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Comment by sangnoir | Hacker News Reader

I wish we could create a "Galt's Gulch" and quarantine all the toxic individuals/entities who believe that the rules don't apply to them. They would be free to "cut corners" and "win" to their hearts content only amongst themselves.

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Sometimes innovation requires breaking rules. Uber wouldn't have had the success it's had if it had gone through "proper" channels. While it made them successful, I'd argue that it also benefited consumers.

"It also benefited consumers" is not a get out of jail free card.

If I break into warehouses, steal merchandise by the truckload, and sell it at a tenth the price, that also benefits my consumers.

Who says it should be a "get out of jail free card"?

I think that's a good approach: someone openly breaks a rule that they think is unfair and/or outdated, and then society can decide whether to re-evaluate the rule or fine them (even into bankruptcy, if they're a company).

It depends a lot on the political clout of the incumbents being disrupted. Aereo got shut down in a pretty short time considering it went to Supreme Court: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." - Grace Hopper

I find it unlikely the first person to express that concept was born in the 20th century.

Some places say Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe). If I had to guess, though, it's hundreds or thousands of years old.

It's attributed to Hopper. If you can find it anywhere before July 1986 we can change the wikiquote page.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

Disney used it in a slightly modified form: "Better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."

That's the thing. There's no particular flourish that makes her version remarkable. It's just a sentence.

Except she said it first, and versions of it have appeared since she said it, but not before she said it.

Telling me that it's just a sentence isn't persuasive in any way. Showing me something mostly similar from before 1986 would do a lot more to persuade me.

Nor is telling me "it's attributed to Grace Hopper." It's a special kind of hell to google something for 20 minutes, return, and have someone throw you a Wikipedia link.

Oh, you don't know who the Beechers are. They're from the 1800s.

> “It is easier to get forgiveness than permission” appears earlier in Arthur Bloch, Murphy’s Law Book Two (1980)

http://freakonomics.com/2010/06/24/quotes-uncovered-forgiven...

This comment is the most ironically ignorant thing I've seen in a long while. The first issue is that it was the best individuals that went to Galt's Gulch. The second issue is that the reason they went was to escape all the unjust rules and regulations that society was laying upon them. So the fact that you're suggesting sequestering these "toxic" individuals for trying to bypass the same thing that the Gulchers did is laughable.

Just because you disagree with a comment does not make it ignorant.

I deliberately invoked Galt because the book is appeals to the same group that thinks the law doesn't apply to them (when convenient),and they also believe they own/are themselves "the engine of the world". See BioShock for an equally fictional critique of what happens when the "best individuals" are left to their devices, without pesky laws.

Haven't we already done that to some extent? The members of the public who wish to buy regardless have placed themselves in the Gulch when they download Uber or book through Airbnb, etc.

It was once called America. I guess the next one will be the EMC, Elon's Mars Colony...

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