[hrbf]

> Why should I be inconvenienced because a rounding-error’s worth of people made the choice, of their own free will, to misuse a product to harm themselves?

I guess I’m not surprised that if self-obsessed people lacking nuance and empathy grow in number everywhere that they are also present on HN. Just look at the wording. I’ve noticed them more frequently as of late, in threads regarding war, death and suffering.

Furthermore, to claim a severely depressed teenager is a fully-formed person doing something “of their own free will” betrays fundamental ignorance regarding what depression is, as well as how teenagers function.

[fastball]

> Insert Benjamin Franklin quote about sacrificing liberty for safety here.

[hrbf]

So providing an effective means of protecting depressed non-adults from the frictionless purchase of above-laboratory strength chemicals to potentially kill themselves by as trivial a measure as verifying age on delivery is somehow infringing on your liberty. Got it.

[catiopatio]

Yes, it very clearly is, and the fact that you think age verification on delivery is “trivial” is alarming and depressing.

[hrbf]

Trivial as compared to taking away the freedom of being able to purchase stuff like that at all via mail order – which I do not necessarily consider to be a reasonable request, nor do I agree with the lawsuit as is. There are already established mechanisms to verify age and identity in place to do that, package delivery companies do it all the time. It’s simply more expensive to do that. But Amazon clearly did not respond to reasonable discourse. I fail to see what you consider radical or restricting about my position.

There was also a quickly deleted response accusing me of ”pathological empathy that would abandon any principled position if it offered an immediate salve” to my “emotional panic”.

I believe this reveals more about the character and expectations of the commenter than anything else. To their credit, they deleted it.

Rational discourse about touchy subjects appears to be largely impossible. I expected better from HN. It doesn‘t follow that because you apparently hold an absolutist stance regarding what you consider freedom to be, that I am on the opposite end of this absolutism.

[catiopatio]

> I fail to see what you consider radical or restricting about my position.

Society should not bear the cost or responsibility for parenting other people’s children and preventing all possible accidents, much less willful self-harm.

The possibility of bad things happening is the cost of having a healthy, responsible, capable society of well-adjusted adults.

[iancmceachern]

It's simple. They do it every time I order wine or booze online, they do it every time someone orders pot, it'd simple and easy. Even Amazon does it in their whole foods branch when they deliver wine, safeway does it when they deliver me beer. It is simple and trivial.

[catiopatio]

Those are already intrusions — a slow creep of adding more is not a trivial outcome.

Next you’ll be advocating for age checks on kitchen knife purchases out of an irrational fear of “knife crime”: https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

Don’t worry, though, Scotland is a little more relaxed: “In Scotland, you’re allowed to sell 16 and 17 year olds cutlery and kitchen knives.”

I moved out at sixteen and bought my first kitchen knife set. That’d be illegal now in the UK.

That’s where your emotionally-driven policies lead. No thanks.

[fastball]

I have ordered booze a number of times online and the majority of times have not been carded on delivery.