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I expected guidelines for how to take things away without angering users -- would be a good (but much harder to write) post. These three bullet points barely state the problem.

I don't think the title over-promised, I think I over-expected :(

The title is: "The art of taking things away" and generally speaking there are no guidelines to good art.

I think there's plenty of precedent for works titled "The Art of X" to explain how "X" works. Knuth?

(I was going to include an Amazon link for a book search on "The Art of" to support my point, but the first few pages of results were all books of pictures from Hollywood movies. Oh well.)

We should take away the tax breaks for small businesses like 37signals. Oh, I mean, all the "entitlement programs" except that one...

That is the core of the problem. Nobody likes to say no - especially politicians whose constituents will lose something from it. They might vote for someone else at the next election.

Distraction has replaced scarcity.

Thoughts on taking things away