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> But we prefer to risk authorizing some people to carry deadly weapons around—even knowing it can and does turn out badly sometimes—in order to reduce the prevalence of the things we get from lawlessness.

Yes, and we can get away with that because deadly weapons have an important safety feature: they're operated by individuals who can think for themselves, and themselves resist tyranny. Those weapons are also operated by individuals who are vulnerable to individuals who also have those weapons - notably an argument against drones is they make war too easy, without enough consequences against the agressor.

When those deadly weapons become more powerful - and more likely to be used against civilians rather than military - society is less and less accepting of their existance. That's why biological and chemical weapons are banned, and nuclear weapons are heavily discouraged.

Imagine if we had the ultimate deadly weapon - the ability to kill any individual with a push of the button with 100% success rates, with the owner of that weapon not being vulnerable to it. We'd be terrified of that weapon, because for all the good it might be able to do, in the wrong hands it'd be game over for freedom.

The opposition to Aadhaar simply recognizes that for whatever good it can do, it is a dangerous weapon, one with surprising power. Part of its surprising power is that it gets used to argue for implementation in other states - fighting that weapon needs to start not by arguing against it in your own country, but by arguing against its deployment anywhere.



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