Comment by azundo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by azundo | Hacker News Reader

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The problem with having a no-trust rules-only society is it would be terribly inefficient and things would grind to a halt. Every day you take actions and make decisions that rely on trusting others. In general people do not steal and cheat at every opportunity, and treating the world that way would be counter-productive. Taking the argument to the extreme, if you trust no one, you must have no expectations of any privacy as that is the only way to really be sure that people aren't acting differently than you would like them to. If everyone else is being watched you better believe you will also be watched. The cost of this regulation and surveillance would be obscene and the pace of progress would grind to a halt.

I think the reaction here is appropriate. There are laws that were broken. This is not scapegoating, it is punishing behaviour as should be expected. Yes reforms may be needed, and they should certainly be considered and I am sure they will be, but punishing those who knowingly broke the law and abused power for personal gain cannot be considered scapegoating, or punishment of any criminal activity must be considered scapegoating as it means society simply gave them too much power and trusted them too much to allow that activity to happen.

Note I didn't say no trust. I merely said watch incentives and balance of power.

I also didn't say every decision.

It's a balance. You have drivers licenses to ensure a standard of safety and trust - but after that you leave people alone (risky if driver's do bad things). It's a tradeoff.

However in this case, society has seen it fit to give a few individuals too much power, without placing the correct checks and balances upon them. This creates a situation that allows "nasty" agents to exploit it for their own benefit.

Don't blame the hackers. Blame the system designer (a security researcher told me this).

You must assume, upon creation of a system, untrusted and "nasty" agents and deal with them (at some cost). This is how cryptographers and security researchers work to ensure our safety. Maybe we should get them to look into this problematic mess (they love finding flaws in systems :D).

It's easy to blame Hitler for the Holocaust (which was a despicably evil thing). But you must also consider how one could've stopped a situation from developing such that an artist drop out could end up seizing control of an industrial powerhouse.

If you say don't blame only the hackers, I agree. But the hackers that - knowingly and selfishly - violated the law must be punished, not given a free pass because it was the fault of the system.

Then you should also improve the system; the two things aren't mutually exclusive.

Ah but you see here is the kicker (and I totally understand your point).

When designing systems you must severely reduce the ability of "nasty" agents to take advantage and exploit you for personal gain.

We should also enforce standardized punishment for those that successfully exploit the system.

LIBOR left the gate wide open! That's 10x more important than punishing any one person that just walked in (and they should be punished - I don't disagree). But focusing on the people is the wrong mental attitude to adopt.

I keep hearing things like "So and So has $100 million dollar salary and he should be punished for bringing the house down". I really want to hear things like - "Who the bloody hell let this happen in the first place?".

That's all I'm saying. Punish hackers all you want but if you want true robustness you must rectify the exploits present in the system.

Ok, agreed that fixing the system (which isn't itself an easy thing) is more important. But punishing the perpetrators of the actual crimes isn't only important for this single problem; it is also very important as both an example for others that could be tempted, and an encouragement to honest people. The OP was against the justifications that are put forward to somehow save those people, not against also changing the system.

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