The people do not have to be sustained by the businesses during this decidedly non-normal time. Not if we, as a society, decide it's more important to keep people alive than to maintain the economic status quo.

Uhh.. economics == people. If the economy is fucked, then nobody will work to produce food. The fact is that the purchase and sale of luxury goods is essential to the economy, and the economy is essential to our survival.

Right, but our businesses produce way more than enough to sustain our people... normally, this is great, and the excess can go into luxuries for people.

We can still sustain people for a while without producing the extra that lets us have a luxurious life... we just need to make sacrifices for a bit.

We need to do a better job of spreading that sacrifice around, is the issue.

The economy is too big to centrally plan what depends on what. We've stopped producing tools and supplies for essential jobs (and parts for those tools, and so on). Instead we're drawing down stockpiles that hadn't been sold yet. When those stalled pipelines fully drain it's going to get ugly.

You don't have to central plan, and our food production and manufacturing have not stopped... we aren't drawing down stockpiles, the critical things are still being made.

What we have stopped are things like restaurants and entertainment... there aren't stockpiles involved with those things, we just aren't going out to eat and aren't going out for entertainment. They can start right back up when we end quarantine.

The government does not have an exhaustive supply chain diagram of every essential business. Emergency orders have exempted certain obvious types of business, but their feedstocks and tools come from other businesses that weren't listed and cannot operate today.

Maybe they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a second job?

The fact that people are so tied and sustained by businesses is the problem!

You should be considering the coronavirus essentially a trial run for any future pandemics or disasters we have to deal with, because it's showing how completely unprepared we are for anything that destabilizes our daily lives. We're lucky that covid-19 isn't deadlier because in the case of a far more serious disease with greater repercussions we'd likely be staring down the barrel of extinction with people clamouring to reopen business so they can die.

In scenarios like this the government should be stepping up to support people so that they can restart their lives when necessary. Rugged individualism doesn't work when you encounter a global disaster that requires everyone to work together.

> The fact that people are so tied and sustained by businesses is the problem!

Welcome to capitalism. Nice of you to join us.

> In scenarios like this the government should be stepping up to support people so that they can restart their lives when necessary.

Government gets its income from people. Who have businesses. Or jobs at businesses.