Comment by klagermkii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klagermkii | Hacker News Reader

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You underestimate the power of being able to turn the Eye of Justice selectively upon individuals or groups of enemies. It's one of the reasons people get so upset with racial or class-based profiling.

We may all agree that enforcing speeding laws is a good thing, and someone who gets a ticket for it deserves the fine. But if I could fund the police department to have a car permanently follow just you around and nail you for each transgression, it turns something that is fair for each individual offense into something unfair in aggregate. Even if by doing so I was making the roads safer, and you technically deserved each fine.

I think Peter Thiel is doing something similar and even though Gawker is in the wrong in the individual case and deserves to lose, I strongly dislike being able to keep paying to throw the justice system against your enemies.

In your example, you're conflating the actions of a government and the actions of a private individual. Peter Thiel isn't the government.

You are also muddying up scale. In your example, the government is much more powerful than the individual. In the Gawker case, all the parties are pretty much at parity.

There has always been yellow journalism. Gawker isn't new. What is new is that this is the first time an establishment like that got a bloody nose. Usually they're the ones using the legal system to silence those they abuse.

> you're conflating the actions of a government and the actions of a private individual. Peter Thiel isn't the government

I don't think if it's government or individual it changes the inherent unfairness of having someone decide to watch you, and just you, for any sign of a slip up and then getting you punished based on it. Heck, I think most siblings understand this kind of unfairness with uneven parental justice.

> You are also muddying up scale. In your example, the government is much more powerful than the individual. In the Gawker case, all the parties are pretty much at parity.

There's an order of magnitude difference between the net worth of Thiel and Gawker as a whole. And that's on a good day for Gawker.

There's usually an order of magnitude difference between them and their victims. This time it went the other way.

>I strongly dislike being able to keep paying to throw the justice system against your enemies.

Why? This is simply how the world works.

It doesn't have to be the justice system.

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