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Of the 66 comments here at this moment, almost every comment strongly agrees with the article's premise that the US has a "bizarre disconnect between real and p

Of the 66 comments here at this moment, almost every comment strongly agrees with the article's premise that the US has a "bizarre disconnect between real and perceived danger when it comes to kids". There's an obvious contradiction: How do we (Hacker News readers at least) agree that this is crazy but society keeps doing craziness like "arresting a mom for letting her kids, 8 and 9, wait at the condo for an hour".

mschuster91 10y ago
> How do we (Hacker News readers at least) agree that this is crazy but society keeps doing craziness Because HN readers tend to be an extremely small subset of the general population. General population will happily vote for Trump, le Pen, Orban, Petry and other populists, which in my opinion is equally stupid with arresting parents for growing up their kids "range-free"... More and more, I have the feeling that "Idiocracy" looks more and more like a documentation of now than a satire.
- csuwldcat 10y ago
  While I detest Trump and authoritarians in general (which Hillary is really just a different flavor of), I don't think you're statement holds water here. California, where I live, is the ultimate nanny state - we've criminalized the everloving shit out of everything. California has 3x as many laws on the books than the next closest state in volume, and it makes many activities, business and personal, very complex. 'Progressive' ideology places the State in greater and greater control over defining most aspects of life, and tends to turn to law and mandates more frequently than other ideological systems. This naturally drives the use of state mechanisms as a means of operation and resolution over non-legal communal resolution between individuals.
apatters 10y ago
Because democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. It's very easy to get people worked up and crusading (e.g., wolf-mode) about "think of the children" type causes. Then you get representatives who play on this and keep on passing more and more draconian laws. The rational part of the population is bigger than people often realize it's just that they don't yell as loudly.
Fiahil 10y ago
Not all of us are Americans, and we have no problem leaving children alone in an apartment for an hour.
csuwldcat 10y ago
That's why you never initiate aggression, unless in fear of immediate harm - but if someone initiates it with you, be well prepared to drop them.
naasking 10y ago
> There's an obvious contradiction: How do we (Hacker News readers at least) agree that this is crazy but society keeps doing craziness like "arresting a mom for letting her kids, 8 and 9, wait at the condo for an hour". Because HN isn't a statistically representative sample of society as a whole.

mschuster91 10y ago

> How do we (Hacker News readers at least) agree that this is crazy but society keeps doing craziness Because HN readers tend to be an extremely small subset of the general population. General population will happily vote for Trump, le Pen, Orban, Petry and other populists, which in my opinion is equally stupid with arresting parents for growing up their kids "range-free"... More and more, I have the feeling that "Idiocracy" looks more and more like a documentation of now than a satire.

csuwldcat 10y ago
While I detest Trump and authoritarians in general (which Hillary is really just a different flavor of), I don't think you're statement holds water here. California, where I live, is the ultimate nanny state - we've criminalized the everloving shit out of everything. California has 3x as many laws on the books than the next closest state in volume, and it makes many activities, business and personal, very complex. 'Progressive' ideology places the State in greater and greater control over defining most aspects of life, and tends to turn to law and mandates more frequently than other ideological systems. This naturally drives the use of state mechanisms as a means of operation and resolution over non-legal communal resolution between individuals.

apatters 10y ago

Because democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. It's very easy to get people worked up and crusading (e.g., wolf-mode) about "think of the children" type causes. Then you get representatives who play on this and keep on passing more and more draconian laws. The rational part of the population is bigger than people often realize it's just that they don't yell as loudly.

Fiahil 10y ago

Not all of us are Americans, and we have no problem leaving children alone in an apartment for an hour.

csuwldcat 10y ago

That's why you never initiate aggression, unless in fear of immediate harm - but if someone initiates it with you, be well prepared to drop them.

naasking 10y ago

> There's an obvious contradiction: How do we (Hacker News readers at least) agree that this is crazy but society keeps doing craziness like "arresting a mom for letting her kids, 8 and 9, wait at the condo for an hour". Because HN isn't a statistically representative sample of society as a whole.