If society was actually thrown back into preindustrial levels, odds are good we would never get back, because all of the easy to acquire oil/coal is already gone.
I don’t think that’s frightening at all. A bunch of rent seekers lose everything, and everyone else wins. This practice should be, and in some places is, illegal.
Hotels are a regulated industry for a reason and Airbnb is completely flouting the rules. No one wants to be a next-door neighbor to an Airbnb'ed apartment, and hotels are a more efficient use of real estate for housing a given number of tourists.
So yeah, they're helping out tourists, but they're harming all the people in the city who live there and need a place to live. If you're primarily a tourist then Airbnb is good for you; if you live in a high cost city then it's most definitely not. And more of us are in the latter situation, me included.
Rentals have been a thing since people have been travelers. It's easy to point a finger at Airbnb, but a lack of affordable housing existed long before they were around. You could argue that hotels are using space that could be used for housing locals, too. Is Airbnb a factor in prices going up, yes. Is Airbnb the only factor, clearly no.
AirBnB is not rent seeking though I’m dubious of its value to society. People buying property in RESIDENTIAL areas to be used exclusively as short term rental units are rent seekers.
People seem really positive about this, but I don’t see anything here that seems actionable or materially different from what we’ve seen elsewhere. Can someone point out why this is noteworthy?
It's important because it is political. There have been widespread calls for government to show it's working, and a really determined campaign to show that the strategy is ineffective and is the thing of the prime minister. The document is a chance for the government to try and change some of these perceptions.
Also it is pretty impressive how transaprent the UK prime minister has been in dealing with this pandemic.
- 100% scientific driven approach
- Daily briefings and updates addressed to the public
- Daily Q&A where the PM addresses questions from the press
- Publication of all scientific papers and studies conducated in this short amount of time which are fundamental in decision making
Nobody has a crystal ball to look into the future and therefore nobody can say if what the UK gov has done so far and when they have done it and how they have done it was any good or bad, but I rather have a government which takes such a scientific and transparent approach than anything contrary.
Mistakes can happen regardless which approach one takes, but I rather have a mistake done based on best scientific effort than through negligence.
I don’t believe that could possibly be true. The current ICU makeup in the US is 2-4% for ages 20-44. That’s a 10-20x increase you’re proposing. And yes, you can say that they’re triaging, but for this to be possible you’d need truly enormous numbers of infected individuals AND tons and tons of triaging going on which doesn’t feel accurate based on what news says.
A quick google suggests that 84% of the population is under 65, so this isn’t especially surprising. Every other data source I’ve seen has used age 60 as the benchmark which is probably skewing how we think of these numbers in the US context.
% of ICU patients in ages 20-44 is just 2-4%.
% of ICU patients under 60 is going to be, eyeballing it, maybe 25-30% with most of concentrated in people in their 50s.
If you’re young and would be hospitalized (not ICU), I think it’s pretty unlikely you would die from this even if just left at home.
This is a serious concern. It is not apocalyptic. If you’re young and healthy, you are still vastly likely to come out of this just fine even if infected regardless of hospitals.
The IWBTG maker has a rarely updated blog in which he talks about game design in stuff he has played or made which I enjoy. Maybe check this out? This post seems relevant.
This is a fine comment. But could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
That's exactly why it's a poor choice for a product name. It's "greedy" to claim generic words for your products. It works for the likes of FAANGs with stuff like "Google groups", but at least they're coupling it with their brand. To just come out and call your product "Sink" for example, with no qualifiers, is foolish and bordering on unethical.
