FWIW, I'm not wild about these "righteous indignation" articles on HN. This is one of the better ones I've seen, and I agree with it wholeheartedly, but... I feel that perhaps they're just better left to other sites.
I don't think you quite get my angle; it's a bit subtler than "this stuff isn't important". I think it's extremely important. Far more important than pretty much everything considered 'on topic' on this site: people live or die due to the health care system in their countries, for instance. Therefore, if we start posting this stuff, it could easily crowd out the 'hacker news' content. Problem #2 is that most of these things are either something where 1) pretty much everyone agrees (like this article), or 2) it because episode 3391913947165 of "libertopians vs lefties" on the internet, trotting out the same tired stuff and not resolving anything.
I'm ok with talking about things where we all agree, in that it can still deepen understanding and spur people to action. For example, most people here agree about the idiocy of TSA's security theater. But when I took a flight this week, I opted out of what I could partly because I know that some of my fellow nerds are doing the same.
I'm also ok with talking about things that don't seem to get resolved right away. A lot of major issues take decades to get sorted out. But I don't think they get resolved by ignoring them. Well, they often do, but I don't expect they'll get resolved in favor of my position that way.
There's also interesting discussion to be had about "hacking large bureaucratic systems - building in incentives for polite but effective behaviours or traffic flow analysis or what not.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=242484
The problem is that these kind of articles breed - first it's this, then it's some other thing, then it's Mitt Romney, then it's Ron Paul, and in the end you're saddled with a lot of politics.
And none of it is "intellectually stimulating". When I read the article, it just makes me irritated about the US policies and practices in place, but it's all information I already knew.
Also, to me, the "hacker mindset" works a lot better for things you can just go fix, or avoid altogether. Fixing a large, messy, political problem in a large country is anything but that.
You sound exactly like one of those higher educated Chinese college kids arguing that whole censorship thing really isn't as bad as they make it sound ...
Or, rather someone defending their abusive husband. "It's just a lot of poltics" == "Sometimes, he's just had a really rough day at work, you know?"
This is politics, and there's nothing wrong with that.
http://srlfacile.org/ (lowering the costs of creating a company in Italy).
I'm also passionate about bicycle racing (Milano San Remo tomorrow!) but that doesn't mean I feel a need to talk about it here.