Hacker News Reader

Article mentions people were raiding beaches for free building materials like sand and stone for concrete, which would be a problem at a large volume. Enforcing the same rules on individual souvenir collectors seems excessive.

View on HN

Excessive, but potentially necessary, since otherwise you need to draw an arbitrary line between an amount being taken away that is still acceptavle and one that is not, and how many times that can happen in what period of time and so on. From that point of view it can make sense to simply categorically forbid people to take things away from the beach.

Yup and that's where it gets silly.

It's trivial to say "all you can carry" and be done with it. Nobody can carry away a beach in their hands.

I think you underestimate the ingenuity of people who love to use free resources.

Laws are full of arbitrary drawn lines, it is hard to avoid them. If you don’t have an arbitrary line in the law then there will be arbitrary/selective enforcement which can be even worse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com