Hacker News Reader

Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

stale2002

> Are these tracts actually being sold by the government?

If you say "It is illegal for me, ajross, to purchase stale2002's house".

And then I respond by saying "No, it is not illegal for you to do that. All you have to do is get me to agree to sell you the house"

And then your response to this is by saying "But you aren't selling your house!"

This final response by you, does not prove the first statement you made to be true.

It continues to be legal for you to purchase my house, if I agree to it. Just like it continues to be legal for a rancher to purchase land from the government, if they agree to it.

Just because you are not very good at convincing the government/state legislator to sell you that land, does not make it illegal for you to purchase the land from them, if they choose to sell it to you.

View on HN

Rather, if you, stale2002, tell me that "all" I need to do to build a large ranch is to purchase land that isn't for sale (and hasn't been for 140 years!)... your response does nothing to refute my point upthread, which is that large ranches in Wyoming are de facto illegal.

You can't have a big ranch. That's silly. You also can't use "corners" to prevent access to land you don't own, because that too would be silly. Two sillies don't make a sane, as it were. Someone should fix this, because the regulatory regime is bananas. This court case isn't doing anything to help, it's just negating the silly.

> You can't have a big ranch. That's silly.

You absolutely are allowed to do this! All you have to do is purchase the land from the people who own it.

> which is that large ranches in Wyoming are de facto illegal.

They aren't! Someone refusing to sell you something, is not the same as it being illegal.

Just like it isn't "defacto illegal" for you to purchase my house.

> your response does nothing to refute my point

it absolutely does, because it is not defacto illegal for you to buy my house, even if I refuse to sell it to you.

It is disingenuous to say that it is defacto illegal for you to buy my house, because I refuse to sell it to you.

> Two sillies don't make a sane, as it were

It is not silly for someone to refuse to sell you something.

The analogy would be like if you said "its silly for me to steal your home". And "it is also silly that it is defacto illegal for me to purchase your home".

It is not silly that you cannot buy my home, if I refuse to sell it to you. It is not defacto illegal for you to buy my home, because I refuse to sell it to you.

You're just... repeating the same argument. Maybe you're not understanding the use of the terminology?

Your point is a "de jure" argument, you're telling me what the law says (and for the record: I don't disagree). I'm making a "de facto" point: regardless of what the law says, owning large unbroken tracts of land in this area is a practical impossibility. And since the entity refusing to sell the land is the government itself (the body that makes and enforces those laws), I don't think it's at all a stretch to categorize this as de facto illegal: any action that resulted in big ranches not being impossible as a matter of practice would be by definition an act of lawmaking.

Stated slightly differently: if the government needs to change a law in order to make something possible, then that thing was "illegal" previously.

I think when you are specifically the government and will definitely refuse to sell the land, the line is a little grayer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com