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posted by takyon on Sunday May 03 2015, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the garbage-in-garbage-out dept.

Tim O'Reilly has advocated for the idea of algorithmic regulation - reducing the role of people and replacing them with automated systems in order to make goverment policy less biased and more efficient. But the idea has been criticized as utopianism, where actual implementations are likely to make government more opaque and even less responsive to the citizens who have the least say in the operation of society.

Now, as part of New America's annual conference What Drives Innovation Around the Country? Virginia Eubanks has written an essay examining such automation in the cases of pre-crime and welfare fraud. Is it possible to automate away human judgment from the inherently human task of governance and still achieve humane results? Or is inefficiency and waste an unavoidable part of the process?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:49AM (#178086)

    O'Reilly has a point, but only up to a point. For lack of a better word, "debugging" government is almost impossible. There are far too many personalities involved, not to mention personal, political & corporate interests. Removing the "professional politicians" and the greed & corruption would help address the near-zero production that results from government acting in what they claim to be the citizens' best interests.

    Debugging the "algorithmic regulation" would be even harder. It would be controlled by only a few (or possibly even one) corporation (another government contract handed out to a friend, donor or lobbyist). The current regulation and oversight, as poorly implemented & managed as it is, is far more transparent than anything a tech company would ever throw together. Not to mention any political bias the company holds could influence the algorithm, and the fact that the jobs to create the algorithm would probably be outsourced or handed to a H-1B friendly company.

    Don't get me wrong, I'd trust a rabid robot making decisions using a random number generator (or even an old pair of dice) more than I trust anyone in politics. I just don't trust closed source software contracted by, and acting on behalf of, those same politicians. 99% of them don't know what software really does so they are among the least qualified to make these types of decisions (not to mention they are greedy, corrupt and continue to be for sale).

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:51AM (#178087)

    Do you still beat your wife?

    [Yes] [No]

    ERROR MUST SELECT AN ANSWER

    etc.

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:04AM (#178092)

      When was the last time you beat your wife:
      O < 1 day ago
      O < 7 days ago
      O < 1 month ago
      O < 1 year ago
      O >= 1 year ago
      Must select exactly one

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by joshuajon on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:15AM

    by joshuajon (807) on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:15AM (#178095)
    This reminds me of a short story called Manna [marshallbrain.com] that was mentioned in a comment on another article recently.
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:22AM (#178097)

      Well at least you're not one of those idiots who insist that the Australia Project is supposed to be a better outcome than Burger G.

      ............cue the morons who think forced brain implants and total lack of privacy are good things.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:27AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:27AM (#178099)

        But the Australia Project is better and better! And like it pays lip service to open source, dude. The Vertebrane can't possibly be bad, m'kay. Here, try one! Just let me sever your neck. Come on, stop resisting, motherfucker.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:34PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:34PM (#178106)

      Three things about the "manna" program implementation that have not been explored in SN past discussion that I can recall:

      1) OK its a VERY thinly skinned taskrabbit or mechanicalturk. The problem is some guys I know used to play a turk drinking game where you only drink as much as you pay for by turking in real time. Obviously this works better for cheap college beer and not so well for shots of decades old whiskey. From my own experience you can get pretty drunk filling out surveys on the turk. This is something to think about WRT psych research and the like done on the turk, you can safely assume a huge percentage of turkers are just phoning it in and are chemically enhanced and simply don't care about anything and being anonymous unlike an in-person study they don't need to keep up appearances for social reasons so the attitudes (and data) are likely to be total garbage. In my experience a good way to identify a failed society (bad parts of 3rd world, USA "urban areas", etc) is things just stop working once maybe 10% of the population gives up, at least with human leadership. Maybe manna can out manage humans such that it can be a success in the face of 30% apathy. Probably not. The story models a collapse where the population of people who care and the population of people who don't give a F are magically equally productive, which is ridiculous in experience. A more likely outcome from the first chapter is the employee assigned to cleaning the bathroom says F it, the employee assigned to checking up says F it, and the health dept shuts them down or the consumers are horrified into never coming back. Or the place burns down because they're too apathetic to clean the grease out of the ventilators and the inevitable fire occurs. Business success or failure happens on the margins and cleaning a fast food restaurant is possibly the worst place to start a deployment.

      2) The claim in the first chapter that people love micromanagement is pretty much the core fictional part of the book. People hate that shit. So only the worst workers in society on average will be stuck with the manna jobs. Everyone who's any good and/or who cares about their job will work at a competitor and drive manna into the ground. Combine this with the above and the product quality is going to be awful. You can run a kmart or a walmart or a mcdonalds that way, maybe, for a little while, but no one voluntarily goes there if they can afford better and the marketplace is full of better competitors (that are full of customers). Implementing manna at the imaginary restaurant in the story is in the real world a pretty good way to guarantee increased quality of service and increased profits at McD, Burger King, Culvers, Wendys, etc.

      3) Business history for decades is full of idiots who think they're the inventor of the idea of simplifying complex things. The miracle is sometimes they're right and everyone knows about the model T assembly line or whatever. What they don't hear about is the hundred or thousand of idiots who tried dog food delivery over the internet or similar WTF and crashed and burned. Your average idiot doesn't understand complexity. Even many smart people don't. Believe it or not, people decades ago thought IT departments wouldn't exist, computers would be appliances like a coffee pot, and MBA businessmen would write their own software directly in COBOL... seriously! In practice this stuff turns into epic fail time and human consultants and specialists get hired at immense pay rates to clean that mess up. Nothing ever really changes and businessmen still worship at the altar of procedurization and productization even though it kills maybe 99 out of a 100 companies that try. Essentially this toxic outlook toward human employees is like mis-use of antibiotics. The only human jobs left RIGHT NOW (not in theory) are ones that are already automation resistant, so even if the code were cracked for fast food joints, the antibiotic-resistance analogy means it can't spread to ... groundskeeping or whatever because the inquisition has already purified all areas of human endeavor by the flame. Or another way to put it, is systems like this always F up and usually end up increasing overall labor costs by hiring people as cleanup/repair crew. A lot of the clueless business leader problem comes from clueless middle management defining the best middle manager as the one most talented at externalizing costs onto fellow middle managers. What happens when the "best" one rises to the top and the idiot no longer has anywhere to externalize costs because there is no more external? Collapse. This story is a fictionalized where it implies, almost comically, that success happens instead of collapse. There's a certain physics analogy of conservation of complexity and making one part of the system really dumb like the manna program and its automata humans is just going to make the remaining real human part even more complicated. Of course competition being what it is today, that part is already running at 100% to 150% complexity capacity so forcing it to 10000% complexity by shoving all the complexity to the remaining thinkers is guaranteed collapse of the entire system.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:37PM (#178164)

        Interesting points on that story.

        My biggest nit with it was the sharp divide between the old and new. The motivation of the new world just did not exist earlier in the story. The earlier story was much more interesting than the later which seemed to be a giant 'wish this could happen'. It would have been a better story if the people living the 'i was automated out of a job' lives created a better world. Instead of 'take this magic carpet to a new land of unicorns'.

        that success happens instead of collapse
        This was what I mean. The assumption that money hoarders will not hoard harder. That somehow magically giving everything away will fix everything. It ignores that most people are very selfish. There was no motivation in the book for anyone to change.

        Fast food places will not automate in that way at all either. They will put in boxes that make things and need minimal service. They will go from a crew of 10-15 workers to 2-3 with some dude driving around servicing kiosks. With mostly people mopping floors and a sensor that says 'this is dirty'.

        The other big assumption is that the money hoarders actually gave a damn about the lower class and would put them in 'cubes'.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:25PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:25PM (#178245) Journal
          Is a "money hoarder" supposed to be a rich person? Is there supposed to be a problem with whatever that means?
        • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday May 04 2015, @08:10AM

          by darkfeline (1030) on Monday May 04 2015, @08:10AM (#178370) Homepage

          >It would have been a better story if the people living the 'i was automated out of a job' lives created a better world.

          That's what happened though. The person who founded the Australia project was primarily motivated by "The people who are automated out of jobs (i.e., everyone) should benefit from technology instead of having their welfare taken away by technology". It just happens that the main characters did not witness it happening, so we only hear about it post facto from the perspective of the characters.

          It might have been interesting had the author written about the project itself, but then again, it might not be; hard sci-fi is only fun for people who like hard sci-fi.

          --
          Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
          • (Score: 1) by IntelliCow on Tuesday May 12 2015, @02:32AM

            by IntelliCow (4518) on Tuesday May 12 2015, @02:32AM (#181760)

            I think we might be missing the larger point (and what made Manna such a fine read on a weekend evening) --

            (CONSIDERABLE SPOILERS)

            -
            -
            -

            I'm relatively certain the Sinister Twist actually occurs, and we're so surprised as readers that no Sinister Twist is spelled out for us that we fail to realize it happened until I'm thinking about the story in the shower the next day. Dammit.

            The large, oddly-apportioned plane (with the standing/sitting/lying down accommodations, "walls that display a view of the outside", and apparently VTOL engines)? Also the out-the-window view of the space elevators, because The Good 'Ol USA "slowed down" so much that Australia SPED UP, presumably due to relativity. XD
            ... I am... _relatively?_... certain that the narrator is still sitting there, or some other long-term Human Storage Zone. I.e., the spinal/optic splices happened during the first blackout, because they sorta-consented.

            But that's the thing. In that (fairly well-supported) read of the story, the Australia Project is fucking brilliant and perfect, save perhaps the moderately creepy "the escorts were possibly selected (self-selected?) as breeding partners for the protagonist and other people with great genes (airline pilot father) computer-directed soft-eugenics project". I especially like how well the gamified credits system works to actually encourage behavior that gets a species through a crisis/paradigm shift/economic slump.

            ... what? Stop staring at me. >:-|
            I assume this reading is traveled in Manna's subreddit, but frankly I'm 31 and reddit's interface still confuses and frightens me.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @09:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @09:14PM (#178224)

        You fail to take into account high unemployment (e.g. 25% in Spain). As you have to work to get money to live, you are forced to accept any job, and if you do it too badly, you will be fired and replaced by a more desperated unemployed person.
        For this very reason, even though most people hate micromanagment, they will still obey the computer (that's already the case in many places). At the same time, people are replaced by machines when those are less expensive than employees (automatic checkout lanes in supermarkets, robots in factories or to prepare orders for Amazon...).

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:30PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:30PM (#178246) Journal

          You fail to take into account high unemployment (e.g. 25% in Spain).

          We can make that a non-problem by not punishing employers. What employers will invest in an expensive, limited functionality manna system when they can employ cheap people instead? By making people expensive to employ (often without any benefit to the employees), we make this future more likely.

          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:33AM

            by sjames (2882) on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:33AM (#179390) Journal

            They tried that 'solution' in China. Net result? People who can only afford to live in on-site dorms and in spite of dirt cheap employees, they're starting to get replaced with robots and offshoring anyway.

            That sounds like a distinct step down for all but a few at the top.

            Meanwhile, implementing minimum wage in the U.S. has measurably improved things. recently many places have increased it considerably higher. So far, the instant doom predicted has not happened. We shall see, but the evidence suggests that at worst minimum wage isn't harmful.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 07 2015, @03:21AM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 07 2015, @03:21AM (#179757) Journal

              They tried that 'solution' in China. Net result?

              The actual net result is the next superpower.

              they're starting to get replaced with robots and offshoring anyway

              Chinese industrial employment is still growing.\

              Meanwhile, implementing minimum wage in the U.S. has measurably improved things.

              Such as record unemployment in young adults and African Americans. You'd come across as much less of an idiot, if you were actually paying attention to reality.

              • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:23AM

                by sjames (2882) on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:23AM (#179775) Journal

                I guess you didn't notice that unempoloyment is down here. That and that bit about Chinese workers having to live in dormitories because they can't afford a proper life. You must also have missed how they had to put nets up to prevent worker suicide at Foxconn. (note how that resembles life on the plantation for Negros)

                So if you want people to be destitute and exhausted from labor at the same time, then off themselves in despair, no minimum wage is just fine.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:40PM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:40PM (#179895) Journal

                  I guess you didn't notice that unempoloyment is down here. That and that bit about Chinese workers having to live in dormitories because they can't afford a proper life. You must also have missed how they had to put nets up to prevent worker suicide at Foxconn. (note how that resembles life on the plantation for Negros)

                  But of course, I didn't consider stuff that is irrelevant to my argument. So what if there is some variation in unemployment? The trend is solidly towards high levels of unemployment in groups that are particularly hard hit by minimum wage (you know, the people who are allegedly helped) even if it varies a little over the last couple of years. Similarly, it doesn't make sense to complain about the current lifestyle of the Chinese worker while ignoring both that they used to be far worse off than they are now *and* they are moving in a big way to a developed world standard of living over the next few decades. Finally, I don't care that there were a few suicides at Foxconn.

                  So if you want people to be destitute and exhausted from labor at the same time, then off themselves in despair, no minimum wage is just fine.

                  Beats having them be destitute and exhausted because they can only be employed illegally for subminimum wage jobs (such as selling illegal recreational drugs) and then off themselves in despair (or die in some gang warfare) because of the unintentional cruelty of minimum wage laws.

                  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:28PM

                    by sjames (2882) on Thursday May 07 2015, @07:28PM (#180038) Journal

                    I don't see how your scenario is any better than mine.

                    Actual data suggests that minimum wage isn't reducing employment. Consider for your assertion to be true, employers would have to be paying people they don't actually need. How likely do you believe that is? China has shown us that no matter how poorly paid you are, you will be replaced by a machine ASAP.

                    BTW, the ones who decide they can't make a living at a legit job and go into drug dealing generally get paid quite well. If you don't want a bunch of people working for organized (or disorganized) crime, you have to make sure there is adequate legitimate employment for them or make employment unnecessary to get by.

                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:27PM

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:27PM (#180060) Journal

                      Actual data suggests that minimum wage isn't reducing employment.

                      You mean data like the massive movement of US industry out of the US for the past 50 years? I find it interesting how one of the supposed justifications for minimum wage is studiously ignored as a consequence of minimum wage. It's all greedy, rich people who suddenly sprang into being about the time that we started implementing these social safety net programs and economically undermining our developed world societies.

                      BTW, the ones who decide they can't make a living at a legit job and go into drug dealing generally get paid quite well.

                      Average wage is below minimum. You ought to look it up sometime. Not everyone can be the kingpin.

                      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:51PM

                        by sjames (2882) on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:51PM (#180067) Journal

                        Actually, that move overseas is unrelated to the minimum wage considering the timing being entirely off. Sorry, but it really does look like it's greed related. It is much closer related to "impedance mismatch" between the economies.

                        You must really like welfare and food stamps, because without a minimum wage, we'd be paying out a lot more for either those or for coroners to carry the dead from the streets.

                        Minimum wage isn't allowing families to make ends meet, what do you think half that will do?

                        Note tha ta job that will not support you is not actually a job worth having. If you're going to starve in a month, what sense is there in giving all your remaining time to someone else to stretch it out to 6 weeks?

                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @12:00AM

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @12:00AM (#180107) Journal

                          Actually, that move overseas is unrelated to the minimum wage considering the timing being entirely off. Sorry, but it really does look like it's greed related. It is much closer related to "impedance mismatch" between the economies.

                          Well, of course it does. But that's just a problem with the observer. Because why would anyone move low skilled jobs overseas when they can hire minimum wage US workers for several times the cost?

                          You must really like welfare and food stamps, because without a minimum wage, we'd be paying out a lot more for either those or for coroners to carry the dead from the streets.

                          Ever think of encouraging employment instead?

                          Minimum wage isn't allowing families to make ends meet, what do you think half that will do?

                          Not much difference really. Most people don't have wages near minimum wage. And low wage jobs serve a very important role. They allow people to learn how to work so that they can have better jobs in the future. By having these jobs we are creating a more skilled workforce and a better society in the future.

                          Note tha ta job that will not support you is not actually a job worth having. If you're going to starve in a month, what sense is there in giving all your remaining time to someone else to stretch it out to 6 weeks?

                          Typical response when you have shit for an argument. We didn't want those jobs anyway. The job that is not "worth having" is better than not having a job.

                          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 08 2015, @12:57AM

                            by sjames (2882) on Friday May 08 2015, @12:57AM (#180131) Journal

                            Ever think of encouraging employment instead?

                            II was referring to people who are employed but not making a living wage, you know, a wage sufficient to live?

                            Not much difference really. Most people don't have wages near minimum wage. And low wage jobs serve a very important role. They allow people to learn how to work so that they can have better jobs in the future. By having these jobs we are creating a more skilled workforce and a better society in the future.

                            OMG, REALLY! You're trying to say it's a favor to them?!? That has GOT to be the most depraved claim I have heard this year! It is the moral equivilent of "The bitch wanted it!"

                            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @01:19AM

                              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @01:19AM (#180138) Journal

                              II was referring to people who are employed but not making a living wage, you know, a wage sufficient to live?

                              I don't care. I was pointing out something more important than feelgood. People working is better than people not working.

                              OMG, REALLY! You're trying to say it's a favor to them?!? That has GOT to be the most depraved claim I have heard this year! It is the moral equivilent of "The bitch wanted it!"

                              No, it's beneficial to us that they have jobs rather than not. The obvious rebuttal to your whole line of thinking is that a wage below the so-called "living wage" is higher than zero. I'd rather that people were paid to do something productive than they not be paid and not do anything productive.

                              • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 08 2015, @02:46AM

                                by sjames (2882) on Friday May 08 2015, @02:46AM (#180165) Journal

                                You must not be aware that at some point, the profitability of an economic activity can get so low that it is no longer worth doing at all. That has to factor in the opportunity costs. So no, some work is not always better than none.

                                If what they are being paid for is productive enough to be worthwhile, their employers will find a way to pay them enough to live on if they have to. It is much better for society if they do.

                                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @03:43AM

                                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @03:43AM (#180178) Journal
                                  So what? Zero is still even less.

                                  If what they are being paid for is productive enough to be worthwhile, their employers will find a way to pay them enough to live on if they have to.

                                  And if they aren't worth minimum wage, then they don't get paid at all. That's what's happened to 33% of US residents without a diploma in 2010.

                                  It is much better for society if they do.

                                  And it is much worse for society, if these people aren't employed. Look we're talking past each other at this point. All I can do is summarize my viewpoint. The world is growing wealthier at a remarkable rate. But the US isn't partaking in that growth. You should be asking "What are we doing wrong?" not "Let's dig the hole deeper."

                                  I think it's for one basic reason, the US has put too many rules, regulations, taxes/fees, and other costs in front of the things that should be very valuable to us, particularly, employment. And the US worker should be taking a haircut. It's not the easy, low competition era of the 50s and 60s any more. Everyone has stepped up their game, the US and the rest of the developed world should do so as well.

                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:29PM

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:29PM (#180061) Journal

                      I don't see how your scenario is any better than mine.

                      It's backed by actual data. I suppose if you really are interested, I can find the usual links I post at this point.

                      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:44PM

                        by sjames (2882) on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:44PM (#180064) Journal

                        Next thing to return to the workplace "Put your back into it BOOOOOOOYYYY!" *CRACK*.

                        Sounds just peachy.

                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @12:27AM

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @12:27AM (#180116) Journal
                          I see you need help finding this data.

                          Let's start with this graph [voxeu.org]. Figure one is a graph of the change in the amounts earned by people at certain deciles of income over the period of time, 1988-2008. What it effectively shows is that for about two thirds of all humanity, their income grew by more than 30% over the two decade period in question. It also shows that median global income increased by about 60% over that period of time. This is the basis for my claim that things have vastly improved over the past twenty years. One can see similar increases in global GDP per capita throughout [soylentnews.org] the industrial era.

                          A third aspect which I don't usual mention is what happened to the one third of people who didn't improve their income by 30% or more? My take is that they lived in the developed world being at the 70% and above income level. The graph has a huge dip in income growth from about 70% through to the high end of the graph (which shows the very rich having substantial income growth. I guess that's a fourth aspect). I think here the group who didn't improve, did so both because globalization and competition from the developing world and misguided labor and social policies that dig the hole deeper.

                          Then we get to my US-based observation about the large increase [npr.org] in unemployment of US young adults (the graph shows a marked increase in unemployment of young adults from 2003 to 2013). 2003 was after a bad recession too. In this report [senate.gov], we see unemployment correlations with a number of characteristics that select for low wages such as poor education background, minority ethnicities known for being poor, and youth. For a notable example, in 2010, people without a diploma had a 33% unemployment rate while people with some college had a 14% unemployment rate. That's a straightforward minimum wage effect right there. People without a diploma are employable, but they frequently aren't worth employing at minimum wage.
                          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 08 2015, @12:50AM

                            by sjames (2882) on Friday May 08 2015, @12:50AM (#180125) Journal

                            You *DO* realize none of that is even vaguely relevant to the question at hand don't you? That last bit is nothing but your conjecture that you tried to disguise as some form of evidence.

                            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @01:44AM

                              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @01:44AM (#180145) Journal
                              I don't recall caring what you thought the "question at hand" was. I merely corrected errors in claims you made. I believe we saw over the past twenty years the biggest improvement in the lives of the average person ever with two thirds of the world's population seeing large improvements in their standards of living. In the developed world, the very places where your ideas hold sway, we see stagnant wages and a variety of societal dysfunctionality. You really should think about why the developed world has such enormous trouble competing with an economic pie growing this fast.

                              I think it's not only heavily delusional to blame greed, but ultimately self-defeating. The "greedy" people have already demonstrated for 50 years how they'll beat punitive employment and business laws - by moving to other countries like China and India. Those countries will dominate this century. By the end of the century, they will have larger economies than what makes up the present developed world.

                              China in particular has been very adept at growing well paying, productive jobs. The silliness about China automating its jobs away (this hysteria sprung up pretty much just because a single employer, Foxconn was able to automate some jobs) is just sheer delusion.

                              In summary, I think minimum wage and similar measures are terrible for society and cause more harm than working for less than a imaginary "living wage" threshold would and we've seen the destructive effects of these policies for the past 50 years.
                              • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 08 2015, @02:48AM

                                by sjames (2882) on Friday May 08 2015, @02:48AM (#180166) Journal

                                I see. You have no interest in presenting relevant arguments or information. I'm somehow not surprised at this point.

                                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @03:46AM

                                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @03:46AM (#180180) Journal
                                  I already demonstrated otherwise in that post with the effort I put into it. I have no clue at this point what you think is "relevant" or "information" because you haven't said what you think is relevant or informative at any point in this thread. I can't read minds. I can only respond to what you actually write.
                                  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Friday May 08 2015, @07:41AM

                                    by sjames (2882) on Friday May 08 2015, @07:41AM (#180229) Journal
                                    Not one thing in that glueball demonstrated that minimum wage was causing a problem in the United States. You gave me a bunch of irrelevancies about world income showing no particular link to minimum wage, and some blather about the employment rate of people with a degree vs. no degree. Perhaps you could throw in a bar chart of the price of wheat futures to make it complete? What in the world does any of that have to do with making McDonald's pay it's employees better? Do you think they'll close shop and move to China?

                                    All you demonstrated was a willingness to try a snow job.

                                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @11:26PM

                                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @11:26PM (#180554) Journal

                                      Not one thing in that glueball demonstrated that minimum wage was causing a problem in the United States.

                                      I have already presented the extremely high unemployment rates of various characteristics associated with earning low ages, like being young, not having a high school diploma, or being African American. These are expected outcomes of having a high minimum wage.

                                      What in the world does any of that have to do with making McDonald's pay it's employees better?

                                      Why do you even consider that a good thing? That means less money for McDonald's to pay its employees (because there will be less profit per employee) and less money to invest in their business.

                                      Do you think they'll close shop and move to China?

                                      No, they'll just automate more of the jobs or close the restaurants. If you complain about both a low minimum wage and the subsequent elimination of developed world jobs via automation or movement to cheaper foreign locales, then you are an oblivious part of the problem. And as we've seen over the past 50 years, plenty of businesses have closed shop and gone to China. How are we supposed to survive on the businesses that can't move to China? Create a french fries-based economy? Good luck on that.

                                      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:21AM

                                        by sjames (2882) on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:21AM (#180571) Journal

                                        These are expected outcomes of having a high minimum wage.

                                        Those are outcomes *YOU* expect, but you haven't demonstrated a connection. I'll throw in a chart of CEO compensation increasing and prove to your apparent standard that high CEO pay causes poverty. I'm thinking there's a better chance that Sea pirates (in some combination with peg legs and parrots) cause global cooling.

                                        No, they'll just automate more of the jobs or close the restaurants.

                                        Funny thing, that hasn't happened in the places that DID raise the minimum wage.

                                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:43AM

                                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:43AM (#180596) Journal

                                          Those are outcomes *YOU* expect, but you haven't demonstrated a connection.

                                          Well, I don't know what you mean by "demonstrated a connection", but I believe I have. Perhaps an elaboration of the argument would help?

                                          First, I have the obvious observations that minimum wage precludes jobs that earn less than minimum wage by definition and the basic model of supply and demand. If you make low income labor more expensive via a high minimum wage and a variety of other obstructions to employ low income people, then the model implies that demand for that labor will decline. Second, we have known correlations between low income labor and youth, low education, and being African American. Thus, we should see correlations between these characteristics and higher unemployment, if the model is correct. We do. Hence, evidence for the connection and it is as demonstrated as it'll be under the circumstances of an internet argument.

                                          I'll throw in a chart of CEO compensation increasing and prove to your apparent standard that high CEO pay causes poverty.

                                          You would waste your effort here since I already provided a chart that shows two thirds of humanity greatly improved their wages at the same time that relatively high CEO pay occurred (over the 1988-2008 period). It is not true. I would also point out in your charts that you are ignoring somewhere on the order of 80-95% of the world, depending on the size of the grouping of developed world countries you use.

                                          There is a very simple explanation for this which doesn't require some silly narrative about CEO greed. Due to globalization after the end of the Second World War, the effective pool of labor (with good enough support infrastructure such as transportation and industry to make and ship things competitively to other parts of the world) available to global industry and business has increased from crudely around half a billion people in 1945 (basically North America and Western Europe) to around 4 billion people today. When you increase the supply of something, then the price of that thing goes down. Fortunately, demand for labor easily expands when the available labor pool becomes cheaper. That still means that developed world labor just can't command the premiums of the past.

                                          OTOH, what of the CEO? Most of their wealth comes from capital. Capital has experienced the same massive growth as labor, but as the price of labor available to global industry and business declined, the relatively price of capital increased. That led to everyone whose wealth comes from capital, becoming wealthier relative to people whose wealth comes from their labor. And hence, the extreme wealthy became richer compared to the rest of developed world society while the developing world societies saw a large increase in their wealth due to the increase in wages from the insertion of global trade.

                                          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 09 2015, @04:43AM

                                            by sjames (2882) on Saturday May 09 2015, @04:43AM (#180642) Journal

                                            I guess you never heard that correlation doesn't prove causation? You showed a few correlations, I showed a few others (deliberately silly ones but just as strong from the standpoint of proof).

                                            Part of what you are missing is inelastic demand. Double the cost of floor sweepers and shops will still be hiring floor sweepers. They have to since otherwise nobody will shop there and eventually they'll get shut down for health violations. You also ignore that more people with more money tends to produce more business. Not so much at a yacht showroom, but at exactly the places that tend to pay minimum wage.

                                            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:37PM

                                              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:37PM (#180905) Journal

                                              I guess you never heard that correlation doesn't prove causation?

                                              How do you "prove" causation? My view on that is that you develop a model which describes the supposed cause/effect relation and make observations which confirm or falsify the model. The causation isn't a result of the observed correlations, it's described by a model which describes the observations well and in a parsimonious way. You also have to pay attention to what reality is actually doing. Here, we have most of the world thriving and growing while the developed world, particularly the US, is not. A greed-based model doesn't work because all parts of the world experience the greed, but most of the world doesn't experience the alleged decline in quality of life which is predicted to accompany that greed. Similarly, claims that automation are finally replacing jobs don't work because global labor continues to be employed better, continuing a centuries old trend.

                                              Part of what you are missing is inelastic demand. Double the cost of floor sweepers and shops will still be hiring floor sweepers.

                                              We can already see that's not true since so much labor has been exported to China and elsewhere. Further, as I noted earlier, there has been a vast increase in the pool of labor available to global employers. If labor were inelastic, we would have seen a large drop in the price that workers could command. I don't mean the modest decline over decades apparent to developed world workers, but a huge drop. Employers would have long ago employed everyone they could have employed and we would have the numbers of unemployed and employed reversed, with the vast majority of people unemployed.

                                              If you have a large pool of persistent unemployed, your country is doing something very wrong. In a normal economy, employers will snap up those prospective workers. For example, if one looks at job recovery from the US recessions after the Second World War, one notices a remarkable thing. The majority of them fully recovered from job loss in two years.

                                              Not so much at a yacht showroom, but at exactly the places that tend to pay minimum wage.

                                              Funny you should mention yachts [fee.org]. Pardon this detour, but I think this is relevant due to a historical policy taken in the name of the poor which backfired spectacularly. The linked story describes what happened in the US in 1990 when Congress decided to punish the rich again.

                                              With so many benefits “trickling down” to middle-class and poor Americans, it’s hard to understand why Congress would seek to destroy the boat-making industry. Yet that’s exactly what it did in 1990 when, according to a Wall Street Journal report, “Congressional Democrats [were] eager to show they were being tough on the rich.” A ten percent tax was added to the cost of luxury yachts. Since a yacht today costs anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000, this means that at least $10,000 had to be paid to the government before a potential buyer could get his first whiff of salt air. With the economy already heading for trouble, this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Ocean Yachts in Weekstown trimmed its workforce from 350 to 50. Egg Harbor Yachts entered Chapter Eleven bankruptcy, going from 200 employees to five. Viking Yachts dropped from 1,400 to 300 employees. According to a Congressional Joint Economic Committee Study, the boat industry nationwide lost 7,600 employees within one year. As Bob Healy, president of Viking Yachts explained on NBC News, “Every six or seven years, you have a down cycle. You might be off 20 percent, 30 percent, or 40 percent at maximum. Our industry is off 90 percent nationally.”

                                              Despite all the talk about stimulating the economy, and the clear evidence that both the luxury taxes and higher taxes in general have pretty much destroyed the yacht-making industry, the tax did not generate any significant revenue, and has only cost taxpayers money by forcing workers onto the government dole. Congress originally estimated that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft, and jewelry would raise $5 million in taxes a year. Instead, the Treasury has lost $24 million through lost income-tax revenues and higher unemployment and welfare payments.

                                              The luxury boat industry is heavily dependent on a good economy and they apparently were even worse off [nj.com] after the 2007-2008 recession, but consider this 2009 quote:

                                              Since the recession hit, Leek's payroll has dwindled from 150 people to 30. His production has gone from 70 boats a year to just four. He declined to release sales figures -- "it's ugly" -- but said to stay afloat, they are servicing old boats and building new ones only for those who pay up front.

                                              Healey and others recall the last time the industry was on the brink of collapse. In 1991, a federal luxury tax throttled boat sales and nearly put Viking and other builders out of business before eventually being repealed.

                                              "This time it's worse," said Brett Marshall, Silverton's vice president of sales and marketing.

                                              Funny how they remember this luxury tax even two decades later.

                                              Minimum wage is not the only bad policy idea out there. There's a large group of people who are willing to destroy their own future in order to get back at the rich for imaginary injustices. And there is a half century of bad policy decisions in the US which come from this group occasionally getting what they want. You can keep pointing out the living wage thing, but what's the point of having a living wage, if you aren't employed? What's the point of punishing the rich, if those policies either harm plenty of people other than the rich or encourage them to move a significant fraction of a country's wealth elsewhere? These bad ideas don't happen in a vacuum. They hurt people.

    • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Monday May 04 2015, @02:01AM

      by Murdoc (2518) on Monday May 04 2015, @02:01AM (#178298) Homepage
      If you've heard of Manna, have you heard of Technocracy [technocracy.ca]? Instead of a work of fiction, an actual workable system of economics with similar goals. The whole point is to minimize waste so as to maximize economic output in order to make everyone's standard of living as high as possible, within a sustainable framework. And the bonus is that it would have none of the political problems mentioned here by this algorithmic idea.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 07 2015, @03:43AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 07 2015, @03:43AM (#179766) Journal
        Technocracies can work as Japan and China indicate, but they can also fail hard as the USSR demonstrates. I think we need to keep in mind the two primary ills of technocracies: conflict of interest and no mechanism for preserving competence.
        • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:20AM

          by Murdoc (2518) on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:20AM (#179774) Homepage

          You're thinking of political "technocracy". The one I'm referring to is the economic system known as Technocracy, which is a completely different animal and hasn't been tried before. The term actually referred to the economic system long before it was used to describe any kind of political set-up. So you might want to check it out to see what I mean. It might surprise you.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:33PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 07 2015, @01:33PM (#179888) Journal

            You're thinking of political "technocracy". The one I'm referring to is the economic system known as Technocracy, which is a completely different animal and hasn't been tried before.

            I don't see this distinction as valid since political and economic control don't separate cleanly and each of my examples strongly manifest as economic control systems as one would expect of a technocracy and these economic decisions were made by an elite with the characteristics one would expect of a technocracy. In fact, I find the claim that technocracies haven't been tried to be mystifying because it wasn't hard to come up with counterexamples.

            • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Friday May 08 2015, @12:02AM

              by Murdoc (2518) on Friday May 08 2015, @12:02AM (#180110) Homepage

              I was trying to give you new information that I thought that you'd be interested in, but apparently I was wrong. None of your examples is anything remotely like economic technocracy, but if you'd rather keep believing that than learn about something new then you go right ahead.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2015, @03:09AM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @03:09AM (#180168) Journal
                Well, I get the impression you disagree for some reason. What is that reason?

                I did google around and read a little on technocracy and I just don't get what you are claiming. There is no distinction in the definitions I've read between political and economic technocracy and frankly I don't see how such a division could even be attained. Your economic technocracy can stay that way as long as the elite technocrats never influence the real world. Once they do, it inherently becomes political, unless we're speaking of something almost purely economic, like running a stock exchange or managing the credit card industry.
                • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Friday May 08 2015, @03:54PM

                  by Murdoc (2518) on Friday May 08 2015, @03:54PM (#180348) Homepage

                  Then why didn't you just use the link in my original post? Googling around will generally only give you info on political technocracy, whereas using my link you'd be sure to know that that was what I was talking about. But I'll explain it in brief here: Political technocracy is simply putting scientists, other technical experts, or simply technophiles in political power. It says nothing about how the government (much less the economy) is actually run, because it can still be a democracy, dictatorship, whatever. It may refer to their desire to use technology in some way in government operations, like this article describes, or it could refer to government involvement in the technology sector, which itself could take many forms.

                  Economic technocracy is a very specific program outlining the operation for a sustainable, post-scarcity economy. It was developed by a group of scientists, engineers, and other technical experts in the 1920s, and uses only science in its analysis and synthesis. The program calls for, among other things, the abolition of money and the value-exchange system to be replaced by a scientific resource accounting system (also described in detail), and also would require no political government. For all the many differences between the two of these concepts, it is this last one that is perhaps most prominent, since by using economic technocracy you cannot put scientists or anyone "in power", since there is no political power to be had. I hope that clears things up.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:15AM (#178096)

    Our computer models clearly indicate EIGHT MORE YEARS OF BARRY OBAMA would be better than any alternative we gave to the computer.

    VOTE BARACK OBAMA FOREVER

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:00PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:00PM (#178103)

    Wouldn't the legal analogy of algorithmic regulation be criminal justice mandatory minimums, which virtually everyone other than "get tough on crime" politicians sees as a BS idea?

    This analogy serves two purposes:

    1) This is how we get stuck with cruddy systems and stupid mandatory minimums have been around longer than the examples of algorithmic regulations.

    2) If by some miracle we can fix the algorithmic regulation disease (good luck with that) then the same technique could be applied to eliminate mandatory minimum policies, which would be good.

    Another obvious analogy with pre-crime algo-reg is a credit score.

    A stretch of analogy would be IQ tests and other standardized tests as a gatekeeper to vocational training (or even education) and the resulting socioeconomic outcomes.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @12:45PM (#178109)

      It is worse than mandatory minimums because at least those are transparent.

      One of the biggest problems with algorithmic regulation is that it is opaque. It spits out a result but we don't know why. In the best possible version each result would also come with a full explanation of how that result was produced. But when it is Big Data based using inferences and correlations such an explanation isn't likely to be meaningful and it brings that old problem we all know: "correlation is not causation."

      Correlation might be sufficient for insurance underwriters, but when it comes to public policy it has the strong risk of reinforcing the status quo which would be great if everything was perfect and the world was a static place.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hartree on Sunday May 03 2015, @01:49PM

    by Hartree (195) on Sunday May 03 2015, @01:49PM (#178115)

    Implementing technical solutions to what are at base human problems often doesn't work out very well.

    Somehow, magically, the machine system is supposed do away with the human problems. In reality, it often amplifies them. Why? It's humans programing, running, and critically, authorizing exceptions. Anyone who's done security and had to leave a decades old default password exposed to the open internet because a high level manager orders them to knows the problem.

    When you're trying to get humans out of the loop, you're usually just making it a smaller group of humans that are in the loop. And the effects of one or more of them being corrupt/incompetent becomes even worse.

    Look at the current feedback system in politics where pursuit of campaign contributions and a rather fanatical base has become the way of ensuring reelection. Theoretically, the idea is to keep a large enough cross section of voters happy enough to keep you in office. In reality, it often degenerates into keeping happy relatively small groups/institutions that either vote in blocs or have lots of money.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday May 03 2015, @04:07PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Sunday May 03 2015, @04:07PM (#178140)

    The major problem I see is that the individuals whose lives are affected by these impersonal algorithmic processes usually have no recourse when an error, false positive, or similar thing happens. Individuals don't even usually know what data is being collected on them by shadowy companies that collect and sell data to large corporations. Much of life is being dictated by numbers like credit scores, grades, and so on which are generated by impersonal processes. Vast files are collected about people, the data in which is of dubious quality. When something goes wrong, where does an affected individual go to appeal? The more these impersonal processes crank out "big data" numbers about people, the less anyone is going to be involved. Corporations and governments have little incentive to do anything at all for any random individual, unless they are shamed into it by bad media attention or something. As long as individuals end up as collateral damage by these impersonal algorithmic processes, it's hard to want to trust them. We can't get credit scores right, and we want to use the same "big data" concepts to predict who will be a criminal? What if someone is predicted to be a criminal, what will happen to them?

    Given the track record of IQ tests, lie detector tests, "cyber' defenses, and so on, the probability is that these new algorithms are going to be more snake oil sold by corporations and consultants to big corporations and governments. That doesn't inspire confidence.

    Another major problem is mission creep. Social security numbers have become de facto unique identification numbers. Credit scores are needed for job applications. So when there's a profile on my predicted criminal activity, who is going to want it in the future? Will I be denied a job because some algorithm predicted that I was a criminal?

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday May 03 2015, @07:56PM

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2015, @07:56PM (#178210) Journal

      Here in Blighty, about 150 sub-postmasters were accused of fraud because of a new, buggy computer system they were forced to use. Some went to prison because and some had to remortgage their houses to pay back money that they were accused of stealing.

      Of course the software couldn't have been wrong, could it? Of course not! Over night, all of these people just decided to become crooks...

      See here [bbc.co.uk],here [bbc.co.uk] here [accountingweb.co.uk],here [ukcampaign4change.com] and here [ft.com].

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:41PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2015, @10:41PM (#178248) Journal
    Laws get piled on top of laws. If one transitions to a computer-based law system, then what's the limits to what complexity can build up - especially if the regulators are selectively allowed to break the law in order to regulate? Even consistency can become extremely hard to implement.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:31PM (#178274)

    http://boingboing.net/2015/05/01/algorithmic-guilty-using-secr.html [boingboing.net]

            In December 2007, Indiana resident Sheila Perdue received a notice in the mail that she must participate in a telephone interview in order to be recertified to receive public assistance. In the past, Perdue, who is deaf and suffers from emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and bipolar disorder, would have visited her local caseworker to explain why this was impossible. But the state’s welfare eligibility system had recently been “modernized,” leaving a website and an 800 number as the primary ways to communicate with the Family and Social Services Administration.

            Perdue requested and was denied an in-person interview. She gathered her paperwork, traveled to a nearby help center, and requested assistance. Employees at the center referred her to the online system. Uncomfortable with the technology, she asked for help with the online forms and was refused. She filled out the application to the best of her ability. Several weeks later, she learned she was denied recertification. The reason? “Failure to cooperate” in establishing eligibility.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @02:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @02:56AM (#178303)

      Gee thanks for linking to a summary on some other site.
      Now if BoingBoing's summary had as much background detail as this summary right here.

  • (Score: 1) by Murdoc on Monday May 04 2015, @02:18AM

    by Murdoc (2518) on Monday May 04 2015, @02:18AM (#178299) Homepage

    But instead of applying the principle of "reducing the role of people and replacing them with automated systems" in order to make things more efficient in government, this idea should be applied to economics instead. And I don't mean the managing money and interest rates type of economics, but more the physical aspects of getting resources from nature, processing them, and delivering them to the people to be consumed. Our current system is just about as inefficient as you can get when compared to something like Technocracy [technocracy.ca] which does exactly what I just said, replaces people with automation in the economy (that is, production and distribution) in order to maximize efficiency, thereby minimizing waste, which raises economic output in order to raise the standard of living of everyone, all within a sustainable framework. And the bonus is that you'd have very little need for government at all, so most of our problems there get solved as well, and you wouldn't need "algorithmic regulation".

    It all comes down to separating objective from subjective issues. Objective issues, like how to mine resources, how best to process them, and the most efficient way to deliver them to people, are technical problems that need to be dealt with by objective, scientific means, based on fact, not opinions like they are now. While subjective issues, like politics, are best left to the people. There is no way to make subjective issues more efficient (e.g. What is the most efficient flavor of ice cream?). The only way to make government more efficient is when you are dealing with the objective parts of it, namely the logistics of running it, or where it deals with regulating the economy. Keeping the two separate clears a lot of things up and then you don't have things like political ideologies trying to decide what forms of power generation are best, or how to run an efficient and effective health care system. And that's not even getting into how the subjective value of money ends up making most of our technical economic decisions today either.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @02:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @02:58AM (#178304)

      Objective issues, like how to mine resources, how best to process them, and the most efficient way to deliver them to people, are technical problems that need to be dealt with by objective, scientific means, based on fact, not opinions like they are now.

      I think you will find that the definition of "best" is pretty subjective.