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Comment by flockonus | Hacker News Reader

I do find the author position to be incoherent in the following regard:

1. believe a statement can be true or false, and false should be called out.

2. believe deportation is morally wrong in certain cases, that is, the law can be selectively broken.

I personally believe laws should always be enforced and followed. That eliminates margin for corruption and lenience. A strong law also creates incentive for the population to care about the letter of the law and reforms, since it becomes a known fact that such law will be followed through.

The worst of both worlds is a situation like in US or EU where immigrants "more or less" can settle, but live under constant pressure knowing there is no legal framework to support them, and deportation may come at any moment.

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> believe deportation is morally wrong in certain cases, that is, the law can be selectively broken.

Except that that author didn't say that at all. They said "deport only the lawbreakers", while expressing dismay at a blogpost which (apparently*) said "deport everyone".

> I personally believe laws should always be enforced and followed.

Quote from TFA: "Any kind of mass deportation plan would have to change [the law], which would be legally tricky to say the least. However, enforcing the existing laws requires no legal action, and could start tomorrow if the relevant executive wanted it to."

*Other comments have argued that the post didn't actually say that.

To establish oneself in a country (for the majority if not all the western world) without an appropriate visa is already breaking the law.

Not saying this is the only way, or what should be - but it's what it is, selectively breaking the law is ok - "as long as they behave". It implies that immigrants must live in the limbo and under undue psychological pressure, knowing one day their whole life may be uprooted for any transgression (or even none). This to me is some medieval mindset.

The people DHH is taking about are EU citizens with a legal privilege by default to live in Denmark

He also means Danish citizens who might be second or third generations Danish but came from background he doesn't like. Oh and of course you can see it - their skin.

> without an appropriate visa

In this particular case, they are legal residents.

Do you believe that even morally wrong laws should be enforced and followed? A lot of the segregation and jim crow laws were pretty odious. Women weren't allowed to have bank accounts and credit cards in multiple countries (even the US until 1974). Women were not allowed to legally vote (one Swiss canton kept this until 1990!).

Do you believe that these laws should be enforced and followed despite most people believing that they are morally wrong?

There's a coherent argument for doing so: if the law is enforced, and no one wants it to be enforced, it creates pressure to fix the law. Laws that are on the books but not enforced lead to laws meaning nothing in the extreme case.

I think there's merit to both sides and the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.

Who decides what is morally wrong? If everyone decided to not follow or enforce laws based on their own morals, society would be in absolute chaos. You can't have a functioning society around "I do what I believe, fuck y'all"

In the US we call it the Supreme Court

People ultimately decide on their own. There are institutions that make judgments but ultimate it's an individual that decides. But for a lot of things, there are nearly universal agreement going one way, e.g. everyone almost universally agrees that murder is wrong.

I think some of the trouble here is that the application of the law cannot be guaranteed to be free of discrimination or bias, regardless of the letter of the law itself?

> That eliminates margin for corruption and lenience.

Lenience and mercy are critical components of a system of a just criminal justice system. We have judges issue sentences in large part because we want a human being with good judgement to decide how serious the punishment for an offence should be based on the circumstances.

A person who shoots their partner who has been abusing them for years should probably receive a different punishment than a person who pulls out a gun in traffic and shoots someone for cutting them off. Mercy or "lenience" are not inherently flaws in the justice system, though of course there's always "too much of a good thing."

> believe deportation is morally wrong in certain cases, that is, the law can be selectively broken.

I (the author) do believe deportation is morally wrong in certain cases. For example, there are laws governing which people can be deported and for what reasons. Deportations that violate those laws are morally wrong. What I spent the whole article arguing against was the idea that people should be deported even when the laws say their deportation is illeagl. (It would be illegal to deport the vast vast majority of Roma in Denmark.) The other thing I argued for in the article is enforcement of the law against people who break it.

Something I was told when started building in fintech was that the laws are in such a way that its impossible to be 100% compliant in every interpretation.

The law is huge, complex and can often have conflicting aspects.

This is assumed by some to be "by design". When the law is such that everyone is breaking it, then the power shifts to whoever can bring people in "front of the law".

So, in every case with strong beliefs such as yours, IMMV and it's easy to voice an opinion when you feel "not in target".

> I personally believe laws should always be enforced and followed.

Laws are written by imperfect humans. Bad laws exist.

Well then fix the laws, and/or advocate to fix the laws. Laws must exist in order to have a society, and no defeatist attitude will ever fix them. Laws won't fix by themselves, a majority needs to need them fixed. And then APPLY them.

But in the meantime follow the bad law? If the law said that you aren't supposed to give water to the people that cross the desert would you follow that even if the person is dying of thirst?

Oh dear, the desert thirst seems to be a beloved metaphor on HN... Anyway: you can and should have both. Because it's wrong and backwards to just disrespect laws - it breaks said society structure - without actively trying to do something to replace its wrong pillars. It might be more poetic or movie-like to be the hidden hero sharing water, but without a law change, when you'll be eventually busted (because you will) the stupid desert crossers will dry out. Literally.

> I personally believe laws should always be enforced and followed.

I read an article some years back that really changed my mind about this. It made the point that society evolves through the imperfect enforcement of laws (those some kinds of imperfection, like selective enforcement, are distinctly harmful). That is empirically true, but for some reason I hadn't realized it until the article pointed it out to me.

This one, by Signal creator Moxie Marlinspike, perhaps? https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to...

I don't believe that deportation is inherently morally wrong, but there are certainly ways to deport people that are less moral than others.

I think DHH's comments are pretty mild given the subject. However, I think it is how he frames his comments that cause offensive - lumping a (potentially) problematic (arguably) ethnic group of people in with animal control...

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