Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?

1. Avoid unnecessary profanity.

2. Avoid ridicule and sarcasm, especially when directed at other HNers.

3. Avoid complaining about "trolls" downvoting you. In fact, avoid discussing karma in general.

4. Avoid using emotionally laden terms of disapproval. Instead use direct objective language ("There were rendering artifacts in the rotation effects") or clearly state the subjective aspects of what you are discussing ("Something about the rotation effects rubs me the wrong way.")

5. Be concise and relatively formal in your language.

The open question was how big of a stick the government should wield, and your response was to implicitly ask whether the other person believed in capitalism, and if not then should we go with communism? This is a straw man comparison. There is a world of difference between saying that the government should punish bad behavior harshly, and saying that the government should have any active role in the day to day management of businesses.

In particular Stiglitz' proposal is that executives who can be shown to have engaged in fraud and theft, be punished for it. He further seems quite unhappy about corporate governance issues that in practice make it very hard for shareholders - the theoretical owners of a company - to have any direct ability to control compensation of CEOs, or to get an accurate picture of what their own company is doing.

The appropriate discussion to have about this is whether Stiglitz' characterization of the behavior is correct. And, if it is, then whether his proscription would be reasonable, and whether or not it would solve more problems than it causes. It is not to accuse someone of not believing that capitalism works.

Trying to be genuinely helpful:

"Vertical list of applications??? Microsoft what have you been smoking?"

Sounds pretty emotional. Maybe was intended somewhat humorously but humor on the internet (especially in a forum) is tough to pull off. Three question marks expresses strong emotion. Strong emotion is the opposite of critical thinking and logic. Emotion is (in part) actually a form of memory. People with strong feelings are better at making snap judgments. People who lack that have to actively work at making a decision because they don't have some "gut feeling" to go by. When you emote strongly in a public discussion, you actively promote other people not thinking and, instead, just reacting. So there are valid reasons why that is something not very welcome here.

I'm someone who tends to strongly emote and I sometimes make remarks that get downvoted in part because of that. That kind of expression has its place. But it's so socially disruptive that there is good reason to discourage it in a public discussion and even more reason to discourage it in a public discussion where the goal is critical thinking and logical exchange of ideas.

Unfortunately there is always a temptation with karma systems to use them for "social proof". Social proof is implemented by downvoting opinions you disagree with and vice versa. The only ego-preserving way of dealing with this is to view your minority opinions as "ahead of your time" and resolve to politely keep up the thought leadership.

EDIT: I bit and looked at your comments. Suggestions on the thought leadership appear in another message.