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Comment by isamuel | Hacker News Reader

In what sense is "mere political news" distinct from an "ominous sign" of "today's broken system" that will "indirectly [affect] all of us?"

These submissions are getting really tiresome, not least because of the way discussions proceed: the article is submitted, it's silently upvoted by people who agree with it, and everyone who disagrees posts comments explaining why. This was the pattern on the "Why I'm Not Hiring" submission a while ago; nearly every comment explained the many idiotic deficiencies of the article, but it was still a highly upvoted submission because of people who agreed with its substance.

Very annoying.

edit: And now I'm getting silently downvoted too, in the mirror image of the above phenomenon. Excellent.

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Fair enough. I'll explain why I find this article important.

The current crisis is not cyclical, it's man-made:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64796

Some have seen it coming, ie it could be averted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

Countries have been breaking the basic economic law - income >= spendings - for a long time. There are several ways to get rid of the debt, eg inflation or nationalization. All of them are unethical and are basically stealing from all but a select few at the top. That's what this article is about.

If things come as far as the author writes, it will affect all of us here at Hacker News. There is a lot of people here trying to create something, to enrich the others and thus to get rich. It will all be in vain if our governments decide it's time to rob us.

I could have been less emotional and more specific about this. Thank you for challenging me.

This is exactly why I think this kind of article is appropriate for HN. If you know as an entrepreneur that you are operating in a closing window of opportunity before the big crash comes, how does this affect your startup decisionmaking? Are you building with the people on Flippa.com in mind or the fine folkds at the Long Now?

perhaps we should allow downvoting on submissions as well as comments.

I assumed that existed, but I hadn't reached the right karma threshold yet. So I keep flagging things, which is pretty much the same I guess.

It doesn't exist at 1900 karma for sure. I think if we allowed downvoting on submissions there would be a lot less about Google and Apple, and perhaps less Zed Shaw, and definitely less politics, less Ruby/Rails, because then the wishes of non-fans would be weighed more in comparison to their fans. Heck, non-fans have no weight presently at all actually.

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