[zackmorris]

Seconded. Another way of saying this is that avoiding politics benefits the status quo.

Since the status quo is inherently conservative, that has a stifling effect on innovation - which is inherently liberal. Which is ironic for a site dedicated to disruption. Hence the cognitive dissonance.

I try to entertain opposing viewpoints in all of my comments, even if I don't always agree with them. So while I find it most practical to live conservatively, that doesn't mean that I wish that for the world. It's important to remember that FDR - a liberal - was one of Reagan's heroes. I think that we can imagine a Star Trek style post-scarcity geopolitical reality without abandoning the ethos which got us this far.

Now, regardless of all that, I still think that HN has the best ranking algorithm around. So I would say that if it wants to get serious about getting back to meritocracy, funding real work on hard problems, setting a positive example through intellectual honesty, etc, then it should consider revising its flagging policy.

A proof of concept might be to move flagged posts below the fold past slot 31, rather than removing them completely. Then they could bubble back up on their own merit. Or maybe each flag costs 10 slots, something like that. And all flags should go through human review to prevent gaming, if they don't already.