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Comment by thin_carapace | Hacker News Reader

i can make arguments as to potential merits of kids having a beer/cigarette, listening to swear words, or witnessing casual violence. i cant make an argument for letting kids see hardcore pornography in any capacity.

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I have hard time imagining what is that argument, that apply to the thing you mention but that doesn't apply to hardcore pornography.

Or do you also think we should forbid hardcore pornography also for adults?

Swear words and violence don't cause addiction, alcohol can but it's way less likely and also easier to restrict... idk why a kid should have cigs even once though

there may be valid use cases in certain demographics eg the disabled. to me it is evidently advantageous teaching a teenager how to have a smoke or have a drink properly , so that they don't go overboard with self directed learning for a valid activity (loosening social inhibition). we could totally teach teenagers the generation and consumption of dispassionate violent relationship simulacra. may I ask what would be advantageous about this ?

it is literally always the same thing - who gets to make these decisions? if you come from a family of alcholics (there are many) you will view alcohol for what it is, one of the most dangerous drugs that someone decide should be "legal." if you come from family that lost loved ones to smoking - same thing with smokes. hardcode porn, eh, they will eventually start putting this into practice ("hard" part is personal preference) so while probably not the greatest thing to have kids exposed to who makes these decisions? Personally, if you gave me a choice between smokes and porn and I had to choose one for my kid - I would choose hardcode porn. the core issue as always - who is making decisions on what kids should or shouldn't be exposed to?! and what do you do when whenever someone else gets that power then decides that reading or math or fishing or camping or ... is not allowed?

There are things where like 90% of people will find common ground

why 90%? and who decide is it 90%? or 87%? or 94%? are we going to have a referendum to decide on this? we need 100% people to vote on this referendum or small fraction will work? ...?

Practically it's hard to ban something new across the entire country without overwhelming support like that. There are enough people who strongly think kids shouldn't be able to buy alcohol or cigarettes that it ended up getting banned in every form, in all US states (even before federal law). Wouldn't be possible with a slight majority opinion, even if an individual proposition only needs 50% of votes.

> without overwhelming support like that.

this is 1,000,000% not accurate. there are things that vast majority of people support that are never going to happen (e.g. universal background check for gun purchases) and there are things that ruling party easily gets through that are wildly unpopular.

I said it's hard to ban something without support, not that it's easy to ban with support. Not to mention, gun background checks are more controversial than you're making them out to be, in fact this is an example I would use. Even if more than 50% like the idea of a background check, not so many will trust the implementation, and not everyone will vote.

Just for completeness sake and just for fun about 40 or so states allow private sales of firearms without a background check. Of course it is on the seller to know they are not selling to a felon and they may be on the hook if the buyer does something bad though I am straying a bit off topic from age/ID verification and tracking.

you should look this up, the percentage of support is closer to 100% than 50% (84-90%) - about as great of a support as it is humanly possible and yet………

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