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Thanks for the response! Your points are reasonable - in fact I fully agree with several - but I am afraid you misunderstood my meaning. I am not arguing for o

by gkop 11y ago

Thanks for the response! Your points are reasonable - in fact I fully agree with several - but I am afraid you misunderstood my meaning. I am not arguing for or against the proposition - I just don't think the OP is a quality article around which to have this debate. It's a political scare piece.

smsm42 11y ago
It is political, of course - which is only appropriate when discussing questions of policy. I disagree with it being "scare piece" - it describes a bad proposal, and it is appropriate to emphasize the potential dangers and problems, and the claims in the article I personally consider reasonably founded. For example, private right to action is very scary - it generates immense amount of abuse for such things as ADA and Prop 65, most of which only reallocates money from businesses to slimy lawyers while contributing exactly nothing to the welfare of the intended beneficiaries. And to add one-way attorney fees shifting to that? This moves it from the "bad idea" territory to "these guys are completely insane, everybody, turn and run!" territory. This is practically begging for the law to be abused. I think with such starting point one has to work very hard to write a piece that would be scary enough.
- gkop 11y ago
  Now we're talking. Because of private right to action plus one-way attorney fees, the proposition stands to cause a lot of harm. See, it's not that hard to focus your argument and take a stand without resorting to hyberbole. The OP on the other hand, well I really tried in my first comment to show the OP's hypocrisy, I am not going to be able to do a better job here. I suppose one measure is, how much did private right to action and one-way attorney fees come up in the HN discussion of the article? Not enough, and never (?) with the kind of historical context you are hereby providing (also missing from the OP). I'd posit that the OP did successfully scare more than 0 readers into considering voting against the proposition. So while the article may not be entirely without social utility (scare pieces have utility!), it's not a "smart" article, and it didn't do a good job of explaining the real critical problems with F. And it successfully made me feel alienated from and judgemental toward the No On F crowd.

by gkop 11y ago

smsm42 11y ago

It is political, of course - which is only appropriate when discussing questions of policy. I disagree with it being "scare piece" - it describes a bad proposal, and it is appropriate to emphasize the potential dangers and problems, and the claims in the article I personally consider reasonably founded. For example, private right to action is very scary - it generates immense amount of abuse for such things as ADA and Prop 65, most of which only reallocates money from businesses to slimy lawyers while contributing exactly nothing to the welfare of the intended beneficiaries. And to add one-way attorney fees shifting to that? This moves it from the "bad idea" territory to "these guys are completely insane, everybody, turn and run!" territory. This is practically begging for the law to be abused. I think with such starting point one has to work very hard to write a piece that would be scary enough.

gkop 11y ago
Now we're talking. Because of private right to action plus one-way attorney fees, the proposition stands to cause a lot of harm. See, it's not that hard to focus your argument and take a stand without resorting to hyberbole. The OP on the other hand, well I really tried in my first comment to show the OP's hypocrisy, I am not going to be able to do a better job here. I suppose one measure is, how much did private right to action and one-way attorney fees come up in the HN discussion of the article? Not enough, and never (?) with the kind of historical context you are hereby providing (also missing from the OP). I'd posit that the OP did successfully scare more than 0 readers into considering voting against the proposition. So while the article may not be entirely without social utility (scare pieces have utility!), it's not a "smart" article, and it didn't do a good job of explaining the real critical problems with F. And it successfully made me feel alienated from and judgemental toward the No On F crowd.