Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

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Yes it is. Try and think a couple steps ahead.

The system we live under only works because people believe in it and more or less voluntarily play by the rules.

Feel free to undermine state legitimacy but know that this will result in more entities (and it will be the more powerful ones first, BigCo, city governments, etc) thumbing their nose at the state and engaging in short sighted behavior.

If CA isn't gonna honor it's promises then anyone who deals with CA has less incentive to enter into agreements with the state or honor existing ones. In that future if CA grants someone permission to take X of Y resource they might just take 5X on the basis that CA won't honor their end so why should they.

Any lasting solution needs to be constructed on a solid legal foundation.

The solid legal foundation needs to take physical reality into account. Sure, if previous legal agreements did not account for reality, somebody needs to own up to that, cancel the previous agreements openly while sucking up the relevant penalties. However, if this doesn't happen, physical reality will eventually assert itself over legal agreements.

Yes and those issues will have to be worked out in the state legislature. This is a complex political process with many conflicting stakeholders. Regardless of the physical reality, the political reality will take time to change. We don't live in a dictatorship where policies can change on a whim.

Nothing is at odds with physics. The conflict is between people that own something and people that want that thing. Nothing in physics is stopping them from purchasing that thing from the people that have it.

> Try and think a couple steps ahead.

Right back atcha.

> undermine state legitimacy

You know what would undermine state legitimacy? Lobbying some old verbiage into an excuse to make city-dwellers baghold for Big Agriculture.

> incentive

Farmers need incentive to not grow crops in a desert.

> Any lasting solution needs to be constructed on a solid legal foundation.

Yes. Not only should we strike down this absurd "promise," we should put in place a mechanism to make sure nonphysical open-ended promises don't ever get made again.

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