trying to clarify what you mean by that. For example, my sister is part of the unelected bureaucracy - she's a deputy director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Do you think she knows that this is the goal? If you don't think that, then who in the organization would know that is the goal? Basically, how would one go about verifying this?

No offense to your sister who I am sure is a fine person indeed but the SEC could not even find Bernie Madoff and that is supposed to be their one job.

So what do you think?  Corrupt or Incompetent?  A little of column A and a little of column B?

As far as I can tell from conversations with her, the problem is that the SEC has very limited authority to investigate and prosecute. They are nothing like drug cops who can bust down doors and seize evidence.  It's difficult to prosecute big corporations for anything given their armies of lawyers, and the SEC is not an exception. My sister has been on the witness stand a handful of times at prosecutions, but at best the SEC seem to be a partial deterrent against the most blatant abuses, and prosecutions are rare.

Basically, it's not that the SEC is failing to enforce the law -- it's that the laws themselves favor those with expensive lawyers, and that is because the laws tend to be written by corporations, or at least with corporate consultants.

I know partly because she worked on the other side of the law previously, as a consultant for Deloitte where she was hired often to get around the law as much as possible.

No corporation can ever compete with the finances available to the federal government.  You are correct, though, that the vast majority of federal agencies are filled with people who used to work for the businesses that they are supposed to be regulating.  It's called "regulatory capture" and it's a huge part of the problem.  So, no one needs to tell your sister what the "plan" is.  She's already worked for the folks who made the plan ("get rich at any cost, everyone else... and their rights... be damned").

Regulatory capture is usually the other way around. Bureaucrats in the public sector going off to take lucrative private sector jobs in the industries they formerly regulated. But a lot of it is companies pressuring agencies and politicians to install the people they want in the various regulatory agencies.

Doesn't help that more and more agencies are adopting the NTSB model, where they rely on experts from the industry they're regulating to provide technical expertise in their investigations.

[jhkim]

As for your position, Pundit... You say that "the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away". I'm trying to clarify what you mean by that. For example, my sister is part of the unelected bureaucracy - she's a deputy director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Do you think she knows that this is the goal? If you don't think that, then who in the organization would know that is the goal? Basically, how would one go about verifying this?

No offense to your sister who I am sure is a fine person indeed but the SEC could not even find Bernie Madoff and that is supposed to be their one job.

So what do you think?  Corrupt or Incompetent?  A little of column A and a little of column B?

As far as I can tell from conversations with her, the problem is that the SEC has very limited authority to investigate and prosecute. They are nothing like drug cops who can bust down doors and seize evidence.  It's difficult to prosecute big corporations for anything given their armies of lawyers, and the SEC is not an exception. My sister has been on the witness stand a handful of times at prosecutions, but at best the SEC seem to be a partial deterrent against the most blatant abuses, and prosecutions are rare.

Basically, it's not that the SEC is failing to enforce the law -- it's that the laws themselves favor those with expensive lawyers, and that is because the laws tend to be written by corporations, or at least with corporate consultants.

I know partly because she worked on the other side of the law previously, as a consultant for Deloitte where she was hired often to get around the law as much as possible.

No corporation can ever compete with the finances available to the federal government.  You are correct, though, that the vast majority of federal agencies are filled with people who used to work for the businesses that they are supposed to be regulating.  It's called "regulatory capture" and it's a huge part of the problem.  So, no one needs to tell your sister what the "plan" is.  She's already worked for the folks who made the plan ("get rich at any cost, everyone else... and their rights... be damned").

So, your claim is that because she used to work for Deloitte -- now she's part of the plan and she's implementing Deloitte's will within the SEC? First of all, I don't believe that from my knowledge of her, but I don't even see the logic in the accusation. She quit her job at Deloitte. Why would she have any loyalty to them? I don't have any loyalty to my ex-employers. They could offer her money - but they could offer money to anyone regardless of whether they were an ex-employee or not.

The term "regulatory capture" refers to corporations controlling regulatory agencies -- which I think happens, but not by ex-employees being hired at agencies. Being offered a future career at the corporation would be a conflict of interest, but going the other way doesn't. But regulatory capture doesn't require there to be intentional sabotage of the regulation. As far as I can tell, it happens more because of ignorance and bias - mostly in the public and in elected officials.

i.e. It's not mustache-twirling villains whose conscious goal is to strip away people's human and civil rights. Regulatory capture comes more from well-intended by ignorant people playing into their hands, often in the guise of politics (both left-leaning and right-leaning).

EDIT: Cross-posted with Pat.

[Eirikrautha]

As for your position, Pundit... You say that "the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away". I'm trying to clarify what you mean by that. For example, my sister is part of the unelected bureaucracy - she's a deputy director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Do you think she knows that this is the goal? If you don't think that, then who in the organization would know that is the goal? Basically, how would one go about verifying this?

No offense to your sister who I am sure is a fine person indeed but the SEC could not even find Bernie Madoff and that is supposed to be their one job.

So what do you think?  Corrupt or Incompetent?  A little of column A and a little of column B?

As far as I can tell from conversations with her, the problem is that the SEC has very limited authority to investigate and prosecute. They are nothing like drug cops who can bust down doors and seize evidence.  It's difficult to prosecute big corporations for anything given their armies of lawyers, and the SEC is not an exception. My sister has been on the witness stand a handful of times at prosecutions, but at best the SEC seem to be a partial deterrent against the most blatant abuses, and prosecutions are rare.

Basically, it's not that the SEC is failing to enforce the law -- it's that the laws themselves favor those with expensive lawyers, and that is because the laws tend to be written by corporations, or at least with corporate consultants.

I know partly because she worked on the other side of the law previously, as a consultant for Deloitte where she was hired often to get around the law as much as possible.

No corporation can ever compete with the finances available to the federal government.  You are correct, though, that the vast majority of federal agencies are filled with people who used to work for the businesses that they are supposed to be regulating.  It's called "regulatory capture" and it's a huge part of the problem.  So, no one needs to tell your sister what the "plan" is.  She's already worked for the folks who made the plan ("get rich at any cost, everyone else... and their rights... be damned").

So, your claim is that because she used to work for Deloitte -- now she's part of the plan and she's implementing Deloitte's will within the SEC? First of all, I don't believe that from my knowledge of her, but I don't even see the logic in the accusation. She quit her job at Deloitte. Why would she have any loyalty to them? I don't have any loyalty to my ex-employers. They could offer her money - but they could offer money to anyone regardless of whether they were an ex-employee or not.

The term "regulatory capture" refers to corporations controlling regulatory agencies -- which I think happens, but not by ex-employees being hired at agencies. Being offered a future career at the corporation would be a conflict of interest, but going the other way doesn't. But regulatory capture doesn't require there to be intentional sabotage of the regulation. As far as I can tell, it happens more because of ignorance and bias - mostly in the public and in elected officials.

i.e. It's not mustache-twirling villains whose conscious goal is to strip away people's human and civil rights. Regulatory capture comes more from well-intended by ignorant people playing into their hands, often in the guise of politics (both left-leaning and right-leaning).

EDIT: Cross-posted with Pat.

No, regulatory capture goes both ways.  It is a revolving door from industry to bureaucracy to industry.  And, despite my oblique method of presentation, I am stating clearly that, yes, she is implementing Deloitte's will, not because she is some nefarious villain, but because she has the same set of world views as the folks in that business.  There is a culture, a mindset, a set of assumptions about how things are supposed to work that are inherent in every profession.  You cannot be successful in your profession unless you understand the culture and, for lack of a better term, belief systems inherent in that business.  Sure, an occasional person is able to be both successful and bend or break the business norms, but we generally can identify them easily (they are the "mavericks" of the industry, and usually pretty notorious within them).  Otherwise, those who don't follow the general culture of the industry get spit out, and are either the reviled gadflys or move on to a pursuit that fits their world-view.  I'm very familiar with Deloitte (as far back as when they were Deloitte, Haskins, and Sells... and later Deloitte and Touche).  There isn't a nanometer of difference between what Deloitte sees as good business and good governance and what the SEC sees as the same.  They share the same biases, world-views, expectations, and sense of "what is right."  I don't know your sister, and therefore can make no claims as to her personality, morals, or righteousness.  But I can say, with perfect certainty, is that, as a member of the financial systems in good standing, she sees the world the same way as the folks she is supposed to be regulating.  Maybe not on little points here and there.  But her view of how the system works aligns with theirs 100%, otherwise she couldn't do what she does.  That's regulatory capture... the standardization of expectations as to how the system should work (far beyond what those outside of the system may care about).  A shared perspective based on shared worldview.  People who think that regulatory capture consists of bribes or offers of reward and jobs are fools.  None of that is necessary.  A bureaucrat doesn't need to be compelled to behave in the "right" manner, because they already agree on what is "right"...

[Pat]

No, regulatory capture goes both ways.  It is a revolving door from industry to bureaucracy to industry.  And, despite my oblique method of presentation, I am stating clearly that, yes, she is implementing Deloitte's will, not because she is some nefarious villain, but because she has the same set of world views as the folks in that business.  There is a culture, a mindset, a set of assumptions about how things are supposed to work that are inherent in every profession.  You cannot be successful in your profession unless you understand the culture and, for lack of a better term, belief systems inherent in that business.  Sure, an occasional person is able to be both successful and bend or break the business norms, but we generally can identify them easily (they are the "mavericks" of the industry, and usually pretty notorious within them).  Otherwise, those who don't follow the general culture of the industry get spit out, and are either the reviled gadflys or move on to a pursuit that fits their world-view.  I'm very familiar with Deloitte (as far back as when they were Deloitte, Haskins, and Sells... and later Deloitte and Touche).  There isn't a nanometer of difference between what Deloitte sees as good business and good governance and what the SEC sees as the same.  They share the same biases, world-views, expectations, and sense of "what is right."  I don't know your sister, and therefore can make no claims as to her personality, morals, or righteousness.  But I can say, with perfect certainty, is that, as a member of the financial systems in good standing, she sees the world the same way as the folks she is supposed to be regulating.  Maybe not on little points here and there.  But her view of how the system works aligns with theirs 100%, otherwise she couldn't do what she does.  That's regulatory capture... the standardization of expectations as to how the system should work (far beyond what those outside of the system may care about).  A shared perspective based on shared worldview.  People who think that regulatory capture consists of bribes or offers of reward and jobs are fools.  None of that is necessary.  A bureaucrat doesn't need to be compelled to behave in the "right" manner, because they already agree on what is "right"...

Yep. Regulatory capture isn't about direct tit for tat. It's about the people you go golfing with, or who you meet at conferences. It's about the lectures you all hear, and the assumptions you all share. You may not agree on everything, and may even fight bitterly over certain things. But you're all part of the same overriding culture, and share many of the same values and world views.

And the reason why democracy is terrible at defending against it is the asymmetry of professional investment vs. casual interest. If you're part of that industry, whether in the business side or amongst the public regulators, it's your life. You spend all your time immersed in it, have generations to work things in your favor, know the ins and out intimately, and it's vitally important for your financial and personal interests. Conversely, the public knows nothing about any of that, doesn't know where the levers of power lie, and the cost of any failure or inefficiency is spread so thinly that the personal cost to each member of the public is tiny and not worth the effort to learn more, so they only pay attention maybe once a generation when there's a scandal big enough to garner widespread attention. But in the decades in between, the regulators and the businesses they supposedly regulate become cozy and develop a symbiosis that favors their interests, with only a few perfunctory moves toward public interest.

For a historical example, look at the Interstate Commerce Commision, and how quickly they were suborned by the railroad interests. It happened in less than an election cycle. And then when interstate trucking became a thing, how quickly they became invested in protecting the brokers with licenses and excluding everyone else from competing. That's how it works in every industry, and with every regulatory agency.

[HappyDaze]

I'm asking you to show the evidence that the worst infected contracted the virus in hospital (that's the linenof your post I put in bold to call attention to it. Perhaps I should have used another color?

And I'm telling you fuck off, I can't be bothered.

So just more of your usual bullshit then.

[Eirikrautha]

No, regulatory capture goes both ways.  It is a revolving door from industry to bureaucracy to industry.  And, despite my oblique method of presentation, I am stating clearly that, yes, she is implementing Deloitte's will, not because she is some nefarious villain, but because she has the same set of world views as the folks in that business.  There is a culture, a mindset, a set of assumptions about how things are supposed to work that are inherent in every profession.  You cannot be successful in your profession unless you understand the culture and, for lack of a better term, belief systems inherent in that business.  Sure, an occasional person is able to be both successful and bend or break the business norms, but we generally can identify them easily (they are the "mavericks" of the industry, and usually pretty notorious within them).  Otherwise, those who don't follow the general culture of the industry get spit out, and are either the reviled gadflys or move on to a pursuit that fits their world-view.  I'm very familiar with Deloitte (as far back as when they were Deloitte, Haskins, and Sells... and later Deloitte and Touche).  There isn't a nanometer of difference between what Deloitte sees as good business and good governance and what the SEC sees as the same.  They share the same biases, world-views, expectations, and sense of "what is right."  I don't know your sister, and therefore can make no claims as to her personality, morals, or righteousness.  But I can say, with perfect certainty, is that, as a member of the financial systems in good standing, she sees the world the same way as the folks she is supposed to be regulating.  Maybe not on little points here and there.  But her view of how the system works aligns with theirs 100%, otherwise she couldn't do what she does.  That's regulatory capture... the standardization of expectations as to how the system should work (far beyond what those outside of the system may care about).  A shared perspective based on shared worldview.  People who think that regulatory capture consists of bribes or offers of reward and jobs are fools.  None of that is necessary.  A bureaucrat doesn't need to be compelled to behave in the "right" manner, because they already agree on what is "right"...

Yep. Regulatory capture isn't about direct tit for tat. It's about the people you go golfing with, or who you meet at conferences. It's about the lectures you all hear, and the assumptions you all share. You may not agree on everything, and may even fight bitterly over certain things. But you're all part of the same overriding culture, and share many of the same values and world views.

And the reason why democracy is terrible at defending against it is the asymmetry of professional investment vs. casual interest. If you're part of that industry, whether in the business side or amongst the public regulators, it's your life. You spend all your time immersed in it, have generations to work things in your favor, know the ins and out intimately, and it's vitally important for your financial and personal interests. Conversely, the public knows nothing about any of that, doesn't know where the levers of power lie, and the cost of any failure or inefficiency is spread so thinly that the personal cost to each member of the public is tiny and not worth the effort to learn more, so they only pay attention maybe once a generation when there's a scandal big enough to garner widespread attention. But in the decades in between, the regulators and the businesses they supposedly regulate become cozy and develop a symbiosis that favors their interests, with only a few perfunctory moves toward public interest.

For a historical example, look at the Interstate Commerce Commision, and how quickly they were suborned by the railroad interests. It happened in less than an election cycle. And then when interstate trucking became a thing, how quickly they became invested in protecting the brokers with licenses and excluding everyone else from competing. That's how it works in every industry, and with every regulatory agency.

All very true.  And that's how "good" people become the engine of very bad things...

[jhkim]

And, despite my oblique method of presentation, I am stating clearly that, yes, she is implementing Deloitte's will, not because she is some nefarious villain, but because she has the same set of world views as the folks in that business.  There is a culture, a mindset, a set of assumptions about how things are supposed to work that are inherent in every profession.  You cannot be successful in your profession unless you understand the culture and, for lack of a better term, belief systems inherent in that business.  Sure, an occasional person is able to be both successful and bend or break the business norms, but we generally can identify them easily (they are the "mavericks" of the industry, and usually pretty notorious within them).  Otherwise, those who don't follow the general culture of the industry get spit out, and are either the reviled gadflys or move on to a pursuit that fits their world-view.

People who think that regulatory capture consists of bribes or offers of reward and jobs are fools.  None of that is necessary.  A bureaucrat doesn't need to be compelled to behave in the "right" manner, because they already agree on what is "right"...

So your claim is that she is doing overt evil and utterly failing to do her job - but she is a helpless pawn who just can't see beyond Deloitte's worldview? I don't see that as any better than being a nefarious villain - nor do I find it believable.

It's not like she was born and raised into Deloitte's worldview. She wasn't even an economics major in undergrad. She got a psychology degree in college, then worked as a counselor for a few years before going back to school for her business degree (which turned into a Finance PhD).

---

I find her own explanation much more believable. Like any organization, the SEC has some dysfunction - but its people are neither nefarious villains nor brainwashed drones. They are generally fulfilling their job -- enacting the legal codes that they are given by the elected government. They work with businesses because that's their job. They are not generally crusaders or mavericks looking to change the system, because that's not what they're hired for, nor what the law tells them to do.

If you swept away all of the current SEC bureaucrats and replaced them with people with no background in finance -- then they might *attempt* to make more change, but they'd be less effective in actually getting it done. An organization full of mavericks and crusaders might be morally superior, but it wouldn't be effective in implementing the change desired.

To get any real change in how things work, we have to change the laws. There needs to be wider public sentiment against corporate dominance, and get more genuinely anti-corporate politicians elected. Most of the public simply don't care and are happy to get their iPhones and Amazon delivery, and they elect the majority in both the Republican and Democrat party who support that.

[HappyDaze]

Locally, homeless people are being tested and many are coming up positive for Covid. Relatively few of them have severe symptoms, and some probably don't have any. However, they are required to get a negative test to get into shelters, so many "infected but not sick" are being forced out of some of the few refuges normally open to them. Now, again locally, that might not be so bad when the nighttime temperature is 60 degrees F, but I do wonder if this is also happening in colder cities. I plan to look into it over the weekend.

[Pat]

All very true.  And that's how "good" people become the engine of very bad things...

There's nothing good about what those people are doing. Hannah Arendt came up with the phrase "the banality of evil" after meeting Eichmann during the Nuremberg Trials. She was describing how unremarkable he seemed, and how he never showed any of the stereotypical signs of evil, like sadism, or hate, or anything except a desire to just go about his life and advance his career. You can blame the system, but the system doesn't exist as a separate thing. It's just people, and how they interact, so any evil in the system is entirely and completely the fault of those who work within it. It's just a name for the tools that people use to absolve and distance themselves from evil actions when opposition would inconvenience them.

That's why I completely reject the idea that the socialism is based on good intentions. It's not. It's just the facade of good intentions, and the lofty but abstract claims that go against every bit of what we know about how humans work and every historical example, are just the tools of self-deception people promoting very evil ideas use in an attempt to excuse themselves. And it's no different when it comes to cronyism, or corporatism, or all the other names for the way people build lives and careers that benefit them and theirs, and mask their self-serving nature with claims that they're public servants or that they're really doing good or that it would be so much worse without them.

[jhkim]

All very true.  And that's how "good" people become the engine of very bad things...

There's nothing good about what those people are doing. Hannah Arendt came up with the phrase "the banality of evil" after meeting Eichmann during the Nuremberg Trials. She was describing how unremarkable he seemed, and how he never showed any of the stereotypical signs of evil, like sadism, or hate, or anything except a desire to just go about his life and advance his career. You can blame the system, but the system doesn't exist as a separate thing. It's just people, and how they interact, so any evil in the system is entirely and completely the fault of those who work within it. It's just a name for the tools that people use to absolve and distance themselves from evil actions when opposition would inconvenience them.

You're blaming only government employees -- when they are enacting laws that were approved by people via popularly elected leaders.

By parallel, I have big problems with many of the U.S.'s series of foreign wars. However, I don't blame our soldiers for them. The soldiers were only doing their duty. The blame goes on not just the politicians who started the war, but on the public who approved of the war and elected (and re-elected) the leaders responsible.

Not stringently regulating corporations is something we are *all* responsible for. It's not something originating from bureaucrats foisted on a hapless population. The vast majority of Americans are willing consumers and supporters of the mainstream party politicians.

[Mistwell]

Mark Levine Tweet about Covid Hospitalizations

Who is filling up the hospitals in NYC as omicron surges?

Answer: it's still the unvaccinated. They are now *32* times more likely to land in the hospital vs. vaccinated.

You don't want those odds. Get vax'd now. https://vax4nyc.nyc.gov

[Pat]

All very true.  And that's how "good" people become the engine of very bad things...

There's nothing good about what those people are doing. Hannah Arendt came up with the phrase "the banality of evil" after meeting Eichmann during the Nuremberg Trials. She was describing how unremarkable he seemed, and how he never showed any of the stereotypical signs of evil, like sadism, or hate, or anything except a desire to just go about his life and advance his career. You can blame the system, but the system doesn't exist as a separate thing. It's just people, and how they interact, so any evil in the system is entirely and completely the fault of those who work within it. It's just a name for the tools that people use to absolve and distance themselves from evil actions when opposition would inconvenience them.

You're blaming only government employees -- when they are enacting laws that were approved by people via popularly elected leaders.

By parallel, I have big problems with many of the U.S.'s series of foreign wars. However, I don't blame our soldiers for them. The soldiers were only doing their duty. The blame goes on not just the politicians who started the war, but on the public who approved of the war and elected (and re-elected) the leaders responsible.

Not stringently regulating corporations is something we are *all* responsible for. It's not something originating from bureaucrats foisted on a hapless population. The vast majority of Americans are willing consumers and supporters of the mainstream party politicians.

No, that's just your statist bias showing though. I was very clear in the previous post that I'm criticizing all participants, whether they're in the public or the private sector. Though the government is more at fault, because they have the power to make the laws, enforce them, and adjudicate them. People often forget or even deny that, because public officials use those bully powers to blame the private the sector so incessantly that a fair amount of the public end up believing them.

And I specifically spoke to the reason why democracy is a poor check on regulatory capture in the previous post, which you apparently just ignored. Special interests gain sway against the interests of the vast majority because small groups benefit in large and concrete ways from the privileges they seek, and thus have a pressing need to preserve them. While the harm they do the general public may be vast in toto, but to each member of the public the impact of each new privilege is tiny and abstracted away into something like a tax bill with no itemized costs or some barrier against entry that leads indirectly to higher costs because of a lack of true competition, so they have little incentive to get involved, even if the accumulation of special privileges leads to great public harm.

And if you consider the wars wrong but don't blame the soldiers, then you're also absolving Eichmann, or at least the lower level functionaries who worked for him. You're exhibiting exactly the same kind of rationalization I was criticizing. The root of all evil is complaisance.

And if the vast majority of people are onboard with the politicians, why have Congress's approval ratings been in the single digits for decades?

[Kiero]

So just more of your usual bullshit then.

Not my job to reason you out of a position you didn't reason yourself into in the first place. Hope the collapse of your delusion isn't too painful, when the time comes.

[Kiero]

In the latest instalment of bullshit official statistics, the UK government's "daily" covid death stats from yesterday included a little bonus: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/whats-new/record/258bbad6-5c7b-458c-ab88-fcc6b9df4b7a

Today's death figures include a backlog of hospital deaths reported overnight by NHS England covering the period 24th⁠–⁠29th December.

Not that any of the MSM outlets feverishly reporting it as a "spike" will include that footnote.

[RPGPundit]

The real problem with conspiracy websites is that they serve mainly as counter-intel to ridiculize the very legitimate arguments about the abuse of institutions, which didn't cause Covid in some great Shadowy Cabal Master Plan, but who are taking enormous advantage of Covid for their own power-grab, as well as for personal enrichment.

It's being done by almost every government on the planet, by the nonelected bureaucracies of those governments, by establishment corporations and media, by teacher's unions, and yes, by the World Economic Forum. And the individual goal of these actors would be to see our human and civil rights stripped away and much greater centralized control by a power elite. And none of that needs a secret master plan.

Only problem in this instance is that there's nothing "secret" about it. How do you explain virtually every government mouthpiece using the WEF's "Build Back Better" and repeatedly referring to elements of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which align to it?

Yes, exactly. THERE IS NO "CONSPIRACY". Neither the WEF nor the UN require the idea of some shadowy cabal of illuminati or reptilians or whatever behind it all. Just a gang of assholes with a very public agenda of control.