Property is a social invention, maintained and enforced by government, whose laws are controlled by the people.

We have free enterprise not because freedom is absolutely right or an absolute right, but because we've determined that's the best way to get a decent outcome for the most people.

Should free enterprise start oppressing the people, we'll change the rules. Because we made the rules.

> Property is a social invention, maintained and enforced by government, whose laws are controlled by the people.

Yup.

> We have free enterprise not because freedom is absolutely right or an absolute right, but because we've determined that's the best way to get a decent outcome for the most people.

False. We have free enterprise because there is no freedom without the freedom to exchange labor, goods, and services. It's the natural order of things to trade, always has been and probably always will be. It's not about the best outcome for most people, never has been, and never will be. It's about the right of self determination and autonomy.

> Should free enterprise start oppressing the people, we'll change the rules. Because we made the rules.

True, but Google and Facebook and Amazon aren't oppressing anyone, so your point is moot in this conversation.

> We have free enterprise because there is no freedom without the freedom to exchange labor, goods, and services. It's the natural order of things to trade, always has been and probably always will be. It's not about the best outcome for most people, never has been, and never will be. It's about the right of self determination and autonomy.

So I think we're getting to the root of the disagreement here. All of this your opinion, not fact. Quite a few of us do not believe property and free exchange are unconditional freedoms, but rather ones whose definition should be tuned to best serve the freedoms of the individual. A few countries (like Germany) even explicitly encode this belief into the constitution (previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317712).

If you disagree with that, fine, but note that history, Constitutional scholarship, and case law are not on your side, so you should not go around saying that your opinions are absolute fact.

As neither of us are supreme court justices, everything here is opinion, that's what we're discussing, our opinions. I shouldn't need to prefix everything I say with "this is my opinion" just as I don't force you to prefix everything you say with the same. So put that aside, it's a useless thing to point out and adds nothing to the conversation.

> Quite a few of us do not believe property and free exchange are unconditional freedoms

I believe you are in the minority. I believe the vast majority of Americans would disagree as our Constitution only allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, I believe the case law is on my side as is the law but I'm not remotely running around claiming things are facts so please get off that high horse.

And by the way, trying to claim Constitutional scholarship and case law are not on my side is a poor and fallacious attempt at argument from authority; try addressing my arguments, I have no interest in your fallacies. I don't live in Germany, I don't care what their constitution says about property; I care what my Constitution says and more importantly how it came to be; it codified not what my rights are, but what the government can and cannot do.

My right to trade pre-existed government. If the governments of the world all collapsed tomorrow, my right to trade would still exist, I would have to defend it by force, which I would, but it would still exist as a naturally recognized right of any human to engage in trade and we'd all each defend this right by force if required. And I'll call you a liar if you claimed otherwise, you'd defend that right for yourself as well and you know it.

You're being massively downvoted, as it is happening with me in a lot of posts when I disagree with these radical leftists that appear to have taken control of HN.

I think this wasn't so fully dominated by SJW and communists two or three years ago as it is now.

Downvotes were not so commonly used as censuring mechanisms for contrary political opinions also.

I think in this case you're both being downvoted for calling up some of the right's favorite bogeymen(SJWs, communists) without any real cause for it here.

Characterizing everyone with a different opinion than you as "radical leftists" or "SJWs" only demonstrates your own ignorance and close-mindedness.

What we're talking about here is a perfectly ordinary application of antitrust law, which has been a well-supported framework of law for over a century. This is not some radical new idea proposed by a fringe group.

And while it is off-topic, HN "dominated by SJWs"? Good grief, you cannot be serious. Just to give one example, the HN commenters overwhelmingly supported James Damore and thought Google was in the wrong for firing him. Regardless of the merits of that opinion, it is not what you would see in a community "dominated by SJWs".

My comments were about the downvotes the other guy was receiving, for which I could only see political motives, not about the matter.

It is pretty clear in the HN guidelines that downvotes shouldn't be used to punish people you disagree with, but I see an army of politicized people doing it consistently, so it makes sense to identify these people with what I personally think from certain political groups. The discussion could continue from that point, with other people disagreeing with me and saying that the downvotes had a reasonable motive or whatever.

Oddly enough, I'm a liberal; the SJW's society wide are getting out of hand even for me. I'm not convinced HN has been taken over by them however.