
Ask HN: Do we have a political double standard? - throwaway373747
This political thread has been on the front page since yesterday:
California&#x27;s housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate (&gt;250&#x2F;upvotes, &gt;300 comments)<p>This isn&#x27;t the first instance of something that can be interpreted as &quot;Off-Topic&quot; because it&#x27;s a story &quot;about politics&quot; and &quot;they&#x27;d cover it on TV news.&quot; Yet it hasn&#x27;t been flagged.<p>It seems, almost arbitrarily, decided that our collective brainpower is allowed to focus on some political events. But, it&#x27;s imperative that we&#x27;re distracted from perhaps one of the most significant political events, arguably in our lifetimes, and that doesn&#x27;t start&#x2F;end with impeachment.<p>Democracy as we know it is changing. TPTB at HN have decided there are other [more capable?] people discussing this elsewhere.<p>I could beat the dead horse with the well known arguments. I could argue why the current policy is NOT in HN&#x2F;YC&#x27;s best interest. But who am I to deliver those arguments.<p>We know the best way to get to the bottom of an argument is to let the HN crowd have at it.<p>So I&#x27;ll leave you with this.<p>I have a dream that one day the problems of the 99%, our brothers, sisters, parents, and children, that those problems will be as ferociously debated by the privileged technical class as are merits of the fleeting superiority of their ephemeral toys.
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ThrowawayR2
> " _This political thread has been on the front page since yesterday:
> California 's housing bill SB 50 has died in the state Senate..._"

Probably has more to do with all the SVers being in California than any double
standard.

> " _We know the best way to get to the bottom of an argument is to let the HN
> crowd have at it._ "

We do? I think that rather overestimates HN's expertise outside the technology
field, as amply demonstrated whenever any medical topics come up.

> " _I have a dream..._ "

Launch your own site to do it in; this is HN. The person who is most famous
for saying "I have a dream..." worked his tail off to make his dream come
true.

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buboard
Who is “we” ? Imho HN isnt homogeneous or representative enough to constitute
a “we” unless referring to YC companies. Its fit for certain kinds of
discussion but pretty bad for others. I self censor my account heavily here,
and in fact often delete my comments that are voted down, in order not to
attract negativity. Despite that, my account is rate limited

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yesenadam
>we're distracted from perhaps one of the most significant political events,
arguably in our lifetimes

What is this highly significant political event you talk of? I read your text
several times, but couldn't find where you said what it actually is. Could you
spell it out? (I don't read/watch much news lately, maybe I should know.)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I presume, impeachment.

To address the original question:

SB50 is something that people have strong opinions on, but the opinions are at
least somewhat connected to data, experience, and reason. It is therefore
possible for HN to have a reasoned discussion about it. And, reading the
comments on the SB50 article, HN did that fairly well.

HN is very unlikely to have a good discussion about impeachment. It would turn
into a flame-filled partisan shouting match. HN is right to steer clear of
that topic.

But SB50? HN covers stuff about the livability of cities somewhat regularly.
We care about that kind of stuff because a lot of us live in cities. SB50 is
at least somewhat related to that kind of topic.

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pid_0
> Do we have a political double standard?

Yes, of course. Tech communities are biased to one direction. Not really a bad
thing, and its not really a big deal in this case either.

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non-entity
I kinda agree although it may not be popular. The caliber of discussion on
these threads drops hard, and things that are discouraged on any other threads
are rampant.

~~~
DailyHN
> The caliber of discussion on these threads drops hard, and things that are
> discouraged on any other thread are rampant.

Thanks for pointing out this problem.

Is this something that might get better in time? For example, downvotes
catching up with those who can't participate in a productive discussion.

~~~
non-entity
I dont really think so unfortunately. This is more of a general internet issue
as opposed to an HN specific one. Of course, especially bad stuff tends to
eventually get flagged and HN moderation is generally good at keeping things
under control, but many of these threads seem to attract people with a
specific view (not calling anyone out in particular, different threads will
attract different groups and create echo chambers, as does anywhere in the
internet) who will mass downvote what they oppose andunkike other threads, wll
constructed comments cant wind up greyed out at the bottom and highly
disingenuous ones at the top. I suppose the worst of these threads deal with
things that may not neccesarily against the rules, but lower the quality
regardless. It's not uncommon to see seemingly suspicious unsourced claims and
stats upvoted if they confirm existing biases, for example, while this seems
to be less common in other types of threads

~~~
AnimalMuppet
HN does tend to correct such things... in the small. The corrective mechanisms
seem to get overwhelmed when the volume of garbage is too high. People don't
have the time and the energy to wade through it all and try to clean it up, so
the garbage accumulates. This is true both of the members and the moderators.

So HN tries to avoid topics that are too hot-button politically. I like to
think that we do better at having a reasoned discussion on difficult topics
than other places do, but we have our limits.

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PaulHoule
My take.

The 1% in California has never been that concerned about the high price of
housing. They can afford it.

If they really cared (e.g. they perceived it hurt their business) they would
have used market mechanisms and moved their business out.

What makes the SB50 result predictable is that ordinary homeowners benefit
from the situation. (e.g. they can someday rent out or sell their house at an
inflated price while paying low property taxes.) Homeowners vote more than
renters, and importantly, the people who might move to CA if housing were more
available don't vote.

Another way of thinking about it is that CA is crazy crowded anyway. I'm
thinking of a neighborhood in Santa Monica where people live in pretty little
single family homes with pretty little yards, well tended gardens.

In a place like that, people are very affected by what their neighbors are
doing and they don't want more.

CA's style of development is also expensive economically and environmentally.
If you do build more housing, it will need more infrastructure, and at
American rates for building infrastructure it is hard to come out ahead.

~~~
DailyHN
I think you missed the point of the post...

~~~
PaulHoule
I responded to the "content" level but not the "process" level quite
deliberately.

Also I think the poster missed the point of the post as well, that is, did not
formulate the problem with any coherence, did not have a developed enough
"mental model" of the problem to formulate it well, and in some ways the
community doesn't have the shared reality to discuss the problem.

The poster left a square kilometer to paint and I had time to cover maybe 0.5
sq meters so I got stuck in the weeds.

If anyone wants to discuss this stuff seriously, the material in this course
is helpful:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw4-Fp0S2dJZkPN8HTrQ5...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw4-Fp0S2dJZkPN8HTrQ5xPTB8nrHyxqb)

