Hacker News Reader

Comment by openclosed | Hacker News Reader

What makes you say bizarrely?

It seems normal to pursue something that could result in economic benefit, if you have the means to do so. And if there's a larger principle at stake, all the more reason.

View on HN

I used "bizarre" based on the tone of the guys writing. Read some of the older stuff he's written about it; it's been going on for years. He cares about this a lot more than most people who suffer from these sorts of regulation. It's not clear to me that he actually ended up with an economic benefit to justify the time he spent on it.

So "surprisingly passionate"?

A frequent narrative I hear on HN is that going to court is ruinously expensive, emotionally taxing, wildly uncertain even if you're completely in the right, and so slow any victory is almost certain to be Pyrrhic.

Someone who believes that narrative would have expected this guy to lose, pay six figures in legal fees, have a mental breakdown, and the judgement to only come in five years after his magnet company closed down because they couldn't sell their only product.

Personally I don't have enough experience to know whether the US legal system really works that way.

I think that's actually an accurate characterization of the legal system. I highly recommend this book if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Adversarial-Legalism-American-Way-Law...

My first hand experience is it works exactly that way.

The CPSC successfully drove every other company in this product category out of business. For any CEO in this position, it honestly bears question whether fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle (they claim they're the first to win such a battle in over 20 years) is going to end up eventually allowing you to turn a profit, or if your best bet is to close up shop and enter a different business entirely.

It's bizarre in that he went to great lengths to prove a point when there were much easier ways to make more money in the same period. Most people would not be willing to spend as much money on proving the point but would rather use it to produce something less controversial.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com