Prohibition failed because it allowed the bootleggers of the underground to fully monopolize their trade without having to abide by any legal restrictions. If a business no longer has the threat of ramifications for questionable acts, then the questionable acts increase exponentially.
That can be two-way though. Cracking down only builds a stronger underground, which is where I see the entire surveillance issue going. As with all other ails in society, the ones with the power to effect real change are precisely the ones who would suffer most by said change. So it won't happen. Petitions, demonstrations, appeals courts, etc, are all useless. And there could never be a massive, singular pro-privacy effort as there is no money to be made. The NRA and big pharma have huge lobby groups playing with billions of dollars because there's billions more to be made.
So what? It's harder to combat guerrillas than a standing army. There's not always safety in numbers, sometimes that just results in a bigger target. So what if the Feds can tap into the larger encrypted anythings, give them a thousand tiny encryption outlets to deal with instead. Not a united cause, but a million different efforts. OWS failed bigtime because there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Aligning forces means individual voices get lost in the shuffle of the crowd. And Prohibition aligning with the Suffrage movement only resulted in the Suffrage movement being falsely placated to as a new target for Capitalism. Sell them ladies some cigarettes! Sell them some clothes-washing machinery! Let them know how much we respect their struggles by giving them things to go broke on!
(Apologies for any lack in logic- still working on 1st pot of coffee.)
You realize this site is one big ad for YC and its minion fledgling not-always-entirely-legitimate companies, right?
The job of this site is to legitimize up and coming nothings in the eyes of you, the dear early adopter.
You've been had.
In other news, have you heard companies are hiring to CREATE DELIGHTFUL PAYROLL and for MINOMONSTERS (because nobody actually wants to work on that, they have to post job spam every two days) and, oh, look, immad has thrown up his 200th job advert for zerozap again too.
I know what this site is and I can use it for my own purposes. But having to see popups or god knows whatever other eyesores would no longer make it worthwhile even in such minimal regards. I could care less about startups or especially anything relative to marketing or investment. But the factoid linkages are the real gold. I only care about information, not Capitalism. Not in the slightest.
What if PG sold ad space to HN users? Plenty of people here would doubtless pay to be able to drop something into a text-only banner at the bottom of the page or something.
