4 ms·

He writes well, and it's an interesting look at how intertwined the government has become (was it ever not?) enmeshed with corporate empires. Unfortunately in t

by chiaro 12y ago

He writes well, and it's an interesting look at how intertwined the government has become (was it ever not?) enmeshed with corporate empires. Unfortunately in the wider population, Google's image is nigh unassailable. The average user wouldn't know about their being saddled with military contracts through their Boston Dynamics acquisition, for example. For this, and other reasons, 99 times out of 100, "free market" consumer action such as boycotts have negligible impact. That's alright though, when you can trust the state to properly monitor and regulate ethical conduct, though it doesn't look like we'll be quite so lucky here. Regulatory capture is one of the biggest problems in the government today, but the solution isn't decreasing the power of the government over companies, it's decreasing the power of companies over the government.

api 12y ago
"Regulatory capture is one of the biggest problems in the government today, but the solution isn't decreasing the power of the government over companies, it's decreasing the power of companies over the government." It's both, really. Companies are incentivized to meddle with government because government meddles with them. The revolving door goes in both directions. It's the dark side of "public-private partnership." BTW... I really wonder if it's possible to get as big as Google without kowtowing to the state. Are you allowed to get that big without being summoned to some... ahem... "interesting" meetings? Seems to me that no government would allow private power of that magnitude without ensuring that its leadership was somehow beholden to state interests or at least was "with the program."
smtddr 12y ago
>>Unfortunately in the wider population, Google's image is nigh unassailable. Well, for me I _still_[1] think of Google as the good guys because I place the blame for this mess squarely on USgov, which perhaps ultimately leads to the public's lack of empathy - but I see this as a chicken-and-egg problem. I don't know if USgov laws created a socioeconomic setup that made people too stressed about day-to-day life not care, or people not caring resulted in our current socioeconomic setup. That's the cycle I'd like to break; but blaming Google solves nothing. What are they suppose to do? Just straight up say "Screw you USgov, we're not obeying the law. Don't care about your gag-orders or your subpoenas. We're just going to flat out refuse. Do your worst, come at me bro." --- I would think even Google must crumble under the full force of USgov that would swiftly follow such an act of rebellion. Afterall, Google cannot dodge, bob and weave like say... Snowden. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443796
- mindslight 12y ago
  > What are they [Google] suppose to do? Not have a business model predicated on datamining users' information, and build their systems in such a way that they are unable to collect troves of unnecessary information. But the only way we'll ever see any change is through users/developers: Detach yourself from such businesses. Don't build your dream on top of their corrupted platform. And if you must use some of their services for pragmatic reasons, consider them hostile governmental entities and thoroughly understand what you are giving away to be stored indefinitely. Even if we demolished the NSA and put the traitors' heads on pikes, it would only be a matter of time until insurance companies robustly created similar chilling effects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928484
  - smtddr 12y ago
    Basically, you're saying to just not create a business like Google. That's not a practical solution because... money. If there's an opportunity to make money, it will be taken. Even the illegal & immoral ones, not to even talk about perfectly legal avenues. More tangible problems with your idea of never collecting huge amounts of userdata are: - If Google didn't collect userdata, I suspect their search wouldn't be working even half as good as it does now. - Gmail, or any email provider? - Amazon's shopping history with your address and CC recorded? - Youtube? - cellphone service provider? (yeah, you could avoid logging conversations & SMS but you're still the kind of company the NSA would come to for spying on a person simply because you'd be a major hub of communication)
    - mindslight 12y ago
      Yes. Users wising up will hopefully put an end to that money. Your statement is similar to saying that ending the NSA is not a practical solution because "power". So our personal autonomy is fucked because money and power - I'm willing to admit that this may be the inevitable answer, but in what way is it productive? It's indeed hard to imagine a world in which users control their data - that is the extent of how hard we've been pwned. Some of these systems were in place long before the issue could possibly be on anyone's radar, and would/will take quite a lot of work to extricate ourselves. anonymous payments - hard, especially now with Bitcoin on the scene. cell service - a bit harder, TOR+wifi+bearer payment for programmatic wifi access. physical address obfuscation - even harder, physical package mix network backed by repu (fuck, I give up). But Youtube? You could write a software frontend tomorrow that avoided being Google's slave by not sending cookies. Comments would be a little harder, but that's a feature - I think a recent study showed glancing at those actually causes brain cancer. Beyond that, I guess TOR to scrub IPs until a better (high-latency) mix network comes along. Email is a broken naive protocol like HTTP which relies on centralized identities, and can thus never really be secured. But secure messaging itself is a low hanging fruit. The fact we don't have it already shows that we seriously need to invest effort into building the ladder.
nickff 12y ago
>"That's alright though, when you can trust the state to properly monitor and regulate ethical conduct, though it doesn't look like we'll be quite so lucky here." Please provide an example of an industry whose regulator has performed this task well (or a list of regulators if you can find more than one), as I am not familiar with any in North America (my area of residence and familiarity). >"Regulatory capture is one of the biggest problems in the government today, but the solution isn't decreasing the power of the government over companies, it's decreasing the power of companies over the government." Why is the former solution inferior to the latter? I believe that the first solution is the only solution because of problems such as the aformentioned regulatory capture, as well as public choice, and various resource allocation (market-related) reasons. Please explain why I am mistaken. If you would like clarification with respect to any of my reasoning, let me know, and I can show my work (but I don't want to bore you unnecessarily).
- chiaro 12y ago
  1. That's kind of the catch, isn't it? All the government agencies that do their job with efficacy wouldn't be the ones you'd be made aware of. Only when something goes wrong do you become aware that your local water board performs useful work. To the point though, regulation ensures our planes crash at a rate of less than one per 21,000 years of flight time. Food safety regulations have dropped e.coli poisoning by half in 15 years. I believe there's a state by state comparison on road deaths following seatbelt regulations, showing a clear causative effect. Maybe we'd be a bit more aware of the fact that the government actually works pretty well most of the time if we sent our little prayers of gratitude to the Federal Aviation Administration on touch down instead. Despite this, my larger point is that it works even better in most other Western countries. You can see this quite clearly in at least one case by comparing public expenditures on healthcare per person. Single payer health insurance is more effective per dollar, regardless of possible criticism on other grounds. 2. Largely, because the free market is a poor regulator, and the government does it pretty well most of the time. To break it down: a) there are things we'd rather corporations didn't do, for the good of society as a whole - such as misleading consumers about ingredients, or hey, hiring local cartels to break down some unions in Columbia. b) consumer action by itself is ineffective. Boycotts, in the vast majority of cases, are too transient to be effective. This is compounded by the sheer number of companies one must try to keep track of to be an ethical consumer, the cartel example above is Coca-Cola, for example. Furthermore, say a mining or oil company is doing massive ecological damage. It's just too difficult to be able to track the produce of that mine to any decisions you make personally to effect what minute sway that decision would have. c) the solution is to codify our standards for this behavior by social agreement, and penalize corporations that are found wanting. This is a regulatory body that provides a net benefit to society. I do agree that the government has protectionist and overreaching regulations in certain areas, but I believe it's remiss to label the entire government as such. "Big" and "small" government are rhetorical buzzwords that prevent people from evaluating regulations and regulatory bodies on the case by case basis they require.
lovemenot 12y ago
He does indeed write well. This made me lol: >> That April, $32,300 went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A month later the same amount, $32,300, headed off to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Why Schmidt was donating exactly the same amount of money to both parties is a $64,600 question.

by chiaro 12y ago

api 12y ago

"Regulatory capture is one of the biggest problems in the government today, but the solution isn't decreasing the power of the government over companies, it's decreasing the power of companies over the government." It's both, really. Companies are incentivized to meddle with government because government meddles with them. The revolving door goes in both directions. It's the dark side of "public-private partnership." BTW... I really wonder if it's possible to get as big as Google without kowtowing to the state. Are you allowed to get that big without being summoned to some... ahem... "interesting" meetings? Seems to me that no government would allow private power of that magnitude without ensuring that its leadership was somehow beholden to state interests or at least was "with the program."

smtddr 12y ago

>>Unfortunately in the wider population, Google's image is nigh unassailable. Well, for me I _still_[1] think of Google as the good guys because I place the blame for this mess squarely on USgov, which perhaps ultimately leads to the public's lack of empathy - but I see this as a chicken-and-egg problem. I don't know if USgov laws created a socioeconomic setup that made people too stressed about day-to-day life not care, or people not caring resulted in our current socioeconomic setup. That's the cycle I'd like to break; but blaming Google solves nothing. What are they suppose to do? Just straight up say "Screw you USgov, we're not obeying the law. Don't care about your gag-orders or your subpoenas. We're just going to flat out refuse. Do your worst, come at me bro." --- I would think even Google must crumble under the full force of USgov that would swiftly follow such an act of rebellion. Afterall, Google cannot dodge, bob and weave like say... Snowden. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443796

mindslight 12y ago
> What are they [Google] suppose to do? Not have a business model predicated on datamining users' information, and build their systems in such a way that they are unable to collect troves of unnecessary information. But the only way we'll ever see any change is through users/developers: Detach yourself from such businesses. Don't build your dream on top of their corrupted platform. And if you must use some of their services for pragmatic reasons, consider them hostile governmental entities and thoroughly understand what you are giving away to be stored indefinitely. Even if we demolished the NSA and put the traitors' heads on pikes, it would only be a matter of time until insurance companies robustly created similar chilling effects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928484
- smtddr 12y ago
  Basically, you're saying to just not create a business like Google. That's not a practical solution because... money. If there's an opportunity to make money, it will be taken. Even the illegal & immoral ones, not to even talk about perfectly legal avenues. More tangible problems with your idea of never collecting huge amounts of userdata are: - If Google didn't collect userdata, I suspect their search wouldn't be working even half as good as it does now. - Gmail, or any email provider? - Amazon's shopping history with your address and CC recorded? - Youtube? - cellphone service provider? (yeah, you could avoid logging conversations & SMS but you're still the kind of company the NSA would come to for spying on a person simply because you'd be a major hub of communication)
  - mindslight 12y ago
    Yes. Users wising up will hopefully put an end to that money. Your statement is similar to saying that ending the NSA is not a practical solution because "power". So our personal autonomy is fucked because money and power - I'm willing to admit that this may be the inevitable answer, but in what way is it productive? It's indeed hard to imagine a world in which users control their data - that is the extent of how hard we've been pwned. Some of these systems were in place long before the issue could possibly be on anyone's radar, and would/will take quite a lot of work to extricate ourselves. anonymous payments - hard, especially now with Bitcoin on the scene. cell service - a bit harder, TOR+wifi+bearer payment for programmatic wifi access. physical address obfuscation - even harder, physical package mix network backed by repu (fuck, I give up). But Youtube? You could write a software frontend tomorrow that avoided being Google's slave by not sending cookies. Comments would be a little harder, but that's a feature - I think a recent study showed glancing at those actually causes brain cancer. Beyond that, I guess TOR to scrub IPs until a better (high-latency) mix network comes along. Email is a broken naive protocol like HTTP which relies on centralized identities, and can thus never really be secured. But secure messaging itself is a low hanging fruit. The fact we don't have it already shows that we seriously need to invest effort into building the ladder.

nickff 12y ago

>"That's alright though, when you can trust the state to properly monitor and regulate ethical conduct, though it doesn't look like we'll be quite so lucky here." Please provide an example of an industry whose regulator has performed this task well (or a list of regulators if you can find more than one), as I am not familiar with any in North America (my area of residence and familiarity). >"Regulatory capture is one of the biggest problems in the government today, but the solution isn't decreasing the power of the government over companies, it's decreasing the power of companies over the government." Why is the former solution inferior to the latter? I believe that the first solution is the only solution because of problems such as the aformentioned regulatory capture, as well as public choice, and various resource allocation (market-related) reasons. Please explain why I am mistaken. If you would like clarification with respect to any of my reasoning, let me know, and I can show my work (but I don't want to bore you unnecessarily).

chiaro 12y ago
1. That's kind of the catch, isn't it? All the government agencies that do their job with efficacy wouldn't be the ones you'd be made aware of. Only when something goes wrong do you become aware that your local water board performs useful work. To the point though, regulation ensures our planes crash at a rate of less than one per 21,000 years of flight time. Food safety regulations have dropped e.coli poisoning by half in 15 years. I believe there's a state by state comparison on road deaths following seatbelt regulations, showing a clear causative effect. Maybe we'd be a bit more aware of the fact that the government actually works pretty well most of the time if we sent our little prayers of gratitude to the Federal Aviation Administration on touch down instead. Despite this, my larger point is that it works even better in most other Western countries. You can see this quite clearly in at least one case by comparing public expenditures on healthcare per person. Single payer health insurance is more effective per dollar, regardless of possible criticism on other grounds. 2. Largely, because the free market is a poor regulator, and the government does it pretty well most of the time. To break it down: a) there are things we'd rather corporations didn't do, for the good of society as a whole - such as misleading consumers about ingredients, or hey, hiring local cartels to break down some unions in Columbia. b) consumer action by itself is ineffective. Boycotts, in the vast majority of cases, are too transient to be effective. This is compounded by the sheer number of companies one must try to keep track of to be an ethical consumer, the cartel example above is Coca-Cola, for example. Furthermore, say a mining or oil company is doing massive ecological damage. It's just too difficult to be able to track the produce of that mine to any decisions you make personally to effect what minute sway that decision would have. c) the solution is to codify our standards for this behavior by social agreement, and penalize corporations that are found wanting. This is a regulatory body that provides a net benefit to society. I do agree that the government has protectionist and overreaching regulations in certain areas, but I believe it's remiss to label the entire government as such. "Big" and "small" government are rhetorical buzzwords that prevent people from evaluating regulations and regulatory bodies on the case by case basis they require.

lovemenot 12y ago

He does indeed write well. This made me lol: >> That April, $32,300 went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A month later the same amount, $32,300, headed off to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Why Schmidt was donating exactly the same amount of money to both parties is a $64,600 question.