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posted by martyb on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the R.I.P. dept.

With morgues brimming, Texas and Arizona turn to refrigerator trucks:

Officials in Texas and Arizona have requested refrigerated trucks to hold the dead as hospitals and morgues become overwhelmed by victims of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

"In the hospital, there are only so many places to put bodies," Ken Davis, chief medical officer of Christus Santa Rosa Health System in the San Antonio area, said in a briefing this week. "We're out of space, and our funeral homes are out of space, and we need those beds. So, when someone dies, we need to quickly turn that bed over.

"It's a hard thing to talk about," Davis added. "People's loved ones are dying."

Related Story:
Crematorium Data Prove China Was Lying About COVID-19


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 18 2020, @01:56PM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 18 2020, @01:56PM (#1023368) Journal

    *seriously, read the book, it's pretty short

    I will.

    He makes a very good case that most of "employment" is bullshit makework

    Well, I might be a bit outdated, but I'm still keen on the idea of fairness.
    I mean, look, what that farmer is doing is certainly not bullshit makework. Without his work, I'll probably die of hunger.
    Seems unfair that most of others will have their life the easy way, while he may need to spit blood to make his payment to the banks, especially during drought of floods or bush/grassfires.

    I am OK with the idea of UBI, but there's a big risk into it. If the deal is unfair to the actual value creators, two things can happen:
    1. the value creator will act unfair towards the society too. And then inflation climbs until no matter how much the state wants to give a UBI that covers the survival needs, it never happens
    2. the disillusioned value creator start questioning what good all his toils are when he can survive on UBI like all others? Fair question, isn't it? Except suddenly there's not enough income for it to be universal anymore.

    ---

    My definition of "value": look at the hierarchy of human needs [wikipedia.org], anything that contributes to satisfying those needs is "value".

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday July 18 2020, @02:29PM (1 child)

    by deimtee (3272) on Saturday July 18 2020, @02:29PM (#1023374) Journal

    Best way to start would be to take the current social security budget - the dole, govt pensions, disabled payments, salaries for all the bureaucrats etc. - every govt payment out there and the salaries of the fatcats who administer them - split it evenly over the whole population. Throw it all in the pot and then divvy it up equally to everyone.

    Seriously, our current society probably needs about 5 hours of real work per person per week. Things have just gotten that efficient. That farmer would have more help than he knows what to do with. People would be queuing up to do real work just to fill in time and feel good about themselves.

    A few hundred years ago the renaissance occured mostly because the ide rich could amuse themselves with science and the arts while riding on the backs of the peasants. We have inproved efficiency and automation to the point that we don't need the peasants. We could have a new renaissance without grinding anyone down. So what if 90% of people are just going to play on facebook and twitter, the output from the truly creative remainder would be staggering.

    --
    If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday July 18 2020, @03:07PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 18 2020, @03:07PM (#1023388) Journal

      That farmer would have more help than he knows what to do with. People would be queuing up to do real work just to fill in time and feel good about themselves.

      You thinks so?
      I see "queuing up to do real work" as plausible, but let me tell you, amateur farmers will be more a liability to the professional one, degrading the efficiency of the operation (necessarily so, that farmer's business was self-sufficient with reduced personnel, anything else added is still bullshit makework).
      You yourself noted/pointed that the world doesn't need so many "peasants". Those "helpers"? Simply won't have enough opportunities to learn how to do "professional farming".

      I'm too tired now to go on a rant, so I'll jump over a lot of details and say... how about, before introducing UBI, the govt makes all education (tertiary included) free? At least the current "make-work professionals" can actually get to a level of knowledge/skill and a larger horizon so they are less restricted in their choices of meaningful work.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford