I would agree with you that there is some coverage of these issues...lately. Yesterday for instance CNN ran a story about the suicide trend in Japan. However there was very little coverage of the secondary effects until late in the summer.
> we are charging down that path optimizing for lives saved without giving fair consideration to other side effects
This reminds me of the French economist Frederic Bastiat's essay "That which is seen, and that which is not seen". The media (tv, newspapers and internet) were all hyper-focused on the number of deaths (initially) and later number of cases but always failed to take into account secondary consequences like those you mention.
One does not simply retrieve a record from the database. One must first declare a type to represent the database's view of the record and copy it into a repository layer. Next a type shall be declared to translate the repository's view of the record to a domain layer. Another type shall translate the domain layer's view of the record to the controller layer's view...and so on.
We now use Teams video chat at work. The results have been mixed. When the number of meeting participants is low (<5) the video seems to work well. Anything above that we start seeing random disconnects. We've had better experiences with Zoom for larger meetings (~25).
In the short term it might look bad. But in the long term it would encourage other companies to enter the market and existing players to increase their capacity.
If you like books I recommend Humble and Farley's "Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation". It was written before cloud native practices like containers were mainstream so not all the advice will be relevant but it has good chapters on source code management practices and CI.
I once worked for a company that uses SAP for several important business processes. The software provides great support for well defined areas like payroll, benefits, accounting and so on. It does not work well for things that are unique about the business (i.e. how it sells to- or services customers). For those things custom built software is usually a better choice.
Analogy: "In the past, a well-meaning body of public servants decided there was a need to slow down microprocessors to protect jobs threatened by automation, reduce resource consumption and benefit the climate. CPU frequency was capped at 25MHz and instruction length was limited to 8 bits. The move was hailed as a great victory for humans, nature and the climate"
As a nation, where would we be today (compared to where we are) if a policy like that had actually been adopted?
Here's a weight loss tip I've used with some degree of success: exercise portion control by using smaller dinner plates at home and chew the food on the plate longer (like 30s). The rationale is that the sensation of feeling full takes about 20 minutes to kick in and so by practicing the above you end up eating less over time and as a result lose weight. There is also a possibility your body will make better use of the food this way as there are enzymes in your mouth that help with digestion.
> I had a list at one point, not much VPC and IAM Roles, but routing tables, CIDR blocks, NAT Gateways
Just curious - how is the developer experience different on Azure? There are different types of developers. Some like to have full control and end up building their own cloud infrastructure while others like to have no control and go with something like Heroku (or maybe Azure, but I'm not too familiar with that hence my question).
> not have to worry about automating deployment
How do you validate your code before deploying to production? If you test in environments besides production how do you manage configuration settings for the different environments (i.e. a db connection string)? How do you avoid patching? Almost any code I've written takes dependencies on 3rd party libraries and those will often have security vulnerabilities (usually some time after I wrote the code).
> atmosphere cannot be effectively privatized.
It could be done. After all the ground below us is privatized (i.e. your property extends from the surface borders to a point at the center of the planet). Similarly it could be extended outward.
> Nor can courts.
Agreed. Courts are a necessary part of government by definition. I'm only arguing for the privatization of government controlled land - not anarchy.
I'm having difficulty unpacking the last part of your comment but I think the essence is that private individuals will act in ways you find disagreeable and that government can prevent that for the benefit of all. I would counter that a government is just as capable of acting in the same ways. Unfortunately in the case where an individual acts this way the consequences are limited to what that individual can do (and can usually be corrected by the courts) whereas when the government is the actor no competition is allowed and the only recourse is to challenge the power in periodic elections.
If you mean form a government then I can't blame you. It seems so logical and yet the last 50 years have demonstrated the futility of this approach (as demonstrated by the article).
Power corrupts - politicians and bureaucrats act on whims and pressure from special interest groups. It doesn't matter if the entity is a county, a state, a nation or the world.
> it's futile to see in terms of human concepts (like profit) the entity which literally created our species.
Why is it futile to understand our planet in terms of human concepts? What alternative means of understanding do you have in mind? Direct perception or revelation? Feelings?
I disagree with your overall point of view. Profits (i.e. savings) is exactly what will save the environment by enabling the preservation of the rain forest and other desirable environments.
I do agree with you that incentives have to change. Humanity absolutely depends on industry to survive and leaving precious resources like the rain forests in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats will ensure their destruction through corruption.