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Comment by DINKDINK | Hacker News Reader

>The goal with regulations like these isn't to make things "cheaper," but to control negative externalities.

Seeing as the proponents -- of regulations regarding who can trade what with whom -- first cited issue is "Affordability", categorically, yes, these regulations are about making things "cheaper".

>The government is great place to balance competing interests, especially if it's more democratic.

How successful has the US government been at balancing trillion dollar bailouts for the banking/political class and endless wars of murder? Building a system where the minutia of liberty can be taken away with a stroke of a pen unless millions of dollars are spent lobbying the political class is not what I'd call a "great place to balance competing interests".

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> Seeing as the proponents -- of regulations regarding who can trade what with whom -- first cited issue is "Affordability", categorically, yes, these regulations are about making things "cheaper".

> How successful has the US government been at balancing trillion dollar bailouts for the banking/political class and endless wars of murder? Building a system where the minutia of liberty can be taken away with a stroke of a pen unless millions of dollars are spent lobbying the political class is not what I'd call a "great place to balance competing interests".

It's not very promising to start a conversation by ignoring the actual circumstances under discussion, so you can get on your hobby-horse to rail against your favored straw men.

So, as a helpful reminder, we're talking about a specific set of Japanese regulations meant to help people who are annoyed because they never chose to live next to a hotel room. We're not talking about hotel costs and we're certainly not talking about US bank bailouts.

>meant to help people who are annoyed

So to summarize you: rights are not inalienable but dependent on if people get annoyed.

Do you see how philosophically weak that position is? Should Muslims be deported because the US government finds them annoying and people 'never chose to live next door to them'? Rights must be grounded in something other than 'popular opinion'.

I'd rather live in a world where I simply have to buy/rent in an HOA which everyone signs a contract stating that we will abide by XYZ rules rather than one where we have to rely on the threat of murderous government.

Government's proposition to you is: Let me kill whomever I want and I'll make your life marginally better. I find it ethically unconscionable to benefit so marginally at the expense of someone else's life.

> So to summarize you: rights are not inalienable but dependent on if people get annoyed.

You're not being reasonable, but rather reading your own straw men into what I wrote.

Based on your misunderstandings, I can pretty confidently say that "rights" are a lot more complicated and multifaceted than you seem to comprehend. There are more kinds of rights relevant here than just property ownership rights and those created through contracts.

To put it another way: these Japanese regulations can be thought of as an articulation of preexisting rights that hadn't previously been codified.

I'm just going to ignore all the ridiculous hyperbole in the rest of your comment, because it's not worth a response. You seem enchanted by an over-simple toy mental model of society (with an admittedly seductive simplicity), and angry that it's not normative in a world that's too complex for it to fit.

You rested your argument on the fact that we should take away someone’s right because they got annoyed. So no, I am not being unreasonable.

I don’t need you to realize rights are inalienable but you do need to me to believe that submitting to oppression does bestow rights to me or else your framework falls apart.

> You rested your argument on the fact that we should take away someone’s right because they got annoyed. So no, I am not being unreasonable.

You are being unreasonable. You seem to be unable to imagine things except from the POV of a person who wants to rent out an apartment as an AirB&B, which may be the root of your unreason.

Anyway, this thread is dead and you seem immune to the insight that what you seem see as an "inalienable right" (turning an apartment into a dedicated AirB&B) might actually be an oppression on others. It's pointless to continue.

I'm glad you're not my neighbor, and I'm glad there's government to keep you from being too much of an inconsiderate asshole if you were.

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