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The whole "preventing fraud" thing is 95% strawman. Most of this dystopian bullshit within various nations welfare/safety net systems is implemented in the nam

The whole "preventing fraud" thing is 95% strawman. Most of this dystopian bullshit within various nations welfare/safety net systems is implemented in the name of "nudging these people into making the right choices" to the applause of the very same people who are generally enthusiastic about the existence of these systems in the first place (whereas the whole fraud shtick mostly comes from people who don't want these systems to exist at all). The people running these systems are not incentivized to care about fraud, quite the opposite really. The more money they dispense and the more people the serve the more important their program or department is and important they are. When government says they're doing something that increases their power over people at their expense you need to look at it the same as BigCo doing something that increases profit at the expense of consumers. Sure the pretext of fraud or theft or ambulance chasing lawyers might exist but it is not the whole story.

luckylion 4y ago
The nudging being required is basically the fraud. The systems are set up to be used "in case of emergency", not as a life style. If you need to be nudged towards "hey, maybe get a job and start contributing to society", you're abusing the welfare system. It's for those who can't, not for those who prefer not to.
pizza234 4y ago
When the country I live in started to give money to Ukrainian refugees, an Ukrainian friend of mine requested them as well (although they aren't a refugee), and told me that _all_ of their friend were doing the same (again, all defrauding the state). Which means, here there has been a lot of fraud in relation to this scheme. When it comes to welfare schemes, I'm very skeptical (like the current top post) that fraud rate can be as low as presented.
giantg2 4y ago
"When government says they're doing something that increases their power over people" I didn't see this in the article. The eligibility requirements and punishments remain the same regardless of the surveillance. It's just that with surveillance you're more likely to get caught. The most compelling case against large scale surveillance is that future regimes can abuse that power. Surveillance itself is agnostic until employed to some end. The question becomes what level of use do people find acceptable. Of course this will always result in some level of minority abuse when certain activities are frowned upon my the majority. The somewhat good news in the welfare case is that it's only enforcing existing laws, it only covers a subset of the entire population, and those in the subset have at least the theoretical choice to remove themselves from the surveillance.

luckylion 4y ago

The nudging being required is basically the fraud. The systems are set up to be used "in case of emergency", not as a life style. If you need to be nudged towards "hey, maybe get a job and start contributing to society", you're abusing the welfare system. It's for those who can't, not for those who prefer not to.

pizza234 4y ago

When the country I live in started to give money to Ukrainian refugees, an Ukrainian friend of mine requested them as well (although they aren't a refugee), and told me that _all_ of their friend were doing the same (again, all defrauding the state). Which means, here there has been a lot of fraud in relation to this scheme. When it comes to welfare schemes, I'm very skeptical (like the current top post) that fraud rate can be as low as presented.

giantg2 4y ago

"When government says they're doing something that increases their power over people" I didn't see this in the article. The eligibility requirements and punishments remain the same regardless of the surveillance. It's just that with surveillance you're more likely to get caught. The most compelling case against large scale surveillance is that future regimes can abuse that power. Surveillance itself is agnostic until employed to some end. The question becomes what level of use do people find acceptable. Of course this will always result in some level of minority abuse when certain activities are frowned upon my the majority. The somewhat good news in the welfare case is that it's only enforcing existing laws, it only covers a subset of the entire population, and those in the subset have at least the theoretical choice to remove themselves from the surveillance.