Comment by ferentchak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ferentchak | Hacker News Reader

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It's the normal thing to do in the States too.

Quote stolen from another thread:

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age of beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one 'makes' them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

and with that, I suddenly regret not reading me some Ayn Rand

No, you're better off.

Writing her off completely is also wrong. While I may not agree with much of what she said, I do agree with that paragraph. Case in point: the Civil Asset Forfeiture "law"s.

Her writing is very problematic and her ideas seem to fall down a bit when trying to use them outside of her authorial universe.

To me, it's like a literary Rube Goldberg device where it looks cool on the page, but seems impractical and kind of unhelpful as a way to live your life.

It's also important and useful to know why you don't agree with her. So many people have never read her writing but have very strong opinions about her but only based upon some blog they read or what their friend told them.

It always reminds me of fundamental Christians patting each other on the back about dinosaurs not being real and knowing better than to have to read the literature on it.

Rand has some great points, one thing that bothers me is when in Atlas Shrugged and her philosophy is that she always attributes everything to a single amazing person. It's like a 50's version of the Steve Jobs biographies.

Not really. The fallacy is likely to come on the next line below the quote, where the quote gets used as an excuse to ignore all laws. including things like traffic regulations and public drunkenness.

The overall message is that laws and government is an obstruction to be ignored or demolished.

As i get older i learn that while it is good to question laws and regulations, many of them have actual factual reasons to exist. So blanket dismissal is as much a wrong as unquestioning obedience.

Government is a system, and like all systems it will require maintenance. And sometimes the job the system was constructed for is no longer there.

But just tossing the system out because it is in your way is as useful as throwing out a random server just because you need the rack space.

I think it's simpler than that, as you get older you recognize patterns, and you then associate those patterns to things, negative or positive.

I see this with myself and people who are aging with me, we have so much to do as we get older that we have automated thinking around certain subjects.

I think the younger people lack this conditioning to things as they are and can see better methodologies for approaching the situation.

But we old farts have created our pattern and understand it, and so block the young from testing their theories, in a small community this would be a fairly ideal situation, but when scaled to countries, it's slow and inefficient.

We need a more scalable thought process when it comes to large scale humanities.

You also see younger people getting excited about ideas that you recognize are really not new, and since you know they have always failed in the past, you are skeptical. You also see cycles repeating themselves.

That seems overly dismissive of experience, while overly optimistic regarding the creativity of youth.

Way too many times the young dismiss existing conditions simply because they feel constrained by them, and lack the context for why said conditions came to be. End result is that they rebel against everything just because its there by (learned) reflex.

Yes, as one grow older one fall into patterns. But i think quite a bit of it is because of the work pace of modern day rather than some condition of age.

Edit: Again from personal experience, i have come to think that people need to experience something to really get it. So if you tell someone young that drinking is bad (in excess), they may or may not listen (and may just ignore you because you are old). But let them experience it under relatively controlled conditions, rather than some random binge hidden away somewhere, and maybe some synapses will connect up (and quite a few destroyed most likely) and the message will be received.

As I read somewhere: every line in the building code was written in blood.

Of course, the same can't be said for the anti-trust regulation book.

I like that you said you were stealing from another thread and then quoted a book. A book that isn't evidence of your assertion.

yeah I thought about rebuking his point, but someone who quotes fiction texts not from 'another thread', but from a book written in 1957 that was talking more about socialism and fascism in Hitler's Germany and Russia, and proceeds to copy and paste an entire paragraph in order to support his point about US in 2016 Well, that's some sort of superpower right there.

Less a super-power and more a sad reflection of the lack of integrity, enlightenment, and honesty of both those that are put in power and those who put them there.

Reading is a superpower! The book is neither about Hitler nor fascism.

I would say it is a book about the magically industrialists that she wishes existed in her youth when her family was disposed by the Russian communists. They have ray guns and invisibility machines and everything, oh and trains don't forget trains.

Here is the thread I copied the quote from, but I have read the book. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11088704

American business mantra: better to ask for forgiveness after committing the crime, then to ask for permission before. I don't know any major business who does not follow this.

Really? Most big businesses in America devote incredible resources to following the law. Of course there are prominent examples to the contrary, but those are the exceptions, not the norm.

No they devote incredible resources to covering their ass when shit hits the fan. Obviously compliance is another issue entirely. But they are always lobbying hard to get rid of that, until they get rid of it and shit hits the fan again. Ex. Enron.

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