8 ms·

> This is a world that has nearly ended the manufacture of private aircraft that any individual with a private pilot's license and enough money can purchase. D

> This is a world that has nearly ended the manufacture of private aircraft that any individual with a private pilot's license and enough money can purchase. Did this happen due to legislation or market forces? I honestly don't know, but that sounds like it could be that the author got priced out of the market. Where's the legislative or legal connection here? > This is a world that feels compelled to pass laws requiring the use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets in the hope of protecting people who are too stupid to wear them otherwise. People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. I have a really hard time seeing how a helmet law, which if violated would result in what, a citation?, can be construed as overwhelmingly oppressive. This is pretty weak. > You are too stupid to speak in public or post on the Internet on any topic you judge to be important. We will tell you what you can and what you cannot say. Care to provide specific examples of what you have tried and been unable to say because the government explicitly tells you not to? A lot of that has to do with the commercial mechanisms that keep the internet free for users too, it's not like banning all regulation around the internet would magically make it a better place. I still think American ISPs are doing a lot more to stifle innovation than legislation that keeps certain chemicals out of kids chemistry sets.

WalterBright 5y ago
> People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. I'm astounded to read this. Do you believe we are the property of the government? That we live for the benefit of the government? That we are kept alive to serve the government? > I have a really hard time seeing how a helmet law, which if violated would result in what, a citation?, can be construed as overwhelmingly oppressive. This is pretty weak. Washington State just repealed the bicycle helmet law, on the grounds that it was racist.
- pixl97 5y ago
  In this sense we are the government. The people that are getting hurt in auto accidents are us, and in a large number of cases not just the person behind the wheel of bad driving. If you crash into someone and you die but they dont, they are still left as a burden on society to take care of.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > In this sense we are the government. I'm not your property, either.
    - EdwardDiego 5y ago
      But your medical care increases my burden. Washing your brain off the road becomes someone else's emotional burden.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Voting for taxes doesn't imply you now own the people who benefit from those taxes.
        fennecfoxen 5y ago
        I’m not sure the right people feel the same way about this. I recall that after the 2008ish bailouts many politicians felt they were entitled to own banks, even the ones who did not ask for and had repaid the money.
        EdwardDiego 5y ago
        Seeing as there's no chance of voting for "no taxes" because that's not how effective governments in the real world work (although I wish the Seasteaders, Cryptoland[0], and the LPD[1] the best of luck), your point is rather moot. A quick synopsis of my wall of words below - stop calling mutual obligation "ownership", I feel that's a bit of a silly framing. No matter how high or low our tax rates, you live in a society. Societies were evolved by our ancestors because they kept clever apes (with no natural weapons and infants that have the animal world's longest periods of helplessness due to the compromises involved in big brains and pelvises) alive better than not having them. But a society comes with a) rights and b) responsibilities. The two are not an OR, nor XOR, but very much AND. The government mandating you wear a helmet on a motorcycle is because far too many people focus on their rights only, and consider their responsibilities an onerous imposition - and then impose the consequences of their choices on the rest of society. If you feel you have no obligations to the rest of society, you're wrong in my opinion, but you are always free, of course, to opt out entirely, go and build a hut in the boreal forests (tropical is also an option, but might be too many societies living in them for your tastes), and live fully free. And because Terry Pratchett is eminently quotable in these areas: "Freedom may be mankind's natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling." Perhaps I can give you an example not involving brains being hosed off roadways. As our society is a big fan of property rights, a mutual obligation of "don't steal my stuff, and I won't steal yours" is core to it. Even the USSR, despite it's views on private property, weren't fans of stealing from other members of your society. It's a very old value in human societies, I mean, it's in the top ten Commandments from YHWH, and we're going back a few thousand years there. Previously it was enforced by people of the tribe throwing stones while the priests watched, these days it's enforced by the government, a collective figment we formed to represent our society's collective desires and values as best we can (very imperfectly, but as the old saying goes, democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others we've tried). If I choose to steal your stuff, agents of the government (paid for by the taxes of yourself and other members of society) will try to apprehend me, return your stuff, and punish me for violating a mutual obligation inherent to our society. But, to go full reductio ad absurdum here, why should the fact of your paying taxes constrain my choice to steal your stuff? Why should my choices be constrained when they impact you? Do you think you own me? If not, please send me location details, times of day you're not at home, alarm codes, the favourite foods of any pets which might be defensive when I come calling unexpectedly so I can make friends before trying to carry your TV out, and which valuables have the highest market value, just so I can reaffirm that you and I claim no ownership of each other or our respective actions. TL;DR - it's not ownership, it's mutual obligation. It's central to being a social animal, and we're social animals because that's how we evolved. PS - I was trying to be understanding of your POV, as I had assumed you'd lived in the USSR based on your repeated comparisons to it. Then I found out that you're Apple Pie American, so now I'm just a bit sad that you're resorting to Soviet Russia for the sake of argument. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/cryptoland-runs-aground-as-12m-bid-to-buy-fiji-island-for-resort-falls-through https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/cryptolan... [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
- kevingadd 5y ago
  You don't need to be the government's property for the government to optimize laws in order to reduce loss of life and medical expenses (the latter is important because in practice if someone badly wounded shows up in the ER, they get treated and someone has to pay for it, and that might not be the injured person or an insurance company)
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > You don't need to be Yeah, you do. It goes hand in hand with being the property of the government. For an example, the Soviet Union believed that if they funded your education, you owe the government a lifetime of service for it.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      Sure, in Soviet Russia they go hand in hand. But Soviet Russia is perhaps not the model to limit oneself to? A government that does altruistic things for the benefit of the citizenry is good, actually.
      - brimble 5y ago
        I know the post you're responding to probably got a, "wait, that doesn't follow at all..." out of a bunch of folks, but I'd recommend letting it be to speak for itself—most everyone else can see the same thing you do. You're not going anywhere useful by engaging.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Doing altruistic things is one thing, going a step further and concluding that this entitles you to control the other is quite another.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
        I agree. But no one except you is suggesting that it does! No one except you has said anything about anyone being the governments property. You've invented a line of argument to be concerned about. As another user said, your line of reasoning doesn't at all follow. I've tried to point that out twice now and I guess you don't want to acknowledge that.
- b112 5y ago
  Washington State just repealed the bicycle helmet law, on the grounds that it was racist. This is insane. Literally insane. I am not for or against a helmet law. But racist?! I can see it being an economic issue, but that's not race. Absolutely not. There are poor people of all stripes.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    They repealed the law because they wanted to for a bunch of fairly legitimate reasons. Due to the political climate at the time they couldn't say they did it because "what people do with their craniums is none of the government's business" so they picked a reason that they could use.
  - CodeMage 5y ago
    Yeah, they didn't repeal it because it was racist. They repealed it because the enforcement of it was biased. That's an important difference and omitting it can lead to misinterpretation. As it turns out, their data showed that the vast majority of people already used helmets. Those who don't are mostly those who can't afford it, and fining them won't make cycling safer for anyone. The bias in the enforcement was substantial: black cyclists got 4 times as many tickets as white, and nearly half of the tickets were issued to homeless people.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Missing in the bias statistics was the rate at which various groups wore helmets. Enforcement bias cannot be inferred without these figures, which were missing from every article I read about it.
      - axiosgunnar 5y ago
        It is blasphemous these days to even entertain the thought that there might be behavioural differences between races, so gathering these statistics is like picking the forbidden fruit.
- closeparen 5y ago
  The government arranges for most people to live in environments where driving or otherwise being around cars is necessary. Compensating controls are the least it can do.
sT370ma2 5y ago
"Care to provide specific examples of what you have tried and been unable to say because the government explicitly tells you not to? " I would love to, despite your setting up a straw-man argument. I posted a link to this article: http://misc-stuff.terraaeon.com/articles/no-vote.html http://misc-stuff.terraaeon.com/articles/no-vote.html on Hacker News. It received about 2000 page views in less than 30 minutes before it was pulled from the feed.
- cecilpl2 5y ago
  Did you just conflate Hacker News with the government?
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  Wait, are you saying that Hacker News is the government? What does having a post getting removed from Hacker News have to do with what the government tells us to say? I'm sorry but I don't follow this line of argument at all.
  - sT370ma2 5y ago
    The article doesn't say the government is the reason children could not have decent chemistry sets in the 1970's and '80's. That's the straw-man argument. However, I can't prove that fear of the government, due to what could be seen as an anti-government article, is the reason Hacker News pulled the post from the feed. I really don't know.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Given the topics quite routinely discussed here, I very much doubt that. But the article in question is a really short piece, and, so far as I can see, it's strictly politics - what makes it HN front page material? (popularity by itself is not a valid metric here)
syshum 5y ago
>>Care to provide specific examples of what you have tried and been unable to say because the government explicitly tells you not to? Looked at Canadian news lately? I am not even talking about those blocking a major bridge or anything like that. They are seizing bank accounts of people they politically disagree with, or supported "indirectly" those they politically disagree with. "Without the freedom to transact, you have no other constitutional rights" >>People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. WOW... you understand you are providing an authoritarian justification for literally controlling everything about a persons life. These type of justification for the imposition of state authority into peoples life is one of the main reason I continue to oppose single payer healthcare for the US. This idea because it would cost the government money in medical expenses is all the justification the government needs infringe on my personal autonomy / liberty is frankly terrifying, but less those then the idea of "less economic activity" being justification. That is freaking dystopian right there, am at a loss that anyone could think that is a valid justification for state power / authority
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  > Looked at Canadian news lately? I am not even talking about those blocking a major bridge or anything like that. They are ceasing bank accounts of people they politically disagree with, or supported "indirectly" those they politically disagree with. Yes I have. You're ignoring the relationship between these two things. A group of protestors has occupied a city and created a massive public disturbance in the process for those that live and work there. People have a right to live in peace, undisturbed by others, do they not? What's even more bizarre about this situation is that now, the leader of the movement has been arrested and now wants out of the entire thing because he didn't think the authorities would actually take action. When you look back at history, you see leaders of real movements like MLK getting arrested because they lived under actual tyranny, and they weren't afraid of it because they spent their entire lives under oppression. MLK was arrested multiple times throughout his life, and anyone who's serious about participating in civil disobedience knows that arrest is always on the table, and has been since the founding of the country. The leader of the truckers buckled after a day in custody, what conviction he has in his rights.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

WalterBright 5y ago

> People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. I'm astounded to read this. Do you believe we are the property of the government? That we live for the benefit of the government? That we are kept alive to serve the government? > I have a really hard time seeing how a helmet law, which if violated would result in what, a citation?, can be construed as overwhelmingly oppressive. This is pretty weak. Washington State just repealed the bicycle helmet law, on the grounds that it was racist.

pixl97 5y ago
In this sense we are the government. The people that are getting hurt in auto accidents are us, and in a large number of cases not just the person behind the wheel of bad driving. If you crash into someone and you die but they dont, they are still left as a burden on society to take care of.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > In this sense we are the government. I'm not your property, either.
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    But your medical care increases my burden. Washing your brain off the road becomes someone else's emotional burden.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Voting for taxes doesn't imply you now own the people who benefit from those taxes.
      - fennecfoxen 5y ago
        I’m not sure the right people feel the same way about this. I recall that after the 2008ish bailouts many politicians felt they were entitled to own banks, even the ones who did not ask for and had repaid the money.
      - EdwardDiego 5y ago
        Seeing as there's no chance of voting for "no taxes" because that's not how effective governments in the real world work (although I wish the Seasteaders, Cryptoland[0], and the LPD[1] the best of luck), your point is rather moot. A quick synopsis of my wall of words below - stop calling mutual obligation "ownership", I feel that's a bit of a silly framing. No matter how high or low our tax rates, you live in a society. Societies were evolved by our ancestors because they kept clever apes (with no natural weapons and infants that have the animal world's longest periods of helplessness due to the compromises involved in big brains and pelvises) alive better than not having them. But a society comes with a) rights and b) responsibilities. The two are not an OR, nor XOR, but very much AND. The government mandating you wear a helmet on a motorcycle is because far too many people focus on their rights only, and consider their responsibilities an onerous imposition - and then impose the consequences of their choices on the rest of society. If you feel you have no obligations to the rest of society, you're wrong in my opinion, but you are always free, of course, to opt out entirely, go and build a hut in the boreal forests (tropical is also an option, but might be too many societies living in them for your tastes), and live fully free. And because Terry Pratchett is eminently quotable in these areas: "Freedom may be mankind's natural state, but so is sitting in a tree eating your dinner while it is still wriggling." Perhaps I can give you an example not involving brains being hosed off roadways. As our society is a big fan of property rights, a mutual obligation of "don't steal my stuff, and I won't steal yours" is core to it. Even the USSR, despite it's views on private property, weren't fans of stealing from other members of your society. It's a very old value in human societies, I mean, it's in the top ten Commandments from YHWH, and we're going back a few thousand years there. Previously it was enforced by people of the tribe throwing stones while the priests watched, these days it's enforced by the government, a collective figment we formed to represent our society's collective desires and values as best we can (very imperfectly, but as the old saying goes, democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others we've tried). If I choose to steal your stuff, agents of the government (paid for by the taxes of yourself and other members of society) will try to apprehend me, return your stuff, and punish me for violating a mutual obligation inherent to our society. But, to go full reductio ad absurdum here, why should the fact of your paying taxes constrain my choice to steal your stuff? Why should my choices be constrained when they impact you? Do you think you own me? If not, please send me location details, times of day you're not at home, alarm codes, the favourite foods of any pets which might be defensive when I come calling unexpectedly so I can make friends before trying to carry your TV out, and which valuables have the highest market value, just so I can reaffirm that you and I claim no ownership of each other or our respective actions. TL;DR - it's not ownership, it's mutual obligation. It's central to being a social animal, and we're social animals because that's how we evolved. PS - I was trying to be understanding of your POV, as I had assumed you'd lived in the USSR based on your repeated comparisons to it. Then I found out that you're Apple Pie American, so now I'm just a bit sad that you're resorting to Soviet Russia for the sake of argument. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/cryptoland-runs-aground-as-12m-bid-to-buy-fiji-island-for-resort-falls-through https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/16/cryptolan... [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
kevingadd 5y ago
You don't need to be the government's property for the government to optimize laws in order to reduce loss of life and medical expenses (the latter is important because in practice if someone badly wounded shows up in the ER, they get treated and someone has to pay for it, and that might not be the injured person or an insurance company)
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > You don't need to be Yeah, you do. It goes hand in hand with being the property of the government. For an example, the Soviet Union believed that if they funded your education, you owe the government a lifetime of service for it.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Sure, in Soviet Russia they go hand in hand. But Soviet Russia is perhaps not the model to limit oneself to? A government that does altruistic things for the benefit of the citizenry is good, actually.
    - brimble 5y ago
      I know the post you're responding to probably got a, "wait, that doesn't follow at all..." out of a bunch of folks, but I'd recommend letting it be to speak for itself—most everyone else can see the same thing you do. You're not going anywhere useful by engaging.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Doing altruistic things is one thing, going a step further and concluding that this entitles you to control the other is quite another.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        I agree. But no one except you is suggesting that it does! No one except you has said anything about anyone being the governments property. You've invented a line of argument to be concerned about. As another user said, your line of reasoning doesn't at all follow. I've tried to point that out twice now and I guess you don't want to acknowledge that.
b112 5y ago
Washington State just repealed the bicycle helmet law, on the grounds that it was racist. This is insane. Literally insane. I am not for or against a helmet law. But racist?! I can see it being an economic issue, but that's not race. Absolutely not. There are poor people of all stripes.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  They repealed the law because they wanted to for a bunch of fairly legitimate reasons. Due to the political climate at the time they couldn't say they did it because "what people do with their craniums is none of the government's business" so they picked a reason that they could use.
- CodeMage 5y ago
  Yeah, they didn't repeal it because it was racist. They repealed it because the enforcement of it was biased. That's an important difference and omitting it can lead to misinterpretation. As it turns out, their data showed that the vast majority of people already used helmets. Those who don't are mostly those who can't afford it, and fining them won't make cycling safer for anyone. The bias in the enforcement was substantial: black cyclists got 4 times as many tickets as white, and nearly half of the tickets were issued to homeless people.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Missing in the bias statistics was the rate at which various groups wore helmets. Enforcement bias cannot be inferred without these figures, which were missing from every article I read about it.
    - axiosgunnar 5y ago
      It is blasphemous these days to even entertain the thought that there might be behavioural differences between races, so gathering these statistics is like picking the forbidden fruit.
closeparen 5y ago
The government arranges for most people to live in environments where driving or otherwise being around cars is necessary. Compensating controls are the least it can do.

sT370ma2 5y ago

"Care to provide specific examples of what you have tried and been unable to say because the government explicitly tells you not to? " I would love to, despite your setting up a straw-man argument. I posted a link to this article: http://misc-stuff.terraaeon.com/articles/no-vote.html http://misc-stuff.terraaeon.com/articles/no-vote.html on Hacker News. It received about 2000 page views in less than 30 minutes before it was pulled from the feed.

cecilpl2 5y ago
Did you just conflate Hacker News with the government?
thr0wawayf00 5y ago
Wait, are you saying that Hacker News is the government? What does having a post getting removed from Hacker News have to do with what the government tells us to say? I'm sorry but I don't follow this line of argument at all.
- sT370ma2 5y ago
  The article doesn't say the government is the reason children could not have decent chemistry sets in the 1970's and '80's. That's the straw-man argument. However, I can't prove that fear of the government, due to what could be seen as an anti-government article, is the reason Hacker News pulled the post from the feed. I really don't know.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Given the topics quite routinely discussed here, I very much doubt that. But the article in question is a really short piece, and, so far as I can see, it's strictly politics - what makes it HN front page material? (popularity by itself is not a valid metric here)

syshum 5y ago

>>Care to provide specific examples of what you have tried and been unable to say because the government explicitly tells you not to? Looked at Canadian news lately? I am not even talking about those blocking a major bridge or anything like that. They are seizing bank accounts of people they politically disagree with, or supported "indirectly" those they politically disagree with. "Without the freedom to transact, you have no other constitutional rights" >>People dying in auto accidents costs the government money in lost economic activity as well as things like medical care. WOW... you understand you are providing an authoritarian justification for literally controlling everything about a persons life. These type of justification for the imposition of state authority into peoples life is one of the main reason I continue to oppose single payer healthcare for the US. This idea because it would cost the government money in medical expenses is all the justification the government needs infringe on my personal autonomy / liberty is frankly terrifying, but less those then the idea of "less economic activity" being justification. That is freaking dystopian right there, am at a loss that anyone could think that is a valid justification for state power / authority

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
> Looked at Canadian news lately? I am not even talking about those blocking a major bridge or anything like that. They are ceasing bank accounts of people they politically disagree with, or supported "indirectly" those they politically disagree with. Yes I have. You're ignoring the relationship between these two things. A group of protestors has occupied a city and created a massive public disturbance in the process for those that live and work there. People have a right to live in peace, undisturbed by others, do they not? What's even more bizarre about this situation is that now, the leader of the movement has been arrested and now wants out of the entire thing because he didn't think the authorities would actually take action. When you look back at history, you see leaders of real movements like MLK getting arrested because they lived under actual tyranny, and they weren't afraid of it because they spent their entire lives under oppression. MLK was arrested multiple times throughout his life, and anyone who's serious about participating in civil disobedience knows that arrest is always on the table, and has been since the founding of the country. The leader of the truckers buckled after a day in custody, what conviction he has in his rights.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]