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What I think is that your argument is in bad faith and breaking HN rules.

The governments, being useless and focusing on the wrong things, are banning objectively non-nefarious objects (ninja swords, anonymous coins) that can be use for good by good actors (cutting stuff in the garden, sending money in privacy) but are sometimes used for evil by bad actors (murder, money laundering), like many other things.

How can rape and murder ever be used for good by the general public? Did you ever meet someone in need of a legit rape/murder in the name of good? How can you possibly make such a comparison? Honestly!

Banning a tool doesn't stop the criminals from committing crimes that are already illegal, it's just removing a tool from the law abiding citizen.


They aren't comparing those crimes. You don't get to pick and choose where laws should matter based on whether you personally like the item being banned. Your "bad guys will do it anyway" argument doesn’t hold.
The argument would be that your "non-nefarious" use is just not that important. Cutting stuff in your garden with your ninja sword or sending money in privacy with your fake money is just not something anybody gives a shit about you being able to do.
My best interpretation of their comment would be that to ban owning ninja swords or rape does not prevent either from happening 100% of the time. But it's still the 'right' thing to do and prevents it some of the time.

But I am guessing here.

> ninja swords

> cutting stuff in the garden

Wait, are you talking about like using a Ninja sword as a gardening tool?

Or do you mean something like playing Fruit Ninja IRL in your backyard, chopping up watermelons and other fruits being thrown around in the air, for fun?

The swinging bladed tool people might use for gardening is a machete, which (absurdly) is banned under separate legislation along with "zombie knives", whatever the hell that is (some sort of serration?)

You have to understand that as a headline factory. The Offensive Weapons Act already prohibits carrying anything with the intent of using it as a weapon. Police routinely confiscate kitchen knives from the pockets of young men in stop-and-search. The specific bans on specific weapons are part of a stupid media cycle where a crime is carried out using a fancy weapon so the government legislates against that specific weapon. It's like trying to outlaw cryptocurrencies by banning them by name one at a time. It's incredibly stupid but a tradition of UK politics because it's easier than trying to untangle the actual problems of knife crime.

It's also a UK thing, not an EU thing. There isn't an EU level knife directive, rules vary; Czechia and Finland seem to be loosest from some brief googling.

I would think that most of the things that require privacy in a payment are more or less shady, except for the few % of people really into tech that can't be traced back

I'm not either pro or against such bans because I'm not well versed into the crypto universe (just like almost anyone else) though

Yeah sorry if you think that! I was just (admittedly, in passing, and through a one-liner), pointing to the fact that I don't think that your argument is really solid. There are already other comments expanding on that so I won't reiterate.

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