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This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation, is the reason why America has a culture of innovation. For those u

by pg_bot 8y ago

This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation, is the reason why America has a culture of innovation. For those unaware, the United States runs on what I call "Air Bud rules", named for this scene from the children's movie.[0] To summarize, as long as there isn't a rule forbidding you from doing something, you can do it. While I applaud his personal stance on refusing to work on a censored search engine, any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish. For those who have been tasked with building tools that support authoritarian regimes, grow a spine, make your voice heard, and quit if necessary. Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing, if you know it's wrong stop supporting it! [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvf0WWxrYRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvf0WWxrYRM

forapurpose 8y ago
> This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation, is the reason why America has a culture of innovation. I've seen that theory, but my understanding is that striking a proper balance is what fosters innovation; anarchy yields corruption and spoils for the powerful; it does not reward the most productive and innovative. Also, my impression is that other things may be much more important for innovation, especially opportunity for education, for capital, and for access to the market (e.g., rules that prevent vested interests from blocking newcomers from the marketplace). > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish Should we abolish all laws and regulations about safety, fraud, and fairness? Personally, I don't see corporations as having such a great track record that I trust them so implicitly.
- pg_bot 8y ago
  I'm not advocating for anarchy, just that we stick to the laws that are actually codified. We should be reactive to bad behavior, not proactive. Instead of blanket calls for regulation, we should be specific and considerate when making new rules as they often have unintended consequences. Instead of having to constantly ask for permission, you should be able to read the rules and make decisions independently. You don't hear about the millions of interactions that occur daily without consequence so I believe your views on corporations may be biased.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > We should be reactive to bad behavior, not proactive. The ex-Google employee is calling on Congress to be reactive to Google's activities. Do you agree then with their proposal? I actually don't agree; bad behavior hurts people and that harm should be prevented if reasonably possible. For example, we should be proactive about airplane safety. We should have been proactive about regulating the securitization of mortgates - that would have saved maybe billions of people from harm, many losing their homes, jobs, and savings. Of course, anything can be taken too far ... > Instead of blanket calls for regulation, we should be specific and considerate when making new rules I don't think anyone would disagree, but am I overlooking someone? In fairness, you earlier wrote the following, which seems like a much broader, stronger statement: > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish
  - tremon 8y ago
    we should be specific and considerate when making new rules as they often have unintended consequences Shouldn't we be equally specific and considerate when developing/deploying new technology?
blub 8y ago
Your "permissionless innovation" is obliterating the well-being of the average American citizen (and others too). At-will contracts, the gig economy, force arbitration, the privacy free-for-all, union busting, zero-hour contracts, privatised law enforcement, privatised medical care and all the other innovations created by US corporations. And your proposed solution is absurd, by the way, and this can be easily demonstrated by the fact that few awful organisations had trouble finding qualified personnel.
jniedrauer 8y ago
We don't even have to go back very far to find examples of American companies exploiting people to the point of knowingly killing them.[0] > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish Whether you think less regulation or more regulation is better, you can't in good faith advocate for no regulation. Corporations have demonstrated many times over the years that they are profit maximizing algorithms with no regard for human life. > For those who have been tasked with building tools that support authoritarian regimes, grow a spine, make your voice heard, and quit if necessary. Once again, this makes very little sense in the context of history. Individual people are largely powerless when standing up to large organizations. Corporations do not self regulate and individuals cannot stop them. They are effectively a form of "very slow rogue AI" and the only way we seem to be able to control them, at least for a little while, is with central governments. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
- pg_bot 8y ago
  I made no such argument for no regulation. My argument is that we have a set of rules, and we should not interfere with decision making if rules have not been broken. If in response to some exploitation of the rules which you deem as unhealthy to society you may pass new rules to deal with that behavior. You can't just mess with someone because you don't like them.
  - morenoh149 8y ago
    I take issue with the spineless bit. If a corporation is undermining basic human rights that's a problem. You also can't expect exployees to stand up to a corporation because they may need the job desperately. There are certain things a government must do. I'd say protecting human rights is the role of government.
    - another-one-off 8y ago
      > You also can't expect exployees to stand up to a corporation because they may need the job desperately. If an employee thinks their job security is more important than the human rights of the population of China then I personally have no problem with that. This is because we have a lot of evidence about how much the average employee values human rights and anybody who expects great things from them is going to be disappointed, so I don't. But to say the government must be responsible for the moral aspects is profoundly irresponsible. "Just following orders" got a lot of Nazis hanged at Nuremberg. If an employee does something they have a personal moral responsibility. Maybe don't bring the law in because it is happening in a foreign country, but claiming that moral responsibility doesn't factor in because people like money is not how we want to run our values system.
shady-lady 8y ago
> the United States runs on what I call "Air Bud rules" also known as common law. and most ex-UK colonies have it(USA/Canada/India/Australia/New Zealand/UK & more) What have the "big" SV companies in common? Exploiting customer data more than ever before with weak US lawmakers unwilling to challenge them or press for stronger user protections. Including adapting or enforcing rules more suitable for the internet age. FB/Instagram/LinkedIn and other social media companies rely on inducing addictive behaviour in their users so as to sell more ads. That's it. All bullshit about connections and making the world a better place.. It's hollow. Gamification of users so as to sell more ads.
akira2501 8y ago
> Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing Then don't act as if this is sufficient reasoning. Any one of these people or the entire department could quit, and you and I both know it would be re-staffed inside of a month. > named for this scene from the children's movie. Which should be a strong hint as to it's merit in the real-world. You shouldn't have to look very deeply into our society to see where the problems of this mentality lay; in fact, whole other works of fiction and non-fiction alike have been created just to highlight this precise fact.
- pg_bot 8y ago
  If you knowingly engage or are an accessory to bad behavior, you are a bad person. Another person potentially replacing you does not absolve you of your actions. This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. A concept so simple that a child could understand it is fundamentally sound.
  - AlexandrB 8y ago
    > This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. Great. Unfortunately you're not the emperor of the United States and people will continue to take jobs that harm society. Seeing what happened to the Nazis tried in Nuremberg did exactly nothing to stop the same thing from happening in Indonesia, Rwanda, and other post-WWII mass killings. This is because people who do these things, don't actually think they're doing bad things. For example, in your original comment you're justifying a system where exploitation of labor, violation of privacy rights, and support for despotic regimes are permitted because it promotes a culture of innovation. By your standard I should hold you accountable for helping whitewash these practices by making them the responsibility of individual employees - who have little real power to influence their employer's decisions. However, you clearly don't see yourself as culpable because you're defending what you believe is a higher goal: innovation. Now consider that the people who choose to continue to work on these projects feel exactly the same way you do, except they justify their behaviour by some other ends: perhaps they need to support a family, or care for an elderly relative, or they're just demonstrating the idea of "permissionless innovation" with their own employment choices. And why not? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. > Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing, if you know it's wrong stop supporting it! Perhaps you should apply this to your own opinions before suggesting others apply it to their lives.
titzer 8y ago
> This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation I'll take your permissionless innovation and raise you 8 million tons of plastic garbage going into the oceans every year[1], a depleted Ozone layer, black lung, asbestos, and unbreathable air. (Not to mention global warming--egad!) The problem is that industry "permissionlessly innovates" and because profitable innovations flourish in the marketplace, the system blindly scales bad ideas to global proportions, and only after we've accumulated massive debt do we try restrict their actions with feeble legislation which is roundly shouted down by deniers funded by the profits of those industries and poo-pooed by corrupt legislators beholden to their financiers. You see why there might be some systemic problems with this default setting? We need to jettison this idea that companies get to do whatever they want "because it's for the economy!" and only later do we reign them in when they've inevitably wrecked something that we only recognize is important in hindsight. [1] Who knows, maybe some might come back with "oh it's those dirty trash monkeys in India and Indonesia who can't be good and put their garbage in a hole like we do". To that: yeah, the problem is we didn't innovate and scale the economy hard enough to save the planet. Right. Meanwhile, who thought it up? Who sold them all those damn coke bottles and chip bags?
- tim333 8y ago
  Re [1] you have to give pg_bot that the argument was "why America has a culture of innovation" and your counters are all basically non American. As to "8 million tons of plastic garbage going into the oceans every year[1], a depleted Ozone layer, black lung, asbestos, and unbreathable air. " America does rather well at getting rid of those, China is the biggest offender. It works in America because they do pass laws to reduce that stuff, China could try harder.
  - zhengwang 8y ago
    First of all this is pretty blatant whataboutism and second of all we currently have a government that is actively rolling back the very protections you are talking about so you don't have a strong point.
  - kapad 8y ago
djrobstep 8y ago
You can always rely on Hacker News to come through with the corporate bootlicking perspective.
throw2016 8y ago
This is like appealing for ethics after the river is polluted, wondering why none of the people involved didn't protest earlier, and worse hoping that individual protest now will somehow fix the problem while the pollution continues unabated. The only reason someone is not building a nuclear plant in your neighborhood or polluting rivers and poisoning your kids is regulations. The idea that this 'dampens innovation' is an extremely narrow view of 'innovation' without context of consequences. Building surveillance infrastructure is unethical and pollutes the commons and democracy, every educated person knows this, yet hundreds of thousands of 6 figure earning engineers did it anyway. These are the same old problems of commons that have been solved by human societies with governance, rule of law and democracy. The 'repositioning' of government and rules and regulations as a 'constraint' is fundamentally anti rule of law. Governments is 'you' in a democracy. Constraints and laws exists for businesses but also individuals, how will lifting constraints lead to a civilized society? This promotes an unstable society that regresses to barbarism by those who want all the benefits of civilized society in terms of stability, peace, education, science and markets but do not want to think how this comes to be.
kapad 8y ago
Wait.. hold on for a second.. and think about the following points. 1. Campaigns cost a lot of money. 2. Private organizations fund political campaigns. 3. A legislator's constitutional job is to maintain an effective set of rules for a country/state/city whatever. 4. Is the democratic process effective in voting in the best legislators? 4.a. or is the democratic process the best at voting in the best fund raisers? 5. With the massive amounts of private capital, are the best innovators, engineers and builders succeeding or are the best fund raisers succeeding? 6. Is private capital largely responsible for the success of new companies (ventures) as well as aspiring legislators? Well, not everything is so black and white as those points, but looking at one extreme perspective, does raise many concerns in my mind. The primary one being, "is democracy reaching it's breaking point?"

by pg_bot 8y ago

forapurpose 8y ago

> This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation, is the reason why America has a culture of innovation. I've seen that theory, but my understanding is that striking a proper balance is what fosters innovation; anarchy yields corruption and spoils for the powerful; it does not reward the most productive and innovative. Also, my impression is that other things may be much more important for innovation, especially opportunity for education, for capital, and for access to the market (e.g., rules that prevent vested interests from blocking newcomers from the marketplace). > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish Should we abolish all laws and regulations about safety, fraud, and fairness? Personally, I don't see corporations as having such a great track record that I trust them so implicitly.

pg_bot 8y ago
I'm not advocating for anarchy, just that we stick to the laws that are actually codified. We should be reactive to bad behavior, not proactive. Instead of blanket calls for regulation, we should be specific and considerate when making new rules as they often have unintended consequences. Instead of having to constantly ask for permission, you should be able to read the rules and make decisions independently. You don't hear about the millions of interactions that occur daily without consequence so I believe your views on corporations may be biased.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > We should be reactive to bad behavior, not proactive. The ex-Google employee is calling on Congress to be reactive to Google's activities. Do you agree then with their proposal? I actually don't agree; bad behavior hurts people and that harm should be prevented if reasonably possible. For example, we should be proactive about airplane safety. We should have been proactive about regulating the securitization of mortgates - that would have saved maybe billions of people from harm, many losing their homes, jobs, and savings. Of course, anything can be taken too far ... > Instead of blanket calls for regulation, we should be specific and considerate when making new rules I don't think anyone would disagree, but am I overlooking someone? In fairness, you earlier wrote the following, which seems like a much broader, stronger statement: > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish
- tremon 8y ago
  we should be specific and considerate when making new rules as they often have unintended consequences Shouldn't we be equally specific and considerate when developing/deploying new technology?

blub 8y ago

Your "permissionless innovation" is obliterating the well-being of the average American citizen (and others too). At-will contracts, the gig economy, force arbitration, the privacy free-for-all, union busting, zero-hour contracts, privatised law enforcement, privatised medical care and all the other innovations created by US corporations. And your proposed solution is absurd, by the way, and this can be easily demonstrated by the fact that few awful organisations had trouble finding qualified personnel.

jniedrauer 8y ago

We don't even have to go back very far to find examples of American companies exploiting people to the point of knowingly killing them.[0] > any solution that requires foregoing independent corporate decision making would be foolish Whether you think less regulation or more regulation is better, you can't in good faith advocate for no regulation. Corporations have demonstrated many times over the years that they are profit maximizing algorithms with no regard for human life. > For those who have been tasked with building tools that support authoritarian regimes, grow a spine, make your voice heard, and quit if necessary. Once again, this makes very little sense in the context of history. Individual people are largely powerless when standing up to large organizations. Corporations do not self regulate and individuals cannot stop them. They are effectively a form of "very slow rogue AI" and the only way we seem to be able to control them, at least for a little while, is with central governments. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

pg_bot 8y ago
I made no such argument for no regulation. My argument is that we have a set of rules, and we should not interfere with decision making if rules have not been broken. If in response to some exploitation of the rules which you deem as unhealthy to society you may pass new rules to deal with that behavior. You can't just mess with someone because you don't like them.
- morenoh149 8y ago
  I take issue with the spineless bit. If a corporation is undermining basic human rights that's a problem. You also can't expect exployees to stand up to a corporation because they may need the job desperately. There are certain things a government must do. I'd say protecting human rights is the role of government.
  - another-one-off 8y ago
    > You also can't expect exployees to stand up to a corporation because they may need the job desperately. If an employee thinks their job security is more important than the human rights of the population of China then I personally have no problem with that. This is because we have a lot of evidence about how much the average employee values human rights and anybody who expects great things from them is going to be disappointed, so I don't. But to say the government must be responsible for the moral aspects is profoundly irresponsible. "Just following orders" got a lot of Nazis hanged at Nuremberg. If an employee does something they have a personal moral responsibility. Maybe don't bring the law in because it is happening in a foreign country, but claiming that moral responsibility doesn't factor in because people like money is not how we want to run our values system.

shady-lady 8y ago

> the United States runs on what I call "Air Bud rules" also known as common law. and most ex-UK colonies have it(USA/Canada/India/Australia/New Zealand/UK & more) What have the "big" SV companies in common? Exploiting customer data more than ever before with weak US lawmakers unwilling to challenge them or press for stronger user protections. Including adapting or enforcing rules more suitable for the internet age. FB/Instagram/LinkedIn and other social media companies rely on inducing addictive behaviour in their users so as to sell more ads. That's it. All bullshit about connections and making the world a better place.. It's hollow. Gamification of users so as to sell more ads.

akira2501 8y ago

> Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing Then don't act as if this is sufficient reasoning. Any one of these people or the entire department could quit, and you and I both know it would be re-staffed inside of a month. > named for this scene from the children's movie. Which should be a strong hint as to it's merit in the real-world. You shouldn't have to look very deeply into our society to see where the problems of this mentality lay; in fact, whole other works of fiction and non-fiction alike have been created just to highlight this precise fact.

pg_bot 8y ago
If you knowingly engage or are an accessory to bad behavior, you are a bad person. Another person potentially replacing you does not absolve you of your actions. This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. A concept so simple that a child could understand it is fundamentally sound.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. Great. Unfortunately you're not the emperor of the United States and people will continue to take jobs that harm society. Seeing what happened to the Nazis tried in Nuremberg did exactly nothing to stop the same thing from happening in Indonesia, Rwanda, and other post-WWII mass killings. This is because people who do these things, don't actually think they're doing bad things. For example, in your original comment you're justifying a system where exploitation of labor, violation of privacy rights, and support for despotic regimes are permitted because it promotes a culture of innovation. By your standard I should hold you accountable for helping whitewash these practices by making them the responsibility of individual employees - who have little real power to influence their employer's decisions. However, you clearly don't see yourself as culpable because you're defending what you believe is a higher goal: innovation. Now consider that the people who choose to continue to work on these projects feel exactly the same way you do, except they justify their behaviour by some other ends: perhaps they need to support a family, or care for an elderly relative, or they're just demonstrating the idea of "permissionless innovation" with their own employment choices. And why not? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. > Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing, if you know it's wrong stop supporting it! Perhaps you should apply this to your own opinions before suggesting others apply it to their lives.

titzer 8y ago

> This "broad pattern of unaccountable decision making", also called permissionless innovation I'll take your permissionless innovation and raise you 8 million tons of plastic garbage going into the oceans every year[1], a depleted Ozone layer, black lung, asbestos, and unbreathable air. (Not to mention global warming--egad!) The problem is that industry "permissionlessly innovates" and because profitable innovations flourish in the marketplace, the system blindly scales bad ideas to global proportions, and only after we've accumulated massive debt do we try restrict their actions with feeble legislation which is roundly shouted down by deniers funded by the profits of those industries and poo-pooed by corrupt legislators beholden to their financiers. You see why there might be some systemic problems with this default setting? We need to jettison this idea that companies get to do whatever they want "because it's for the economy!" and only later do we reign them in when they've inevitably wrecked something that we only recognize is important in hindsight. [1] Who knows, maybe some might come back with "oh it's those dirty trash monkeys in India and Indonesia who can't be good and put their garbage in a hole like we do". To that: yeah, the problem is we didn't innovate and scale the economy hard enough to save the planet. Right. Meanwhile, who thought it up? Who sold them all those damn coke bottles and chip bags?

tim333 8y ago
Re [1] you have to give pg_bot that the argument was "why America has a culture of innovation" and your counters are all basically non American. As to "8 million tons of plastic garbage going into the oceans every year[1], a depleted Ozone layer, black lung, asbestos, and unbreathable air. " America does rather well at getting rid of those, China is the biggest offender. It works in America because they do pass laws to reduce that stuff, China could try harder.
- zhengwang 8y ago
  First of all this is pretty blatant whataboutism and second of all we currently have a government that is actively rolling back the very protections you are talking about so you don't have a strong point.
- kapad 8y ago

djrobstep 8y ago

You can always rely on Hacker News to come through with the corporate bootlicking perspective.

throw2016 8y ago

This is like appealing for ethics after the river is polluted, wondering why none of the people involved didn't protest earlier, and worse hoping that individual protest now will somehow fix the problem while the pollution continues unabated. The only reason someone is not building a nuclear plant in your neighborhood or polluting rivers and poisoning your kids is regulations. The idea that this 'dampens innovation' is an extremely narrow view of 'innovation' without context of consequences. Building surveillance infrastructure is unethical and pollutes the commons and democracy, every educated person knows this, yet hundreds of thousands of 6 figure earning engineers did it anyway. These are the same old problems of commons that have been solved by human societies with governance, rule of law and democracy. The 'repositioning' of government and rules and regulations as a 'constraint' is fundamentally anti rule of law. Governments is 'you' in a democracy. Constraints and laws exists for businesses but also individuals, how will lifting constraints lead to a civilized society? This promotes an unstable society that regresses to barbarism by those who want all the benefits of civilized society in terms of stability, peace, education, science and markets but do not want to think how this comes to be.

kapad 8y ago

Wait.. hold on for a second.. and think about the following points. 1. Campaigns cost a lot of money. 2. Private organizations fund political campaigns. 3. A legislator's constitutional job is to maintain an effective set of rules for a country/state/city whatever. 4. Is the democratic process effective in voting in the best legislators? 4.a. or is the democratic process the best at voting in the best fund raisers? 5. With the massive amounts of private capital, are the best innovators, engineers and builders succeeding or are the best fund raisers succeeding? 6. Is private capital largely responsible for the success of new companies (ventures) as well as aspiring legislators? Well, not everything is so black and white as those points, but looking at one extreme perspective, does raise many concerns in my mind. The primary one being, "is democracy reaching it's breaking point?"