An American City Where the Government Barely Exists

Re:An American City Where the Government Barely Exists by DanBC on Sunday September 24, 2017 @04:34AM (#15323903)

At some point you and dang are going to have to stop excusing the sizable fascist faction on HN as being "just a few people" or some kind of balance for the other "extremist" POV. Here we have someone saying something utterly mainstream - accessibility is good - and getting downvotes for it.

HN has lurched to the right, and fascism is now acceptable here.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:An American City Where the Government Barely Exists by taway_1212 on Monday September 25, 2017 @03:39PM (#15333381)

> accessibility is good

Pretty much nothing is 100% good or bad.

In many cases, accessibility rules (or fire safety rules for that matter) can prevent a business from being viable. Are we better off with a store that has a huge sign "does not meet fire code, enter at your own risk" in front of it, or with no store at all? I prefer the former.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:An American City Where the Government Barely Exists by timthelion on Sunday September 24, 2017 @04:14PM (#15326303)

I think you might be overzealous in using the word fascism here. While fascism does lead to the oppression of minorities and has historically lead to the oppression of the disabled [1], I do not believe that my view is a fascist one.

There is positive discrimination, telling quadriplegics that they should be euthanized. And there is negative discrimination, failing to provide an ADA compliant restroom. The former is fascist, however the latter is not in my opinion. Of course it is best if all venues have restrooms that are wheelchair accessible, however the idea that any which does not provide accessible restrooms is fascist is a logical absurdity.

Lets take your argument to its end. There are 1 million wheel chair users in the US [2]. Lets just say that any venue that negatively discriminates against 1 million or more Americans is fascist. How many restaurants are there in the US that provide separate gluten free work surfaces in order to prepare gluten free food for the 3 million with celiac disease [3]? Another million people have a milk or egg allergy and need separate work surfaces for those ingredients as well [4]. I know, it's just 120 000 people in America that are actually blind [2], but not a single grocery store provides braille packaging on all their produce. All in all there are 2.4 million who are visually disabled, they should be given well lit venues, no darkness and light shows at concerts for them, they might trip and fall in the dark. But if things are going to be well lit, what about the 3 million Americans with chronic migraines (which causes photo-sensitivity) and therefore cannot bear the bright light [5]? Its literally impossible to not negatively discriminate against someone, and I've not even gotten into religious or ethical diets and norms. So is everyone who tries to open a venue a fascist?

[1] https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007... [2] http://codi.tamucc.edu/graph_based/.demographics/.statistics... [3] https://www.cureceliacdisease.org/wp-content/uploads/341_CDC... [4] https://www.foodallergy.org/sites/default/files/migrated-fil... [5] https://migraine.com/migraine-statistics/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:An American City Where the Government Barely Exists by grzm on Sunday September 24, 2017 @05:19PM (#15326559)

I could be wrong, but FWIW, I read 'DanBC's reference to fascism as applying to trends of behavior and comments on HN as a whole, not with respect to the ADA and related issues in particular.

[ Parent | on HN ]