4 ms·

I wish people in the US would stop blaming specific bad actors in a system for acting in their own best interest and start blaming the system that empowers them

by slg 5y ago

I wish people in the US would stop blaming specific bad actors in a system for acting in their own best interest and start blaming the system that empowers them. ExxonMobil and Intuit lobby the government in their own best interest just like FAANG companies and basically everyone else that has the size to do it. That is how our system is designed. It isn't Intuit's fault this works, but since it does work, they would be stupid not to do it. Blame the legal and political system for allowing what they do to work and/or go unpunished. Don't blame individual actors for responding to systemic incentives.

jakelazaroff 5y ago
How do you propose to garner support to fix the system without drawing attention to the bad actors? "A multi-billion dollar company has been lobbying the IRS so it can steal money from the most vulnerable taxpayers" is far more compelling than "poor people pay more taxes than they have to".
- slg 5y ago
  >How do you propose to garner support to fix the system without drawing attention to the bad actors? Is there any evidence that drawing attention to bad actors actually garners political support to fix this? Look at the comments here, almost everyone is talking about the problems with Intuit and not how to fix this systemically. What we need is grassroots political change. This specific issue regarding tax prep is a symptom of larger systemic problems caused by two main issues. First-past-the-post voting means that people generally only have two viable choices when voting. Anyone who is a single issue voter and their single issue is the tax prep industry is extremely rare and frankly in my opinion crazy. This means that no one has any incentive to change the status quo. The second problem is how US's free speech laws (or perhaps more accurately the current interpretation of these laws) basically create a near free-for-all in terms of campaign financing. Since there is almost no strong motivation for change, the only people involved in the discussion about tax prep are the people who are already invested in the industry. They obvious have a huge incentive to lobby against the death of their industry. So you have an issue in which we have little public motivation for change versus an entire industry that would be willing to dedicate all their profit to fighting change. It isn't surprising we see the results we see. >A multi-billion dollar company has been lobbying the IRS so it can steal money from the most vulnerable taxpayers" is far more compelling than "poor people pay more taxes than they have to". I am not making the second argument. I am generalizing the first argument to "multi-billion dollar companies have been lobbying the government to steal money from everyone, let's adjust our system to stop that".
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    >> What we need is grassroots political change. I'd argue that someone drawing attention to specific bad actors is implicitly saying "stop these people from doing this" which is far more actionable than your generic "What we need is wide-spread, bipartisan support for change". What am I supposed to do with that?
    - slg 5y ago
      >I'd argue that someone drawing attention to specific bad actors is implicitly saying "stop these people from doing this" Exactly, but people focus on the "these people" rather than the "doing this". Why stop this single actor when we can stop anyone from "doing this".
intrepidhero 5y ago
I think its fair to blame both.
burnished 5y ago
So just.. leave the bad actors out of the narrative? It feels like if one does that, then you come back and say "but who is doing [bad thing]? where is the evidence?". You can't just leave the people causing the problem out, as if it were some how rude to name the people pissing in the pool.
- slg 5y ago
  I never said we need to leave the bad actors out of the narrative. I am simply talking about not placing the blame on them. It is the equivalent of a blameless postmortem. We are in a constant cycle of firing interns for pushing costly bugs into production without ever wondering why we are allowing interns to push to production without supervision. We just fire the intern and think the problem is fixed. We have learned that isn't a good way to run a company, but we haven't learned that isn't a good way to run a society.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    Would you fire an intern who intentionally and repeatedly pushed broken code to production because for whatever reason it was in their best interest? We fire bad actors all the time.
    - slg 5y ago
      My main goal would be to understand how an intern could intentionally and repeatedly pushed broken code to production. Fixing that is more important than punishing the individual. A broken/corrupt system will do more damage over the long term than an rogue individual because a well designed system won't give a single individual with little experience that much control.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Would you fire an intern who intentionally and repeatedly pushed broken code to production Probably not faster than I’d fire whoever let an intern repeatedly push broken code to production, without taking responsibility for fixing the deployment process problem they were responsible for, were I at the level where my responsibility wasn't merely to fix the deployment process problem but to address the problem that allowed the deployment process to persist, and presuming that there wasn't a systemic reason rather than simple nonfeasance behind permitting that problem to go unfixed. Especially as establishing the “intentional” part of the hypothetical would probably take longer than establishing a serious and inexcusable failure even in the absence of any intent in the person responsible for allowing the push to be possible in the first place. That's, I think, the upthread posters point. If you have an intern posting broken code to production repeatedly (intentionally or not), you have another problem that is a deeper and broader impact problem, whether individual or systemic or both, than the intern.

by slg 5y ago

jakelazaroff 5y ago

How do you propose to garner support to fix the system without drawing attention to the bad actors? "A multi-billion dollar company has been lobbying the IRS so it can steal money from the most vulnerable taxpayers" is far more compelling than "poor people pay more taxes than they have to".

slg 5y ago
>How do you propose to garner support to fix the system without drawing attention to the bad actors? Is there any evidence that drawing attention to bad actors actually garners political support to fix this? Look at the comments here, almost everyone is talking about the problems with Intuit and not how to fix this systemically. What we need is grassroots political change. This specific issue regarding tax prep is a symptom of larger systemic problems caused by two main issues. First-past-the-post voting means that people generally only have two viable choices when voting. Anyone who is a single issue voter and their single issue is the tax prep industry is extremely rare and frankly in my opinion crazy. This means that no one has any incentive to change the status quo. The second problem is how US's free speech laws (or perhaps more accurately the current interpretation of these laws) basically create a near free-for-all in terms of campaign financing. Since there is almost no strong motivation for change, the only people involved in the discussion about tax prep are the people who are already invested in the industry. They obvious have a huge incentive to lobby against the death of their industry. So you have an issue in which we have little public motivation for change versus an entire industry that would be willing to dedicate all their profit to fighting change. It isn't surprising we see the results we see. >A multi-billion dollar company has been lobbying the IRS so it can steal money from the most vulnerable taxpayers" is far more compelling than "poor people pay more taxes than they have to". I am not making the second argument. I am generalizing the first argument to "multi-billion dollar companies have been lobbying the government to steal money from everyone, let's adjust our system to stop that".
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  >> What we need is grassroots political change. I'd argue that someone drawing attention to specific bad actors is implicitly saying "stop these people from doing this" which is far more actionable than your generic "What we need is wide-spread, bipartisan support for change". What am I supposed to do with that?
  - slg 5y ago
    >I'd argue that someone drawing attention to specific bad actors is implicitly saying "stop these people from doing this" Exactly, but people focus on the "these people" rather than the "doing this". Why stop this single actor when we can stop anyone from "doing this".

intrepidhero 5y ago

I think its fair to blame both.

burnished 5y ago

So just.. leave the bad actors out of the narrative? It feels like if one does that, then you come back and say "but who is doing [bad thing]? where is the evidence?". You can't just leave the people causing the problem out, as if it were some how rude to name the people pissing in the pool.

slg 5y ago
I never said we need to leave the bad actors out of the narrative. I am simply talking about not placing the blame on them. It is the equivalent of a blameless postmortem. We are in a constant cycle of firing interns for pushing costly bugs into production without ever wondering why we are allowing interns to push to production without supervision. We just fire the intern and think the problem is fixed. We have learned that isn't a good way to run a company, but we haven't learned that isn't a good way to run a society.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  Would you fire an intern who intentionally and repeatedly pushed broken code to production because for whatever reason it was in their best interest? We fire bad actors all the time.
  - slg 5y ago
    My main goal would be to understand how an intern could intentionally and repeatedly pushed broken code to production. Fixing that is more important than punishing the individual. A broken/corrupt system will do more damage over the long term than an rogue individual because a well designed system won't give a single individual with little experience that much control.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Would you fire an intern who intentionally and repeatedly pushed broken code to production Probably not faster than I’d fire whoever let an intern repeatedly push broken code to production, without taking responsibility for fixing the deployment process problem they were responsible for, were I at the level where my responsibility wasn't merely to fix the deployment process problem but to address the problem that allowed the deployment process to persist, and presuming that there wasn't a systemic reason rather than simple nonfeasance behind permitting that problem to go unfixed. Especially as establishing the “intentional” part of the hypothetical would probably take longer than establishing a serious and inexcusable failure even in the absence of any intent in the person responsible for allowing the push to be possible in the first place. That's, I think, the upthread posters point. If you have an intern posting broken code to production repeatedly (intentionally or not), you have another problem that is a deeper and broader impact problem, whether individual or systemic or both, than the intern.