> Alexandra and Daniela Del Gaudio had never been to a political rally before, let alone one to protest a coronavirus lockdown and recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. But things had changed in the sisters’ lives since they opened the Wild Plum, a yoga and wellness space, in 2018.
> The Wild Plum, in California’s San Fernando Valley, closed in March when Mr. Newsom issued pandemic stay-at-home orders for the state.
It's a special kind of "wellness" that wants to expose a bunch of people in close quarters in an enclosed space to a deadly virus.
Probably not a representative sample, but the NYT photo of the recall protest shows precisely zero wearing masks.
It's not nearly as deadly as we feared when we initially started this lockdown insanity. Survival rate is what, 99.7% now? Back in March the fear was another 1918 (CFR of like 2-4%). It's by basically every country's estimates an order of magnitude less deadly than we feared.
Yet here we are, many folks scared so much they're praising their jailers and starting to love their cages.
Thanks for generalising. I don't break the restrictions just because I'm arguing against them. Nor am I an American.
What I do know is my American friends are suffering for the same reasons my local community are, and it's abhorrent to continue supporting these policies when it's destroying so many lives.
I'm sick of hearing stories about children trying to commit suicide, people getting fat and lazy, domestic abuse reports skyrocketing, small businesses going under and taking generational wealth out of the working class.
This isn't worth it, and we need a better solution.
Ok I’m not going to argue anymore but let me point out some things since it sounds like you’re getting a distorted picture of what’s going on here.
Everyone is free to travel anywhere in the country and even outside to places welcoming people. Schools are opening back up pretty quickly. Restaurants are doing in person again despite all common sense. Amusement centers are either already open or on the path to open, most are not even hurting that bad and some are flourishing (look at Disney’s stock price, what pandemic?). The only people really hurting the most are bars.
And I really hate to say it but if someone is going to kill themselves over these “lockdowns” they’re already mentally ill and still would be without the pandemic. That’s another discussion around the poor state of mental health globally.
The only thing destroying so many lives are families deciding to host massive parties and watching all of their relatives die from covid over a month.
I guarantee unless your friends own a bar, they’re not hurting as much as they might lead on to believe.
> taking generational wealth out of the working class.
Do you have a source for that claim? Household savings were up across all American income categories in 2020.
The $600 / week federal unemployment benefit that ended in July 2020 was the most significant (accidental) antipoverty program in decades. It lasted long enough that it’s effects will probably be felt for a year or more.
How does the fact that 2019 had a much much less deadly flu season fit into your narrative? And 2020 magically did away with the flu, eradicating this awful virus, plus reduced heart attacks massively.
Please provide factual data on the survival rate and not just your opinion of 99.7%
What we do know is It has killed (currently) nearly 400-500K people in the US alone. It overwhelmed the health services of many places in the world and even here in the US (Even though the last president sought to massage those figures for less bad press)
It causes long term problems in lungs and hearts, and goodness knows what else in perhaps up to 25% of the people who may not know how badly they are affected for years.
In fact Covid19 has actually reduced the average age an American lives to by an entire year.
And we know that wearing a mask was politicized to the point that its still a symbol of division instead of common sense protection that, lets face it, had it been adhered to and not turned in to a conspiracy theory divisive action may have enabled those very stores in California to remain open.
So to get your cooperation the next time the world needs collective sacrifice, the people defining the emergent worldwide problem on day one must be precisely correct in their predictions for what will happen over the next year?
But they have actually acted in such a way as to completely obliterate any credibility they had. From lying about masks being useful (Fauci), to the WHO carrying water for China, to the "it's 100% proven zoonosis, couldn't possibly be a lab creation), to the rapid shift away from any commentary about IFR/CFR once it became clear that it was an order of magnitude off.
What's strange is I'm not arguing against crazy strict measures during a deadly pandemic. What I'm arguing is that we have learned a lot about this coronavirus, which is just one of thousands/millions of coronaviruses, and even though we learned it was nothing like what we feared, the policy response never changed.
Why do you associate the lack of credibility with investigation into the virus's origin? What lends any credibility to the lab theory? Science isnt a team sport, yet a certain group of people seem very invested in the sinister explanation.
It's been repeated over and over that initial recommendations against mask usage was in the hope that people didn't hoard them and prevent healthcare workers from getting them. Predicting the irrational behavior of large populations is a key skill of leadership. Judging by way people hoard toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and other goods, that prediction seems pretty spot on.
The disease being less deadly than we feared, and our response to it remaining the same are not contradictory. Even 10x less deaths than originally predicted is still a major crisis. It is still worthy of attempts to mitigate the problem, and the mitigation strategies are still the same.
Not sure what they want to recall him for? Anywhere the GOP have been in charge, its a disaster. Just look at Texas currently, or Florida etc. In fact, most GOP states sponge federal dollars, that the Dem run states provide. Do people really want to Texas or Florida up California?
In a global pandemic... you can stay open.. but who is gonna go in to your store?
It's a special kind of authoritarian who believes that everyone except them are incapable of making an informed assessment of the risks and exercising their freedom to participate or not in the activity. Many of history's greatest human rights abusers committed their crimes in the firm belief it was for the greater good.
> Many of history's greatest human rights abusers committed their crimes in the firm belief it was for the greater good.
That's true. But it doesn't follow that authoritarian collective action is never for the greatest good. It's no coincidence that almost all of the world's democratic government governments have enforced lockdowns and other restrictions.
"exercising their freedom to participate or not in the activity" ignores the externalities of their bad decisions.
Your freedom to swing your fist, et c.
Now the hospitals are full and I can't drive anywhere because there are no ICU beds should an idiot crash into me. Some freedom.
You don't have freedom to pollute the air that I use to breathe, and you don't have the freedom to get and spread a deadly virus (which, really, is a subset of polluting the air that others use to breathe).
You picked a small fragment of the OP's argument and turned it into a strawman. For example, you dropped the whole "making an informed assessment of the risks" part, which is pretty important to the whole message.
You bring up "your freedom to swing your fist, etc." - how does this apply to lockdown measures that were proven to be ineffective, such as cleaning surfaces[0]? We've poured a lot of money and people's time into cleaning surfaces even while knowing early on that this is a very minor source of transmission. These resources could have been invested in proven measures, such as getting more people more N95 masks.
The way I understand OP's argument is that it's against how heavy-handed and inflexible these lockdown measures have been, limiting individuals effectiveness in dealing with the pandemic. Turning surface cleaning into security theater is one example. Another is the initial official messaging that people should not wear masks because they are not proven to be effective against COVID[1].
These restrictions made it harder to respond to the pandemic in an effective way. People wearing masks early in the pandemic or those choosing not to drown themselves in disinfectant did not, in fact, "pollute the air you breathe."
If we are to face similar disasters in the future, we have to be honest about these things so we can act better next time.
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's repetitive, tedious, and unusually nasty. Definitely not what we're going for here.
This whole thread is about Newsom not about wearing masks. If Newsom can just not be bothered to follow his own rules then he shouldn't be governor.
I was not making a statement on whether or not one should wear a mask and instead of asking for clarification you just jumped to conclusion and insulted me. I think "all it really shows us is that you and Newsom are a holes."
how do you know they don't have good ventilation and/or an outdoor space?
furthermore, it's not deadly (though possibility of long-term organ damage?) for most people, especially under ~70 years of age and in otherwise good health. making low-risk people stay at home, indoors, is generally making their mental and physical health worse. not to mention their economic situation in many cases. that all needs to be factored in too.
Agree that we're making the healthy unhealthy. I've experienced mental and physical degregation like never before under the current restrictions. Would not wish it on the worst of em.
A person who makes risky decisions is putting their own health and the health of everyone around them at risk. It's not a personal decision. We're 12 months into this thing, I thought that was well understood?
I go along with the lockdown policy only out of a sense of duty to my community, but ultimately I can protect myself alone. That being said, eventually people are going to decide they want their lives back if this isn't improving.
You're missing the point at so many levels. One, no you cant protect yourself from covid. Two, its not about protecting yourself, but about protecting everyone.
"eventually people are going to decide they want their lives back if this isn't improving."
If a certain moronic section of our society doesn't die off from this then you are correct.
Your analysis is not symmetric. If you're making a decision on what level of risk you're ok with, that is (by definition) in relation to other people also making similar calculations
You have to take look at an empathetic view - it's very easy for someone like me (and assume you), to tell everyone else to comply with the lockdowns while you continue to take a salary from $tech. If you are business owner watching your savings whittle away while the state forces you to stay closed and congress continues to do nothing, what can you do? What do you say to those people who look at Florida who have stayed opened to only have have similar per-capita numbers than that of California?
I don't put the blame entirely on Newsom, but America's COVID response has been a failure. We failed to enforce lockdowns, failed to do any sort of contact tracing and failed to give people confidence that there is any light at the end of tunnel.
Define “similar per capita rates”
Financial times shows that Florida had 20% more deaths attributed to COVID per capita cumulatively.
I do agree that CA failed to build on top of the success of early shutdowns, but I disagree that a hands off approach of Florida or the Dakotas can be deemed as a success by anyone.
>but I disagree that a hands off approach of Florida or the Dakotas can be deemed as a success by anyone.
First, you are right, I think I misremembered; California has a similar number of cases per capita. However, it was not my intention to show Florida as a success; I only mean to point out that it's hard to convince people to continue with the lockdowns when the results feel marginal.
> I don't put the blame entirely on Newsom, but America's COVID response has been a failure. We failed to enforce lockdowns, failed to do any sort of contact tracing and failed to give people confidence that there is any light at the end of tunnel.
Who would have thought that keeping citizens locked inside and spying on them when they are out of their dwellings effectively indefinitely isn't going to fly in "the land of the free." The reaction of the people is exactly what I would expect from a society that respects its freedoms while watching their leadership scaremonger and act against their own rhetoric and the media/big tech refuse dialogue and blatantly shut down any opposing views on the pandemic. We can blame whomever we want for this, what happened in America is the best thing that could've happened without completely stomping on civil rights.
>Who would have thought that keeping citizens locked inside and spying on them when they are out of their dwellings effectively indefinitely isn't going to fly in "the land of the free."
I'm sorry but this is completely pretentious. When it comes to saving lives we are the "land of the free" but when it comes to (1) making money and (2) indefinite war in the middle east then that goes out the window. It's pure cope to help us feel better about not having a government that can adequately function in time of crisis.
I fully disagree, America could have handled this 100 times better but political grandstanding came first at every step of the way.
The result of the election, if there will be one, will depend more on political affiliations than for the merits of the recall. In the past century some of the worst people on the left or right of the political spectrum were elected and were popular with their electorate at that time, no matter what the outcome was. It is one of the cases were democracy can fail and transform in a mob rule.
I haven’t really followed Newsom’s term as governor, but I do remember him being a frequent guest on Bill Maher a few years ago. He was frequently touted as a future Big Deal since he “even looks presidential.”
It’s interesting how many political careers COVID has sunk.
Not just COVID has sunk his career, I think the extreme social shift leftward of the American left has also become a liability for many formerly stable Democratic politicians.
Gray Davis thought he was on a similar path to the presidency before he was recalled as well.
I stayed in southern California the first few months of Covid and Newsom took every opportunity to get on camera, and almost never did he say anything that needed to be said by him, it was all fluff, and what wasn't fluff was rambling of what should have been two sentences turned into what felt like an hour of him talking. I think he may have failed even without covid.
This really blew up when people realized that the governor and many of the politicians of California we’re not only ignoring their own rules, but doing so blatantly.
It doesn't help that their behavior leads to the public asking "what do they know that I don't?" or to wanton disregard in general.
Clandestine salon visits, maskless restaurant gatherings, trips to Cancun during a statewide crisis, calling your broker after an intelligence briefing, public ridicule of scientific experts, and more. All of these set very poor examples for the majority of citizens who are being asked to endure extremely difficult circumstances for months at a time.
Hot take: California's recall rules are anti-democratic. It takes 12% of the voters in the last election to to demand a recall. Has there ever been a politician with less than 12% of voters strongly against them?
A recall happens whenever someone rich enough wants one. Those 1,495,709 signatures aren't cheap.
It's very democratic, and too much democracy is bad for efficient, practical rule
California's recall rules are democratic (a recall is just calling an election thus there's sense in keeping the signature level low, winning/losing the recall is completely democratic).
BUT, democratic isn't always better. The ability of the people to call elections whenever they want to puts a strain on the finances of the ruling party. Unforeseen elections also sow doubt and discord among the populace. In addition, most voters aren't educated on the issues and might recall a sitting leader without really considering whether it's merited or not. That can lead to long-term problems when governance is constantly doing and undoing policies rather than committing to long-term strategic plans.
The rules for the replacement election (FPTP with no primary, held on the same ballot as the yes/no on the recall) are particularly perverse and chaotic, and are both the main reason we don’t see more recalls with how easy they are (because even if you know you can recall the target, the replacement selection process is both poorly representative and unpredictable even with a solid knowledge of popular preferences) and the main motivation for factions that are convinced they can't compete in regular elections to seek them.
> Those 1,495,709 signatures aren't cheap.
20 years ago I remember valid signatures on California recall or ballot petitions were pretty consistently about $1/signature in signature gathering expenditures; even if that's gone up since then, it's not that expensive, especially considering the potential impact.
I linked to the costs in my comment. For ballot initiatives in 2020 it was between $5.59 and %10.37 per signature. Somewhere around 15% of signatures are invalidated putting the recall effort between $9,615,165 and $17,837,077 for the signatures alone.
What's the need to frame American socio politics in the specific language of a German theorist from the 1800's whose ideas have failed miserably and caused widespread famine, abuse, genocide, and atrocities every time they've been tested out?
American politicians seem to have the mindset of “do as we say not as we do” compounded by a view that they as the elected class, are superior in their thinking, and to back down or give in to the will of the people, is to somehow admit fault, defeat, or error. Dare I say that the sign of a good politician is someone who can admit when they are wrong, and admit that perhaps the path they have chosen is not the best path. What we see in America today is the complete opposite, where politicians steadfastly refused to admit a decision was made an error, and a rigid adherence to continuing that path.
Well, among other reasons because many ideas he came up with or championed have been fundamentally adopted as part of the fundamental reasoning of theoreticians, politicians, and economists of all political stripes?
The most notable of them is the labor theory of value, an archaic relic of the Victorian industrial revolution but apparently impossible to leave behind. This obsession makes reasoning about post industrial economies almost impossible
Or how about people’s use of the terms “left” and “right” which are only meaningful when referring to certain parties in the French revolutionary Assemblée. This lazy characterization leads to confusion when supposedly “right wing” people support increased minimum wage or “lefties” defend the police.
Maybe the author (usefully in my mind) found those characterizations both directly illuminative as well as evocative of prior eras of social stratification.
Personally, while I find Marx irreparably muddle headed and recognize well that people have used his ideas as excuses (pro and con) for their own repressive attitudes, I think a knee-jerk response simply demonstrates its own lazy thinking.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents [1]."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
By that latter standard you could mentally replace the annoying terms with ones that you find more accurate, and then either respond interestingly to the GP's actual point, or perhaps not post anything (since the provocation will have gone away by itself).
[1] By "generic tangents" we're particularly talking about taking HN threads into generic ideological warfare. That's repetitive, tedious, and usually nasty.
Okay so the 50 cent words made people mad so here let's do this again:
Seems like people who are their own boss are not happy with the current political situation; a deep fear that they'd have to give up their business and become a regular worker.
If the recall is successful, the governor gets replaced by whoever has the highest plurality of votes. In other words, it creates a special scenario where you can be elected governor with much less than 50% of the vote.
I've always thought this is part of why California seems headed for its second recall election in just 16 years.
California haa effectively had no lockdowns, since state and county public health orders are enforced by county sheriffs and most have not only not done so but also announced policies of not doing so.
Small businesses may have been hurt by people voluntarily taking steps to protect themselves or their community despite the absence of lockdowns, but a recall isn't going to effect that.
OTOH, nothing here indicates that this is a general sentiment among small business owners, just “some”, which in a state with 4.1 million small businesses is going to be true of support for (or opposition to) almost any idea imaginable.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] thread> The Wild Plum, in California’s San Fernando Valley, closed in March when Mr. Newsom issued pandemic stay-at-home orders for the state.
It's a special kind of "wellness" that wants to expose a bunch of people in close quarters in an enclosed space to a deadly virus.
Probably not a representative sample, but the NYT photo of the recall protest shows precisely zero wearing masks.
Yet here we are, many folks scared so much they're praising their jailers and starting to love their cages.
Being anti-lockdown does not mean being pro-death. Now we know more about the virus the lockdown measures must be re-evaluated.
What I do know is my American friends are suffering for the same reasons my local community are, and it's abhorrent to continue supporting these policies when it's destroying so many lives.
I'm sick of hearing stories about children trying to commit suicide, people getting fat and lazy, domestic abuse reports skyrocketing, small businesses going under and taking generational wealth out of the working class.
This isn't worth it, and we need a better solution.
Everyone is free to travel anywhere in the country and even outside to places welcoming people. Schools are opening back up pretty quickly. Restaurants are doing in person again despite all common sense. Amusement centers are either already open or on the path to open, most are not even hurting that bad and some are flourishing (look at Disney’s stock price, what pandemic?). The only people really hurting the most are bars.
And I really hate to say it but if someone is going to kill themselves over these “lockdowns” they’re already mentally ill and still would be without the pandemic. That’s another discussion around the poor state of mental health globally.
The only thing destroying so many lives are families deciding to host massive parties and watching all of their relatives die from covid over a month.
I guarantee unless your friends own a bar, they’re not hurting as much as they might lead on to believe.
Do you have a source for that claim? Household savings were up across all American income categories in 2020.
The $600 / week federal unemployment benefit that ended in July 2020 was the most significant (accidental) antipoverty program in decades. It lasted long enough that it’s effects will probably be felt for a year or more.
How does the fact that 2019 had a much much less deadly flu season fit into your narrative? And 2020 magically did away with the flu, eradicating this awful virus, plus reduced heart attacks massively.
What we do know is It has killed (currently) nearly 400-500K people in the US alone. It overwhelmed the health services of many places in the world and even here in the US (Even though the last president sought to massage those figures for less bad press)
It causes long term problems in lungs and hearts, and goodness knows what else in perhaps up to 25% of the people who may not know how badly they are affected for years.
In fact Covid19 has actually reduced the average age an American lives to by an entire year.
And we know that wearing a mask was politicized to the point that its still a symbol of division instead of common sense protection that, lets face it, had it been adhered to and not turned in to a conspiracy theory divisive action may have enabled those very stores in California to remain open.
Cant have it both ways!
But they have actually acted in such a way as to completely obliterate any credibility they had. From lying about masks being useful (Fauci), to the WHO carrying water for China, to the "it's 100% proven zoonosis, couldn't possibly be a lab creation), to the rapid shift away from any commentary about IFR/CFR once it became clear that it was an order of magnitude off.
What's strange is I'm not arguing against crazy strict measures during a deadly pandemic. What I'm arguing is that we have learned a lot about this coronavirus, which is just one of thousands/millions of coronaviruses, and even though we learned it was nothing like what we feared, the policy response never changed.
It's been repeated over and over that initial recommendations against mask usage was in the hope that people didn't hoard them and prevent healthcare workers from getting them. Predicting the irrational behavior of large populations is a key skill of leadership. Judging by way people hoard toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and other goods, that prediction seems pretty spot on.
The disease being less deadly than we feared, and our response to it remaining the same are not contradictory. Even 10x less deaths than originally predicted is still a major crisis. It is still worthy of attempts to mitigate the problem, and the mitigation strategies are still the same.
In a global pandemic... you can stay open.. but who is gonna go in to your store?
That's true. But it doesn't follow that authoritarian collective action is never for the greatest good. It's no coincidence that almost all of the world's democratic government governments have enforced lockdowns and other restrictions.
Your freedom to swing your fist, et c.
Now the hospitals are full and I can't drive anywhere because there are no ICU beds should an idiot crash into me. Some freedom.
You don't have freedom to pollute the air that I use to breathe, and you don't have the freedom to get and spread a deadly virus (which, really, is a subset of polluting the air that others use to breathe).
This is a freedom that changes during a boxing match for the obvious reason that both parties consent.
I'm sure the people attending this class are aware that viruses are a thing and that there's an ongoing pandemic
You bring up "your freedom to swing your fist, etc." - how does this apply to lockdown measures that were proven to be ineffective, such as cleaning surfaces[0]? We've poured a lot of money and people's time into cleaning surfaces even while knowing early on that this is a very minor source of transmission. These resources could have been invested in proven measures, such as getting more people more N95 masks.
The way I understand OP's argument is that it's against how heavy-handed and inflexible these lockdown measures have been, limiting individuals effectiveness in dealing with the pandemic. Turning surface cleaning into security theater is one example. Another is the initial official messaging that people should not wear masks because they are not proven to be effective against COVID[1].
These restrictions made it harder to respond to the pandemic in an effective way. People wearing masks early in the pandemic or those choosing not to drown themselves in disinfectant did not, in fact, "pollute the air you breathe."
If we are to face similar disasters in the future, we have to be honest about these things so we can act better next time.
[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00251-4 [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-doesnt-regret-advising...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
All it really shows us is that you and Newsom are a holes.
I was not making a statement on whether or not one should wear a mask and instead of asking for clarification you just jumped to conclusion and insulted me. I think "all it really shows us is that you and Newsom are a holes."
furthermore, it's not deadly (though possibility of long-term organ damage?) for most people, especially under ~70 years of age and in otherwise good health. making low-risk people stay at home, indoors, is generally making their mental and physical health worse. not to mention their economic situation in many cases. that all needs to be factored in too.
The article has a photograph.
You may have had a point in the beginning when so much was unknown about the virus. How it spreads. Who it affects.
But distributions are much clearer now.
If you’re part of the vulnerable cohorts stay home, cleanse everything from the outside. That’s your safe choice.
Has that problem gone away?
You're missing the point at so many levels. One, no you cant protect yourself from covid. Two, its not about protecting yourself, but about protecting everyone.
"eventually people are going to decide they want their lives back if this isn't improving."
If a certain moronic section of our society doesn't die off from this then you are correct.
I don't put the blame entirely on Newsom, but America's COVID response has been a failure. We failed to enforce lockdowns, failed to do any sort of contact tracing and failed to give people confidence that there is any light at the end of tunnel.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart
https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#country=US...
I will also note that FL has a significantly larger elderly population than CA.
First, you are right, I think I misremembered; California has a similar number of cases per capita. However, it was not my intention to show Florida as a success; I only mean to point out that it's hard to convince people to continue with the lockdowns when the results feel marginal.
Who would have thought that keeping citizens locked inside and spying on them when they are out of their dwellings effectively indefinitely isn't going to fly in "the land of the free." The reaction of the people is exactly what I would expect from a society that respects its freedoms while watching their leadership scaremonger and act against their own rhetoric and the media/big tech refuse dialogue and blatantly shut down any opposing views on the pandemic. We can blame whomever we want for this, what happened in America is the best thing that could've happened without completely stomping on civil rights.
I'm sorry but this is completely pretentious. When it comes to saving lives we are the "land of the free" but when it comes to (1) making money and (2) indefinite war in the middle east then that goes out the window. It's pure cope to help us feel better about not having a government that can adequately function in time of crisis.
I fully disagree, America could have handled this 100 times better but political grandstanding came first at every step of the way.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-18/gavin-ne...
Economy decidedly un-randy, declares Randy Economy.
It’s interesting how many political careers COVID has sunk.
I stayed in southern California the first few months of Covid and Newsom took every opportunity to get on camera, and almost never did he say anything that needed to be said by him, it was all fluff, and what wasn't fluff was rambling of what should have been two sentences turned into what felt like an hour of him talking. I think he may have failed even without covid.
Clandestine salon visits, maskless restaurant gatherings, trips to Cancun during a statewide crisis, calling your broker after an intelligence briefing, public ridicule of scientific experts, and more. All of these set very poor examples for the majority of citizens who are being asked to endure extremely difficult circumstances for months at a time.
A recall happens whenever someone rich enough wants one. Those 1,495,709 signatures aren't cheap.
https://ballotpedia.org/California_ballot_initiative_petitio...
It's very democratic, and too much democracy is bad for efficient, practical rule
California's recall rules are democratic (a recall is just calling an election thus there's sense in keeping the signature level low, winning/losing the recall is completely democratic).
BUT, democratic isn't always better. The ability of the people to call elections whenever they want to puts a strain on the finances of the ruling party. Unforeseen elections also sow doubt and discord among the populace. In addition, most voters aren't educated on the issues and might recall a sitting leader without really considering whether it's merited or not. That can lead to long-term problems when governance is constantly doing and undoing policies rather than committing to long-term strategic plans.
> Those 1,495,709 signatures aren't cheap.
20 years ago I remember valid signatures on California recall or ballot petitions were pretty consistently about $1/signature in signature gathering expenditures; even if that's gone up since then, it's not that expensive, especially considering the potential impact.
But seriously, that's not even pocket money for plenty of people who are against this governor, it's a rounding error.
The most notable of them is the labor theory of value, an archaic relic of the Victorian industrial revolution but apparently impossible to leave behind. This obsession makes reasoning about post industrial economies almost impossible
Or how about people’s use of the terms “left” and “right” which are only meaningful when referring to certain parties in the French revolutionary Assemblée. This lazy characterization leads to confusion when supposedly “right wing” people support increased minimum wage or “lefties” defend the police.
Maybe the author (usefully in my mind) found those characterizations both directly illuminative as well as evocative of prior eras of social stratification.
Personally, while I find Marx irreparably muddle headed and recognize well that people have used his ideas as excuses (pro and con) for their own repressive attitudes, I think a knee-jerk response simply demonstrates its own lazy thinking.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents [1]."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
By that latter standard you could mentally replace the annoying terms with ones that you find more accurate, and then either respond interestingly to the GP's actual point, or perhaps not post anything (since the provocation will have gone away by itself).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] By "generic tangents" we're particularly talking about taking HN threads into generic ideological warfare. That's repetitive, tedious, and usually nasty.
Seems like people who are their own boss are not happy with the current political situation; a deep fear that they'd have to give up their business and become a regular worker.
I've always thought this is part of why California seems headed for its second recall election in just 16 years.
Small businesses may have been hurt by people voluntarily taking steps to protect themselves or their community despite the absence of lockdowns, but a recall isn't going to effect that.
OTOH, nothing here indicates that this is a general sentiment among small business owners, just “some”, which in a state with 4.1 million small businesses is going to be true of support for (or opposition to) almost any idea imaginable.