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How can this article possibly be relevant to a non-negligible number of HN readers? (unless criminal-grade risk-affinity is more widespread than I thought?) I

How can this article possibly be relevant to a non-negligible number of HN readers? (unless criminal-grade risk-affinity is more widespread than I thought?) I mean, sure, good on JPay; but the interesting details are mostly absent. EDIT: I don't know what you people are thinking, but I'm not trolling. These are sincerely my beliefs.

saurik 8y ago
This is about the intersection of tech companies with morality and legislation. How can this article possibly not be relevant to a non-negligible number of HN readers? This is like claiming an article about Facebook providing Facebook-only Internet to some rural location in Africa is only relevant if a non-negligible number of people live in that specific place in Africa :/.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > with morality Wait, we actually care about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to commit crimes? Yawn. Wake me up when this is Weimar Germany, and not only in the eyes of the hysterical. ... And an article about Facebook providing Facebook-only Internet to some rural location in Africa is indeed only relevant if a non-negligible number of people live in that specific place in Africa, because ... why do we we care about some random rural location in Africa? (The likelihood of any kind of interesting technology/mathematics/HN-material being produced there is astronomically low.)
  - danso 8y ago
    HN-material arguably includes Silicon Valley/VC-funded entrepreneurial effort, as success stories tend to spawn competitors or inspiration in other fields. Not sure the origination of JPay, but it competes in the same industry as the HN-seeded Pigeon.ly [0]. That said, I don't understand your metric of measuring a company's potential relevance to HN readers. For any given tech startup, I would think revenues/funding rounds/programmers hired is enough of a relevance metric for the average stereotypical HN-ner. But you think HN-relevance is predicated on what proportion of the said startup's userbase would include the typical HN user? [0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-focused-on-serving-the-us-prison-population-joins-y-combinator/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-...
    - mmirate 8y ago
      sigh your train of thought is completely turned-around. This article is largely not about JPay. It is rather a bout of "let's express pity on these poor people because we're compassionate/upstanding/Christian/whatever". (Those legislators were even further lacking in details, but that's typical of legislators.) It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face. But simple schadenfreude is not what HN is for, I daresay.
      - danso 8y ago
        Just by looking at the text, it looks like 40% of the text deals with JPay's specific business details (pricing for its services), and 30% of background info (e.g. a description of the contract, services rendered, the specific government dept.). And 30% rhetoric, arguing that this is an exploitative deal and that lawmakers have not performed due diligence in considering the long-term impact of this revenue model. Not sure what the right proportion of content mix is needed to make this a legitimate article in your eyes, but consider that not everyone feels the immediate need to argue the public policy position.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face, but in addition to the fully comprehensive summary provided by the text, the article provides an in-text link to the full state contract with JPay; I'm not sure how much more detail it is possible to provide.
        mmirate 8y ago
        > I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face The past several decades have seen that idiots and their resources are departed less swiftly than before. I gladly welcome solutions to that set of problems.
danso 8y ago
The primary relevance is that this looks at the business details of a tech startup, JPay, which is in the not-insignificant industry category of incarceration services (estimated 1 to $2 billion) https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-focused-on-serving-the-us-prison-population-joins-y-combinator/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-... The secondary factors of relevance are: hardware sales, the increasing use of mobile/tablet computers, the impact of private contractors on the cost of government, and interesting/controversial pricing schemes.
- mmirate 8y ago
  No, this article is mostly a bout of "let's express pity on these poor people because we're compassionate/upstanding/Christian/whatever", and does not go into particularly much depth about JPay. (Nor did those legislators, but that's typical of legislators.) It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face. But simple schadenfreude is not what HN is for, I daresay.
  - danso 8y ago
    I think it's fine to accept that this article was written by what seems to be a pro-prison reform group (I saw it retweeted by a friend, who I believe works in that area), but that doesn't make it irrelevant to the tech entrepreneurial crowd. Just as pricing strategies and revenues for pay-to-win mobile games is interesting to folks here who have no intention on playing such games. But yes, there is an additional element of public policy discussion, particularly whether we should be cautious of the wider consequences of seemingly no-strings-attached contracts. Not everyone shares your clearcut perspective on what amenities convicts should have access to. But the bulk of these costs are borne by the families of these convicts, who are generally not morally culpable in their family members' crimes.
    - mmirate 8y ago
      > But the bulk of these costs are borne by the families of these convicts Then they're idiots, too.
rocqua 8y ago
To start, the US (Main HN audience) incarcerates 0.716% of its population. Add on family of those incarcerated, and prison rights immediately effect a sizeable portion of the population. Then there is the societal effects of how we treat those who are incarcerated. Prison is a punishment, but that does not strip prisoners of their rights. The punishment is that they are no longer free to go where they will. Enforcing that happens to come with other downsides, but no part of enforcement includes 'price gouging by state sanctioned monopolies'. Now, HN isn't supposed to be political. This is where the tech angle comes in. The stuff about using free devices to peddle services. In this specific case, there is a state sanctioned monopoly that exacerbates the issue. Note that some of these services supplant others; meaning that inmates don't have alternatives.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > To start, the US (Main HN audience) incarcerates 0.716% of its population. Add on family of those incarcerated, and prison rights immediately effect a sizeable portion of the population. Then there is the societal effects of how we treat those who are incarcerated. Prison is a punishment, but that does not strip prisoners of their rights. The punishment is that they are no longer free to go where they will. Enforcing that happens to come with other downsides, but no part of enforcement includes 'price gouging by state sanctioned monopolies'. We don't have the kind and extent of unjust laws that would give me the ability to care one iota about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to break them. > Now, HN isn't supposed to be political. This is where the tech angle comes in. The stuff about using free devices to peddle services. In this specific case, there is a state sanctioned monopoly that exacerbates the issue. Note that some of these services supplant others; meaning that inmates don't have alternatives. Right, that's the beauty of it all, but the article buries it in the midst of a bunch of humanitarian bullshit. (pardon the pleonasm)
  - rocqua 8y ago
    > We don't have the kind and extent of unjust laws that would give me the ability to care one iota about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to break them. Just because someone broke a law doesn't mean they should lose all of their rights. The reason for various levels of penalty (from a fine, to some prison time, to life in prison, to execution) is so the penalty can be proportionate to the crime. By extending your reasoning, one might conclude it is fine to execute every single prisoner. After all, they are criminals. I have heard people say that prison rape isn't a bad thing, because those getting raped are criminals anyway. Do you agree with that? All of this ignores the more practical matter of reintegration upon release and the message we are sending to the loved ones of prisoners. If the systems society has set up were exploiting them, can we really expect them to then have faith that trying to work with society will help? The same goes for their loved ones. They see the same unfairness in the system, will they feel like society is fair? like it pays to do what society wants?

saurik 8y ago

This is about the intersection of tech companies with morality and legislation. How can this article possibly not be relevant to a non-negligible number of HN readers? This is like claiming an article about Facebook providing Facebook-only Internet to some rural location in Africa is only relevant if a non-negligible number of people live in that specific place in Africa :/.

mmirate 8y ago
> with morality Wait, we actually care about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to commit crimes? Yawn. Wake me up when this is Weimar Germany, and not only in the eyes of the hysterical. ... And an article about Facebook providing Facebook-only Internet to some rural location in Africa is indeed only relevant if a non-negligible number of people live in that specific place in Africa, because ... why do we we care about some random rural location in Africa? (The likelihood of any kind of interesting technology/mathematics/HN-material being produced there is astronomically low.)
- danso 8y ago
  HN-material arguably includes Silicon Valley/VC-funded entrepreneurial effort, as success stories tend to spawn competitors or inspiration in other fields. Not sure the origination of JPay, but it competes in the same industry as the HN-seeded Pigeon.ly [0]. That said, I don't understand your metric of measuring a company's potential relevance to HN readers. For any given tech startup, I would think revenues/funding rounds/programmers hired is enough of a relevance metric for the average stereotypical HN-ner. But you think HN-relevance is predicated on what proportion of the said startup's userbase would include the typical HN user? [0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-focused-on-serving-the-us-prison-population-joins-y-combinator/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-...
  - mmirate 8y ago
    sigh your train of thought is completely turned-around. This article is largely not about JPay. It is rather a bout of "let's express pity on these poor people because we're compassionate/upstanding/Christian/whatever". (Those legislators were even further lacking in details, but that's typical of legislators.) It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face. But simple schadenfreude is not what HN is for, I daresay.
    - danso 8y ago
      Just by looking at the text, it looks like 40% of the text deals with JPay's specific business details (pricing for its services), and 30% of background info (e.g. a description of the contract, services rendered, the specific government dept.). And 30% rhetoric, arguing that this is an exploitative deal and that lawmakers have not performed due diligence in considering the long-term impact of this revenue model. Not sure what the right proportion of content mix is needed to make this a legitimate article in your eyes, but consider that not everyone feels the immediate need to argue the public policy position.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face, but in addition to the fully comprehensive summary provided by the text, the article provides an in-text link to the full state contract with JPay; I'm not sure how much more detail it is possible to provide.
      - mmirate 8y ago
        > I shudder to think that the description of the exploitive terms of the deal would bring a smile to anyone's face The past several decades have seen that idiots and their resources are departed less swiftly than before. I gladly welcome solutions to that set of problems.

danso 8y ago

The primary relevance is that this looks at the business details of a tech startup, JPay, which is in the not-insignificant industry category of incarceration services (estimated 1 to $2 billion) https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-focused-on-serving-the-us-prison-population-joins-y-combinator/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/pigeon-dot-ly-yc-w15-a-startup-... The secondary factors of relevance are: hardware sales, the increasing use of mobile/tablet computers, the impact of private contractors on the cost of government, and interesting/controversial pricing schemes.

mmirate 8y ago
No, this article is mostly a bout of "let's express pity on these poor people because we're compassionate/upstanding/Christian/whatever", and does not go into particularly much depth about JPay. (Nor did those legislators, but that's typical of legislators.) It does go into just enough detail about JPay to bring a smile to my face. But simple schadenfreude is not what HN is for, I daresay.
- danso 8y ago
  I think it's fine to accept that this article was written by what seems to be a pro-prison reform group (I saw it retweeted by a friend, who I believe works in that area), but that doesn't make it irrelevant to the tech entrepreneurial crowd. Just as pricing strategies and revenues for pay-to-win mobile games is interesting to folks here who have no intention on playing such games. But yes, there is an additional element of public policy discussion, particularly whether we should be cautious of the wider consequences of seemingly no-strings-attached contracts. Not everyone shares your clearcut perspective on what amenities convicts should have access to. But the bulk of these costs are borne by the families of these convicts, who are generally not morally culpable in their family members' crimes.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    > But the bulk of these costs are borne by the families of these convicts Then they're idiots, too.

rocqua 8y ago

To start, the US (Main HN audience) incarcerates 0.716% of its population. Add on family of those incarcerated, and prison rights immediately effect a sizeable portion of the population. Then there is the societal effects of how we treat those who are incarcerated. Prison is a punishment, but that does not strip prisoners of their rights. The punishment is that they are no longer free to go where they will. Enforcing that happens to come with other downsides, but no part of enforcement includes 'price gouging by state sanctioned monopolies'. Now, HN isn't supposed to be political. This is where the tech angle comes in. The stuff about using free devices to peddle services. In this specific case, there is a state sanctioned monopoly that exacerbates the issue. Note that some of these services supplant others; meaning that inmates don't have alternatives.

mmirate 8y ago
> To start, the US (Main HN audience) incarcerates 0.716% of its population. Add on family of those incarcerated, and prison rights immediately effect a sizeable portion of the population. Then there is the societal effects of how we treat those who are incarcerated. Prison is a punishment, but that does not strip prisoners of their rights. The punishment is that they are no longer free to go where they will. Enforcing that happens to come with other downsides, but no part of enforcement includes 'price gouging by state sanctioned monopolies'. We don't have the kind and extent of unjust laws that would give me the ability to care one iota about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to break them. > Now, HN isn't supposed to be political. This is where the tech angle comes in. The stuff about using free devices to peddle services. In this specific case, there is a state sanctioned monopoly that exacerbates the issue. Note that some of these services supplant others; meaning that inmates don't have alternatives. Right, that's the beauty of it all, but the article buries it in the midst of a bunch of humanitarian bullshit. (pardon the pleonasm)
- rocqua 8y ago
  > We don't have the kind and extent of unjust laws that would give me the ability to care one iota about people who are stupid, desperate or boneheaded enough to break them. Just because someone broke a law doesn't mean they should lose all of their rights. The reason for various levels of penalty (from a fine, to some prison time, to life in prison, to execution) is so the penalty can be proportionate to the crime. By extending your reasoning, one might conclude it is fine to execute every single prisoner. After all, they are criminals. I have heard people say that prison rape isn't a bad thing, because those getting raped are criminals anyway. Do you agree with that? All of this ignores the more practical matter of reintegration upon release and the message we are sending to the loved ones of prisoners. If the systems society has set up were exploiting them, can we really expect them to then have faith that trying to work with society will help? The same goes for their loved ones. They see the same unfairness in the system, will they feel like society is fair? like it pays to do what society wants?