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Comment by mavhc | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...

Worth reading. Apparently Reagan was right:

"In striking, the union violated 5 U.S.C. (Supp. III 1956) 118p (now 5 U.S.C. § 7311), which prohibits strikes by federal government employees[...]"

"Right" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Reagan was correct that the strikes may have been illegal, but I wouldn't say that Reagan was "right" to fire all the workers.

It's not "doing a lot of heavy lifting" to use the word unambiguously in one of its many defined meanings. Clearly the parent was referring to Reagan being correct about the illegality of the strike (given that they cited the specific statute), not speaking about any moralistic righteousness.

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not clear that this was the only sense in which the word "right" was being used. Language is sometimes ambiguous like that, regardless of the intentions of the author.

A slave owner disciplining his slave used to be legal. It was never right.

And yet you are right about it being legal at the time. The word has multiple meanings, one of which is as a synonym for "correct". This is how it was used in the context above as the commenter made no reference to morality.

Morally wrong, legally correct. ethically grey. but a really black shade of grey.

"Right" and "legal" are two different things. Especially as a person with the authority to change laws or direct enforcement.

The parent was not commenting on morality and only pointed out that Reagan was correct about the strike being in violation of Federal law ("correct" is one of the many meanings of the word "right").

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