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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

OK but where does it end? Every time you strike a match you could start a fatal fire, but it would obviously be absurd to require people to take a safety class every time they strike a match. We settle for putting a generic warning on boxes of matches instead. Likewise you can buy gasoline and propane at the gas station without having to go through any bureaucracy, because it's assumed that responsible individuals know fire is dangerous and that refined fuels are highly-combustible, so as long as there are some warning signs up to remind people of the fact then the public interest is considered to have been served. And sure enough, millions of people buy and consume gasoline every day without injury despite the high risk potential.

Please stop offering false dichotomies like 'status quo (even when it's failing) or no regulation at all.'

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>Please stop offering false dichotomies

as opposed to your slippery-slope "where does it end?" argument?

Unless you think that there should be no regulations at all, you agree that there is some line before which there should be regulations and after it there shouldn't, so "where does it end" is an actual discussion to have, not a non-sequitor to end the conversation like you're using it.

Oh no. you said 'Unless you also dislike any medicine or safety measures.' I asked you where the line of demarcation was for acceptable safety measures, and gave some examples for context, which is a totally legitimate question.

It was not a non-sequitur at all. I want an answer.

The answer is we have that debate as a society. I was asserting that there was a line of demarcation, because you asserted that there wasn't with your claim of "Darwinism".

I did not write the post about Darwinism (that was user jlgaddis) nor did I interpret his/her comment to mean that there was no such line.

Meantime, since we are already having that debate, I am asking you, personally, to go on the record on where you as an individual think that line of demarcation should be. I am all for safety labeling (up to the point where there are so many safety warnings that their effectiveness drops) but I am also all for people being able to buy potentially dangerous products that can be used safely by following instructions and the use of the senses by a person of ordinary adult competence.

In other words, if a supermajority of adults selected via a statistically valid sampling method were to examine a commercial product and correctly infer what degree of danger it might present (based on the packaging, direct observation of the product, and general knowledge) then that's Good Enough.

I don't think that we need to build all our theories of product safety and liability around the least competent people in our society. That imposes a large opportunity cost on people who do take their responsibilities seriously but whose liberty is curtailed in the name of safeguarding people who can't or won't take responsibility.

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