All cultures mimic, adopt and modify aspects of other cultures. See: New York pizza, Australian beer etc. It doesn't follow that the resulting outcome is any less a valid expression of national cultural identity.
Likewise, I don't follow the connection between having a national identity and having national borders.
I once invited my neighbour over for dinner. He introduced me to his BBQ recipe which I now make all the time for my family. But he also got drunk and pissed himself on my couch. I won't be inviting him to move in with us any time soon, despite us having some culinary cultural overlap.
Well there is a stark difference between: "This is my grandma recipe, a family heritage" and "This is my drunk piss-himself-on-the-couch neighbor recipe" the first is something that can inspire you to impale yourself on a bayonet, the second is not.
In Europe much of the teaching of history in school has something to do with inventing a common national narrative, that's why everyone minimizes their own war crimes (with some exceptions after Nazism and Fascism, where Germany and Italy wanted a clean cut), and that's why France has forbidden Paths of Glory until 1975 and celebrates WWII victory.
As I was saying in another post almost every country in the Balkans has some kind of national myth about when they were an empire spanning the whole region (so does Italy about the Roman Empire). Ukrainians are very proud about Kievan Rus' (as a tool to prove superiority or precedence over Russians) and I could go on about this.
Maybe New World countries are based less on a nineteenth century national myth, with everyone being able to trace their ancestry to some immigration a few generations back, but here in the Old World this kind of half lies are still very much present.
Re: the connection between national identity and national borders is basically a softer version of the racial substitution conspiracy theory: if these immigrants swamp our country they are going to prevent us from using real pork in carbonara and add pineapple to our pizzas.
"The police view it as a civil matter, but could they look at it differently? Is there an ordinance that could be passed locally?"
This is more an issue with lazy or unmotivated policing rather than need for more and more specific laws. The driver is acting dishonestly to defraud the passenger of money. There are numerous statutes regulating fraudulent criminal conduct ranging from street scams to Bernie Madoff.
The fact there is a private contract between them regulating their commercial transaction does not obviate the need for both parties to comply with criminal law.
I wonder why the reporter did not seek any input from anyone legally trained. Relying on the police, who have no incentive to overly burden themselves with non-revenue generating police work, to inform the public on whether something is criminal or not is half-assed journalism.
As far as I can tell the relevance to HN is that people who do less than wholesome things use secure communication tools to organise them.
This is the necessary cost of not living in a police state (or police world). I hate people trafficking but freedom of association and privacy are too valuable to concede. I'm comfortable with that balance.
I'm not sure secure communications are terribly relevant here. ISIS would be doing much the same stuff if they were insecure. Indeed they post much of the stuff on twitter and youtube given the chance.
I'd add the USA to that list - plenty of evidence that National Security Letters have been used to stifle/gain access to/alter coding projects in the interests of US GOV.
It's probably even more insidious, because simply confirming the existence of an NSL can be a crime punishable by significant custodial sentences. In the USA, posting "The police asked me to delete this code" could land in you federal pound you in the ass prison for 10+ years.
The guy simply expressed an opinion about where he doesn't want to live. You can't force him to agree with your opinion on the subject, and you're unlikely to convince anyone with a barely coherent rant about a bunch of topics not even relevant to the original post.
The OP posts about his direct experience in Singapore which are his reasons for leaving. You posted reasons for not coming into the US, that would not affect OP. Is he going to Guantanamo Bay? No. Does he murder civilians? No. Is America a beautiful and exciting country? Yes. It's the government and military which is fucked. If the OP's points for leaving were political, you would make some sense.
One thing I notice when I passed through the States, is that you are constantly being bombarded with advertising, subliminal messaging, NLP. Trying to sell you something, or mold the way you think.
(The fact that a large proportion of Americans seem to think they have a "right" to bear arms shows that more than just the government and military that are fucked.)
I don't think completely abolishing civilians guns is the right answer. However, they should be VERY tightly regulated, and open carry should be abolished for sure. I'm okay with having a low caliber rifle in your house, locked away for intrusion/intimidation purposes in case of robbery.
Right now it's pretty crazy though. My American uncle has so many fucking guns that could blow holes in your chest, and I think that's wrong.
> is dead people my only gripe? Surely you cannot be serious.
Drop your attitude. If you have a point, make it. Nobody here is a mind reader.
Oh did I upset an American - poor you. I pointed out that all countries have flaws. I used the US as an example because OP is an American. Most of the blog post is about government policies so you don't make much sense.
No, I'm not an American. Why did you use extremes when OP didn't? He's talking about the product of government policies regulating citizens every day lives, the result of which is unsatisfactory for OP, not extremist situations in which political prisoners are shipped off to a torture camp or civilians in different countries are killed.
Those are both terrible things, yes, but hardly affect the day to day lives of people or their decisions, sadly.
The guy in question stayed in the apartment himself and let friends stay for free. So he's off the hook; short-term rental wasn't the sole use of the property.
This entire line of argumentation relies on the fact that there is (maybe) not a clear distinction between hotel and not-hotel.
Engineer-ish types take this to mean that the line is arbitrary and therefore irrelevant, concerns addressed by that distinction are invalid, and efforts to circumvent/exploit it are victories in the battle against analog logic. Other people understand that fuzzy definitions do not mean that the distinction therein is imaginary, merely difficult to identify.
If you've ever heard the phrase "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater," it applies here.
Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is preventing people like OP from doing what he's doing just because some guests might be a nuisance. What about we fine the house owner over those guests instead?
The problem is that the article itself tells us that AirBnB's protection mechanism to keep bad renters out it is broken (don't leave bad reviews for fear of getting bad reviews yourself). So AirBnB is taking all the benefit from this market, without providing a working way to curb any abuses.
My guess is that the fine is either a slap on the wrist (so the house owner just chalks it up to business expense) or so sever that the house owner stops doing short-term rentals entirely. I've not used AirBNB, but I assume that the house owner doesn't really know anything about the renters most of the time.
One solution might be to pass the fine onto the renters, but that leads to another problem: "Quiet" renters would probably be more put off by the possibility of an extra surprise charge than "Party" renters. The latter category probably ignore the penalty clause when booking the apartment and then try to avoid paying the fine after the fact. So now your set of renters is mostly loud partiers and the problem is even worse.
> My guess is that the fine is either a slap on the wrist (so the house owner just chalks it up to business expense) or so sever[e] that the house owner stops doing short-term rentals entirely.
This is tautologous. Either the owner does not cease to rent out his unit, in which case fines are a business expense, or he does. What sort of third option were you imagining might happen?
The fine should high enough to serve as deterrent. If the house owner doesn't know anything about the renters, s/he can either ask for a bond from the tenants that covers the fine (and deal with the loss of customers) or AirBnB or a competitor could offer better vetting of tenants.
My post was in response to the parent, which suggested that any property "solely" used for short-term leases should be regulated.
I was not suggesting that was a useful or appropriate test. Leaving aside the question of whether regulation is necessary, a "dominant purpose" or even "substantial purpose" test would lead to less absurdity.
All cultures mimic, adopt and modify aspects of other cultures. See: New York pizza, Australian beer etc. It doesn't follow that the resulting outcome is any less a valid expression of national cultural identity.
Likewise, I don't follow the connection between having a national identity and having national borders.
I once invited my neighbour over for dinner. He introduced me to his BBQ recipe which I now make all the time for my family. But he also got drunk and pissed himself on my couch. I won't be inviting him to move in with us any time soon, despite us having some culinary cultural overlap.