The underlying message is simple. Willingness to do the work, make hard decisions, and be productive, leads to success. A history of success without that underlying willingness, leads to failure. The West got where it was by being on the winning side of that equation, but has lost it. Taiwan is on the winning side of that equation.

The first example was the rise of Compaq (in the West) when it had that willingness, followed by its fall when it didn't. And the rise of other companies in Taiwan that were willing to do the actual work.

The second example is coronavirus, where Taiwan's current success stands in stark contrast with the unwillingness of western countries to even consider taking effective action. Taiwan shows what it is possible. The USA can only consider which tragedy to choose. And has gone about it so badly that it is effectively choosing both.

I guess Taiwan's inherent mistrust of China helped in making the right decisions - while the thoughts of politicians in the West were something along the lines of "China is saying it has things under control, the WHO is saying the same, so there is no need for drastic actions right now - and if it turns out later that we were wrong, we can shift the blame to China and the WHO".

Even after China’s (self?)deception became uncovered, most countries still didn’t act effectively, or (even more bizarre) performed their own form of denial.

Wasting many weeks of runway, then suddenly discovering an emergency due to lack of foresight.

Many citizens knew what was happening, yet somehow our political organisations failed us.

> And has gone about it so badly that it is effectively choosing both.

This is my fear. We are taking half-measures. So instead of an extreme spike of cases that is short-lived or "flattening the curve", we are instead going to take the middle route of a prolonged stress on our health care system and economy.

I've always wondered what role downturns play in stirring up innovation. If the goal of our monetary policy is always to minimize any sort of downturn, especially one that props up all pet entrenched businesses/industry, will we always lose out in the long run?

It seems humans are at their best when faced with adversity, which is why being new, raw, and unproven always helps create the best, even in media like music and films. The second wave of good stuff usually comes when an artist again feels 'disrespected' or has some inhuman innate drive to always be better and reach new heights.

I'm coming around to the idea that in downturns we should be protecting people, not businesses. Businesses will naturally have a safety net if their employees and founders have a safety net in their own lives.

I was in S. Korea from around Feb 1 - 20. US and S. Korea had the first case of COVID at the same time, Jan 20.

As of the first week of February, emergency SMS alerts in S. Korea were sent out daily, sometimes several times per day. These alerts told everyone to wear masks, stay inside, wash hands, and exercise caution. S. Korea was already mobilizing government resources when there were very few cases. I remember there were only 20 cases at this point and all the efforts seemed overkill, but now we know they were necessary.

Meanwhile in the US none of this was taking place and the president is publicly saying everything is under control, when it was not.

It's comically easy to see why the US is failing to contain COVID if you have been watching how governments in Asia have been handling the outbreak.

we received one single sms in NL via our fancy alert system that gave a warning I don't even remember. we're definitely not doing all that much altogether, other than slowly ramping up the quarantining as things get worse (with a 2+ week lag that we don't seem to take into account, I guess?).

This article feels like what you get when you feel obligated to write something, drawing grand meanings out of disjointed realities.

Taiwan was relatively recently an autocracy. It still can resort to its historical behavior overnight. In the West the sort of actions that Taiwan took absent an emergency are politically unpalatable.

This is a political/ideological reality. Comparing that with empires that have lost their way is intellectually devoid of any basis and just seems incredibly lazy.

From a purely functional perspective it's worth noting that much of the West has a much closer intertwining with China than Taiwan does. This seems counter-intuitive -- China is right beside it, after all -- but multiples more Chinese nationals live in Canada than Taiwan. There were magnitudes more flights between the US and China (purely from a flight # perspective, and certainly much larger from a passenger perspective) than between China and Taiwan. That Taiwan has been somewhat spared thus far is partly explained by this reality.

> Taiwan was relatively recently an autocracy. It still can resort to its historical behavior overnight. In the West the sort of actions that Taiwan took absent an emergency are politically unpalatable.

The difference is that Taiwan saw the emergency coming and decided to make a decision early instead of dithering.

Falling back on "we just can't do stuff like that BECAUSE DEMOCRACY" is intellectually lazy and self-sabotaging.

Arguing about principles instead of considering specific circumstances is exactly how organizations lose their way.

Giving up on some principles can also be a starting point for erosion of more principles. It’s a very slippery slope that needs to constantly be reconsidered. See the slow building up of surveillance states where the principle of privacy is slowly being eroded because of profit and safety.

`Falling back on "we just can't do stuff like that BECAUSE DEMOCRACY" is intellectually lazy and self-sabotaging'

I didn't say that, but okay.

In the widespread expectation of personal freedoms, however, it's harder to implement draconian controls without evidence it's clearly needed and of obvious benefits. Autocratic societies will always have the advantage in such situations because you can stomp the boot down at a moment's notice with little resistance.

It's also easier when your country is a homogeny with extremely few immigrants, extremely few travelers, etc. For a country like Canada or the United States to do what Taiwan could do, with literally millions to tens of millions of citizens returning from overseas, is logistically in a different universe.

And let's be clear that those situations are rare. "But it's just like Compaq because..." -- whatever that stupid noise was. Yeah, I'd rather be "Compaq" in that stupid analogy 99.9% of the time.

Seems to me like Taiwan reacted to an emergency as soon as information was available, while Western countries ignored the emergency until things got so bad they couldn't be ignored anymore.

The root of civic liberties is preserving autonomy of the individual. To the extent that actions making an epidemic spread directly endanger lives of other people, it's kind of obvious to me that we have to have means to control that. I'm saying this as a strong, I think, civic libertarian.

The difference between this situation and the usual pretexts used to curb liberties is that 1. we know pretty well, scientifically, what is the problem and how it acts (not this specific virus, but in terms what diseases are in general) and 2. it's comparatively clear when such a crisis begins and ends. Compare that with the typical scenario of some dangerous people doing shady things, we don't know who and where, the government can't tell us, and we are to just give the state permanent and not clearly delineated powers.

Epidemic and war are the textbook legitimate emergency states.

To that extent I almost feel that talking about this crisis in terms of civil liberties may be harmful, in that it may make people more susceptible and desensitized in the long term in these discussions.

I think that the coronavirus situation will teach liberal-minded folks that individual rights are always contingent on public health and public well-being, and it will teach Americans in particular the need for a notwithstanding clause in the Constitution so that the government can take action if necessary. We tend to interpret First Amendment rights as absolute, but only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Risks are ever-present. Choosing a liberal democracy involves accepting those risks, and not just in terms of public health and public well-being. A society that guarantees perfect public health and well-being would be unlivable.

Various forms of authoritarian government are well known as being able to respond to crises quicker and more effectively. So, yes, being able to declare a state of emergency is an important ability, but living in a permanent state of emergency is to be avoided.

I think many liberally minded people realize that (nothwithstanding a few libertarians). In the US then even have the concept of "The Constitution is not a suicide pact", and during WWII a lot of free speach was limited. I think the reality is that most people don't view COVID-19 as an existenial threat to the liberal regime the live in.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...

I feel like this would have been perfectly suitable as two posts. (Taiwan and the coronavirus, and the analogy with compaq).

But the latter part, about how Taiwan is handling the situation, I thought was pretty interesting.

I also found it difficult to suss out the general point connecting the two events, but I suppose broadly speaking the outsized role of largely unspoken (and undiscussed) choices in both seems significant.

The point is that we outsourced everything. Being on the top of a hollowed out value chain, while efficient, is a precarious place to be, because the bottom of the chain can just flip you on your head. A good brand will allow you to release one flop, but not three. The name of Compaq’s supplier in Taiwan? Asus.

The article does have two good topics, and I can see the connection, but it does detract from the message. There are some very important things said about Coronavirus, and USA should be taking notice of this right now, but unfortunately if I forward the article on to someone, the first thing they will read will be some PC industry history.

When all you have is a hammer everything looks like an IBM clone, I guess.

I don't see the argument here. It is too disjoint.

I tried to summarize but when it took me two minutes and I was still struggling, I had to give in and agree it’s tenuous. There are probably other points, but the primary one seems to be “put in the effort to solve problems and find unique solutions that work for your country, or follow the herd without effort and die/become marginalized,” but not quite in those terms?

In tech-world speak, he's basically saying innovate or die.

On a long enough timeline, the entities that do the work to understand the problem and respond to it are rewarded, the entities which try to coast by on their past success and "brand" will be punished.

my best attempt:

- too much compromising and not enough dynamic effort leads to death

"Taiwan is good in the same way that Compaq was good"?

Outsourcing.

TLDR: He advocates more government control to do what needs to be done.

Unfortunately, the government doesn't always know what needs to be done, and some of his examples (e.g., response of local businesses) don't actually require government control, but a societal attitude shift. Add in the desire of some parties to use the crisis to further their agendas, and government control gets worrisome.

Article summary:

The analogy: "the West feels like Compaq in the 1990s, relying on its brand name and partnerships with other entities to do the actual work, forgetting that it was hard work and determination that made it great in the first place."

Important points:

""" look more closely at what Taiwan has done to contain SARS-CoV-2 to-date — you can reframe everything in a far more problematic way:

Restrict international movement and close borders (including banning all non-resident foreigners this week) Integrate and share private data across government agencies and with hospitals. Track private individual movements via their smartphones. Even the mask production I praised required requisitioning private property by the government, and the refusal of local businesses to serve customers without masks or insist on taking their temperature """

This article feels like it was written out of panic and anxiety. The analogy feels pretty weak.