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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

It's not a joke. He also tells us:

> PPS: I despise libertarianism. Just in case you were wondering ...

So yes, we have an aspiring central planner who wants to take Bad Excuse #1 for intrusive government surveillance, rampant violation of peoples' privacy, and the like — to collect all its abuses, and expand it to a new area. And he ostentatiously despises anyone who tries to build politics around liberty.

These facts are entirely in harmony with each other. I've seen far worse political agendas, but he's an authoritarian thug, and it's as simple as that. Perhaps he should now compare the libertarians to terrorists, so he has access to the abuses collected from Bad Excuse #2, Terrorism.

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Yeah, because everything not libertarian must be Stalinism; there is nothing, has never been anything, and cannot ever be anything in between.

It is unnecessary for you to draw this false dichotomy and its substance is rhetorical nonsense. There's plenty of non-Libertarianism in the world, just as there are plenty of ways to trample on liberties that aren't Stalinism.

And it really shouldn't take someone editorializing the spectre of an overbearing government pressuring service providers for unlimited power to spy on your communications for illicit material, because — as you might have noticed — that's already happening; these pages have of late been covered with news of Apple's fingerprinting schemes, and of the potential consequences to freedom. Our author wants the same sort of laws brought to bear, to stamp out what he sees as moral evil, and perhaps he's right it's evil, just as it is certainly true that child porn is evil.

In either case, though, he wants the authority to stop it, and shrugs off the idea that this would bring unfortunate consequences. This isn't Stalinism, this is just cranky authoritarianism, and if you go for this sort of thing then hating on the libertarians is fun, thus none of what he says is likely to be a joke. It is sufficient for him to be a cranky authoritarian, and nothing further is claimed.

Next time you rag on someone for not drawing any distinctions, maybe try actually drawing the distinctions yourself??

> It is unnecessary for you to draw this false dichotomy and its substance is rhetorical nonsense.

You turned his "I despise libertarianism" into "an aspiring central planner who wants to take Bad Excuse #1 for intrusive government surveillance, rampant violation of peoples' privacy, and the like — to collect all its abuses, and expand it to a new area." So, no: "false dichotomy" my arse.

> Our author wants the same sort of laws brought to bear, to stamp out what he sees as moral evil, and perhaps he's right it's evil, just as it is certainly true that child porn is evil.

Exactly: Perhaps he's right. And if it is as evil as child porn then it logically should be stomped out with the same vehemence. Or does your definition of libertarianism entail different responses to equal evils?

> Next time you rag on someone for not drawing any distinctions, maybe try actually drawing the distinctions yourself??

I don't think you're in any position to criticise my reasoning when your own is this muddled.

> You turned his "I despise libertarianism" into "an aspiring central planner

No, sir. I turned his "preferred solution to the problems created by cryptocurrencies is to treat them all like child pornography: totally illegal, possession a strict liability offense, choke off interoperability with real currencies at the credit agency/bank interchange level, and make them useless for non-criminals, at which point only criminals will bother with them. And India is going down this route"

into that. Despising Libertarianism is merely co-occurrent, proceeding from the same philosophies.

Yeah, well, that's even more stupid. Because if one is convinced that they are as bad as child porn -- a perhaps somewhat exaggerated view IMO, but not at all outlandish -- that's the only sensible stance to take. So, you turned an arguably reasonable stance into whatever libertarians want to rant against today. That, OTOH, is definitely not reasonable.

He's right to despise libertarianism, I'm right there with him!

For an authoritarian thug, he hides it very well behind a surprising long-term trail of posts and opinions that contradict that.

Where this is going, of course, is that I think you're wrong and I think the evidence supports you being wrong.

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