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Comment by Dracophoenix | Hacker News Reader

> My point being that not having a clear definition won't stop us from grappling with the harms. Nor should it.

In the absence of a clear referent or definition, who gets to decide what constitutes a "harm"? What substance do their claims have beyond conveniently spun moral arguments? Why does betting on an event as common and unalterable as the weather require adoption by an incumbent entity and/or regulation by the state to achieve legitimacy?

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Those are all questions with a variety of answers historical and current. You could have looked them up. But I take it that you mean them rhetorically, with a point something like, "since I, a smart guy on the Internet can't think of a clear answer in two minutes, there's no point in anybody looking at anything that harms people I don't care about."

But again, I say that shouldn't stop us from grappling with harms. A good example is food safety regulation. Are there clear, perfect answers? No. But we muddle through anyhow, doing our best to balance many factors. And we should.

We do this in the law all the time. Many here find it imprecise and aesthetically ugly, but it’s how the world works.

> In the absence of a clear referent or definition, who gets to decide what constitutes a "harm"?

The jury.

A jury is relevant to the legal adjudication of harm, not the institutionalization of a certain ideas, activity, etc. as harmful. There are many so-called harms that are arbitrarily declared by agencies as such long before a lawsuit is conceived. Just the same, there are many legitimate harms that states and societies enact as their "right" at the expense of a person's liberty (i.e. conscription, expropriation of property, etc.).

You don't need to take an anti-democracy stance regarding juries.

Also there is a reason why trust in institutions are lower than Trump's approval, institutions are prone to corruptions and enriching the elites while advocating for policies that do not help worker's material needs.

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