[javek]

If you were to take away power from the government, who would be left to defend the interests of the powerless? While it's true that government usually turns out to be an instrument used by the powerful to control the powerless, it is undeniable that the rule of law has occasionally functioned well enough to protect a minority from a majority. It offers a framework with at least the possibility of protecting the powerless. Take away that framework, and the faction with the biggest guns will win. People forget that even in the US, in the early 20th century large corporations used lethal force wielded by their own private mercenaries to keep an oppressed worker population under control. If government had no power, these gatekeepers could do whatever they wanted without the hassle of approval and public debate.

[yummyfajitas]

You are arguing against a straw man. Cheez wasn't advocating taking all power from the government, just "most".

Applying the principle of charity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity ) to cheez's remarks, one would assume that preventing violence is not one of the powers he advocated taking from the government.

[javek]

Suppose the government only lost the power to regulate the telecom industry. In this case, the gatekeepers could do whatever they wanted regarding telecom policy without any fear of legal pushback, instead of having to at least consider their small and manageable fear. If you don't like what they do and there is no framework for making your voice heard on this particular issue, what options do you have? Try to start your own ISP?

[cheez]

Suppose further that the government never subsidized the infrastructure to begin with.

[jbooth]

I'd say it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum.

If his argument is a silly one-liner that's demonstrably refuted with a pointer to Somalia as an example of "less government", it's not javek's responsibility to fill in the blanks for him.

[yummyfajitas]

Similarly, if anyone advocates more test coverage, we should automatically assume they want 100% quickcheck-like coverage testing all possible occurrences including power outages, network cables being unplugged, etc. What nonsense! How could anyone get work done in a place like that?

Or, to use a political example, if anyone advocates more regulation of X, it's incumbent on them to explicitly explain they aren't actually advocating Stalism.

This gives us an easy way to dismiss all views we disagree with without even having to consider the actual proposal.

[jbooth]

"More test coverage" isn't actionable, and if you try to act on it then you'll make stupid tests that don't help, waste effort, and hinder later refactoring efforts. "I'm worried about the foo module, do we have test coverage for this type of failure" is reasonable.

And I'd similarly pile on anyone who asked for quote "more regulation" without specifying so much as an industry and type of behavior to be regulated.

[yummyfajitas]

In the context of a conversation about module foo and all the KeyError exceptions it's raising, a charitable person would interpret "more test coverage" as "write tests that look for KeyError's in module foo." An uncharitable person would make the leap I described in my previous post.

Note to self: don't hire pedantic employees who interpret my statements in the most unreasonable way possible just to prove a point.

[burgerbrain]

If I said I wanted to raise taxes, would you start posting bullshit about what would happen if all property belonged to the government?

Of course not, because you wouldn't be trying to set up a strawman to attack if I said that.

"it's incumbent on Cheez to make a less simplistic argument if he doesn't want to be subject to reductio ab adsurdum."

Bullshit. Bullshit in any circumstance.