Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Lots of Countries/Government have gotten away with it, though.

Going there is a derail. And it doesn't even work because my analogy relied on the relationship between private groups/individuals and the legal system, which is quite different than the relationship between a country/government and the legal system.



The poster has a point though in that the government is the Ur-legal-fiction. What ends up being a problem with any subsequently spawned legal fictions will necessarily be an issue with Government.

That being said, you're absolutely correct, and I don't think that it is on you to solve the Government level issue, and there is nothing about the Government level issue stopping us from slapping some additional constraints on legal fictions it spawns. The devil, however, is in the implementation details; many of which tend to cross increasingly hairy and controversial lines.

Things like limits on freedom from compelled speech for corporations with regard to privately funded research. Revocation of trade secrets (therein tend to lay the fertile ground for corruption). Mandatory recordkeeping practices that start violating the human dignity of everyone to be free from constant scrutiny, as it is only with complete comms records that one could actually piece together the facts of what happened; which still runs into the issue of criminals gonna crime; so what you effectively do is partition your population into two groups. Those that aspire to comply, and those deadset on success even at the risk of non-compliance.

These are not low-stakes social changes we're talking about here. This fundamentally refactors just about everything about our ways of life, from lowest employee to the hoghest level exec, to every small business owner.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: