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What is your proposal to stop this behavior then? Putting people in jail for doing bad things is a signal to future people who want to do those bad things that
by imgabe 8y ago
What is your proposal to stop this behavior then?
Putting people in jail for doing bad things is a signal to future people who want to do those bad things that they will suffer consequences for it. This will make them rethink doing those things. AKA "deterrence"
If people can do these things and get away with it, why wouldn't they? They make billions of dollars doing this and have no chance of suffering any negative consequences. If you were in a room with a billion dollars on the table and you knew you'd be free to take it and no one would ever come after you for it, wouldn't you take it?
> You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were trained by {executive}
If your boss told you to do a bunch of things, and then got thrown in jail for doing exactly those things, are you saying that you would keep on doing them? Most people wouldn't.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ikeboy 8y agoWhat, exactly, are the "bad things" you want people to go to jail for?
- imgabe 8y agoIn this case, manipulating government regulations by submitting false comments. If it's proved that companies fraudulently submitted comments to create the appearance of a grassroots sentiment that did not exist, specifically in order to obtain favorable regulations that would enrich them, don't you think that someone should go to jail for that?
- ikeboy 8y agoAre there any credible allegations that Ajit Pai, or any other government employees were behind any false comments? Because I haven't seen any such claims. It seems to me that people are demanding he be put in jail for drafting and voting for a regulation they disagree with.
- imgabe 8y agoI honestly don't know what role, if any, Pai specifically may have had. This is why we have a justice system - to investigate crimes and hold trials to determine if someone committed a crime or not. I agree he should not be put in jail solely on the basis of allegations from the Internet. I don't think anyone is proposing that.
- ikeboy 8y agoThe original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"
- imgabe 8y agoI assume that person believes that, as former general counsel of a major telecom company and then head of the FCC, if there were wrongdoing, Pai would have been aware of it, if not involved. Do you think that's an unreasonable assumption? Even if it happened without his knowledge, he's the leader so it's ultimately his responsibility. In the best case, we could say he was negligent in assessing the validity of the comments that were submitted to his agency. After all, subsequent investigations have been able to determine the comments were fraudulent, so why didn't he? If he knew they were fake and just ignored that fact because they supported what he wanted to do anyway, that's another thing. If he was being compensated in some backdoor way from the industry for ignoring that the comments were fake, that's yet another thing. These are things that should be investigated.
- ikeboy 8y agoYes, it's incredibly unreasonable to go from "fake comments were submitted" to "Pai is responsible".
- imgabe 8y agoOk, see if I were a government official in charge of reviewing comments from the public, I would consider it my responsibility to ensure that those comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what sorts of responsibilities government officials have.
- ryanlol 8y agoHoly shit, the comments calling for literal execution of Ajit Pai get upvoted and this gets downvoted. Well done!
- anigbrowl 8y agoDon't ealion here please.
- ikeboy 8y agoPer guidelines: >Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.
- jachee 8y ago> What is your proposal to stop this behavior then? In the 18th century, they used the Guillotine.
- padseeker 8y agoSo we're advocating for the death penalty for fake comments? Doesn't that sound a little excessive for fake comments on the internets?
- imgabe 8y agoIt's not merely fake comments. It's fake comments used by a small group of people to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. I'm sure the reference to the death penalty is being hyperbolic, but this is a little different from some kid pretending to be a Navy Seal to sound like a tough guy.
- craftinator 8y agoI'm advocating for execution. He took on a position of power and responsibility. He abused that power to line his pockets while disregarding the responsibility to the American people. Maybe we should set up a comment system to decide his fate! And we can make it just as insecure as the one he chose for us.
- dang 8y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebaity comments to Hacker News? It's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do that repeatedly. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jachee 8y agoRead up on the French Revolution and what actually happened. You'll learn who did what to whom and within what legal framework (or lack thereof). You may also start to see some parallels.