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Comment by wilsonnb | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a foreigner and I think the comment you're responding to is spot on.

Are we just supposed to pretend that all issues are equal? People aren't going to die because the nets aren't neutral. People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.

The author of the comment you call patronizing made no statement on whether or not he's happy that people are involved in the political process. I know I'm happy about it, but I also think single issue voting on net neutrality is stupid. These views are not linked.

In summary, net neutrality is important but there are more important issues in America at the moment. It's not patronizing to point that out.

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Not all issues are a equal. Clearly not. But what is important changes from person to person. To suggest that your concerns and what constitutes a single voter issue for you is wrong is condescending. Since you think net neutrality is a stupid single voter issue then I suggest it not be one for you. But not everyone has your concerns.

It’s not a big issue for me but I can see why it is for others. People need to get involved and active. I’m not going to discourage anyone from doing this.

There is always a more important issue on the horizon. There’s always some cause that is more important. We don’t all get up in arms over the same things. To me climate change is the most important issue facing humans. I’ll advocate this position but my arrogance is not so great as to belittle someone else's pet cause.

So I’m not going to tell you that health care policy is a stupid issue to get energized about when the climate is changing.

Some people's ideas of what's important are stupid. Everyone has the right to an opinion but that doesn't mean we should treat every opinion as equal.

If someone was going to vote on the single issue of whether or not we should make it illegal to have more than 17,000,000 butterflies in a room smaller than 100'x100' I would have no problem telling them that their pet issue is stupid and there are other things they should care about more.

I don't see why that principle shouldn't hold for other issues. Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

If we elect a government who reinstates net neutrality and proceeds to immediately launch a nuclear missile at Moscow, will the 20 minutes that half of the US population got to enjoy net neutrality matter?

Thank you for keeping the discussion in the realm of the plausible and feasible. I'd hate for extreme situations to be brought up. A number of people have given reasons for why they think net neutrality is as important as it is to them.

Thank you for definitively letting me know that

Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

Your argument has been convincing. Convincing enough that I'll be sure to consult you on other issues in the penumbra of the hierarchy of human concerns to see if they merit being single voter issue. Perhaps you can make a flier for those of us not in the know.

> To suggest that your concerns and what constitutes a single voter issue for you is wrong is condescending.

> Since you think net neutrality is a stupid single voter issue then I suggest it not be one for you.

This argument seems to have finished on the wrong point.

It isn't that net neutrality or any other issues have more or less value (although they intrinsically do -- that's for the individual to decide). Instead it's that single issue voting is severely short-sighted since the very same politician may support several other policies contradicting your own well-being.

Yes the example above is extreme but this is what it attempts to convey.

Overall I agree with you. I agree that for me net neutrality is not that important. But in a nation with as much voter apathy, with the growing sense of voting being futile I’ll take a single issue voter that gets galvanized. If everyone were a single issue voter it’d be a mess. With a few people not so much.

I suspect very few people are truly single issue voters. There’s a difference between saying “you should only care about issue X” and saying “I will never vote for someone who doesn’t share my position on issue X.” For example, I doubt many people would vote for someone who supports net neutrality but also includes universal forced child labor in their platform.

> Obviously net neutrality is something we should be concerned about but a single issue voter says it's the only thing we should be concerned about. That's just not true.

Yes, it's not true because what you said is wrong. All a single issue voter has said is that single issue determines their vote. They doesn't say that's the only thing "we" should be concerned about. They don't even say that's the only thing they're concerned about.

Voting is not some kind of distilled expression of pure belief or priorities, it's a practical action subject to tactics, strategy, and trade-offs.

>People are going to die based on our health care policy

Yes, and people are going to die based on our self-driving car policies, our affordable housing policies, our food subsidy policies, our energy policies, our alcohol policies, our gambling policies, our foreign aid policies, etc.

The crippling of the Internet via poor net policies could hamper technologies that ultimately would have saved billions.

You are presumptuous to claim your issues are more important than any of these others.

The difference here is that you are guessing as to what might happen.

We know that some people without access to medical care will die. You're saying it's okay to gamble those people's lives on the chance that future lives might be saved. Obviously a balance between spending on research and health care must be struck so this isn't a black and white issue but you would need to put forth a pretty convincing argument that a lack of net neutrality would prevent us from saving billions for me to buy that.

For the record, I do not support single issue voting at all. There is no issue that outweighs the others.

I also think the idea that someone who was going to vote based on a single issue would choose something as trivial as net neutrality is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.

> We know that some people without access to medical care will die.

That actually sounds like an argument for allowing patients the option of a "fast lane" to their hospital for telemedicine and monitoring with higher priority than Netflix and YouTube.

>We know that some people without access to medical care will die. You're saying it's okay to gamble those people's lives on the chance that future lives might be saved.

This happens every time a double-blind medical trial takes place.

> as trivial as net neutrality is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.

Trivial to you.

>is particularly ridiculous when there are so many other issues where life hangs in the balance.

If immediacy of life is the sole thing driving your decision behavior, you should quit your job and go help people in developing nations. Some people need to do this. But others also need to focus on longer-term things that promote a better economy that leads to new technologies and surpluses to advance the quality of human life.

It doesn’t make sense for everyone to focus primarily on the political issue they deem to be the most important, for the same reason that it doesn’t make sense for everyone to choose the career they deem to be the most important. Competitive advantage applies to both of these arenas, and it is perfectly rational and prudent to focus on political issues that you do not believe to be the most important issues facing society, if you have reason to believe that your efforts can make more of a difference in some other political issue.

> Are we just supposed to pretend that all issues are equal? People aren't going to die because the nets aren't neutral.

Probably not very many as a first-order effect, no.

> People are going to die based on our health care policy, whether we go to war, whether we can prevent nuclear proliferation.

And a narrow range of corporations with a fairly tight alignment on policy preferences controlling media access affects long term ability of the public to understand thode issues, organize efforts around them, and achieve positive results.

Which is why a lot wide-view activist organizations that aren't particularly focussed on tech issues have made it a priority, when they do normally focus on the issues you have concerns about make it a priority.

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