Government is lazy and callus about updating regulations regarding to development and testing of prophylactics. Innovative and better alternatives were taken off the market due to said regulations.
The commentary was spot on. The point of the original comment was to provide bullets without lengthy justification and citation and it was upvoted.
Then this "lazy" bullet was added and all the sudden the author needs to back up his assertion with detailed arguments? The pro-government bias here is insane.
As I said, don't be critical of government on HN unless you don't care about the group think popularity karma contest going on here.
Oh, I'm not saying there isn't a pro-government bias. I'm saying that it's just a bias, not a complete rejection. If you're pro-government, you can be lazy, but if you're against it, you can still be upvoted, you just have to work a little harder to overcome the bias.
Generally speaking I get the sense that HN readers are for an effective and efficient government. That's about as middle-of-the-road as you can get.
For anyone interested in living in a country where there is little to no government intervention are more than welcome to move to Central Africa to see what they're missing out on.
Yeah, and people who want a strong government should move to NK!
Seriously, don't you all get tired of burning the same straw man over and over again? I'm sure you don't support every possible kind of government, including Pinochet's Chile and the Khmer Rouge. It must also be democratic, somewhat respect human rights and such, no? Likewise, people who argue against them also have conditions they believe would be necessary for a stable country. You may think they are wrong, and point out why, but just saying "look at <country in shitty conditions>" is not a good argument.
So basically what I'm getting out of this is you agree with me? And possibly the majority of HN?
It's ridiculous to me how people talk like they're so far apart on their views of what a government should be, but when we really get to the nuts and bolts we're all pretty much after the same thing.
Well, I apologize, because I obviously failed to get myself understood.
My post had nothing to do with agreeing or not with you. I expressed no opinion on the issue. I was just trying to explain why I think the "why don't you move to Somalia?" is a bad argument.
Totally agree with your statement regarding the HN pro-gov't bias, unfortunately. Such is life.
Without the FDA and its outmoded regulations, there would be a flourishing of condoms for people to choose from, instead of just the three entrenched companies that can afford to deal with the gov't. If nothing else, the article details the fact that there are a LOT of people who care deeply about and are trying to solve this problem (and should be left largely unconstrained to do so).
Pro-government bias in the community? I don't see it. In fact, I see the claims of private industry fixing everything being made on the daily due to HN's bias towards startups making a difference.
What I do see is HN not taking lightly claims that someone just makes out of hand without evidence as if they are obviously the truth, no further proof needed.
I dont think anyone would make the claim that any government is beyond reproach. If you have been paying attention to the recent snowden or schwartz or any of the recent police action related articles posted on here, you would see criticism of the government hitting very high levels of (well deserved) vitriol.
>>Totally agree with your statement regarding the HN pro-gov't bias, unfortunately. Such is life.
Really? Last time I checked, most HN users subscribed to the notion that the government is slow and inefficient and does not do as good of a job as private companies in most fields.
Libertarian viewpoints tend to be heavily downvoted though, and for good reason. There are some people whose love for private enterprise and the "invisible hand of the market" blinds them to reality.
