Re: <nettime> Should use mobile phone data to monitor public health

[James Wallbank <james@lowtech.org>]

Hello Andreas,

Great questions!

I think it's interesting to see the reaction of the UK Regime (for
those of you who aren't clear, Johnson is a known deceptionist and
right-wing Trumpalike).

It seems that the challenge for conservatives is simply to maintain
society's current social hierarchies. Johnson has put forward an
extraordinary plan that subsidises 80% of all employees' wages
(notice that it leaves out people in precarious self-employment and
gig-economy work).

What the government has conspicuously NOT done is to introduce
Universal Basic Income. Instead, they have determined that the "value"
of, say, a lawyer who is not working, is much higher than the "value"
of a bricklayer who is not working. Both, in turn, are of higher
"value" than a childcare assistant who is not working.

And, shockingly, the value of a lawyer who is not working is,
apparently, greater than the value of a waste disposal worker who is
working!

So the choice has been to offer differential support to humans - to
freeze in place the inequalities of society in the perverse hope that
they'll be able to defrost it, unchanged, in a year.

Quite apart from the practical complexity of a differential subsidy
for non-workers' wages, I'm interested in the philosophy of inequity
that lies behind this. They are, quite clearly, going to some lengths
to preserve inequality as if it were a precious, vital feature of
society.

Best Regards,

James
=====

On 20/03/2020 09:32, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> Dear Sean, folks,
>
> thanks for the useful historical references. I've already gone on
> record here as being against speculations on who should die in what
> way.


<....>




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