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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to laws, do you just look at the title of the law, or do you look at the actual statute and regulations to see what the law applies to and what it doesn’t? Does a “vehicle inspection program” meant for commercial trucks apply to your car just because the title fits?

In this case, there is a 25 year old regulation that specifies what this program applies to and what it doesn’t. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/chapter-I/subchapter-C...

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Blah blah blah. Yap yap yap. It’s funny how the laws always apply until it’s a rich fucker breaking them.

You might be fine with skirting the technicalities, but the rest of us have to live here and breathe the air.

These aren’t “technicalities.” What types of activities the laws apply to is a central aspect of every regulatory regime.

They are technicalities, because the intent of the law is clean air. A carve out for temporary generators is clearly not intended to allow megawatts of permanent generation to operate outside of the regulatory umbrella and abuse of it is allowing the rich to skate by on a technicality.

> They are technicalities, because the intent of the law is clean air.

That’s not how laws work, especially the Clean Air Act. “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” (https://ozgengungor.medium.com/one-of-those-quotes-thomas-so...).

The Clean Air Act was not designed to achieve cleaner air at any cost, but instead to achieve targeted pollution control that would have the greatest value at acceptable cost. The modern structure of the act was set in place in 1970 under Nixon, and is full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.

> The Clean Air Act was not designed to achieve cleaner air at any cost

You will notice we are not talking "at any cost". We are talking about a very specific cost to AI hyperscalers.

> full of legislative compromises to balance incremental benefits to air quality against burden on industry.

These technicalities are being exploited for the benefit of approximately 10 people, and to the detriment of everyone else.

Your talking points are old and exhausted.

> These technicalities are being exploited for the benefit of approximately 10 people

Legislative compromises aren’t “technicalities.” The exceptions are as much a part of the laws as any other part. If they didn’t exist the laws wouldn’t have passed in the first place.

> Your talking points are old and exhausted

Your talking points—treating law as just an expression of intent rather than a reticulated framework—are third world mentality.

Huh??? The intent of the law is what the entire system and in the entire world is working nowadays, I mean in the real world - aka outside of the minds of the technocultists. This is exactly what the courts are doing everywhere, upholding the intent of the law, and also why legal AI is continuously failing at it - it can't figure out the intent among all edge cases and yeah technicalities.

> The intent of the law is what the entire system and in the entire world is working nowadays

No, in first world countries we follow the letter of the law, including exceptions.

I don't know why you must underline all that "first world" thing, it doesn't make your argument stronger. Please actually verify it, instead of blindly repeating slogans. Namely the courts may start with the letter, find subsequently the letter doesn't apply 100% because things and humans, then proceed to apply the spirit of the law the way they interpret it.

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