6 ms·

I'm at a loss here. Why is this authoritarian decree being cheerleaded on this site?

by Helmet 9y ago

jonknee 9y ago
Because this is hackernews and not libertariannews?
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Arent hackers all about changing the world by themselves instead of relying on Ultimate State powers?
  - Analemma_ 9y ago
    Copy-pasting an earlier comment of mine: > Please stop perpetuating this myth- started by Eric Raymond and happily encouraged by SV "thought leaders"- that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself. I do none of those things, because I recognize that many times regulations are vital for ensuring human health and happiness, and think that free-for-all capitalism leads mostly to misery for all but a few in the plutocracy. "We can do beter" implies not settling for a world like that. > Other people don't have to agree with my politics, but if they want to say I'm "not a hacker" because of that, they can take their very-politically-motivated prescriptivism and... well, I got told by dang the other day and I'm trying to cut down on the angry HN posts because of it, but you get the idea.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      > that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself. I implied none of the above. It's not because you believe in bottom to top action that it means you are an anarchist, and not many libertarians want to see the actual State gone, so don't caricature things either. There's a lot of ground to cover between "the State banning stuff on a whim" and "Doing things in the dark by breaking the law". Let's not pretend every action is binary.
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    Government == Initiation of Force, or threat of same. So yeah, I'd say that historically, many (albeit not all) hackers have felt like we can do better than a system built on force/violence. The problem is, too many people assume that seeking such a model rules out any kind of collective / communal action or coordination. That's just a strawman though. People can, and do, collaborate on a voluntary basis all the time. What is needed is to encourage and facilitate more of that, not seek more application of Ultimate State powers. And I would think that somebody who considers themselves a hacker would look at a problem like that and think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this", not think "meh, let's just put up some huge State apparatus and call it good".
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      > think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this" The transition to Electric vehicles is progressively happening already, it's not like nobody is working on it. There are still numerous problems with electric cars that won't be solved in any reasonable timeframe unless there are major breakthroughs. So a "ban" is easy to do, but it does not make the technical challenges go away by itself.
- Helmet 9y ago
  Completely ignoring for a moment the parallels and long established links between hacker/tech culture and libertarianism, you don't need to be seasteading, Ayn Rand worshipping Peter Thiel protégé to see something wrong with the idea that the State outright banning a product that contemporary society uses every single day, that many people need to survive for which there are currently no affordable and/or reasonable alternatives. Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved to the point where cost won't be an issue and maybe we will have charging stations everywhere, or maybe not, maybe the innovation plateaus as happens often. My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved to the point where cost won't be an issue and maybe we will have charging stations everywhere, or maybe not, maybe the innovation plateaus as happens often. Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly. > My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040. You mean like by the election they just had?
    - Helmet 9y ago
      > Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly. So you seem to be advocating for wide, sweeping bans and regulations, and then working backwards if the technology doesn't pan out. I'm advocating the opposite: tax credits, incentives, etc. to move the technology forward and when it's ready, perhaps make the big shift to all electric. > You mean like by the election they just had? I guess we differ on the authority that elections that for out should have. But that is a more ideological issue, so I'll concede the point.
      - 9y ago
msla 9y ago
Because a number of us recognize that market failures, and pollution is a prime example, are best solved by entities outside the market, such as governments, and that a doctrinaire approach to governing is antithetical to solving problems.
- gtt 9y ago
  I admit I don't know much about economy, but how do we identify market failures? Do we have better information processing process than the market? This is honest question, not trying to nitpick or something.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Markets can only do one thing well - determine the clearing price of a good. That clearing price has absolutely nothing to do with the cost to produce a good - especially if that cost is borne by someone not involved in the transaction. The only people who think otherwise are Marxists - who believe that, on an equal playing field, the cost of a good is solely determined by the costs to produce it.
  - msla 9y ago
    I won't pretend to be a world expert on market failures, but I can take you through how we come to the conclusion pollution is a result of market failure: It all comes down to negative externalities. In general, an externality is something which happens to an unrelated third party due to some activity. An example of a positive externality is if someone waters their grass using a sprinkler, and there's enough excess spray from that sprinkler to keep your flowers sufficiently watered as well. A negative externality is, well, pollution: A truck drives by, belching toxic gasses, and you get to breathe them. The problem with externalities is that they're not priced into the activity, because the cost is not borne by the person doing the thing which causes the externality. The owner of the truck which belched fumes near you isn't going to pay for your next asthma attack. Therefore, there's no incentive to stop doing those externality-causing activities, so they continue to happen. The other half of the market failure at the heart of pollution is game theory, in this case a Prisoners' Dilemma: Say a company wants to stop polluting, but it can't be the only one, because not polluting is more expensive than polluting, so if it's the only one to stop, it gets out-competed. Thus we have the cooperate-defect choice: Cooperation means agreeing to not pollute as much, and then taking the steps to reduce pollution, and defection means agreeing with your fingers crossed, and then not reducing pollution at all. The best strategy for any individual actor in this system is to defect while everyone else cooperates, so you get to be the big economic winner in a cleaner environment because all the other suckers cooperated and reduced their pollution. So. What's the solution? We need an entity which can make the polluters internalize the costs of pollution, so they're more likely to want to stop polluting for real, and can punish defectors who say they want to stop polluting and then don't. That entity, something which can levy and enforce punishments to pursue a policy, is a government, no matter what else it's called, and it can do those things because it's not bound to the same incentive structures which caused the market failure.
vkou 9y ago
Because the climate doesn't care what form of government you have. Because the free market has consistently, and utterly failed to price in the cost of pollution. Because people will not do the right thing that will inconvenience them. If I start dumping my soda cans in the trash bin, the City of Seattle will fine me. Instead of complaining about authoritarians, I put them in the recycling bin. No, you won't be personally rewarded for every correct decision you make. Society doesn't owe anyone a gold star for not doing the wrong thing.
- nostromo 9y ago
  Actually, that law in Seattle that allowed trash collectors to rummage through your trash was ruled unconstitutional under the state constitution as a violation of privacy. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/judge-seattle-trash-check-ordinance-unconstitutional/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/judge-seat... That aside, I think a smarter solution is taxing the actual thing you don't want (carbon in the air via a carbon tax) rather than second order things (gasoline cars). It's much more effective. For example, if your Tesla is being powered by coal, you're doing almost nothing for the environment by switching to electric. So we need to set up the incentives thoughtfully, rather than being reactionary.
  - vkou 9y ago
    > Actually, that law in Seattle that allowed trash collectors to rummage through your trash was ruled unconstitutional under the state constitution as a violation of privacy. This is a peculiarity of Washington state. In much of the US, and the world, once your garbage is on the curb, there is zero expectation of privacy. (And yes, I agree that we want to punish the real externality, which can be done by taxing, or banning coal, petroleum...) However, forcing a switch to electric, without banning fossil fuels would still be a net gain - an electric vehicle powered by fossil fuels produces fewer GHGs per mile driven then a gasoline one.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Nearly all economists agree that a carbon tax would be less distorting, but politics. You know.
mindcrime 9y ago
I'm at a loss here. Why is this authoritarian decree being cheerleaded on this site? It wasn't always like this. At one time there were a LOT more of traditional hacker-mindset types here, the ones who held to ideals like: Mistrust authority. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative. Promote decentralization. But things have shifted over the past few years and authoritarian / big government ideas have gained a lot of currency here. I attribute it to something like the "Eternal September" phenomenon. As more and more new users flood in, the percentage of old-skool "hackers" who hold to those ideals falls.
- Caveman_Coder 9y ago
  Yeah, its only by casual observation, but I've noticed the same trend. I remember when our community was about the tech and anti-authoritarian rabble-rousing in general. Nowadays its like our community is more interested the percentages and genders of the community and ROI/productivity/disruption/etc of the latest and greatest chat app that will be gone in a few years...
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Sure, because those things are trendy in this space. It's a real shame - I wish we as a subsection of society decided we had more interesting things to talk about than gender and racial equality, but that is the dominant topic for the day.
- oblio 9y ago
  Oooooor, HackerNews has become more international and as a result has moved further left since as far as political axes go, the US is to the right of almost any other country on this planet, especially among the developed ones ;)
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    Mistrust of authority and aversion to bureaucracy isn't really a "left" OR a "right" thing though. That's why libertarians, for example, are often referred to as "left of left and right of right". I'd go as far as to say that "left" and "right" don't even really mean anything anymore. Those terms now are just pejoratives that refer to a perceived group that "doesn't agree with me". I mean, who in this day and age has a strong stake in the preservation of the French monarchy?
fooker 9y ago
Sort of the same reason as to why you can not ride a horse on the freeway.
ousta 9y ago
actually i don't care at all about the climate and want to drive my vintage car. Rich people will still be able to pollute much more than me by flying in their planes.
wavefunction 9y ago
I'm cheering it because people can't be trusted with the responsibility of their freedoms.
francisofascii 9y ago
Because fossil fuel consumption is synonymous to a computer program that heats up server components and gobbles up finite system memory without relinquishing it ever again. Sometimes you do want a sys. admin to put a stop to stuff like that.

I'm at a loss here. Why is this authoritarian decree being cheerleaded on this site?

by Helmet 9y ago

I'm at a loss here. Why is this authoritarian decree being cheerleaded on this site?

jonknee 9y ago

Because this is hackernews and not libertariannews?

ekianjo 9y ago
Arent hackers all about changing the world by themselves instead of relying on Ultimate State powers?
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  Copy-pasting an earlier comment of mine: > Please stop perpetuating this myth- started by Eric Raymond and happily encouraged by SV "thought leaders"- that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself. I do none of those things, because I recognize that many times regulations are vital for ensuring human health and happiness, and think that free-for-all capitalism leads mostly to misery for all but a few in the plutocracy. "We can do beter" implies not settling for a world like that. > Other people don't have to agree with my politics, but if they want to say I'm "not a hacker" because of that, they can take their very-politically-motivated prescriptivism and... well, I got told by dang the other day and I'm trying to cut down on the angry HN posts because of it, but you get the idea.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself. I implied none of the above. It's not because you believe in bottom to top action that it means you are an anarchist, and not many libertarians want to see the actual State gone, so don't caricature things either. There's a lot of ground to cover between "the State banning stuff on a whim" and "Doing things in the dark by breaking the law". Let's not pretend every action is binary.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  Government == Initiation of Force, or threat of same. So yeah, I'd say that historically, many (albeit not all) hackers have felt like we can do better than a system built on force/violence. The problem is, too many people assume that seeking such a model rules out any kind of collective / communal action or coordination. That's just a strawman though. People can, and do, collaborate on a voluntary basis all the time. What is needed is to encourage and facilitate more of that, not seek more application of Ultimate State powers. And I would think that somebody who considers themselves a hacker would look at a problem like that and think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this", not think "meh, let's just put up some huge State apparatus and call it good".
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this" The transition to Electric vehicles is progressively happening already, it's not like nobody is working on it. There are still numerous problems with electric cars that won't be solved in any reasonable timeframe unless there are major breakthroughs. So a "ban" is easy to do, but it does not make the technical challenges go away by itself.
Helmet 9y ago
Completely ignoring for a moment the parallels and long established links between hacker/tech culture and libertarianism, you don't need to be seasteading, Ayn Rand worshipping Peter Thiel protégé to see something wrong with the idea that the State outright banning a product that contemporary society uses every single day, that many people need to survive for which there are currently no affordable and/or reasonable alternatives. Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved to the point where cost won't be an issue and maybe we will have charging stations everywhere, or maybe not, maybe the innovation plateaus as happens often. My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved to the point where cost won't be an issue and maybe we will have charging stations everywhere, or maybe not, maybe the innovation plateaus as happens often. Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly. > My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040. You mean like by the election they just had?
  - Helmet 9y ago
    > Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly. So you seem to be advocating for wide, sweeping bans and regulations, and then working backwards if the technology doesn't pan out. I'm advocating the opposite: tax credits, incentives, etc. to move the technology forward and when it's ready, perhaps make the big shift to all electric. > You mean like by the election they just had? I guess we differ on the authority that elections that for out should have. But that is a more ideological issue, so I'll concede the point.
    - 9y ago

msla 9y ago

Because a number of us recognize that market failures, and pollution is a prime example, are best solved by entities outside the market, such as governments, and that a doctrinaire approach to governing is antithetical to solving problems.

gtt 9y ago
I admit I don't know much about economy, but how do we identify market failures? Do we have better information processing process than the market? This is honest question, not trying to nitpick or something.
- vkou 9y ago
  Markets can only do one thing well - determine the clearing price of a good. That clearing price has absolutely nothing to do with the cost to produce a good - especially if that cost is borne by someone not involved in the transaction. The only people who think otherwise are Marxists - who believe that, on an equal playing field, the cost of a good is solely determined by the costs to produce it.
- msla 9y ago
  I won't pretend to be a world expert on market failures, but I can take you through how we come to the conclusion pollution is a result of market failure: It all comes down to negative externalities. In general, an externality is something which happens to an unrelated third party due to some activity. An example of a positive externality is if someone waters their grass using a sprinkler, and there's enough excess spray from that sprinkler to keep your flowers sufficiently watered as well. A negative externality is, well, pollution: A truck drives by, belching toxic gasses, and you get to breathe them. The problem with externalities is that they're not priced into the activity, because the cost is not borne by the person doing the thing which causes the externality. The owner of the truck which belched fumes near you isn't going to pay for your next asthma attack. Therefore, there's no incentive to stop doing those externality-causing activities, so they continue to happen. The other half of the market failure at the heart of pollution is game theory, in this case a Prisoners' Dilemma: Say a company wants to stop polluting, but it can't be the only one, because not polluting is more expensive than polluting, so if it's the only one to stop, it gets out-competed. Thus we have the cooperate-defect choice: Cooperation means agreeing to not pollute as much, and then taking the steps to reduce pollution, and defection means agreeing with your fingers crossed, and then not reducing pollution at all. The best strategy for any individual actor in this system is to defect while everyone else cooperates, so you get to be the big economic winner in a cleaner environment because all the other suckers cooperated and reduced their pollution. So. What's the solution? We need an entity which can make the polluters internalize the costs of pollution, so they're more likely to want to stop polluting for real, and can punish defectors who say they want to stop polluting and then don't. That entity, something which can levy and enforce punishments to pursue a policy, is a government, no matter what else it's called, and it can do those things because it's not bound to the same incentive structures which caused the market failure.

vkou 9y ago

Because the climate doesn't care what form of government you have. Because the free market has consistently, and utterly failed to price in the cost of pollution. Because people will not do the right thing that will inconvenience them. If I start dumping my soda cans in the trash bin, the City of Seattle will fine me. Instead of complaining about authoritarians, I put them in the recycling bin. No, you won't be personally rewarded for every correct decision you make. Society doesn't owe anyone a gold star for not doing the wrong thing.

nostromo 9y ago
Actually, that law in Seattle that allowed trash collectors to rummage through your trash was ruled unconstitutional under the state constitution as a violation of privacy. http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/judge-seattle-trash-check-ordinance-unconstitutional/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/judge-seat... That aside, I think a smarter solution is taxing the actual thing you don't want (carbon in the air via a carbon tax) rather than second order things (gasoline cars). It's much more effective. For example, if your Tesla is being powered by coal, you're doing almost nothing for the environment by switching to electric. So we need to set up the incentives thoughtfully, rather than being reactionary.
- vkou 9y ago
  > Actually, that law in Seattle that allowed trash collectors to rummage through your trash was ruled unconstitutional under the state constitution as a violation of privacy. This is a peculiarity of Washington state. In much of the US, and the world, once your garbage is on the curb, there is zero expectation of privacy. (And yes, I agree that we want to punish the real externality, which can be done by taxing, or banning coal, petroleum...) However, forcing a switch to electric, without banning fossil fuels would still be a net gain - an electric vehicle powered by fossil fuels produces fewer GHGs per mile driven then a gasoline one.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Nearly all economists agree that a carbon tax would be less distorting, but politics. You know.

mindcrime 9y ago

I'm at a loss here. Why is this authoritarian decree being cheerleaded on this site? It wasn't always like this. At one time there were a LOT more of traditional hacker-mindset types here, the ones who held to ideals like: Mistrust authority. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative. Promote decentralization. But things have shifted over the past few years and authoritarian / big government ideas have gained a lot of currency here. I attribute it to something like the "Eternal September" phenomenon. As more and more new users flood in, the percentage of old-skool "hackers" who hold to those ideals falls.

Caveman_Coder 9y ago
Yeah, its only by casual observation, but I've noticed the same trend. I remember when our community was about the tech and anti-authoritarian rabble-rousing in general. Nowadays its like our community is more interested the percentages and genders of the community and ROI/productivity/disruption/etc of the latest and greatest chat app that will be gone in a few years...
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Sure, because those things are trendy in this space. It's a real shame - I wish we as a subsection of society decided we had more interesting things to talk about than gender and racial equality, but that is the dominant topic for the day.
oblio 9y ago
Oooooor, HackerNews has become more international and as a result has moved further left since as far as political axes go, the US is to the right of almost any other country on this planet, especially among the developed ones ;)
- mindcrime 9y ago
  Mistrust of authority and aversion to bureaucracy isn't really a "left" OR a "right" thing though. That's why libertarians, for example, are often referred to as "left of left and right of right". I'd go as far as to say that "left" and "right" don't even really mean anything anymore. Those terms now are just pejoratives that refer to a perceived group that "doesn't agree with me". I mean, who in this day and age has a strong stake in the preservation of the French monarchy?

fooker 9y ago

Sort of the same reason as to why you can not ride a horse on the freeway.

ousta 9y ago

actually i don't care at all about the climate and want to drive my vintage car. Rich people will still be able to pollute much more than me by flying in their planes.

wavefunction 9y ago

I'm cheering it because people can't be trusted with the responsibility of their freedoms.

francisofascii 9y ago

Because fossil fuel consumption is synonymous to a computer program that heats up server components and gobbles up finite system memory without relinquishing it ever again. Sometimes you do want a sys. admin to put a stop to stuff like that.