In our (capitalist) society, greed and profits matter more than lives so we are unprepared to handle this.
I thought this was a non-political thread?
Also, in case you hadn't noticed, "greed and profits" are taking a back seat to isolation-based control strategies in the West. Lots of business isn't getting done, and people are going to be in serious trouble when their cash supplies run dry. Think about that the next time you take a swing at "greed and profits".
They don't tell people to stay home with * because those are treatable and profitable.
What are you talking about? It's not like we have some highly-contagious pandemic waiting to happen, being held off by an ultra-expensive capitalist superdrug that keeps Big Pharma in the money.
I think the better question is, what needs to be changed so this doesn't happen again. I think a lot of us know, but unfortunately those in power won't agree because of greed and reduced profits.
If you really want there not to be a global pandemic, you would have to stop all global trade and travel. You would not like the results regardless of greed or profits.
This whole thing shows how vulnerable our whole system and way of doing things is. The fact that we rely so much on China and other countries to make goods instead of making them here, and the fact that there is no spare inventory of anything... like masks and ventilators. Nobody wants to spend the money, it's all about doing stuff the cheapest possible so the execs can get more profit.
Part of the problem is that our outsourcing has been heavily-concentrated to one country that happens to be:
a). hostile to our interests
b). totalitarian communist and
c). the origin of our current pandemic
If we could figure out how to distribute outsourcing to other countries or find ways to keep production here, either solution could be acceptable. Remember, had Covid-19 originated in the United States (it didn't), we might have inventory problems for those things we still make States-side. Concentrating too much manufacturing in one geographical region is a risk.
Since we're a democracy, we can't tell businesses what to do
That's not true at all. "Democracies" (or representative republics, which is what we actually are) can pass laws to do just about anything that people agree for them to do. In the United States, we have various Constitutional provisions that prevent the Feds from taking too much control of commerce and production, though you may have also noticed that "businesses" (read: corporations) can't even exist in this country without corporate structures that were created for them by state and/or Federal law. The only Constitutionally-protected forms of business is the sole proprietorship (and maybe some archaic forms of partnerships that nobody uses anymore in favor of S-class corps). C-class corporations, S-class corporations, LLCs, and other contrivances are created by the government. Many corporate bylaws are also forced to follow basic frameworks laid out by state/Federal governments (see: fiduciary responsibility).
If it is the will of the People through their elected representatives, corporate law can be rewritten to achieve many goals without giving direct control of business assets to the government.
He will. So will the rest of us.