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Comment by syshum | Hacker News Reader

I am always baffled by the augment of "well the rest of the developed world does X"

Seems to strike me as a lesson I learned when I was young.. "Well if your friends all jumped off the bridge would you?"

Simply because other nations do X, is not IMO a valid justification for X...

Except that in American political culture it’s extremely common to argue that such and such thing is either impossible or will introduce a parade or horrible consequences. Those that make this argument depend on voters being ignorant of the existence of other countries that have successfully done that thing or not experienced those consequences or, when those examples are cited, rush to American exceptionalism or other baseless appeals to distinguish them.

Or we recognize the fact that the United States has a system of government that is Unique in the world, we also have a culture and demographic that is Unique, as such many of the policies that would apply to say a EU nation can not work the same in the US for a wide range of issues from constitutional limitations, to cultural ones...

The rush to make the United States in to a EU nation should be opposed IMO, if I wanted the laws and regulations of the EU I would move.. I have no desire to be subject to the rules of the EU nor do I look to the EU for guidance of how things "should be done"...

Jumping off a cliff is obviously bad because of what happens when you hit the ground at the bottom. One click taxes seem a bit different.

It is more along the lines of "all your friends can excuse themselves to use the bathroom, why do you keep pissing yourself?"

While appeal to consensus is a common logical fallacy, we can make stronger arguments to support government tax software. Tax preparation is 100% deadweight in an economic sense. Nothing useful is created in that time, and yet billions of hours are spent on it each year in the United States. Streamlining the collection of tax revenue seems to be in the best interest of the state and the people, even if a very small minority will be harmed in the process. The additional product of those billions of hours of work time per year would pay enough dividend to cover the development cost virtually overnight.

I am not saying I disagree, personally I think they tax code should be extremely simplified so the need for software is not needed. One should not need an accounting degree or depend on the IRS to figure out what you owe in the first place

The tax code should be simplified to where a person with a High School education can understand it, and process what they should owe the IRS.

however that is not the argument. the argument was "Well the EU does it so American should too" I find that argument to be very lacking

The answer to if your friends all jumped off the bridge would you? is obviously yes, my friends aren't idiots and they haven't all lost their mind at the same exact time.

I'm not saying you should do it because of the fact that the rest of the world does it - this is merely evidence of its feasability.

You should do it because the alternative is downright dumb. That is to say, what you are doing right now is downright dumb.

If all my friends jumped off a bridge they must've had a really good reason to, so yes I might as well.

Same logic applies here. Just maybe, if everyone does it, we should consider it too.

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