It's also super Kafkaesque, because there is no way for you to know why your score is exactly what it is. There is no published rule book or methodology.
Yep. It’s all a secret. You are measured by an invisible system that you can’t opt-out of, can’t question… oh and just in case you thought you could learn from experience, here comes a newer “version” of the score that determines whether you’re allowed to build equity or whether you’re relegated to paying someone else’s mortgage.
How does “checking if people are credit worthy” reinforce inequity? If you can’t repay, you shouldn’t be taking on debt. If anything it prevents people from taking on debt they can’t afford, stopping them from further inequity.
And you can opt out. Don’t use credit at all. (edit: of course a credit record will still exist, but it won't matter if you don't use credit)
This sounds like a bunch of people complaining “why can’t I just borrow whatever I want without people checking whether I can repay?”
Nope. Whether you use credit or not, the credit bureaus collect information about you and share that with all manner of other companies, including employers.
You seem concerned with a “moral failures” aspect of debt, which doesn’t make for an interesting discussion. If you’re not interested in the complex system of algorithmic finance and its intersection with poverty and generational wealth, I’m not sure there’s much of a discussion here.
I already mentioned that some well paying jobs (the kind that people stuck in debt traps would most benefit from) require an active credit score to obtain. So “not using credit” is not an option. As well, credit is a primary way that the people who hold generational wealth got that wealth. Oh, and they run the system.
You’ve created a straw “poor person” and insist on shadow boxing it. If you ever decide to confront the complex systems that these fellow humans face, I encourage you to read up on the modern credit system. Wikipedia has a good rundown with active sources.
There are no "moral failures" so I'm not sure where that comment comes from.
Either you can pay your debt or not. If you can't, others will use that to infer other things about your suitability for various things like jobs.
The credit score isn't the issue, it's just the medium for transmitting information. Background checks can uncover the exact same issues. I can call your neighbor and ask if what kind of a person you're like and decide not to give you a job based on that answer.
> A reasonable take if you ignore how this system reinforces existing inequality
Sure, it "reinforces existing inequality" but what should we do about it? I'm pretty sure punishing people for stealing stuff "reinforces existing inequality", but does that mean stop doing that? Giving high paying jobs to the most qualified candidate also "reinforces existing inequality", but does that mean we should allocate jobs via lottery? Many things "reinforces existing inequality", but they exist for a reason. "reinforces existing inequality" is just a thought terminating cliche.
> the ways this system is used outside its original scope.
What are some examples?
>Also you have to admit it’s kind of fucked up that there’s no total opt out mechanism.
I mean, you can sort of opt out by refusing to give consent for people to run credit checks on you. The problem is that if you don't they assume you must have terrible credit, so you get denied for a lot of things.
This is absolutely sensible and also impossible for the patchwork of systems that an individual has to navigate. These systems would have to talk to eachother, and they don’t.
That’s why I’m in favor of a straight cash subsidy through the negative income tax.
Google’s customers are going to reduce their investment (including ad spend) as a result of the increased cost of capital and changing economics of their business as the next recession looms large (or has already started).
Arguing that Google had a good 2022 is only tangentially relevant to Google’s prospect for the upcoming decade.
I will assume you are asking in good faith, so here goes.
What you think of as "profit" -- e.g. just some random, arbitrary, completely free bonus that Google should be grateful to have at all -- is actually the cost of capital for Google. It is a payment to equity, and the amount of the payment is determined by the interest rate as well as the time path of expected future earnings, adjustment for risk, and other factors. The presence of these other confounding factors often confuse people and make them think profits are arbitrary. They are not. Just because something is complex doesn't mean it is random.
Now when the interest rate increases, that required payment goes up, because investors always have a choice of buying a share of google or buying a bond, and if the bond pays 7%, then buying a share of google should also give you 7%. Now, that 7% could be taken as future growth, as a number of things, but it still needs to be competitive with the bond, which is itself set by government policy in setting interest rates for the economy in such a way as to limit inflation. So we see that companies paying employees a lot of money without actually generating profits is related to inflation. Stop and think about it.
Recently, the government has not been doing a very good job of this and has set the rates -- the payments -- too low, causing inflation to be too high. It's now trying to correct, raise the rates, and so the required cost of capital -- the required profits of companies like Google -- have to increase.
Now suppose Google doesn't do that, e.g. it says "these profits are enough and you should be glad to have them". What investors do is say "well, I'd rather buy the bond" and so they sell their google shares and buy bonds, and in this way the value of Google falls up until the profit rate (profits divided by market price) is compatible with the bond. Well, so what? If Google shares sell for a dollar, who cares, since all that matters is that there be no layoffs, right? Well, when the market share falls below the liquidation value of the company, investors buy up the outstanding shares and liquidate the company. But long before that, there are lot of mechanisms -- e.g. stock options, voting on the corporate board -- that are designed to encourage decision makers to be aligned with the interests of shareholders so that you generally do not see companies trading for less than their scrap value for very long. And this does not need to happen to the whole company, most will scrap unprofitable divisions and projects and not stick their heads in the sand and wait for the whole company to be scrapped. What's an example of a company that has a ton of unprofitable projects? Hmm, one such name comes to mind.
So now we see why, when interest rates go up, businesses struggle to increase their profit margins -- and those that do not go out of business. It is no different for the farmer that needs to earn a higher return on his crop when interest rates rise, so the business needs to earn higher margins when interest rates rise as well. The higher interest rates cause a reduction in investment, which generates a reduction in spending and they incentivize more savings (deferral of spending), and in this way they reduce inflation, which everyone is complaining about as it hurts workers' standard of living.
Couldn’t Google adopt a wait-and-see approach for a few quarters, if all of this was propped up by interest rates to begin with? Maybe instead of reflexively panic-layoffs they could have some sort of longer term strategy to see if the Fed reversed course in a matter of months, which has been speculated already. Why are these megacorps so dependent on the flighty whims of investors, who themselves sat by and allowed the companies to overhire and possibly demanded such a short-sighted risk?
I see some other comments have mentioned this shareholder myopia.
The "payment" can be taken in the form of higher share price, share buybacks, dividends, future dividends, etc.
It does not have take one specific form or another. Despite the fact that Google doesn't pay dividends, it's not a charity. Investors purchase shares of Google in order to get a return, and they have a choice between buying Google or a mortgage bond or ATT, etc.
Now for growth companies like Google, they are effectively "paying" investors with promises of stock price appreciation and high future dividends. This is why they are more sensitive to stock price declines than income investments like a cable company. It's a two edged sword - they are faster to hire and faster to fire and are more responsive to their share price.
At some point, the growth companies discover they need to start paying dividends or doing regular share buybacks in order to stabilize their price, when their growth story is no longer believed by the market.
Well, so in theory they could have used some of the billions they have on hand to start a dividend to prop up the stock price while making their own decisions about staffing.
This narrative that the market forced them to do layoffs feels flimsy when they have so much money, doesn't it? They had other options.
> This narrative that the market forced them to do layoffs feels flimsy when they have so much money, doesn't it? They had other options.
The options they have is to abandon positioning themselves as a growth stock and say "we are now an income stock". You are right, this is a valid choice.
But think a little about what this would mean for Google. This is a company that has one cash cow -- Search. Pretty much everything else is losing money. But only a small share of Google employees are actually needed to run search. So if they tell the market "We are no longer a growth stock", then why are they spending all this money on money losing projects? The rationale up until now was that these are moonshots where some of them would turn into the next big search. That's what a growth company does, but not what an income generating company does.
So my guess is that Google does not want to transition to being an income earning company because that would require laying off a lot more people. You can lay off 80% of Google's staff and just keep search, and then turn those profits over to investors. Google does not do that because it is still promising growth.
But I agree that at some point, the market isn't going to accept the growth story for Google, and this type of transition will happen. Google has also been sucking up a lot of first class talent and putting them to work on money losing projects without a lot to show for it. Those top developers really belong elsewhere, from an economic efficiency point of view -- they should be working on things that really are legit growth opportunities.
An alternative explanation that's just as plausible: Faced with an 11 year federal prison sentence at age 38, she saw this as her last chance to have biological children.
If the children/descendants of other sociopaths like Alexander Dugan, Mussolini, and Jordan Peterson are any clue, they will think it is clever and be grifters just like their ancestors.
As the article notes, US and Mex have bilateral extradition so it’s doubtful she intended to stay there to escape prison. She was likely going on to another country after that.
>Holmes’ partner, William Evans, also bought a one-way ticket “and did not return until approximately six weeks later, returning from a different continent,” prosecutors said.
First you go to Mexico. Then you go somewhere without extradition.
Although if I had high resources and was fleeing justice, I probably wouldn’t buy a ticket ahead of time. If anything I would book some domestic travel to be on flight manifests.
There really aren't that many places that won't extradite an American back to America. Like, North Korea and maybe Iran. All the other countries famous for not having extradition treaties with the US like Vietnam are happy to extradite on a case by case basis.
There are plenty of countries that won't extradite their nationals as a matter of policy like China, Russia, Switzerland, Lebanon, and so on (it's most of the world, probably), but the vast majority won't bat an eye to throwing her back to the US based LEO wolves.
I think it is less about not having an extradition treaty as it is just living in a country that doesn't really actively search for people needing extradition. as long as you have good paperwork for wherever you live and stay the hell off the radar of local authorities, you could probably do okay in lots of central/south american countries. avoid europe and all of their nanny cams with facial recognition. avoid getting online with your old persona's credentials and visiting old family/friends. could probably do pretty well
Something I've always sort of wondered: If you live on a yacht in international waters, will the US Navy come and pick you up? For someone of Ms. Holmes' level of GTA stars.
What would Holmes’ GTA star level be? I mean, IRL in terms of absolute scale of crime maybe 2/5, but in-game it’s usually more violent activity only that gets stars. This needs further discussion, maybe with some consultation from Rockstar.
that's similar to the people that tried to form a country on the deep sea platforms. a submarine launched torpedo would render the country no longer effective while completely invisible to any prying eyes. or a team of underwater welders cut the legs out from under it. again completely hidden from view. "I don't know what happened. One day it was there. The next it was gone!"
There are a lot of unrecognized territories in the world. Wa State, Western Sahara, Rojava, Palestine, Transnistria (remember hacker weev?), Ambazonia, Artsakh, wide swaths of factions in central Africa. It's impractical to extradite people from these regions, although perhaps if they're badly enough wanted the CIA can toss them in a bag and just straight up drive them out or bribe others to do same.
It's thought for instance intelligence may know wanted British terrorist Samantha Lewthwaite is in Kenya or Somalia, but impractical to extract due to being controlled by Al-Shebab. Nobody is gonna send the troops/3 letter goons into some no-mans contested land over some non-violent holmes like character.
Maybe it's just a distraction for the real plan: off to Hong Kong on a cargo ship, through to Mexico in a car trunk, or simply living with an assumed identity after major plastic surgery.
It was always odd to me that entire businesses relied on what was essentially the goodwill of a corporation. I think the same about things like microG in the Android world. They just… use Google’s API without paying and yet we think it’ll all work out?
I believe the same thing! It's rare to see someone hold this view. I got quite a lot of pushback when I argued the same concept a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016155 On the upside it spawned a ton of discussion with lots of people other than myself, which was nice to see.
This is a tricky area. Do we legally protect access to unpublished APIs or only published, supported APIs? If there is no API, should we legally require an API? Should the API support 100% of the services operations or may it only support some subset? What if the API is unprofitable, can the business reduce the set of operations supported or remove it entirely? Can they even release a new version of the API and retire an older version?
What, exactly, are you asking for when you say that "accessing APIs from 3rd party clients ... should be legally protected"?
I think a good starting point would be something like a digital right to roam.
So you should not be able to enforce contractual terms, ask app stores or platforms to block, or use technical measures to frustrate access to an API.
If you expose it to the public internet you should be required to ambivalent about which software an otherwise valid use uses to connect to it.
I think there’s also a reasonable argument for some core protocols and services to be treats and regulated as a hybrid between public and private, kind of like the banking system.
Who built the API and who pays to maintain it? These are not public goods in the traditional sense. The incentives must align or else the benefit is only maintained through benign neglect.
Who cares? Making the world meaningfully better will probably break some business models.
Fact is if you expose an API publicly, at that boundary you [should] lose the right to control what software interacts with it. Web browsers are called user agents for a reason.
If a service is valuable, people will pay for it directly and more than cover the cost of hosting an API. If a company can’t make money without hijacking people’s attention and tricking them into doing things that profit them by controlling the software running on their users’ computers then maybe it shouldn’t exist.
Not saying this is your view, but it amazes me how many people think companies should be able to write anything they like in terms of service and/or that “they wouldn’t be profitable if they weren’t allowed to do bad things” is a good reason not to ban companies from doing bad things.
That you don’t think the possibility of governments prosecuting vulnerable women seeking health care in the US using surveillance capitalist tools is a story says more about you than the article.
I hope they work for you. They did not for me, unfortunately. The text was too fuzzy to not give me a headache and something about it gave me motion sickness.
Also you have to admit it’s kind of fucked up that there’s no total opt out mechanism.