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Mother of bad takes... let's consider the two alternatives. Every single example you name happens just the same under regulation / government bureaucracy. Repl
by dexen 5y ago
Mother of bad takes... let's consider the two alternatives.
Every single example you name happens just the same under regulation / government bureaucracy. Replacing private services with government services or tight regulation of industry doesn't improve error rate nor incentives. Consider the three key differences:
1) When the regulators / the bureaucracy causes you trouble, it is legally and culturally considered your own fault - "you filled the form badly" or any other such. The error rate gets worse, if anything.
2) When the regulators / the bureaucracy causes you trouble, the media has little incentive to hound them persistently. Private companies buy advertising, and the media can push them until they do; conversely the government doesn't buy advertising, but instead can launch endless "lawfare" against journalists, thus making it rather unprofitable to hound them over - what legally and culturally is "your own fault" anyway. That's mis-aligned incentives.
3) There's no competing government to come to, unless you're willing to uproot your whole family and move abroad. And in particularly egregious cases even that is either illegal or made difficult and lengthy - hey, we're having a pandemic right now.
That we know and obsess over the mistakes and problems caused by private service providers is prim and proper - as it is thanks to the interest of journalists and aligned incentives. The same would largely pass unnoticed and at larger scale, under regulation / bureaucracy. So let's not go backwards, shall we?
The third option, un-coordinated / de-centralized services are technically feasible, but quite hard to successfully build for organizational & financial reasons. Presumably we will get there eventually.
- coldtea 5y agoYou missed how with government there are laws, the requirement to serve everybody, and legal recourses to most offenses. A private company like Google can kill your Gmail like that, and that's it, they don't even owe you a reason. It's their "right" to do whatever.
- dexen 5y agoNot at all: just like platforms "suspend" account and may un-suspend it at their discretion, the government arrests suspects and confiscates property for evidence. That it ends after a year or two is of no help - the business is ruined, the person's good name is ruined. At least with the private platforms online our fellow users give us the presumption of innocence after a "suspension". Conversely, having been arrested or indicted is a long-lasting blemish. Government and regulated institutions have endless ways of denying service - whether by finding procedural errors or by stalling. Iron property of bureaucracy. For example: KYC and AML laws hurt small businesses at random, including countless PayPal drama stories. Again the difference is in culture and in reporting: account "suspended" is often reported and perceived as unjust and raise understandable outrage (the egregious cases aside), while legal proceedings are usually reported and perceived as just and proper. My point is, if we were to change the private platforms to strict regulation or outright government provided services, almost all suspensions would be reported and perceived as the user's own fault, and probably for the better of the society. Which puts the incentives of such supposed service-provider completely out of whack. Case in point: a government-provided account would be suspended "for the duration of investigation into spreading misleading information about health/elections/finances/etc.", and reporters and people would largely shrug it off as "well that's for the better". Oh and trying to open an account with another government would raise all sorts of red flags, naturally.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoHave you ever even seen, or had to deal with, a real bad government? A really hostile government? A government determined to make you feel miserable?
- dexen 5y agoYes I have, but that's just one personal experience. My frustration with your proposal stems from the general trend of government monopoly making for sticky and byzantine bureaucracies. For all the warts of private services, there's alternatives available, and the journalists & public opinion don't side with them by default - but rather with the user.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoWondering what kind of experience it is. I hope you're not one of the refugees on the Belarus/Poland border where both governments are pushing and shoving them around as if they were hot potatoes. What you described above, about doing paperwork, has one trait: those government institutions live by the book and die by the book. A frustrated official may act against you as long as regulations permit him, but you can use just the same regulations against him right back. I mean if you live in a democracy, even a shitty one. There are, though, no restraints whatsoever on what a private company may do, and entrusting them with that much of one's life is foolish. Because you don't even get to see the rulebook, like, ever. Employees reading your private messages daily? Well boo hoo, cry me a river, and it's probably in one of those ToS amendmends you agree to or else get booted out.