Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

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The "why are people surprised" line is a huge red flag for me that a person is not arguing in good faith. Accusing people of being "surprised" as an implication of naivete seems to be a very common tool of redirection when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful. I'm not sure why such a particular angle became so common, since it seems so obvious to me that what they are calling "surprise" is indignation/anger. It seems to be exaggerated from the general notion that the stronger a reaction is, the newer it is, but obviously that's faulty. I may hear the same story of wealthy and powerful people behaving badly every day, but it doesn't make the behavior any more acceptable with each occurrence, and so my anger does not subside, no matter how un-surprised I am.

> The "why are people surprised" line is a huge red flag for me that a person is not arguing in good faith. Accusing people of being "surprised" as an implication of naivete seems to be a very common tool of redirection when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful.

This is a bizarrely uncharitable take. Posting an article implies some form of novelty, which is why we don't see articles posted saying things like "if you don't water your plants, they die" or "companies with large valuations tend to have high profits or revenue".

The parent comment isn't claiming that the lack of novelty makes an otherwise-bad thing acceptable; he's saying that any reasonable model of the current state of corporate taxation should already have assumed something like this.

He _separately_ makes the claim that legally minimizing one's tax burden isn't immoral; this is a claim that you can disagree with, but pretending that he's dismissing this entirely due to its lack of novelty is a bizarre non sequitur.

I side with the comment above yours. The model you are talking about in my mind has no such assumption, from the experience of owning a tiny company. So this make me angry and is novel every time I read more about it.

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