TruthAndDare

> Most people would think an entire town deciding to exclude minorities is morally repugnant

What? I'm not saying I don't. It's just irrelevant to the issue.

> shouldn't be allowed.

That's like saying that "these people over here cannot be allowed to decide over their own neighborhood, because they might decide things that I find repugnant". Well, who are you going to trust with the power?

"This"? People in a country or region deciding over that country or region? What do you suggest instead?

> What if an entire town decides they don't want to allow minorities to live there?

Yes, what if they do? Should they not get to decide because they might haver the wrong opinion? Who should decide instead? What if they have the wrong opinion?

> Why is xenophobia and NIMBYism acceptable in one case and not the other?

What two cases are you referring to?

Also, it's not obvious that NIMBY, as in "yes, do thing X, but not in my backyard", is relevant here, because it's not necessarily so that anyone is saying "yes, do thing X". For "NIMBY" to be a meaningful concept at all, it really needs to be about a situation when someone is pushing X onto someone else, while refusing to accept X in their own lives. If "NIMBY" used simply to describe a position of "no X, please", or even "no X, please, at least not in my backyard where I might have a say in it", then it's not useful, because those are perfectly reasonable positions to have about things.

> Why do the rights of the local people trump the rights of people from "elsewhere"?

On at least some level, I find it reasonable that the people who live in a certain place decide over that place. In any case, that is rather conventional, isn't it? It's particularly clear on the level of countries, which is why I mentioned it in my comment. Only citizens or residents of a country, not the rest of the world, get to vote in elections.

> The major question is what harm is being done to the local people by the existence of 50 story buildings

That's really a matter of their personal opinion. Some of us find such buildings repulsive.

> the farm lobby can paradoxically be incentivized to vote for housing regulation

Why is it paradoxical? Because they could otherwise have more buyers of their products?

> How much right should I have to control what other people do because it might bother me?

That's a valid question for every law or other governmental decision. But we can think of an idealized case, where an entire town, or state, or country, agree that they don't want 50-story buildings, even if there exists outsiders who would like to move into such buildings. In this case, we need only recognize the right of the local people to decide what happens in their area, even if it is against the will of people from elsewhere.

I'm not sure what you mean. You don't have to build 50-story buildings just because you have created a demand for them.

> If there's no market for them, they won't get built.

That's something else, isn't it? The people who already live there might not want 50-story buildings, even if there are other people who would move into them if they were built.

> That's the rub

That might be part of it, but it's not exactly obvious that you'd want to live in a place with 50-story buildings either.

Cool! I've been wondering if there is a feed of only the good stuff. If HN itself doesn't provide one, maybe there should be a separate site that does that filtering. I was thinking it would be manually curated, but maybe a list like yours would work as well.

Maybe you should set up such a site. All it would have to do is link to the articles and to the corresponding HN discussions.

I recently returned to HN, having read it a little a few years back. I remembered it as a low-volume, high-quality feed, where I was hesitant to speak, because all the other comments were so full of knowledge.

Now, HN seems to have become like any other place, full of noise like politics, social commentary, and just regular news. I guess the commenters are still knowledgeable about technological subjects, though.

Because I think you shouldn't take deciding what other people are allowed to do lightly. Such things should only be done in extreme cases, like self defense or, perhaps, to prohibit ruining nature through littering.

> Do you wish to live in a human society?

As far as I can see, that is orthogonal to the issue at hand.

> all this law does is to impose the costs on those who incur it.

We might consider littering to be immoral, and might therefore feel that we have a right to prohibit others from doing it, but it does not follow that we have a right to prohibit people from using, selling, owning or manufacturing bags (or fine or tax them for doing those things).

> deny economic coercion applies when e.g a bank charges overdraft or late fees no matter how ludicrous.

That would depend entirely on whether the bank and its customer had agreed upon it before hand or not, wouldn't you say?

Yes, deciding what others are allowed to do is something I am morally uncomfortable with. That is not to say that I have come up with something else that is not also questionable.

In any case, I do think that we should strive toward having just a bare minimum of laws. However, it seems to be too much fun to make laws, once you get in a position to do so, for people to abstain from it.

I'm trying to nail down what the actual issue of debate is, or should be. You are merely sharing your opinion on that issue. That is fine, but beside the point I was getting at.

I am confused. You seem to be saying that the law had negative consequences for you and that you therefore think the cost needs to be increased to correct you into the intended behavior.

> many people needed to experience the enforcement in order to be convinced of the benefits of changing their habits.

So, do you mean that these people considered the outcome uncertain until it was tried?

In both cases, the core of the matter is exposing oneself to danger for some higher cause.

> Ireland did something similar years ago and the results were incredible. An almost overnight transformation of the cleanliness of the cities and countryside. Nobody would like to reverse the decision now despite significant opposition before-hand.

Are you suggesting that the issue of debate was whether it would lead to less litter? That's almost obvious, isn't it? Surely, the question must rather be whether it is morally acceptable for us to impose such a rule on other people.

What about going after the tossing instead?

Me too!

What do you mean by "worked well"? What scenario would have had you conclude that it did not work well?

"Hacker news"

> It's disturbing that leaders (political or religious) would put their constituents in harms way.

Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r73p95I-eE

Or like in any military force, unless there was coercion going on here.

> The guy said "in a temperature range where burns are more likely".

Which makes it sound like there is a lower and an upper bound for this range. That's the issue.

> That sounds linear to me

What? Absolutely not. I'm just saying that it sounds reasonable to believe that burns increase with temperature, as opposed to being high in a range of temperatures and lower below and above that range. Figure 4 in your first link agrees with this common-sense guess.

> which is not generally what one expects from coffee

I disagree. I think it's reasonable to expect that coffee and other hot drinks might be all the way up to boiling.

> in a temperature range making burns more likely

Is there a particular range for burns? Isn't it simply that the hotter it is, the more burns you get?

Maybe so. I don't know that that changes anything. In fact, I'm not sure what you even mean by "efficient market" in this context.

> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Do you think this post lives up to that? Aren't we setting the bar a bit low here? I don't see anything special about it.