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> In particular, the companies purchase financial information from a data broker before offering a nurse a shift; if the nurse is carrying a lot of credit-card

> In particular, the companies purchase financial information from a data broker before offering a nurse a shift; if the nurse is carrying a lot of credit-card debt, especially if some of that is delinquent, the amount offered is reduced. "Because, the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come into work and do that grunt work of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying." I think this should be made illegal. But I also think judging from how bad people are at making laws, what we will get is something that will make it worse for everyone.

bootsmann 1y ago
It's really funny to me that with both the AI act and GDPR, you will see swathes of threads of people on HN bashing the law only to then later discover the purpose of this legislation from first principles.
- octo888 1y ago
  The same could come to Europe (lowballing broke people), because you can just make employees give their consent by baking it into all employment contracts. Just like the working time directive opt-out (HR say "take it or leave it" to 99.9% of people). It probably already happens where it's already acceptable to request financial checks such as the finance industry.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    You could try, but that would most likely be illegal and also fought tooth and nail by unions, which aren't as neutered as American unions. In Europe, sympathy strikes aren't Verboten like in the US.
    - Mindwipe 1y ago
      It depends on the territory, there's no pan-Europe regulation on it. Even when the UK was in the EU sympathy strikes were illegal (to a much greater extent than the US).
    - octo888 1y ago
      Many countries in Europe have weak unions (eg Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Czech Republic, Greece). And there is no real EU (did you mean EU by "Europe"?) wide labour law
  - croes 1y ago
    That would violate privacy laws. They could put it into the contract but they would be void
    - octo888 1y ago
      I don't agree. Which laws? Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR. A similar thing happened with the Working Time Directive - almost all contracts in my country make you agree to opt-out and that's been like that for over 15 years
      - fsflover 1y ago
        > Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR. AFAIK the company must make it opt-in, non-mandatory and provide a way to change your mind at any moment.
        octo888 1y ago
        Yes, as I said, by putting it in the employment contract when applying for a job. Honestly it's hilarious how some people view GDPR. They think CEOs lose sleep at night worrying about it, that they might go to jail for it, or have to pay 100M Euro fine for a breach of it. It's simply not the case. The reality of EU directives and regulations are very different to how they are sold. Many people fall prey to the marketing
        croes 1y ago
        There are many much older privacy laws then just GDPR.
        fsflover 1y ago
        > Many people fall prey to the marketing It seems you did fall prey to the anti-GDPR marketing. It's being actually enforced [0] and doesn't allow "all or nothing" pseudo-consent [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813801 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39272861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39272861; (upd:) an even better link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974361
  - bootsmann 1y ago
    The problem is the party selling that data actually. The nurses would need to consent that whomever the data broker got that data from to share their data with the broker and for the broker to share that data with the nursing service.
- aitchnyu 1y ago
  15 years back, I was subscribed to EU official blog which presents their side of tabloid headlines like "Overpaid French suits want to ban blue stickers on only freckled apples". Did they publish ones for AI Act and GDPR, especially as more countries elect manly commonsense billionaire sympathizers?
  - amiga386 1y ago
    They stopped in 2017, sadly. https://web.archive.org/web/20200131192225/https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200131192225/https://blogs.ec.... Edit: their very last entry was on GDPR: https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131184218/https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/eu-data-protection-rules-do-not-ban-christmas-wish-lists-in-bavaria-or-elsewhere/ https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131184218/https://...
aredox 1y ago
Well, you wanted a "free enterprise" society, why do you complain now? Isn't that freedom? Of expression, of commerce, of association... ...Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?
- philipallstar 1y ago
  > Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist? If you were in a communist country you are definitely worried about the power asymmetry, and rushing to go to West Germany or just out of the USSR, or to the USA from Cuba or out of pre-capitalist China if you could.
  - aredox 1y ago
    I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism while the discourse in the USA is that anything slightly to the left of Pinochet is "COMMUNISM"
    - philipallstar 1y ago
      > I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism Socialist the same in practice. Still state-controlled economy in the name of fairness and starvation soon following.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  In communist countries, labor unions are controlled by the party and serve the interests of the state, not the workers. Strikes are illegal and any pretense of collective bargaining is a farce. Worker rights only exist in free societies.
sneak 1y ago
Why should it be illegal? Seems to me that the illegal part would be the cartel of the 3 apps that cornered the whole market. An app that doesn’t do this could eat their lunch. Nurses work at hospitals, the supply of which is constrained artificially by the state, so once you sell all of the ones in a region on your app, you have a monopoly. It is a type of regulatory capture.
- whinvik 1y ago
  To clarify, what I think should be made illegal is to take advantage of people by using information about how much debt that they have to lowball them.
  - sneak 1y ago
    Yes, why? This is the market working as it should. Market participants should be free to use all available information. The lowballing should be counteracted by competition. There isn’t any competition because the number of hospitals is artificially constrained by the state and a cartel can go to all of them in a region (usually a single digit number) and capture all of them, cornering the market for purchasing labor in that field. The problem is not that the bidders have the information. The problem is that there is effectively only one bidder: the cartel. An app that doesn’t do this (and thus pays more) would quickly have access to the entire labor pool by offering higher wages. It doesn’t exist because of illegal activity. That’s not caused by the cartel having access to, or using, information. You are addressing the symptoms of the cartel, not the root cause.
    - whinvik 1y ago
      IMO cartels are inevitable. Almost all sectors end up with 1 or 2 players. However, I am curious to know how you think we can avoid the problem of cartels.
    - biorach 1y ago
      Exploitation of the indebted is a symptom that should be addressed regardless. Plus I think your diagnosis is simplistic.

bootsmann 1y ago

It's really funny to me that with both the AI act and GDPR, you will see swathes of threads of people on HN bashing the law only to then later discover the purpose of this legislation from first principles.

octo888 1y ago
The same could come to Europe (lowballing broke people), because you can just make employees give their consent by baking it into all employment contracts. Just like the working time directive opt-out (HR say "take it or leave it" to 99.9% of people). It probably already happens where it's already acceptable to request financial checks such as the finance industry.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  You could try, but that would most likely be illegal and also fought tooth and nail by unions, which aren't as neutered as American unions. In Europe, sympathy strikes aren't Verboten like in the US.
  - Mindwipe 1y ago
    It depends on the territory, there's no pan-Europe regulation on it. Even when the UK was in the EU sympathy strikes were illegal (to a much greater extent than the US).
  - octo888 1y ago
    Many countries in Europe have weak unions (eg Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Czech Republic, Greece). And there is no real EU (did you mean EU by "Europe"?) wide labour law
- croes 1y ago
  That would violate privacy laws. They could put it into the contract but they would be void
  - octo888 1y ago
    I don't agree. Which laws? Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR. A similar thing happened with the Working Time Directive - almost all contracts in my country make you agree to opt-out and that's been like that for over 15 years
    - fsflover 1y ago
      > Putting it in the contract is giving your permission. You're allowed to give your permission under GDPR. AFAIK the company must make it opt-in, non-mandatory and provide a way to change your mind at any moment.
      - octo888 1y ago
        Yes, as I said, by putting it in the employment contract when applying for a job. Honestly it's hilarious how some people view GDPR. They think CEOs lose sleep at night worrying about it, that they might go to jail for it, or have to pay 100M Euro fine for a breach of it. It's simply not the case. The reality of EU directives and regulations are very different to how they are sold. Many people fall prey to the marketing
        croes 1y ago
        There are many much older privacy laws then just GDPR.
        fsflover 1y ago
        > Many people fall prey to the marketing It seems you did fall prey to the anti-GDPR marketing. It's being actually enforced [0] and doesn't allow "all or nothing" pseudo-consent [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39813801 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39272861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39272861; (upd:) an even better link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974361
- bootsmann 1y ago
  The problem is the party selling that data actually. The nurses would need to consent that whomever the data broker got that data from to share their data with the broker and for the broker to share that data with the nursing service.
aitchnyu 1y ago
15 years back, I was subscribed to EU official blog which presents their side of tabloid headlines like "Overpaid French suits want to ban blue stickers on only freckled apples". Did they publish ones for AI Act and GDPR, especially as more countries elect manly commonsense billionaire sympathizers?
- amiga386 1y ago
  They stopped in 2017, sadly. https://web.archive.org/web/20200131192225/https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/euromyths-a-z-index/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200131192225/https://blogs.ec.... Edit: their very last entry was on GDPR: https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131184218/https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/eu-data-protection-rules-do-not-ban-christmas-wish-lists-in-bavaria-or-elsewhere/ https://wayback.archive-it.org/11980/20200131184218/https://...

aredox 1y ago

Well, you wanted a "free enterprise" society, why do you complain now? Isn't that freedom? Of expression, of commerce, of association... ...Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist?

philipallstar 1y ago
> Oh, you are worried about power asymmetry? What are you, a communist? If you were in a communist country you are definitely worried about the power asymmetry, and rushing to go to West Germany or just out of the USSR, or to the USA from Cuba or out of pre-capitalist China if you could.
- aredox 1y ago
  I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism while the discourse in the USA is that anything slightly to the left of Pinochet is "COMMUNISM"
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    > I should have gone with "socialist" to avoid all you "ackchually" people who try to educate me on the evils of Soviet Communism Socialist the same in practice. Still state-controlled economy in the name of fairness and starvation soon following.
lupusreal 1y ago
In communist countries, labor unions are controlled by the party and serve the interests of the state, not the workers. Strikes are illegal and any pretense of collective bargaining is a farce. Worker rights only exist in free societies.

sneak 1y ago

Why should it be illegal? Seems to me that the illegal part would be the cartel of the 3 apps that cornered the whole market. An app that doesn’t do this could eat their lunch. Nurses work at hospitals, the supply of which is constrained artificially by the state, so once you sell all of the ones in a region on your app, you have a monopoly. It is a type of regulatory capture.

whinvik 1y ago
To clarify, what I think should be made illegal is to take advantage of people by using information about how much debt that they have to lowball them.
- sneak 1y ago
  Yes, why? This is the market working as it should. Market participants should be free to use all available information. The lowballing should be counteracted by competition. There isn’t any competition because the number of hospitals is artificially constrained by the state and a cartel can go to all of them in a region (usually a single digit number) and capture all of them, cornering the market for purchasing labor in that field. The problem is not that the bidders have the information. The problem is that there is effectively only one bidder: the cartel. An app that doesn’t do this (and thus pays more) would quickly have access to the entire labor pool by offering higher wages. It doesn’t exist because of illegal activity. That’s not caused by the cartel having access to, or using, information. You are addressing the symptoms of the cartel, not the root cause.
  - whinvik 1y ago
    IMO cartels are inevitable. Almost all sectors end up with 1 or 2 players. However, I am curious to know how you think we can avoid the problem of cartels.
  - biorach 1y ago
    Exploitation of the indebted is a symptom that should be addressed regardless. Plus I think your diagnosis is simplistic.