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Josh, loved you on LR&C but missed the last few episodes and saw on the Dish that you had moved to Substack. So glad to have found your writing, a real breath of fresh air. During the reopening last year I picked up Uber driving (nights and weekends) for about six months and found it odd that as the city I drove in relaxed it’s orders I was still obligated to wear a mask while most of the riders I drove admitted to being vaxxd and boosted, as was I. It makes less sense now, as my daughter is riding the bus and attending school maskless. This pandemic has made me re-think my politics and I find myself drawn to a much more minimalist approach than our current set-up.

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I think the transit mask mandates are probably playing a significant role in preventing the cities from getting back in their feet. Not so much that people have to wear them, but they convey the sense that it's not safe to be crowded public settings and as long as that's true people are not going to voluntarily return to the cities.

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I’d say I am generally in favor of returning to the way things used to be, local governments did most things, Congress legislated the rest of the stuff and the President saw to its execution. We’ve thrown almost all off this stuff out in favor of an imperial presidency. But one place where I think our current arrangement makes sense is in public safety emergencies. If you really think masks are an integral part of preventing Covid spread ( I don’t) then it’s entirely counterproductive to leave these policies to local authorities. These sorts of rules only work if everyone follows, unless you also prevent people from crossing state and local boundaries. So I guess I am saying that I don’t agree, in my usual long winded fashion.

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I would love to have some questions about disaster preparedness priorities for citizens and how to determine what to work on in the incredibly extensive list provided by "ready.gov" On the one hand, I find the prepper culture to be offensively crazy (despite being generally libertarian, government skeptical and predisposed to some of their kind of weird), and yet I don't think I will reasonably be doing even half of the official recommendation list from ready.gov, not counting the stuff that really doesn't apply in my region or to me in particular.

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Totally agree on the role of the federal government here. They need to get out of the way. This would also help them politically! Alas, they probably won't get out of the way. These rules have stopped my family from traveling certain places. I have a toddler and I'm not going through the nightmare of trying to have him wear a mask on a long flight.

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