I believe what parent commenter is suggesting is that it would be ridiculous for lawmakers to call it a crime to die, say without verifying you are of the legal age to do so. It would be like declaring that breathing is legal: why does that need a proclamation?
> For whatever reason, I can't reply to your comment further down.
In case you happen to read this, that is (presumably) due to an anti-flamewar feature on HN, which hides the reply button for the first few minutes of posts in deep comment threads. You can either wait to comment, or comment by clicking the "X minutes ago" text next to the commenter's username.
Then you don't see why stealing $10 is a misdemeanor and stealing $1000 is a felony (depending on jurisdiction, but whatever you get the point). Not saying you should see why, just that many clearly do for it to be public policy.
But it makes me wonder: do you think the $10 theft should be punished more heavily (minimum 1 year in prison), or the $1000 theft punished more lightly (maximum 1 year in prison)?
I see what you're saying but it strikes me as naive to suggest that a felony and misdemeanor are different merely in magnitude. I suppose that was my mistake given my initial examples. In practical terms, one is a means of voter disenfranchisement, among many other life complications like "failing" employer and landlord background checks. One thing being a felony and the other being a misdemeanor can be seen as a difference in magnitude and as a difference in kind, and I was talking about the latter.
This "they did bad stuff so we have to do worse stuff" idea strips the people doing the second bad thing of their agency. That's false; they have agency, and can choose to do better.
As long as we're making things up, there's no reason the web search can't be locally deployed as a copy of Google's index and search algorithm circa 2026 on your unbelievably powerful 2050s home server.
This reminded me of something. https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
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