Unreasonable Laws: a Technique for Making Other Proposals Sound More Reasonable

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned with how to push our agenda and inaugurate the New Future, so when we saw this unique application of one of our favorite techniques being used in Aceh, Indonesia, we were quite excited.  The theory behind this approach is that in most negotiations you will have to give up some of what you initially wanted, so you need to be ready to throw away the more extreme parts of your agenda.  The solution is to propose something even more extreme than your most extreme agenda so that it can be dismissed immediately by other parties to the negotiations, leaving you in a stronger position for negotiations.  In this case, the city officials have successfully adopted a position so extreme that the world has taken notice and criticized them for requiring women to ride motorcycles side-saddle.  We hope our astute supporters will begin incorporating similar tactics into all of their negotiations.