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Comment by mcherm | Hacker News Reader

There are many people who have a philosophy of "Anything's Fair Within the Rules". There is no law against buying up the only manufacturer of a lifesaving drug and squeezing out as much profit as you are able, so there are many who would say it is fine to do.

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Obviously, that only works if you don't _ALSO_ create a public relations disaster by doing so.

And end up in jail.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me the difference between a limited-oversight hands-off free market and a competitive criminal oligarchy.

Because variations on the criminal/sociopath thing keep happening so often when you get limited regulation and religious regard for profit at any social cost that they seem to be an inevitable outcome - a kind of moral Gresham's Law, where the crazy assholes always drive out more reasonable actors.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me the difference between governments and stationary bandits.

  > There are many people who...

Argumentum ad popularum. There are also many people who believe the Nazis passed good laws.

Yes, there are many people who are Lawful-Evil. That has no bearing on whether Evil is acceptable, provided it is Lawful.

In order for it to be a fallacy, he has to be basing his argument off the fact that people believe this fact. I do not see him basing any argument on his first sentence. In fact, he mainly seems to be using it as an introduction mechanism. "Many people believe A. Proposition B about A." He states it as fact, and you may disagree with that fact, but that fact is in isolation from his actual argument.

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