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Comment by __MatrixMan__ | Hacker News Reader

Sure but why pussyfoot around the issue? We should be actively encouraging each other to punish misbehaving companies. It's the right thing to do.

They're deaf to anything besides pain. If you want to help your fellow humans, you need to inflict that pain. Otherwise the company won't change.

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I just see it as a way to highlight the absurdity. They're heavily implying they won't buy books on Amazon anymore in the next paragraph:

> So it looks as though this move — both mean-spirited and commercially incompetent — will result in the loss of about 50 book sales per year.

I think by spelling out the process in this manner and then highlighting the absurdity of the first two steps your argument is defusing a lot of the bad faith responses that are likely to arise.

It does feel cumbersome to execute the argument in this manner but it feels rationally defensive.

> Sure but why pussyfoot around the issue? We should be actively encouraging each other to punish misbehaving companies. It's the right thing to do.

Probably because doing what you suggest would not look great in court:

"Dear Jeff Bezos,

Here is my signed confession letter of intellectual property theft.

Yours Truly, Mike Taylor"

I agree, but I think that the author is saying the same thing.

The poster isn't pussyfooting around the issue, he's feigning discovery to emphasize the point as a rhetorical move.

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