&gt; Serious question - was this person downvoted because of the particular argument they presented, or because of the quality of the argument?<p>If it was posted in response to a an &quot;Ask HN: What should we do with federal income tax policy?&quot; or &quot;Ask HN: How would you reduce the power of the IRS?&quot;, it would be on topic and less worthy of downvotes (of course, both of those threads would probably be flag worthy as improper for HN, but that&#x27;s a different issue.)<p>Even for the first of those contexts, its really inadequately argued. But, in the context of the actual thread, its basically off-topic noise.