Interesting the authors cite unionization as an effective protection against this in the past but do not recommend it as a remedy for the future. The problem with simply passing laws as they suggest is that those laws once in place will be opposed by everyone with power simultaneously and forever, with no powerful organized collective force to defend them it is just a matter of time until corporate power grinds them into dust.
Unions give actual power to workers (and are great at motivating them to vote according to their interests!) instead of just passing laws out of the goodness of our heart to protect them and hoping they last through billions of dollars in corporate bribes.
The current problem with unions is labor arbitration. Unions were great when transportation was slow and expensive and communication didn't move at the speed of light. Now capital is more important than labor, and capital can be moved almost freely and at the speed of light. Labor on the other hand is stuck in it's national borders, and much of it has a huge amount of debt.
Giving a union the power to shut down a production line doesn't do much good when a new line can be setup overseas in hours. Corporate power has to be fought at the state and nation level
Why do you assume this is informing police? Imagine police see your license plate and the Palantir app shows up and says "crime risk score: 83" and then the police manufacture a reason to pull you over. Are the police more informed, or are they just working for Palantir now?
Limiting police power is a tough political goal. Right now police can literally shoot you dozens of times with their personal assault rifle that has "fuck you" engraved on it while you are lying on the ground with your hands on your head begging for your life, then get caught planting a gun on your body and face zero repercussions. And in discussions about this a huge number of people support the cops - "you never know, he could have been armed, we can't ever suggest a cop behaved badly because that would make other cops less willing to kill at a moment's notice" are real arguments people put forward. If you want to stop them from being able to pull people over for no reason so easily that sounds great but that is a HUGE undertaking.
Well first of all, any time a private corporation does secret private proprietary unreviewable analysis on members of the public which is then used by law enforcement -- this is a terrifying, horrible dystopian miscarriage of justice on its own. People (i.e. the politicians who signed off on this) should go to jail for doing this. Police should be accountable to the public, allowing them to dodge this by using private entities who are not accountable to do their dirty work is quite simply criminal corruption.
Add on top of that it's being done by a company named after a mass surveillance device used for evil in a fantasy story.
And on top of that it's being done by a Thiel company. Thiel, who is nearly a perfect personification of evil: he has made very explicit candid public statements on how he opposes the idea of democracy itself, he does not think women should have the right to vote.
And on top of that it was being done without the knowledge or consent of nearly anyone in the city.
And finally, the justice system presumes innocence. The Palantir system does the opposite -- it makes wild, arbitrary untrackable inferences that suggest guilt for people without any real evidence. It is quite literally nothing more than a very thin shield police can use to justify harassing and intimidating the "kind of people who tend to be criminals", which in this case is not that at all -- it is "the kind of people who tend to get caught and prosecuted for crimes" i.e. only violent or drug crimes (except drugs white people use), only poor criminals, only minority criminals.
Where's the massive computer analysis system that looks for wage theft committed by employers? This is after all how the vast majority of wealth is stolen in the US, citizens could recover billions of their own money if it were stopped. Where's the computer system working with law enforcement to automatically detect any insider trading? Why don't we monitor the behavior of people in finance to detect cocaine use and then send in the SWAT teams? What about a computer system that detects bad prosecutors?
You are misreading his comments about women and democracy. He was simply saying that certain demographics aren't receptive to libertarians - he was not saying that women shouldn't have the right to vote and that democracy is bad. I daresay it's impossible to read his full writing in question and come to the conclusion one might get from simply reading an excerpt of two sentences that the Politico article wants you to see.
" It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will
be taken away or that this would solve the political
problems that vex us."
"I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why
I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys
relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world
is us versus them; good people versus the other."
His essay here is pretty blunt about how he is opposed to democracy. He outlines how to escape democracy (he calls it politics sometimes in the essay and uses the two words essentially interchangeably, because they are the same). He outlines ways to escape from democratic governments, seasteading, techno-libertarian cyberspace, etc, where capital can rule uninfringed by the desires, needs, interests, votes of its subjects.
I was incorrect about his views on women, though, thank you for the correction I retract that completely. He simply sees women voting as a problem because they don't vote the way he wants (they are not by and large wealthy and powerful so do not vote exclusively for the interests of these constituencies, like Thiel) -- and uses this as an excuse to throw out voting altogether. I'm not sure that that's better but my characterization was inaccurate.
It is most of the time not an education issue. Showing up can be hard: skip work and be fired or show up in court? Abandon your kids to make your court date? Nearly all eviction hearings do not have a defendant present, and it's not because nobody understands. It's because the people who prey on the weak and destitute know they can't afford to take a day off to show up, and because the poor (often rightly) believe the legal system will never help them in any way so showing up is a waste of time.
because the poor (often rightly) believe the legal system will never help them in any way so showing up is a waste of time
This! Sadly, there are many government services that are intended to help the poor in these situations, unfortunately, there is a lack of awareness and/or education about what is exactly available, to whom that help is for, and how to go about receiving that help. For example, many courts have pro-bono attorneys available a few times a month to provide legal advice to those who can't afford to hire an attorney. Most often these services are available for free on a first-come-first-serve basis regardless of income level. They are intended not for criminal defense, but instead to help people navigate civil court issues (i.e. evictions, divorce, collections, etc...).
Yes, showing up can be hard for someone living day-to-day/paycheck-to-paycheck. No amount of education or resources is going to solve that problem. One alternative solution could be for courts to offer alternate hours for these cases.
Or maybe, try to keep these things out of the court system.
If people have less than say 5k in assets just block any sort of wage garnishing, etc.. and dismiss the case. Forbid collection of debt, etc. And put the burden of proof onto the collector.
We shouldn't allow debt collectors to take the clothes of peoples back, why should we allow debt collectors to take the last dollar.
I'm not saying this is the only solution, just one of many. The point keep poor people out of the court system, they can't pay anyways, what's the point?
It's certainly possible to require that if debt collectors demand the courts help them collect their debt, that they have to provide certain pieces of evidence to the court.
This is already the case: in order to convince a court to garnish wages, debt collectors have to prove to the court that the person accused actually owes the debt. They could also be required to provide evidence that the person is wealthy enough to pay.
A person not paying and not being able to reasonably afford to is no crime and should not involve the court at all: the person who made the loan made a mistake. The reason lendors are allowed to charge interest is so that they can asses the risk they will not be able to recover their investment in some cases -- these are those cases.
If someone can pay and chooses not to, that is a matter for the courts, so if a debt collector wishes to have the courts take money from these people they should have to prove they fall into this category.
Lack of teaching empathy is an education issue. No one should think this situation is fair, anyone with sufficient empathy would find this corruption unacceptable in a civil society because it risks loss of trust in it.
The debt company is gaming the system, but it's also ammoral so we should expect this sort of gaming. And perhaps appreciate it for exposing a bug in the rules of civil society, or what should be civil society.
The question is how do citizens react to this weakness in the system being exposed? Selfish individualism says, doesn't affect me, and that just allows more corruption, classism, and distrust. It illiberalizes society. It damages everyone's ability to trust, be trusted, have predictable and fair outcomes.
Yes the courts should be respected, but not by enacting disproportionate punishment for not showing up. The court still needs to be trusted. Why should only the court system, and the debtee be permitted to set the court date and time? Why not give deference to the accused to set the date and time within a 120 day window? It is more fair. Courts serve the people. And the business serves no one.
I also agree with the ACLU's remedies for adequate notification and burden of proof of debt.
>Why not give deference to the accused to set the date and time within a 120 day window?
I definitely agree with this.
>Lack of teaching empathy is an education issue.
I disagree here: we live in a hypercapitalist system. Empathy is a competitive disadvantage. Any company that exercises it is weak, and will be culled eventually by companies that don't. Lack of empathy, brutal selfishness and a willingness to exploit the weak are not a cultural problem, but a natural consequence of an economic structure: we cannot teach our children to be nice and hope that it will go away.
To some extent you're right, but I'd say education is absolutely a part of the problem. Most people (I'm guessing, based on anecdote), at least under 30, have no idea what the potential consequences of not showing up to a court date can be. Even if someone doesn't think the court system will help them, they should understand that not showing up makes things monotonically worse.
You would think so, but there isn't. Even if it is a child custody case. Even if you have a subpoena. I worked one place that would let you off if you were a witness in a criminal case or had jury duty (because it was law), but never for a civil case. After all, you should have conducted your personal life in such a way that it didn't interfere with work.
Of course, this was a state that didn't require any reason to fire you. Sometimes folks could get unemployment afterwards, sometimes not.
Perhaps there should, but these laws are generally toothless and unenforceable because of the power structure in a place of business: in the US employment is "at will" so even if on paper it says you can't be fired for this, it is easy for bosses to invent some justification for the firing, and to make it known subtly or not so subtly that missing work for any reason legal or not will result in consequences. Employers can and do do this right now, all the time: "wow look at John, he worked through lunch and worked unpaid overtime until 6. He is really dedicated. He's employee of the month. You should all be more like John. He definitely won't be laid off next week."
Without a competing power structure to hold employers accountable and keep an eye on their behavior (i.e. a union) the law is a nice sentiment but not much more.
Well sure, the philanthropic model, which is in essence allowing the wealthy to control every part of society by determining what exists (i.e. is funded), who gets to live and die (by who they choose to give jobs to), what can be said (since every communications medium is privately owned), is a better choice for the wealthy, never for society or anyone else. It moves as much as possible of society from a public sphere where democracy exists into the corporate world, which is always a dictatorship.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is great in that it funds research and development in educational pedagogy and techniques and funds education in general. But its existence is also explicitly anti-democratic. It funds schools that accept its doctrine, and leaves the others to wither and die. The existence of charity will be used to cut public support (why do we need public support when these schools are funded without it?) and then we have the setting where one billionaire effectively sets educational policy without democratic input at all. The Kochs are trying to do this by replacing standard American History textbooks with the history rewritten and changed to better serve as Libertarian propaganda.
Make no mistake, when you accept that philanthropy is a fundamental tenet of society you are literally ceding all decision making power to the ultrawealthy who can afford to take part in it, and cutting out nearly everyone else, ensuring they will be begging for scraps from their masters forever. You ensure that anything people have is framed as a kind gift from a wealthy benefactor (and you wouldn't want to make that benefactor mad and risk losing those gifts you need to survive, would you?), not a right or expectation. Even well-intentioned philanthropy is extremely dangerous.
Some episodes are much stronger than others. I think the eye camera episode was good, because it humanizes the dystopia: it moves past abstract moralizing and unrealistic "how things could be" like in e.g. Brave New World and gives you a real human story. It feels more real than reading stories about orgy-porgies, etc. And the technology for it is basically already here.
I think Altered Carbon is a better dystopian tech story though. The actual plot is not even really the point. The setting, backdrop and society that it envisions feels more plausible than any episode of Black Mirror.
The best sci fi dystopian stories imprint our current economic and social structures onto a new future with technology: the world of Altered Carbon asks what if we had our current economic system, which creates a class of impossibly powerful oligarchs who hoard all of the world's wealth and act with impunity while the poor suffer and die, but now these technologies allow their power to extend and expand indefinitely, past death?
The crux of every tech sci fi dystopian story is the question: What if we progress technologically but refuse to progress economically or socially? What if we encourage people to study STEM and sneer at the humanities forever? What if economics is always taught as an exercise in cheerleading for our current system?
Media like this makes us think about the changes that need to be made as technology more and more amplifies the (potentially bad) choices we make about the world we want to live in.
It's easy to get caught in the echo chamber of "technology good, disruption good, gadgets fun" especially living in the tech world so I think it's great stories like these make us take a step back.
Agreed, there's a great formula editor which is very nice if you want to create math presentations in powerpoint instead of in beamer (and I wouldn't blame you, especially if you're in a hurry).
But could you really imagine writing a serious mathematical document (paper, book, thesis) in Word? No Git, no vim/emacs, no plain text? Abandoning the digital lingua franca of mathematical communication? Abandoning the packages written by the sum total of anyone who has worked on anything close to mathematics in recent years? For what?
> But could you really imagine writing a serious mathematical document (paper, book, thesis) in Word?
Yes I could, and I did. My Master's thesis is written in Word and it was pretty heavy on the theory and the formulas. If you're interested it's online on http://e.teeselink.nl/thesis_et.pdf. It's not a particularly stunning thesis in terms of content, but in my humble opinion it's a pretty document, definitely no worse than the average LaTeX-produced thesis.
See eg page 58 (the 70th page of the PDF) for some large formulas. It's not arithmetic but Structured Operational Semantics, but I doubt that matters for this argument. (in hindsight I hate that page and the ones like it - the sheer overload of single-character variables makes it totally impossible to understand)
By the way you said "no git" but Word files can be version controlled just fine - particularly when you're working solo which I was. I used Subversion (hey, 2007) but ok.
I used Word because I noticed in earlier years that LaTeX made my mind drop down into "programmer mode" every time I wanted to accomplish something that was non-trivial. This nerd sniped me and it distracted me from writing the actual content. I ended up with super nice LaTeX themes and definitions and homecooked macros (excuse me for having forgotten the real names these things have in LaTeX, I last used it over 10 years ago), my content sources were super clean, but I spent at least as much time on setting up LaTeX as actually writing. Plus, I found editing large formulas frustrating because I had to find the right place in a fullscreen wall of backslashes and curlies.
Word forced me to focus on the content because everything layout-wise I wanted to accomplish was boring and, mostly, easy.
The only thing that was cumbersome was getting IEEE-style references (i.e. the ones that Bibtex generates by default) to work. It worked out in the end but wasn't as easy as it should be (I noticed that they fixed that since). Also I had zero problems with that thing where Word just doesn't want to do what you tell it to (indents jump, list items suddenly disappear etc, you know the drill) because I only used Word Styles (a bit like CSS classes) and never custom formatting. As long as you stick to that, Word sucks less.
Frankly, this PDF shows that it has been produced with Word. For example:
(a) Full justification without hyphenation;
(b) Chapter 6 ends at page 69, and the next 32 pages have wrong left header; and
(c) Section headers with fake small caps.
Using LaTeX would have resulted in a more beautifully typeset paper.
Your point that you might have spent more time preparing it is subjectively true, obviously, and it seems that in your case Word proved good enough.
Or, alternately, the company could do what every other company in existence does and what B&N has always done and have people work during what they know will be the busiest time of the year instead of sending everyone home, destroying the company and letting the CEO pocket the savings.
A large portion of the SAT is knowledge of English vocabulary which obviously has nothing to do with IQ.
The mathematics questions nearly all use the same basic rules and are presented in the same format, and can easily be learned and trained.
SAT prep courses are ubiquitous and expensive because they work. Do people without training do well? Sure. Do people with training still do poorly? Sure. But a good SAT question would be "does this mean that training doesn't help or that there isn't a correlation between training and success?" because the obvious answer is no.
>The many different kinds of IQ tests include a wide variety of item content. Some test items are visual, while many are verbal. Test items vary from being based on abstract-reasoning problems to concentrating on arithmetic, vocabulary, or general knowledge.
That's odd, when I learned about it a long time ago I was told it was intended to measure "inherent" intelligence, not the level of exposure/memorization of a massive set of (likely trivial) data points.
Vocabulary very clearly belongs on an achievement test, not an aptitude test (as I imagined IQ to be).
Sure this is true if we just let the market do as it wills.
But we have many tools to deal with this problem in our historical toolbox that we have mostly left behind as we hard embrace neoliberal ideology: regulation with fines, regulatory bodies (that can make judgements on unethical behavior not explicitly written into law and mete out serious punishment), a criminal justice system that could be applied to executives, a troubling but powerful system of asset forfeiture designed to seize "ill-gotten gains" (and what is money gained from unethical business practices but ill-gotten?), nationalizing or breaking up companies to prevent concentration of power that can be abused, organized labor and collective bargaining. If e.g. CEOs who ran unethical enterprises were afraid of their assets being seized and being jailed the fairly accurate picture you paint of our current reality -- the unethical businessman who crushes anyone with an ounce of human dignity, worker and competitor alike -- looks a little different.
I think it's pretty clear that voting with your dollar will never and has never worked, but some of the above tools might. Though they all of course come with their downsides.
>I understand it, lots of people have dreamed big dreams of how great the world would be if everyone else was just like them too.
Actually nearly everyone already is like me in this way: nearly every human being has a sense of ethics and sees a pretty clear difference between right and wrong that transcends a profit motive. It's just that it's not so easy to turn that ethical and moral sense we all share into actual power to change things, especially when power is concentrated in the hands of the unethical (for exactly the reasons you describe above). But that's the task before us, and that's why universities are making computer scientists take ethics.
Unions give actual power to workers (and are great at motivating them to vote according to their interests!) instead of just passing laws out of the goodness of our heart to protect them and hoping they last through billions of dollars in corporate bribes.