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Comment by jiofih | Hacker News Reader

What if come in and shoot the birds? Should guns have mandatory GPS so they can be geofenced too?

In most developed countries gun ownership is controlled enough that you don't really need to worry about that.

If we're talking about that one developed country where everybody and their grandmother carries a gun, I get the feeling geofencing them would not be a popular measure.

But yeah, in principle this is totally a thing we should do.

I assume axes need regulating, so you don't cut down the trees, matches so you can't burn them, poisons so you don't kill the birds, speakers because loud noise could disrupt them, etc. ?

You act as if you're making a valid counter-point, but all of these actions would indeed be punishable by their respective law or regulation.

Doing harmful things is what's punishable and regulated. Having the means to do them is not. e.g. I would be punished for chopping down a bird sanctuary, but not required to get a license to own an axe.

In most countries you can't carry a knife on you that's longer than a few centimeters in public. I have no idea what kind of axe legislation exists because I doubt it's ever been a major issue if someone somewhere in the forest swings an axe around, but it actually is perfectly common to regulate tools that are dangerous for other people or endangered animals, plants and so on.

If you could make an axe or a match that couldn’t hurt people, then obviously, yes, you’d do that.

We haven’t before now had the technology to do that in a way that wouldn’t violate other rights, but the technology is shifting in such a way that there are domains where we will have that ability and of course we should do it.

The only reason anybody objects to this is because, again, we used to live in a world where you’d have to do something objectionable to achieve these goals, but as that becomes less true the objections will seem increasingly absurd.

Our intuitions in this space lag reality.

Yes, probably. And cars should be geofenced and speed regulated on public roads, too. Once you have the technology to make objects that can’t break the law it’s hard to think of an argument for allowing versions of them to be made that can. It really boils down to this: at the point of manufacture you have to choose between making a version of your product that can break the law and a version that can’t; I’d submit that this is an easy choice.

You also should be chipped when we have the technology so that you don't get the wrong thoughts... What you are suggesting is absolutely insane. Most things in this world can be used for unlawful things. By your suggestion we should also lock down computers, remove vpn or encryption etc.

Not only is what I’m suggesting not insane, it’s inevitable. As we gain more and more technological control over deadly machines like cars the insane thing will be not to install the tech that makes them far less deadly.

Geofencing a car on public roads doesn’t eliminate any legal uses of the car. It doesn’t violate any rights or freedoms. It doesn’t involve any interesting tradeoffs or compromises. It’s a commonsense banality.

This claim shocks people, but that’s just because we used to live in a world where you’d have to do something objectionable to achieve these kinds of goals. But that’s increasingly not true; our intuitions just haven’t caught up to this new reality.

(Obviously, by the way, that’s why your examples aren’t equivalent. I don’t want to chip your brain or your computer, because that would entail an objectionable limitation. Preventing you from speeding in your car on a public right-of-way does not require any objectionable limitation. It only seems like it might, because we’re used to thinking there’s no way you could prevent these kinds of things without doing something objectionable.)

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