Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon7000 | Hacker News Reader

Come on, it’s not a choice between complete anarchy and complete restriction.

It is very, very fair for society to be like “hm I think X activity is easy to abuse in a way that hurts innocent bystanders,” and then limits the activity to people with licenses and training or things like that.

Like no, it’s totally not cool to give a free pass to people who are putting other people’s lives and homes at risk. How would you feel if your house burned down because your neighbor did something stupid?

I don’t care if it’s just your own life at risk. But you’re essentially saying that people should be free to play around with explosive devices in dense city neighborhoods. Fuck no, it’s fucking concerning to have an explosion rattle your windows. The people most likely to do this shit in the streets have no clue what they’re doing.

View on HN

> How would you feel if your house burned down because your neighbor did something stupid?

Probably the same way I'd feel if it burned down because my neighbor did some other stupid thing, like drive into it with a truck or try stealing electricity. There would be many feelings probably, but none of them would be "trucks/DIY should be illegal".

Stealing electricity is already illegal. Driving a truck into your home could be a genuine accident, but it's more likely that alcohol was involved first (which is illegal with driving).

Do you think it’s legal to shoot a firework at someone’s house?

Fireworks don't need to be intentionally aimed at a house for a forest, or a city, to ignite one.

> Stealing electricity is already illegal.

So is shooting a house with fireworks. I'm against a general ban on doingelectrical work yourself, and against a general ban on fireworks.

Where I live, it's already illegal to shoot fireworks in the city limits, people still do that. Banning sales and importation is the next logical step.

According to what logic?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/logic this one.

Ah, the one where invalid assumptions lead to invalid conclusions. Got it. Explains the invalidity of your conclusions.

What if there was one day a year where it was expected for people to speed through your neighborhood at 20 over the speed limit, which ends up with a bunch of people driving into houses with their vehicles?

It's not really the fireworks that is the issue. It's the alcohol, drugs, and overall attitude towards a dangerous activity. It's a bit different than a random mishap or whatnot.

> What if there was one day a year where it was expected for people to speed through your neighborhood at 20 over the speed limit, which ends up with a bunch of people driving into houses with their vehicles?

You mean All Saints Day (1st of November)? No, thousands of drunk drivers taking dozens of innocent lives and hurting hundreds more, year after year like a clockwork, is still not a reason to ban trucks, or any other car type. Or to cancel All Saints Day, if that's what you're implying.

> Like no, it’s totally not cool to give a free pass to people who are putting other people’s lives and homes at risk. How would you feel if your house burned down because your neighbor did something stupid?

We quite literally have a long and rich tradition of laws to handle exactly this.

You are arguing against a straw man. It was never claimed or even implied that society can't or shouldn't regulate activities that cause harm. The cost benefit tradeoff in this specific instance was called into question and the broader implications of a consistent application of the same bar across all of society was inquired about.

> you’re essentially saying that people should be free to play around with explosive devices in dense city neighborhoods. Fuck no, it’s fucking concerning to have an explosion rattle your windows.

This is nothing more than emotional grandstanding. You could construct similar rants against a canister of gas or bottle of starter fluid. Obviously how you use the thing is important.

Lest you miss my point or think I miss the mark there are video footage of clueless people nearly killing themselves and others through entirely avoidable mishaps with gasoline abound.

The question is the amount of knowledge and judgment required, the likelihood of mishap, and the size of the consequences when one inevitably happens. Regulation needs to balance these things against utility and personal freedom.

> Obviously how you use the thing is important.

Is there a way to use large fireworks in a residential neighborhood that isn’t “light them on fire to cause an explosion”?

Large? When fireworks within the ATF limits for unlicensed individuals are used according to manufacturer instructions they explode on the ground or in the air in a way that does not endanger the surrounding structures. Of course you can't safely light them off in a narrow alley between three story buildings. Anyone doing that (or similarly foolish things) was behaving recklessly to begin with.

The comment was saying it should not be legal to cause “an explosion rattle your windows”, not just endangering the structure.

>How would you feel if your house burned down because your neighbor did something stupid?

Burning your neighbors house down is already illegal. You and they should already have insurance. House fires in human dwellings have been a risk since we started building houses next to other houses.

The issue is that we (and I mean worldwide) have gone from legalism as a method of settling disputes and advertising penalties for destructive behavior, to outlawing risk entirely.

The crux of the matter is that no one stops to point out where the line is. Laws will come in to penalise low probability risks, people make these arguments "wont someone think of the children" and then lawmakers turn on to even lower probability risks.

If you had even a benchmark, "more probable than x is outlawed" people would be more understanding. And its not a slippery slope argument, because the slope seems to be the point and without a line the destination appears to be all possible risk.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume you don't believe in driver licenses and speed limits either

I have nuanced views on both.

I am gonna go ahead and assume theres no freedom you wouldn't give away for safety if the government justified it in the right way.

It's not that simple.

Rules do not necessarily reduce freedom, they can in fact even provide more freedom on the longer term, when the system finds a new balance.

The difficulty of course is to find the proper rules and evaluate these effects from current system state.

>Rules do not necessarily reduce freedom, they can in fact even provide more freedom on the longer term, when the system finds a new balance.

The kind of rules being peddled by the kind of people who peddle rules in a fireworks thread are almost certainly the exact opposite of the kind that direct things at a freer equilibrium.

It's not that we can't have rules. It's that we can't have shortsighted people with bad morals writing tules.

>Rules do not necessarily reduce freedom, they can in fact even provide more freedom on the longer term

Back to my point above that there are laws and regulations that are fine, and then theres the pre-crime nonsense trying to reduce risk to zero that are being peddled today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com