How other people respond is largely unrelated to principled notions of justice -- it will mostly depend on what benefits them. Populism, in other words.
Nobody said anything about lynching anyone. I simply don't recognize idiotic laws bought and paid for by corporations as legitimate. Lobbying is just legalized corruption.
I can't be an anarchist because I don't believe anarchy exists. In every group of humans, power structures and hierarchies form spontaneously from normal social interaction. Even if you abolished all forms of government, they would simply reform. A state of anarchy is impossible.
> Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law out of all other freedom struggles.
Civil disobedience is wrong. Society has established ways to change the rules. Breaking rules instead of changing them is disrespectful to the society that has been built. Just because you quote someone, that does not mean what they are advocating for is just.
Society is wrong. It allows trillion dollar corporations to simply buy the laws that they want to impose on you while conveniently leaving loophopes for themselves. Why the hell would you want to "change" this rigged system through the system? That's mind boggling.
There is absolutely no reason at all to even so much as recognize these laws as legitimate. Society can go to hell if it thinks otherwise. They were supposed to be working for us, not the corporations. Since they aren't, we simply revoke their power over us. It really is that easy.
Power isn't something you have, it's loaned out to you, and it can be revoked. People give you power because they believe you'll act in their best interests and solve their problems for them. Once it becomes clear that's not happening, there is absolutely no reason at all to defer to some corrupt "authorities" who are doing nothing but enriching themselves at our expense.
> Society is wrong. It allows trillion dollar corporations to simply buy the laws that they want to impose on you while conveniently leaving loophopes for themselves. Why the hell would you want to "change" this rigged system through the system? That's mind boggling.
So much for "Resolving inconsistencies between my ideas is the entire reason why I come here to discuss them."[1] - you're just here to engage in propaganda.
(propaganda that, for the future record, isn't even true - corporations do not get votes and do not get to "buy the laws they want")
>Why the hell would you want to "change" this rigged system through the system? That's mind boggling.
The current system allows for changing it if you have enough support. People who try to go around it because they do not have the needed support. If society was truly wrong we could easily dissolve it.
The book of Isaiah tells us to denounce unjust law. And the book of Matthew tells us to recognize Caesar’s secular authority. Anarchism is not the only explanation.
Correct, but in practice this is almost never done, because the way the US legislative system is set up it's almost always more convenient to have judges rewrite laws instead of legislators.
We live in a deeply unjust world where laws are literally bought and paid for by corporations. This age verification nonsense is just the latest example. They aren't going to sit idle if we attack their lobbying efforts, they're going to come after us. God only knows what a surveillance company like Meta can do to you if they really hate your guts.
Lobbyists are quite literally people you pay to "influence" the lawmaking process. Through them you can essentially buy whatever laws you want. The exact methods they use are irrelevant, though I wouldn't discount the possibility that some politicians were corrupt enough to get literally bought with literal checks.
Nobody asked for this age verification nonsense. The entire child protection angle is just a way to manufacture outrage and cover up the real nature of this law. This is purely a political move from Meta against Apple and Google. Apple cut off their data via iOS privacy controls, now Meta is striking back.
Meta spent billions on lobbyists, then laws benefiting Meta and hurting its competitors were passed. If this is not evidence that you can buy laws, I don't know what is.
OK, so then you think the entire system is corrupt, and you should reform/replace it.
Selective rejection of laws based on your own personal morals is wrong in every circumstance.
Either you believe the system is just and you follow all the rules (and work through the system to changes the individual rules you believe are unjust), or you believe that the system is fundamentally unjust and you take drastic action to fix it. If you don't, then you're a hypocrite - you don't really believe that the system is unjust, you're just using that as an excuse to selectively ignore laws you disagree with.
> Either you believe the system is just and you follow all the rules (and work through the system to changes the individual rules you believe are unjust) [...]
I believe the system is just. That does not change in the presence of those unjust rules that you listed above, because those laws can be changed and are changed regularly, and because they're not egregious enough to constitute a failure of the system.
I understood you perfectly, but you didn't understand me. You're trying to create a false binary between "follow every law as written, until it gets changed" and "drastic action." Nobody wants to take drastic action, so (you say) we should follow the laws.
You seem to agree that there are unjust laws, but you don't realize the scope of the problem. There are many unenforceable laws, with drastic consequences if they were enforced, which are not being fixed[0]. A just system would not perpetuate unjust laws indefinitely, and so under your framing, everyone who disagrees with these laws and is not willing to follow them should take "drastic action."
In fact, there's no such binary. We live under a flawed system which contains unenforceable laws; we can just ignore those laws (which law enforcement already does) even if they are not changed, without needing to overthrow the system, emigrate, or whatever it is you meant to imply by "drastic action."
> There are many unenforceable laws, with drastic consequences if they were enforced, which are not being fixed
Irrelevant.
> A just system would not perpetuate unjust laws indefinitely
Can you point to laws that the majority of the population agrees are unjust that have existed since the beginning of the United States? If not, then there's zero unjust laws being perpetuated indefinitely, and so your conclusion is invalid by your own argument.
But, your own argument is wrong to begin with - the vast majority of humans will acknowledge a system as being essentially just even if it perpetuates some unjust/irrelevant/silly laws.
> In fact, there's no such binary.
That's true, you can "just ignore those laws" - and you'll be a hypocrite. The binary that I'm describing is clearly moral. I'm not saying that you physically must take one position or the other (as you're implying) - just that if you pick a value in the middle, you're a hypocrite, and your opinions are worthless, because you don't really believe them - you're just saying whatever is most convenient/advantageous for you at the moment.
>> There are many unenforceable laws, with drastic consequences if they were enforced, which are not being fixed
>
> Irrelevant.
While I don't see why "unenforceable laws" is being mentioned so many times, given the plethora of other laws, I possit that since one of the prior comments was that enforcing them would be damageous, perhaps the intended wording is "unenforced laws" (as distinct from laws which cannot be enforced). If so, then I suggest their relevance.
>> A just system would not perpetuate unjust laws indefinitely
>
> Can you point to laws that the majority of the population agrees are unjust that have existed since the beginning of the United States? If not, then there's zero unjust laws being perpetuated indefinitely, and so your conclusion is invalid by your own argument.
This the flaw that a law being perpetuated "indefinitely" (that is, without defined end) need not have existed since the beginning of the United States. Such law could have begun at any after, or indeed prior.
>> In fact, there's no such binary.
>
> That's true, you can "just ignore those laws" - and you'll be a hypocrite. The binary that I'm describing is clearly moral. I'm not saying that you physically must take one position or the other (as you're implying) - just that if you pick a value in the middle, you're a hypocrite, and your opinions are worthless, because you don't really believe them - you're just saying whatever is most convenient/advantageous for you at the moment.
This formulation is not constructive of enlightened debate. Kindly sheath your daggers and reply without invectives. As written, that might easily be read both as personal attack and casual dismisal of entire person. For what is a person who has no opinions?
Now, if I understand your position correctly, you believe that all laws must be obeyed, and that disobeying any law is immoral. Do we each believe that some laws are, whether past or present, immoral? In the case that a law can be immoral, I must hold that the resultant moral obligations are to disobey that law to the fullest and to endeavour to best ability for its most expedient and most moral removal.
This is a way to reform it. If nobody obeys a law, is it really illegal? It's more like a custom.
> Selective rejection of laws based on your own personal morals is wrong in every circumstance.
So if your so called authorities passed a law saying you're required to participate in some atrocity such as genocide, you'd do it with a clean conscience? Okay.
> you believe that the system is fundamentally unjust and you take drastic action to fix it
I don't have the power to do so. Also, people who try "drastic" actions are called terrorists.
> You've started calling me names so I won't bother trying to engage any further. Thanks for the discussion.
A note to future readers of this thread: observe the inconsistency between the poster's stated positions and decide whether you believe that their words are genuine (and their positions/advocacy are worth taking into consideration) in light of that.
Resolving inconsistencies between my ideas is the entire reason why I come here to discuss them. I'm just not willing to do it while being accused of bad faith and of having no reading comprehension.
Factually, you do either have bad reading comprehension or are operating in bad faith, because otherwise you could not have made this statement:
> So if your so called authorities passed a law saying you're required to participate in some atrocity such as genocide, you'd do it with a clean conscience? Okay.
No need to respond. This is just documentation for future HN readers.
It doesn't make strategic sense to make open source projects the enemy of the people. Incentivizing legislation that hurts open source software is not helpful for open source software to thrive.
>Especially with a law this dumb
Allow software to know if the user is an adult or a child seems like a useful signal to me and is not dumb.
Wanting society to be run effectively and not be blighted with rule breakers does not make me a serf. I have used my free will to decide that I want to live in and respect society.
That would be a lot easier to believe if this law in question actually, you know, helped society. Or did anything to affect how it runs, let alone “effectively.”
As it stands, it reads more like “I’ve used my free will to decide to suspend all critical thinking and accept that anything that anyone with authority decides should be a rule must be unquestioningly accepted.”
