listen to your tree-hugging pinko communist hippies

When I bother to have an opinion on something, it's usually a strong one. People easily write me off as a fringe loon. I can certainly live with that evaluation.  It is frustrating, though, to be right about something when nobody listens.

My writing 8 years ago about USA resiliency in the face of crisis is looking rather prophetic now.

"I do worry that our business culture of just-in-time resource delivery means that we have no local stockpiles of vital goods. We have no resiliency during emergency... I worry for our collective preparedness because we don't do these things together. All of these preparations can be done individually, yes, but they aren't truly effective until a whole community embraces the practices. I view "personal preparedness" as a sign that someone has already seceded from their community, abandoning the public in favor of their private interest. I prefer to continue arguing for sustainability and resilience in the collective infrastructure."
- https://mellowtigger.dreamwidth.org/245976.html

How are my local Minnesotans responding to the unfolding coronavirus epidemic?  Selfishly, which is exactly how they shouldn't.  They're emptying store shelves of water, food, and toilet paper.  Exactly the items that I recommended as stuff to always keep on hand.  Supplies are harder to find now, thanks to an economic system that prioritizes efficiency over resiliency.  I disapprove.  Efficiency is important, yes, but nothing is more important than sustainability.  Resiliency must be a factor.

I don't know how many times and ways that progressives have to argue for the benefits of so-called "socialized medicine" (and other society-enhancing systems).  Only during a global emergency do Republicans and establishment Democrats seem to comprehend the importance of keeping everyone safe and healthy.  Yes, I'm politicizing an emergency.  If it's true that the disenfranchised will die during an emergency, then it's also true that they will die outside of the immediate emergency too.

"You can look at it as socialized medicine," Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) told HuffPost on Tuesday. "But in the face of an outbreak, a pandemic, what's your options?"
- https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/coronavirus-prompts-some-right-reconsider-socialized-medicine-n1149746

But they will consider thinking in terms of whole systems only during this emergency while the health of strangers might affect their own health, of course.  The rest of the time, all of those poor people should wander off and die quietly where everyone else can safely ignore them.

Again, nothing is more important than sustainability.  Any society should build itself as a sustainable one.  Everything else is foolishness.