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Are you arguing that any law, whatever its content, should be followed unquestionably just because it's the law? In the United States, anyway, disdain for laws

Are you arguing that any law, whatever its content, should be followed unquestionably just because it's the law? In the United States, anyway, disdain for laws you disagree with is baked into the culture. The American Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement are both all about breaking laws that were considered unjust, and popular entertainment is packed full of vigilantes breaking the law in pursuit of a greater good. With that sort of mental baggage swimming about in people's heads, is it really any surprise when large numbers of Americans decide to simply ignore laws and regulations they don't believe are justified?

Tomte 10y ago
"Are you arguing..." No, he didn't. That's a big reason why discussions here go wrong. You either write paragraph after paragraph, closing every little loophole in your argument that someone can abuse, or people jump on to an outlandish, uncharitable interpretation and the subthread is toxic.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Yeah, though my fault I forgot to include the qualifier "in general" to "following the law". Of course I didn't mean "follow blindly every single regulation" - I meant, "follow regulations by default unless there's a very good reason not to".
  - gyardley 10y ago
    Is that a typical attitude in your culture? I'm a lot closer to "follow regulations only when I agree that they're justified or when I fear the consequences of not following them" and I'm not particularly sure why - I've always felt that way and it doesn't seem like a particularly unusual attitude in my area. Going back to the article - I might decide not to run an AirBnB unit if it was truly inconveniencing the neighbors, and I might decide not to run an AirBnB unit if I was afraid of getting fined a large sum of money, but I'd never give up my AirBnB units just because the local government said I had to. It would never even pop into my mind - I just wouldn't consider the regulation legitimate. I wonder why we're so different. Education? Parenting? Stuff like this is so interesting!
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Not sure if this is typical in my culture. Probably not to the extent of my personal attitude. I'm the weird guy who declared income from tutoring I was doing during my university years ;). I had two core sources for my thinking about those issues in my childhood - one was religious upbringing; I was raised in a belief that God likes it when you follow rules of secular powers unless they're in direct contradiction with the Bible. The other was growing up watching Star Trek, which taught me to assume things are better when people cooperate, bureaucracies can be competent, and rules that seem to make no sense to individual tend to have a lot of sense if you take a more global approach. So this is where I come from. Even though I'm not a religious person anymore, over the years I thought a lot about the approach to the rules and oragnizations, and came to the conclusion that the society is better off if everyone follows the rules by default, suboptimal they may be, instead of rebelling whenever they feel like. Both because some rules are actually good even if they don't seem so, and for others, it's easier to change things when people are willing to cooperate and authorities aren't so busy fighting fires. Back to the culture. For context, I'm from Europe, Poland. I meet a mix of various approaches. Some are law-abiding citizens. Most break laws here and there, but generally treat upholding them as a virtue and their behaviour as something not good, but done out of practical necessity. I don't encounter people glorifying law-breaking very often. As for vigilantes from TV you mentioned in your previous comment, I like those shows like everyone else. Though I have to remind myself all the time that it's fiction - law enforcement isn't as incompetent as those shows always portray, and lot of the stuff heroes do aren't feasible in the real world. Then again, I'm still a Star Trek guy - I side with organizations made of good, competent, ethical people.
      - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        >The other was growing up watching Star Trek, which taught me to assume things are better when people cooperate, bureaucracies can be competent, and rules that seem to make no sense to individual tend to have a lot of sense if you take a more global approach. Ah. Well a lot of other people were brought up, to so speak, with a more Firefly-inspired worldview.
        10y ago
- gyardley 10y ago
  Outlandish and uncharitable? Interesting, because I wasn't trying to be. It seemed so obvious (to me, anyway) why people routinely break laws that I assumed the person I replied to came from a very different culture than my own, and I wanted to learn where the person's actual boundaries were. There are cultures out there that (from my perspective) believe some deeply weird things about the role of law and government in society, and it fascinates me. I suppose I could've phrased it differently, but when I ask a question, it's because I'm looking for clarification, not because I've decided on an interpretation.
ubernostrum 10y ago
Are you arguing that any law, whatever its content, should be followed unquestionably just because it's the law? In the same way that Airbnb, Uber and a lot of HN are arguing that 100% of laws and regulations should be repealed, 100% of government employees fired and everything turned over to a meritocratic free market which will instantly perfectly and permanently solve all problems.

Tomte 10y ago

"Are you arguing..." No, he didn't. That's a big reason why discussions here go wrong. You either write paragraph after paragraph, closing every little loophole in your argument that someone can abuse, or people jump on to an outlandish, uncharitable interpretation and the subthread is toxic.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Yeah, though my fault I forgot to include the qualifier "in general" to "following the law". Of course I didn't mean "follow blindly every single regulation" - I meant, "follow regulations by default unless there's a very good reason not to".
- gyardley 10y ago
  Is that a typical attitude in your culture? I'm a lot closer to "follow regulations only when I agree that they're justified or when I fear the consequences of not following them" and I'm not particularly sure why - I've always felt that way and it doesn't seem like a particularly unusual attitude in my area. Going back to the article - I might decide not to run an AirBnB unit if it was truly inconveniencing the neighbors, and I might decide not to run an AirBnB unit if I was afraid of getting fined a large sum of money, but I'd never give up my AirBnB units just because the local government said I had to. It would never even pop into my mind - I just wouldn't consider the regulation legitimate. I wonder why we're so different. Education? Parenting? Stuff like this is so interesting!
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Not sure if this is typical in my culture. Probably not to the extent of my personal attitude. I'm the weird guy who declared income from tutoring I was doing during my university years ;). I had two core sources for my thinking about those issues in my childhood - one was religious upbringing; I was raised in a belief that God likes it when you follow rules of secular powers unless they're in direct contradiction with the Bible. The other was growing up watching Star Trek, which taught me to assume things are better when people cooperate, bureaucracies can be competent, and rules that seem to make no sense to individual tend to have a lot of sense if you take a more global approach. So this is where I come from. Even though I'm not a religious person anymore, over the years I thought a lot about the approach to the rules and oragnizations, and came to the conclusion that the society is better off if everyone follows the rules by default, suboptimal they may be, instead of rebelling whenever they feel like. Both because some rules are actually good even if they don't seem so, and for others, it's easier to change things when people are willing to cooperate and authorities aren't so busy fighting fires. Back to the culture. For context, I'm from Europe, Poland. I meet a mix of various approaches. Some are law-abiding citizens. Most break laws here and there, but generally treat upholding them as a virtue and their behaviour as something not good, but done out of practical necessity. I don't encounter people glorifying law-breaking very often. As for vigilantes from TV you mentioned in your previous comment, I like those shows like everyone else. Though I have to remind myself all the time that it's fiction - law enforcement isn't as incompetent as those shows always portray, and lot of the stuff heroes do aren't feasible in the real world. Then again, I'm still a Star Trek guy - I side with organizations made of good, competent, ethical people.
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      >The other was growing up watching Star Trek, which taught me to assume things are better when people cooperate, bureaucracies can be competent, and rules that seem to make no sense to individual tend to have a lot of sense if you take a more global approach. Ah. Well a lot of other people were brought up, to so speak, with a more Firefly-inspired worldview.
      - 10y ago
gyardley 10y ago
Outlandish and uncharitable? Interesting, because I wasn't trying to be. It seemed so obvious (to me, anyway) why people routinely break laws that I assumed the person I replied to came from a very different culture than my own, and I wanted to learn where the person's actual boundaries were. There are cultures out there that (from my perspective) believe some deeply weird things about the role of law and government in society, and it fascinates me. I suppose I could've phrased it differently, but when I ask a question, it's because I'm looking for clarification, not because I've decided on an interpretation.

ubernostrum 10y ago

Are you arguing that any law, whatever its content, should be followed unquestionably just because it's the law? In the same way that Airbnb, Uber and a lot of HN are arguing that 100% of laws and regulations should be repealed, 100% of government employees fired and everything turned over to a meritocratic free market which will instantly perfectly and permanently solve all problems.