alt Hacker NewsYes; and to make it extremely politically explosive, I do enjoy observing American politics and seeing each side (there are, brilliantly, two, because there ARE only two sides to every story and they neatly correlate with each other 100%:) massively enlarge the government, apply massive new restrictive regulations, but one side claims they don't do that because of somewhat specific types of massive government regulations and enlargements they do :)
At its best, a government law/regulation/policy is people saying "Ouch, that hurt, let's not do THAT again!", or "Oooh, I like this, this is good for us, let's do more of THAT please!".
At its worst, its self-preserving bureaucracy run rampant.
Any oversimplifying platitude like "I'm against big government!" or "I'm against government regulation!" so tremendously lacks specifics as to be worse than worthless.
And this is an extremely complicated issue which a tiny minority of people care about that'd be ridiculously over-complicated to implement with huge difficulty in tracking and enforcing! But because where we are, it resonates with us, and we on Hacker News feel it's an obvious and easy policy to apply :). You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)
100 internet points and tip of a hat to you sir :)
> a tiny minority of people care about [...] You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)
The complexity and realism of some particular regulation aside, I honestly don't understand dismissing other people's opinions on the grounds that not a lot of people care about them. Should people not have an opinion because lots of other people don't share it? Or should those opinions just not be expressed?
Everybody's got their own personal interests and values. It's natural to express and even vouch for them. If they aren't shared by enough other people, they probably won't make it to the top in a democracy. That's how it works and it's fine. But I don't get the idea that someone shouldn't express an opinion about X because lots of other people don't care about X.