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.
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.