I had the opposite experience.

Regulations are generally bad because they can be gamed. They produce a huge population of rent seeking parasites who work for the government to make regulation complex so only they can understand it, then move to private sector to help the business game the broken system they themselves created.

All you need to keep businesses honest is to let individuals/localities/states sue the hell out of the businesses if they are harmed by the business.

The only place regulations make sense is where harm is at a very large (country/planet) scale, where there is no coming back from, such as climate change.

> Regulations are generally bad because they can be gamed.

That's a downside, but not at all a reason to write all regulations off.

I'd hate to live in a self regulating society where disputes are resolved by legal action. I'm guessing you're pro legal regulation in this dystopia?

That's a cynical and nonsensical position.

All you need to do to refute this is look at the history of fraud, incompetence and other abuse in the Bitcoin/*coin marketplace. Adam Smith's invisible hand drives price competition in the marketplace, but it doesn't govern conduct.

Punting the need for regulation to the courts is just robbing justice from the public at large. Instead of having a rule that can be easily enforced and understood through the regulatory process, you're going to organically create rules via litigation and precedent. But in the process you're raising the bar in terms of cost and preventing entities without the resources to litigate from realizing justice.

> agents are forced to throw all common sense out the window when handling people

It is not common sense but totally sensical. A grandma could have been threatened to strap it on her butt or her relative/friend gets it in the head.

People are and have never been squeamish about killing. They just don't like to witness gore in their own backyards while they are enjoying brunch with their families. Concentration camps eliminate the inconvenience of having your day ruined by unsightly executions by moving the fate of undesirables out of your sight.

And regarding Mongols, most of what you learn from history is greatly exaggerated. Mongols fought to conquer and the cheapest way to conquer is to intimidate the enemy. It was in their interest to spread terror through stories of murder and brutality and it was in the interest of their victims to spread the same stories to elicit sympathy.

They also backed up their reputation for brutality with stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

Their actions severely depressed to population of the area for centuries.

I don't know that I agree with the parent's conclusions, but it is certainly true that people in the past were much more used to seeing death, whether of humans or animals.

If foreign students want to make American friends, they should be prepared to feel uncomfortable and also be willing to make others uncomfortable.

There is no easy way. You have to separate yourself from your comfort zone. That includes others from your home country as well as other international students. Live with an American roommate, go to every (American) party you are invited to. Say no to every (non-American) party you are invited to. Find an American gf/bf or keep trying. Join volunteering activities (food drives, blood drives, salvation army etc) to meet locals.

In a couple of years, you would have made yourself deeply uncomfortable on many occasions, annoyed some people, but by now you'll be talking and walking like an American.

This applies in general to immigrants who tend to huddle together because it is the easier thing to do. That is why in most cases, cultural assimilation takes atleast a generation.

Did you ever violate speed limit and not pay a fine?

I am guessing you did many times. If you had paid the fine, you'll be too broke to own a device to post this comment.

It also means you circumvented the process and you are a criminal. It takes one to know one.

There are illegal aliens in this country because this country let them come in. We let them in so they can pick fruits, landscape our lawns, babysit our children, all at a huge discount.

So yes, we all got financial benefits out of it. Now, suddenly turning around to punish people who we benefited from strikes as hypocritical, to put it politely.

If were are just enforcing the laws now, it would be only fair to write a big fat check to each deportee before sending them on their way.

I would disagree with Steven King here. Once you write down ideas, it allows you to reconsider them later in a different light, a difference context. I believe that is extremely valuable because it is crucial to analyze an idea from various perspectives before embarking on implementing it. Embarking on an idea not well thought out can be extremely expensive.

Yep, definitely. The process of writing anything out (ideas, emotions, plans) lets you separate out the roles of describing the idea vs criticising it. Trying to evaluate them in your head requires you to do both simultaneously.

Its naive to believe that President Trump's _temporary_ ban on Muslim immigration will be the end of the story. It will just be the start of a nightmare. It took about 10 years for the gas chambers to fire up after Hitler came to power.

> You're comparing a religion and political ideology where large parts of its 1600 000 000 followers think it's okay to kill apostate

People in civilized societies are judged based on their actions, not their beliefs.

If President Trumps ends up gassing 3-6 million Muslims in the United States, it wouldn't be any less worse than Hitler gassing 6 million Jews.