Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism? - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neofeudalism-the-end-of-capitalism/ <comment><USER2> The hug of death!

Here is a mirror: [http://archive.is/9j05G](http://archive.is/9j05G)

<comment><USER3> Note: archive.is is blocked in some countries where archive.org is not.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20200517230049/https://lareviewof...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200517230049/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neofeudalism- the-end-of-capitalism/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Corporatocracy is probably the more accurate term, but the term neofeudalism isn't exactly a huge stretch. The only real difference today is that at least in theory a serf can become a lord, but the same power dynamic remains.

When chattel slavery ended many of the freed slaves became sharecroppers, bound to the land by eternal debts that could never be repaid. Although they were no longer legally bound to their "masters", for many their lives were not really any better.

Although in principle the monopolies and the government are separate institutions, we all know that the reality is that our politicians are bought out by the corporations, and the regulators are staffed by ex-employees of the very companies they are supposed to be regulating. We used to bust monopolies, but since the 70s or so the regulators have become very lax, and practically every industry has become more consolidated than it's ever been (finance, advertising, airlines, utilities, telecom, agriculture, healthcare, etc).

What's interesting to me is that whenever Google/Facebook does something authoritarian that would seem to violate some principle of liberty we deem sacred (eg. censorship, violating freedom of speech), many if not most of the comments seem to rationalize the corporation's decision as exercising their own free speech. But when you're Reddit with 430M monthly active users, your userbase is the population equivalent of the world's 3rd largest country, and so you're effectively the equivalent of a nation-state. When you're Amazon with 750k employees, then your employees could fill up a city.

Does the principle of democracy only apply to country's governments, or does it also extend to corporate monopolies?

<comment><USER3> Those "principles of liberty" are aimed at protecting the American citizen from her government, not from corporations.

If it was the government doing "authoritarian" things, then that is potentially actionable under US laws. Otherwise, Big Tech is not breaking any laws or violating anyone's rights. Google/Facebook are just websites doing what website owners do. They decide what pages to publish.

Unfortunately most HN commenters do not understand that distinction. No doubt many HN readers do, but most readers are not also commenters.

Perhaps Google/Facebook should be run by the US government. At least then users would have some rights they could enforce. Government could not get away with doing what Google/Facebook do.

If the politicians are bought out and regulators are staffed by ex-employees then there is one other way to modify corporate behaviour. Trial lawyers. Death by a thousand cuts. All we need is one good law that gives internet users some rights to sue Google/Facebook for the creepy way they do "business" and I think we would start to see change. Imagine the things that could be uncovered in discovery. It would all be laid bare.

Big Tech is doing what a government only wishes it could do. Consitutional law protects citizens from government, not corporations. In the US, coporations have nearly as many rights as people if not more. The constutional law protects them from governement, too.

<comment><USER4> > Big Tech is not breaking any laws or violating anyone's rights.

Perhaps in a legal sense, but most people criticizing Big Tech policies aren't debating what is or isn't legal under current laws, but rather what should or should not be legal. Current laws give monopolies and corporations an enormous amount of freedom and leniency, and perhaps a certain degree of power and societal importance should entail greater restraints.

<comment><USER3> If what Big Tech does violates no law, personal rights, nor any contractual agreement with users, it is not rational to believe users can hold Big Tech accountable. Sure, they can debate and complain. The online forums and messaging platforms they use to debate and voice their complaints are run by Big Tech. It achieves nothing really. Maybe it makes users feel better to vent. Big Tech knows how to deal with the whining. The threat of having to change their behaviour is negligible.

If there was a possibility they could be sued for this behaviour, then the threat might become non-negigible. The "legal sense" matters because it is a threat the company's management would take seriously. The threat of "people complaining about us on the internet" is not a serious one. It costs very little, often nothing, to make it go away.

<comment><USER4> I don't know what your point is. Nobody is claiming the complaining on an internet forum will directly change the law. But it is obviously possible that this online discourse will lead to a movement ultimately influencing elected lawmakers to change the law.

<comment><USER3> The point is that people think the government is going to solve this problem of Big Tech. "[I]t is possible that the online discourse will lead to a movement ultimately influenceing elected lawmakers to change the law." Sadly, there are no "Ralph Naders" in the age of Big Tech. Who is going to lead this movement to pass these new laws? Is "online discourse" really the level of pressure needed? Do lawmakers normally read "online discourse"? We know they follow mainstream media. The discourse I see seems to focus solely on "government regulation". Regulatory capture, fines and so forth. I am suggesting that the discourse should also focus on "what rights should every user have against Big Tech". Not relying on government to police behaviour but focusing on empowering users to enforce their rights on their own initiative. Which do you think stimulates change in how websites operate? A law that users can enforce at any time or the one where we have to wait and hope that government regulators decide to act? A law that potentially enables an unknown number of users to keep filing lawsuits or one where Google/Facebook can pay a fine and move on, without ever admitting any wrongdoing. The discourse is not contemplating enabling private action. It focuses almost solely on the promise of future government regulation.

<comment><USER5> A democratic government is, in principle, (and more often in theory than in practice) a way for individuals to collectively express their wishes. Including reining in misbehaving corporations. The reason so much discourse is contemplating government regulation is because, in democracy, government regulation _is_ private action of citizens. And arguably, only in this concentrated form it has a chance to oppose the concentrated interests of wealthy private individuals at the steers of corporations.

<comment><USER3> What about the "discourse" where commenters submit ideas to the effect of "This should be illlegal."

Do they realise that, like government regulation, that would leave discretion over enforcement to a third party, e.g., a prosecutor.

It is possible to have a regulatory framework and a criminal code aimed at Big Tech that is, in practice, never enforced, rarely enforced, or enforced arbitrarily.

Giving users a private remedy against tech companies, letting them initiate actions in response to wrongdoing, does not mean anyone has to forgo democratic government, government regulation, law enforcement, and so on.

It is just something that as far as I can see is not getting any focus in popular discussions about the evils of Big Tech. We watch as people bring factually-supported cases over large scale privacy violations but they always fail in the courts because there is no law that is truly adequate to bring them under. The existing law requires actual injury. It reflects a time before the ubiquity of computer networks, let alone the widespread practice of using them for dragnet surveillance on the public as a business model.

<comment><USER5> Fair. But that would, at least in the US, require a complete overhaul of the justice system. As it is, the justice belongs to those who can spend more on lawyers, so few individuals are willing to accept a realistic risk of having their lives forever ruined on the off chance they'll win against a corporation that can easily outspend them in court.

<comment><USER3> I think we each have different ideas about what these statutory private remedies might look like. It is not necessary for the applicant's life to be ruined by filing claims. Not all litigation is like that. Nor would it be necessary to overhaul the justice system. There must be examples you have in mind that have shaped your view of what is or is not possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's only one aspect in the entire piece that I think is somewhat accurate, which is the division of society into hinterlands and centres. That really is happening, however not only between the property owning class and everyone else, but with much more nuance in between.

Everything else however is I think pretty far off the mark, comparing this era to feudalism doesn't make much sense.

The article posits extraction of resources from the poor to the rich, including globally, and this is just wrong. We've seen a great convergence in global equity which one can see with their own eyes if they travel to China or Poland.

Lack of property or wealth also doesn't imply 'serfdom'. In today's age property isn't really a guarantor of personal autonomy any more, in fact if anything the opposite is true, the biggest benefits today fall on people who can move. Owning a house doesn't really do most people any good any more, in particular not if it's in a place that has its economy turned upside down.

<comment><USER7> Uh, what? There's no "convergence in global equity[sic]". See [https://inequality.org/facts/global- inequality/](https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/)

Inequality is rapidly increasing, and the speed of the spread is accelerating.

And given that housing still accounts for somewhere between 20% and 45% especially for the lowest income quintile, yes, owning a house makes a huge difference.[1] [https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over- inc...](https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC1-2-Housing-costs-over-income.pdf)

I respect you have a different opinion, but if it's contradicting available data I'd appreciate a source for that belief.

<comment><USER8> No, parent poster is correct. World Gini coefficient has been consistently dropping since hitting its peak of 0.80 in 1988:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_Gini_index_since_1800s) (see second chart)

This is also reflected in one of the graphs ("The Global 1% Captured Twice as Much Growth as the Bottom Half") from your link, with the decline in the top 1% since 2009 and the slow increase in the bottom 50% since 2002.

The graphs you show are largely broken down by country, and reflect an instance of Simpson's Paradox. [1] _Within_ each individual country, income inequality is rising. However, _globally_ income inequality is falling, because an increasing share of global income is moving from rich countries to poor countries. The super-rich in the U.S. are rapidly outpacing the poor in the U.S., and the super-rich in the China are rapidly outpacing the poor in China, but a large fraction of the huge number of poor people in China are rapidly approaching the middle-class standard of living formerly reserved for the U.S, much more than the number of people that have fallen out of the U.S. middle class.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Did anyone ever figure out what "neofeudalism" means and why it's here now?

I'm gonna write out a notion before I actually read the article and get disappointed.

Feudalism was a mode of production in which value was chiefly produced from arable land via agriculture and mainly extracted in the form of rent or tax by force, with the ruling class being the most effective military force. Merchants, traders, artisans, engineers, and bureaucrats weren't really major players under feudalism, and their _rise_ from tolerated skilled servants to a class for themselves, the asset-owning class of capitalism, was a major historical transition.

 _If_ , hypothetically, we were transitioning into a form of "neo-feudalism", it would be a mode of production in which efficiently producing valuable goods for market trade is no longer more valuable than the ability to just force other people to pay you not to plunder them by force. It would indicate that society's productive potential was either actively degrading, or being held hostage by a ruling class of rent-seekers on the limiting factors of production.

For instance, a society run largely by real-estate or oil tycoons who twist the law to bully their competitors and extract rents/ransoms from anyone needing land or oil could (again, hypothetically) qualify.

The nasty question in this whole thing would be: what so strangled capitalism that feudalism was able to make a comeback? The feudal-to-capitalist transition happened in the first place because the ruling class of capitalism was able to so steadily erode the economic, social, and even _military_ relevance of the landed nobility that by the time of the French Revolution they could be executed en masse without anyone else complaining much, and the nobles of many other countries like England and Germany had to marry into _industrial_ enterprises to keep their wealth! Are we somehow so de- industrialized that we're switching back to subsistence agriculture?

<comment><USER10> Hmm. Then gangs that charge protection money are basically neofeudalist. That seems both plausible and interesting.

<comment><USER11> Early feudal systems were basically just a protection racket.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_by_itineration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_by_itineration)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bruce Schneier partially agrees with it.

* Feudal Security

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.html)

> Perhaps instead of hoping that our Internet-era lords will be sufficiently > clever and benevolent -- or putting our faith in the Robin Hoods who block > phone surveillance and circumvent DRM systems -- it's time we step in in our > role as governments (both national and international) to create the > regulatory environments that protect us vassals (and the lords as well). > Otherwise, we really are just serfs.

</comment><comment><USER13> "owners into billionaires on the basis of the cheap labor of their workers, the free labor of their users, and the tax breaks bestowed on them by cities desperate to attract jobs. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (the parent company name for Google) together are worth more than most every country in the world (except the United States, China, Germany, and Japan). The economic scale and impact of these tech super giants, or, overlords, is greater than that of most so-called sovereign states. Evgeny Morozov describes their dominance as a "hyper-modern form of feudalism.""

How are any of these companies making money on the 'cheap' labor of their workers? Amazon pays all warehouse employees a minimum of $15/hour. This is well above the minimum wage in most areas of the US and outside the US, is a very good wage for doing repetitive tasks that don't even require a high school education.

This article doesn't even touch on the censorship aspects of companies like Google and Facebook becoming more and more a reality every day. They both regularly censor opposing view points and are definitely influencing our elections.

"Digital platforms are the new watermills, their billionaire owners the new lords, and their thousands of workers and billions of users the new peasants"

Not quite. Anyone can still start a website and sell a product without a digital overlord. In fact, there are less barriers to entry than there were a decade ago. Most people choose to give control to companies like Amazon because it's easier and more convenient.

<comment><USER14> >Not quite. Anyone can still start a website and sell a product without a digital overlord. In fact, there are less barriers to entry than there were a decade ago. Most people choose to give control to companies like Amazon because it's easier and more convenient.

The story of diapers.com cogently illustrates the fate awaiting those who believe that there are no barriers to competing with amazon:

[https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff- be...](https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-bezos-went- thermonuclear-on-diapers-com.html)

<comment><USER13> "[https://www.vox.com/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting- down-...](https://www.vox.com/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting-down-diapers- com-quidsi-soap-com")

If a 550 million dollar acquisition is my fate after trying to compete with Amazon, I would look forward to it.

<comment><USER15> "... complex networks produce extremes of inequality, winner-take-all or winner-take-most distributions.", you would indeed become richer, society, not quite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (the parent company name for Google) together are worth more than most every country in the world (except the United States, China, Germany, and Japan).

Did the author just compare market capitalizations with GDP? What? It's hard to take some of this stuff seriously.

<comment><USER17> I got interested and did a more apples to apples comparison:

REVENUES (2019):

Apple: $260B

Facebook: $70.7B

Microsoft: $126B

Amazon: $233B

Alphabet: $162B

TOTAL: $852B

_____________________________

GDPs in 1000's (copy paste from Wikipedia):

1 United States 21,439,453

— European Union 18,705,132

2 China 14,140,163

3 Japan 5,154,475

4 Germany 3,863,344

5 India 2,935,570

6 United Kingdom 2,743,586

7 France 2,707,074

8 Italy 1,988,636

9 Brazil 1,847,020

10 Canada 1,730,914

11 Russia 1,637,892

12 Korea, South 1,629,532

13 Spain 1,397,870

14 Australia 1,376,255

15 Mexico 1,274,175

16 Indonesia 1,111,713

17 Netherlands 902,355

18 Saudi Arabia 779,289

19 Turkey 743,708

20 Switzerland 715,360

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

<comment><USER18> The Wikipedia article you linked lists GDP in millions, not in 1000's.

<comment><USER19> By my rekoning then, there are 17 countries that have larger GDP than the combined tech companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't feudalism arise out of weak (practically non existent) centralized power structures? Despite the rethoric of late (particularly in Trump America) I think most of the world (including the US) is heading towards stronger Nation States not weaker... And not because the State is claiming that power, but because society seems in line with it. The speed with which many western democracies allowed/tolerated extreme measures to be taken during the covid pandemic in a syncronized manner just shows how people rely on the State when push comes to shove.

<comment><USER21> The direct pandemic response was delayed by at least a month, and basically consisted of telling everyone to stay home and not much else. Now we're getting bored of it, so it's ending. That doesn't seem so powerful to me.

Meanwhile the financial response of cutting interest rates started two weeks earlier, which certainly seems like the state trying to appease capital.

<comment><USER20> Agreed on the description on how the State wielded the power (not very effectively I'd argue) yet I'm not claiming that the State knows what to do with power (specially in such pandemic situation), I'm merely describing that the people seem to have accepted very quickly and with little resistance whatever the State decided (late or not)

<comment><USER22> I'm honestly curious what reaction from "the people" you would expect. Even if I was concerned with the source of the orders, if the measures are perfectly reasonable and expected then... should I still defy them? Serious question.

<comment><USER23> I've been quite surprised at how quickly people went from calling Trump "literally Hitler" or at the very least a Russian puppet/Manchurian candidate to complaining that he didn't come down with a hard enough iron fist and start doing things like declaring martial law to more strictly enforce lockdowns. I think there's some very interesting things going on here psychologically with respect to fear, team sports, and state power.

<comment><USER24> Maybe because the critic is not really a contradictory critic once you see the context.

It's like complaining that critics of Stalin can't criticize him for both making the people poor, and making some people (the party) richer.

Ignoring the context doesn't make you smart.

<comment><USER23> I'm not ignoring the context at all. If I genuinely believed that someone was evil, I cannot imagine a scenario in which I'd want them to have more control over me. The fact that so many people feel the opposite of me in this particular context is really interesting and hard for me to grasp. I want to be clear, I'm not suggesting anyone is right or wrong. I just find it fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Emphasis on NEO-feudalism. What this article fails to acknowledge or discuss, is that feudalism was actually BETTER for workers than the current arrangement. Workers were entitled to earn a living from the land they lived on, their lords had obligations to them to provide for their welfare. There was a hierarchy, but the workers themselves were empowered by the value they added to their lord's land. Serfs were only serfs of they lacked the skills to be free men or craftsmen. The craft and trade economy was far more self regulating and less exploitive.

What we have now is a Servile State, not a feudal one.

<comment><USER26> In addition to what others are saying, I'll point out that up until the 20th century most of the people lived in extreme poverty.

We are talking 90% of the population living in extreme poverty and suffering from malnutrition.

A number that plummeted in the 20th century, especially since 1960, being less than 10% in 2015.

This was due to technology and the industrial revolution of course, but those went hand in hand with capitalism.

So from what perspective was it better?

<comment><USER25> Like you said, technology and the industrial revolution improved the "extreme poverty" of the situation. Just because capitalism helped in bring those things about, doesn't mean that capitalism is itself a better alternative. In fact, I don't even think that capitalism was a necessary condition for those things. It just happened that capitalism came along around the same time. Would the loom have not been invented without capitalism? Or the steam engine? People were already innovating in the middle ages (the printing press, etc.) without modern capitalism.

People continue to innovate today without a large profit incentive. Look at the open source movement, the creative commons movement, the content producers all over the Internet that accept donations in exchange for sometimes large amounts of their time. People will innovate because they enjoy innovating. I don't think we can say that capitalism as we know it was necessary for the living conditions of the 15th - 19th centuries to improve.

<comment><USER26> Many technological innovations would have been discovered without capitalism, but it would've taken longer, arguably. This is clear to anybody that lived, even for a short time, in Eastern Europe before the fall of USSR. Innovation requires competition, access to capital and freedom of speech, all of them enabled by capitalism.

\---

> " _People continue to innovate today without a large profit incentive. Look > at the open source movement_ "

I'm a part of the Open Source "movement", I've contributed significantly to a couple of high profile open source libraries.

Everything is driven by profit, either directly or indirectly. OSS contributions are apprenticeships for beginners and a great addition to any resume. Improving one's reputation by OSS is no small thing. Granted some OSS developers are exploited, but that's because they haven't learned to say no yet, or to ask for money. But that's just temporary, a part of the growing up process.

Companies contributing to OSS? That's just complementary to their cash cows. There's no company on this earth contributing to OSS without a profit motive.

Also, even in capitalism we need access to "the commons". In order to continue to innovate, the price of foundations needs to drop and in capitalism this is a natural phenomenon. Everybody needs roads and at some point roads become subsidized.

\---

> " _People will innovate because they enjoy innovating._ "

You have a romantic view of the world. My view is that everything is about sex and power.

<comment><USER25> I think I overstated my "no profit incentive".

I think people need ownership and the potential for profit in order to innovate. I am no advocating for communism or the removal of private property. I think private property is necessary for all sorts of other human rights.

But private property and a profit incentive existed in the middle ages. There were guilds, and trademen, and yeomen, and all sorts of people making a profit and trading in capital. My issue with the industrial revolution is that _exploitative_ capitalism replaced most other forms of exploitation. Yes, you could argue that serfs were exploited. But there were obligations that came with being a landowner and a lord. The industrial revolution paved the way for exploitation _without_ obligations. Can't do the work anymore? Well, say goodbye to a house since you can't pay rent, food because you don't have money, etc. At least there was a level of security afforded by community living and living off the land. The total output of a household or town was enough to pay satisfy the year's quota, none of this week to week rent seeking.

I don't think comparing the USSR to the middle ages is accurate then in this sense. And I think that had the industrial revolution not happened, we could very well have seen a similar increase in technological development. But I suppose it's one of those things we'll only ever be able to speculate about. One thing is for sure: the exploitative capitalism that we have today in many countries needs to change. And I believe there are better solutions than communism. Distributism for instance, with elements of Georgism (also posted about on the front page of HN today funnily enough) would be a good place to start.

<comment><USER26> > " _The industrial revolution paved the way for exploitation without > obligations. Can 't do the work anymore? Well, say goodbye to a house since > you can't pay rent, food because you don't have money, etc._"

This was Marx's worry and reason for its theory of value.

It's not true. Capitalism goes hand in hand with the constant evolution of technology and the competition pressure that companies have, which leads to prices dropping all the time. Food prices have been dropping and I'm pretty sure agriculture will get so efficient that the price of basic food items will be free.

The only worrying thing nowadays, the only phenomenon that can disrupt this trend, are the IP laws (copyright, patents, trademark) that are essentially government-granted monopolies, allowing software companies to keep competition at bay and their prices high. But due to the evolution of technology, even software companies need to evolve and to drop the prices on their services, or they die. Maybe in the future this will stop being true, maybe there is a ceiling to what technology can do. But for now Marx's dystopian future isn't here yet.

Again, let us look at the results. In 2015 less than 10% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty, compared with over 90% in the 19th century.

<comment><USER25> I agree that IP law needs an overhaul and I am not a fan of granting IP monopolies.

I think the rapid change in poverty levels may actually be due to globalism and off shoring. If the most basic of jobs are now done by overseas workers or immigrants, suddenly the quality of life in countries that are beneficiaries of that work increases. Imported food, mass production of goods on a grand scale. Cheap Walmart products made in China that even people on the poverty line can afford. This would not be possible without globalism. You could argue that capitalism and globalism go hand in hand, but again, I don't think capitalism necessarily leads to globalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's as if the author hasn't ever really encountered scientific precision.

Take this for example:

"Most of us constitute a property-less underclass only able to survive by servicing the needs of high earners."

Who is "us"? In the USA, over 60% of housing units are owner-occupied. Hardly property-less. Hyperbole much?

But then to presumably provide support for this, the author goes and cherry- picks something:

"A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that over the next 10 years the occupation that will add the most jobs is personal care aides, not health workers but aides who bathe and clean people. The dependence of the ruling class on the vast sector of servants..."

Could this BLS statistic be because the boomers, a large cohort, are getting old? The author makes the caregivers seem like servants to the "ruling class", not people taking care of the elderly who really do need the help.

Another example:

"Universal Basic Income is an untenable survivalist approach. It promises just enough to keep those in the hinterlands going and barely enough for urban renters to handover to their landlords."

Let's just dismiss UBI, a complex topic, with two sentences! Why prove anything when you can simply assert plausible-sounding things?

And then you have stuff like:

"Such groupings reproduce their lives in common, yet the commons they reproduce is necessarily small, local, and in some sense exclusive and elite, exclusive insofar as their numbers are necessarily limited, elite because the aspirations are culturally specific rather than widespread."

Huh? Am I just too dumb to understand?

I could probably find more examples.

There might be some interesting ideas in the article, but it's just obscured by all the BS.

<comment><USER28> >> In the USA, over 60% of housing units are owner-occupied

Does that include houses with mortgages? Because in my opinion if you're not really the owner until you've paid off your mortgage fully.

<comment><USER27> I'm sure it does. Your ownership is in proportion to equity. It's not as if your life situation suddenly changes when you make that last mortgage payment.

Your point makes me wonder if mortgages just had the effect of transferring rents from landlords over to banks.

<comment><USER28> In some sense yes, you're paying rent to your bank. But the difference is: with a landlord you would pay that rent indefinetely, with mortgage you pay it for 20-30 years and then the house becomes yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find the lack of consensus about anything in the comment here quite interesting too. Clearly nobody is on the same page let alone the right page whatever that may be.

</comment><comment><USER30> > Power law distributions are not inevitable. They can be stopped. But that > takes political will and the institutional power to implement it.

This sentence is busted for me. Power laws are inevitable and acknowledging this is the starting point to finding a solution. You can't fix it from within.

<comment><USER31> It wasn't too long ago that there was a power law in owning people. Somehow that inevitability is no longer with us.

It's almost like once we broke the political will of the slave owning class we removed the need for slaves too.

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure what "power law" you are referring to, although I suspect it's something like "the power of law". That's not the power law being referenced. Re: pareto principle. The idea that the Pareto principle can be up-ended or flattened is fantasy. All you can do is change the logarithmic scale or how you measure.

<comment><USER31> Yes, if you look up ownership statistics for slaves they indeed followed a power law, to the point where the majority of southern whites did not own a slave but felt having the option of owning one was worth starting a civil war over.

It also used to apply for numbers of wives before Christianity killed that particular power law.

Applying descriptive social statistics as prescriptive policy is idiocy.

<comment><USER32> I'm having trouble following.

>>> Power laws are inevitable and acknowledging this is the starting point to finding a solution.

>> It wasn't too long ago that there was a power law in owning people.

> if you look up ownership statistics for slaves they indeed followed a power > law,

Your first statement is incomplete, at best. Thank you for explaining. As it stands, not sure how that explanation applies to the assertion.

> Applying descriptive social statistics as prescriptive policy is idiocy.

Not sure what that has to do with the topic either. The issue is with the articles' assertion that you can avoid the power law via political will, akin to "equality in outcome" or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2081_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2081_\(film\))

Social statistics have to be taken into consideration, or solutions are broken conceptually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've begun to suspect that we're not in a capitalist society for a while. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber argues that a surprisingly large percentage (~34%) of workers don't believe their job even helps the company turn a profit. In a capitalist society this is something that shouldn't happen at scale; market efficiencies should theoretically eliminate all jobs that don't help companies turn a profit.

I've had a suspicion that we're trending towards a feudal structure, with managers as minor lords, companies as countries, and CEO as a modern king. It's not a perfect analogy, but it does explain why our culture doesn't seem to be doing things that a capitalist society should do.

<comment><USER34> Oh we're in a capitalist society alright. This is exactly where capitalism leads to, and it has been foreseen a long time ago by forgotten and hated economists. This is just an attempt to clear capitalism's name by calling the negative effects of capitalism something else than capitalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", by a bloke named Goldstein, may have something to say about "neofeudalism", but I haven't been able to find more a few fragmented chapters...

</comment><comment><USER36> Neofeudalism is only possible in an agrarian society, or if your income is digging stuff out of the ground.

Industrialized societies quickly tear themselves apart when you need an educated workforce, and intelligent consumers.

A society of serfs will only consume the bare minimum, stagnating technological progress, ask the chinese about gunpowder and naval force projection.

Unlikely for the US to enter Neofeudalism when we are entering an age of great power competition.

You only get to keep your power if you "bribe" your workers enough to help you.

<comment><USER37> > You only get to keep your power if you "bribe" your workers enough to help > you.

This is largely a misunderstanding of historical systems of discipline. When the enclosures started to happen, serfs were booted from their land, and were coerced into working for early capitalists at threat of subjective violence (branding, beating, &c., if caught begging) or objective violence (starvation).

It's understood that the states armed bodies of men, under feudalism and neofeudalism, don't care about you. So what is to stop a reversion to the level of subjugation seen by English serfs many centuries ago? You're free to go look up cops wearing, "I CAN breathe," t-shirts and take from that what you will.

These bribes you mention, although an accurate retelling of American history through westward expansion and imperial expansion, are directly threatened by the faltering american hegemony.

<comment><USER38> These systems of discipline were indeed quite real, but they were strongly associated with the mercantile system which was pre industrial revolution. ISTM that parent comment is still correct wrt. industrial and even more so wrt. post-industrial (service-based, contemporary) economies.

<comment><USER37> > These systems of discipline were indeed quite real, but they were strongly > associated with the mercantile system which was pre industrial revolution.

Okay, so post industrial revolution domination is what you want: Blair Mountain. Even more relevant? Literally today as America shovels an underpaid mass of it's citizens into the jaws of a pandemic so that a labor aristocracy can resume their bloomin' onions, onto the beach, and back into movie theatres.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This seems like a really good companion article to the other top story on HN right now talking about Doordash [1].

Specifically, we're living in an era where companies are so flush with capital that the intent isn't even to make money. It's to corner a market so that they can have monopolistic behavior over it. In a capitalistic economy companies like Doordash, Grubhub or Ubereats simply _should not exist_ because the way they operate is contrary to how capitalism is supposed to perform.

So if companies like that can thrive, the only answer is that capitalism is broken.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23216852)

<comment><USER40> On the contrary, it's a classic capitalist move, from Rockefeller to Bill Gates. The so called tollbooth strategy. Create a choke point and extract revenue.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-billionaire- strat...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-billionaire-strategy- tollbooth-rockefeller-warren-buffet-2019-11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It sounds like box-standard capitalism to me. Maybe it'll be neo-feudalism when they force the peons to use their lord's platforms, like China with the Great Firewall. But that could also simply be described as state capitalism and protectionism.

<comment><USER42> Interestingly enough, Chomsky asserts that what we have now is State-Sponsored Capitalism in the US. I think that's more accurate than neo-feudalism, personally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> We are entering the world of shadowrun. Not good.

</comment><comment><USER44> As long as generational money exists capitalism never ends.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't think we can call the current system something different until the ideology of the middle class changes. (I think in society, the power of upper class over middle class is maintained by ideology, while power over lower class is maintained by force).

There is still by and large belief in meritocracy and American dream. Contrast that with feudalism, people in the middle class had the ideology of the divine, unchanged order.

So I think the future is still open because it will crucially depend on what ideology will be taken by middle classes. They might as well adopt a social democratic ideology again, as the did in the reaction to late 19th century capitalism in the Europe and U.S.

</comment><comment><USER46> This of the converse - Capitalism: the the weird case in the history of Feudalism.

Feudalism seems to be a natural order. Look at corporations - they are all feudal hierarchies internally.

So what is capitalism among the natural order of feudalism?

Technology of industrial revolution allowed new generation of aristocracy (refer to as capitalists) to replace old generation of aristocracy (landed gentry).

It's more likely that we have regressed back to natural feudal order than that we are experiencing some funky next stage of capitalism, since there were no major wars or societal conflicts recently.

</comment><comment><USER47> Books like this combine bad history with analysis what is happening now. This amounts to a badly researched opinion piece at most.

> Communism was supposed to come after capitalism and it's not here, so > doesn't that mean we are still in capitalism?

Ah, no sorry. That is not correct. That Communism was supposed to come after Capitalism was a believe held by guess who, COMMUNISTS. And that believe was based on a bunch books by a German philosopher who neither had the correct view of history, and then he drew even wronger conclusions from it. Basically making up Communism as a Utopian so he had a reason to criticism Capitalism, as Capitalism was clearly better then anything else to have an alternative he had to invent a utopia. That worked out great for everybody.

> If we've rejected strict historical determinism

How about were reject historical determinism itself?

> The economic scale and impact of these tech super giants, or, overlords, is > greater than that of most so-called sovereign states. Evgeny Morozov > describes their dominance as a "hyper-modern form of feudalism."

Except that tech giants and other big companies don't have global armies that enact genocide on other nations. Or care what you do with your life, what religion you are and so on. Or force you in any way to use their service of the alternative produce from another service, or the open source version. Or are in any way even close to as powerful as a nation state. So except for all the things that really matter, its the same.

> he result, then, of free choice, growth, and preferential attachment is > hierarchy, power law distributions where those at the top have vastly more > than those at the bottom.

And those on Top then get replaced by something else when a new fade happens comes by. IBM will dominate everything. Microsoft will dominate everything. Netflix will dominate everything. MySpace will dominate everything.

Basic Market Process Theory.

These structures are only there as long as people want them and they are continually reshaped. And they are continuously and dynamically reshaped because people have free choice and the providers have no real powerful way to enforce them. The only power they have is to say 'use this service completely or not at all'. Will governments had the power to say, use this service or we kill your children.

> Power law distributions are not inevitable. They can be stopped. But that > takes political will and the institutional power to implement it.

So we need government centralization against the peoples will to create rules to stop people from voluntary centralization around what they want.

> Quinn Slobodian's Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of > Neoliberalism documents the neoliberal strategy of undermining the authority > of the nation-state over its economy in the interest of advancing global > trade.

How horrible, they power is taken away from dictators and government burocrates who have done such a brilliant job organizing their economics.

We should make it as easy as possible for dictators to systematically exploit their people and natural resources and put all power in the government. That is much preferable to people being 'controlled' by the evils of global trade.

> maintaining the competitiveness of national economies has become "a top > policy concern."

What, being efficient has become a 'top policy concern' for governments, how horrifying. We need to stop this and restore systematic inefficiency.

> Competitiveness has replaced competition and growth as a state goal ... the > dismantling of monopolies but "to aid specific economic actors — those who > are best positioned to perform well in the global competition for profit."

This is just a false. States sometimes push some industries, but mostly because of geo-strategy, not for profits. In actuality those industries most heavily pushed are often not those that produce those profits.

Its the opposite, those that produce profits, finance those that geo-strategy things your country should have.

And honestly, if your great fear is 'the state bureaucracy' will perfectly figure out what companies can be the most profitable and smartly invest in those, you are ignorant of all history.

> "public authority handpicks the companies on which to bestow this > privilege."

This is the same old fear that people had in the 70s about Japan. Find a new slant, this one is old and clearly wrong.

Ignoring that pretty much all of these problems have existed for a long time and the solutions actually do exist already and have been discussed since the 1800s. Those states that do a good job implementing those solutions are still doing well, and others don't.

> Digital platforms are the new watermills, their billionaire owners the new > lords, and their thousands of workers and billions of users the new > peasants.

I really do feel like peasant who was not allowed to leave his village under threat of death because Google provides free Gmail. This is so incredibly stupid and ignorant it actually blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER48> Both companies and individuals are being subsidized or bailed out by central banks and governments. Governments spend 35-45 percent of GDP. That is fascism.

Coven is a statist. While he calls himself a libertarian, his recommendations usually don't involve les# government - very unlibertarian.

</comment><comment><USER49> Capitalism IS neofeudalism. Even the word 'Capitalism' was a joke making fun of the fact that it was a new form of feudalism.

There is a long long history of this criticism going back all the way to the French Revolution.

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't agree with the main idea of the article, communism never worked, we always have had capitalism and always will be. Unless some socialism happens or something in the near future nothing will change. Also people think technology is good, I don't think that. But imho I can't survive in the woods alone

</comment><comment><USER50> > A property-less underclass will survive by servicing the needs of high > earners as personal assistants, trainers, child-minders, cooks, cleaners, et > cetera.

People have been predicting this since Marx, and they've been wrong every single time. It's a better time to be a peasant today than at any time history, and it keeps getting better. The chattering class sure does love to chatter about this though.

<comment><USER51> >> It's a better time to be a peasant today than at any time history, and it keeps getting better.

This is quite literally the "99% of 'poor' people have refrigerators" argument popularized by Fox News.

You should find better sources of information.

<comment><USER50> > This is quite literally the "99% of 'poor' people have refrigerators" > argument popularized by Fox News.

> You should find better sources of information.

The factual claim I made is true. My sources of information are just fine, so you must be objecting to something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> There is no capitalism. First it is an old idea before pubic goods like knowledge and IT comes dominant. Second it is agenda setting as even then and now we have mix economy - market, gov, community (people actually know each other), social (people mostly don't) and cyber (the link is partial both community and social. That is a reason why you have sometimes very similar act by total different regime. Third each life has both most important strategy at that time at that place for that person. All politics are local and you alone (even though it is about you and the world or your group with the world).

There is no ...</comment>


Cameras Came to the Newsroom - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/surveillance-cameras-work.html <comment><USER2> UK: " [https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/surveillance-the-legal- iss...](https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/surveillance-the-legal-issues-of- cctv-use-at-work/)

\- If an employer wishes to use CCTV in the workplace, the ICO must be notified as to why they intend to use it. This is part of the registration process for a data controller under the DPA. An employer cannot then use the information collected for any other reason. For example, if the organisation is using CCTV to monitor crime, it cannot then use it to monitor staff. Employers should, before using surveillance cameras, carry out an impact assessment, decide if alternatives are possible and only go ahead if the use of cameras meets a legitimate aim.

\- Staff must be informed that they may be recorded and where cameras are located. To make this undisputable the employer should use clear and visible signs.

\- Levels of CCTV surveillance in work must be proportionate to the reasonable expectation of privacy. In certain areas with a higher level of expected privacy, such as near toilets, changing rooms, kitchen and break areas, it is unlikely to be acceptable to have cameras.

Maintaining integrity in these areas is essential. Employers need to be aware that staff can request to see the recordings kept of them by making a subject access request, and the data must be provided no longer than 40 days after a request is received. "

It seems that the UK law is reasonable. (At least for a country that has a high level of surveillance)

<comment><USER3> > _An employer cannot then use the information collected for any other reason. > For example, if the organisation is using CCTV to monitor crime, it cannot > then use it to monitor staff._

> _Employers need to be aware that staff can request to see the recordings > kept of them by making a subject access request_

The second kind of undermines the interest sought to be protected by the first. I can imagine nefarious reasons for wanting to see the same frames of footage that you happen to be in.

What function does this access serve anyway?

<comment><USER4> > What function does this access serve anyway?

Oversight

<comment><USER3> Oversight how? If they're not supposed to have certain recordings, why would they then admit to having them when you ask?

<comment><USER5> The process betrays that type of evasion. Usually this stuff is part of a broader system, and there's evidence of whatever omission is taking place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think not uproaring is a very rational response to the threat model:

\- You already have little expectation of privacy at work. Your computer has a sysadmin account for the company, and probably _not_ a sysadmin account for you. Your Springsteen tickets are logged and potentially cached in the printer's memory. At most places, coworkers can see what you're doing in person. So there's no strong reason to expect more crackdown on occasional personal use of work time/resources than there has been in the past.

\- There are easy options (especially for people who get an NYT salary) for private work and private computing: doing things at home, using your cell phone (not on the corporate network, no corporate login, and probably too small to see on the cameras), taking a quick break to a nearby cafe, printing your tickets at FedEx, etc. (Many of those are much more anonymous than possible at work, e.g., leave your phone at your desk, email to email@example.com from a throwaway account, and pay in coins.)

\- The stated rationale—responding to violent attacks—makes sense, is quite worthwhile individually in expectation (even a slight reduction in your chance of getting killed is quite valuable), and if believed implies insufficient staffing to effect a panopticon. There's probably just one security guard downstairs, at most.

\- There's other personally beneficial reasons to want cameras at work, e.g., helping you (whichever side you find yourself on!) in harassment claims. In particular I'd actively want low-resolution cameras, enough to identify people but not enough to read standard-sized text on paper or screen, covering every office or conference room with a door that closes.

My own workplace has cameras everywhere other than the bathrooms. We're told this at orientation, and also told that nobody is actively watching them. This seems totally fine to me. If there were security cameras in the bathrooms / privacy rooms / etc., or in my apartment, or in hotel rooms, or anything else, that would be quite different.

<comment><USER7> \- as evidenced by this article, and some of the posts here, people who haven't gotten used to permanent surveillance do have an expectation of privacy. And cameras are different than people watching you because it's one- way, and at scale.

\- allowing people to do minor personal tasks at work is expected in a professional career such as journalism. It's not a sweatshop, peoples' productivity doesn't neatly correlate with hours worked anyway. And you're expected to be readily available outside of work hours anyway, so this should cut both ways.

\- shooting happen within just a few minutes and the effect of cameras is debatable, especially if there is no armed and trained security.

\- The NYT is a sort of high value target. I would not expect to get into their offices without proper ID.

\- Is there some epidemic of false harassment claims everyone is worried about? As far as I know there was one case that had consequences at the Times (Glenn Thrush) and he admitted to the behavior. Also like 90% of harassment is verbal, which cameras don't capture. The rest seems to happen in hotel rooms and bars, which these cameras also don't address.

<comment><USER8> > And you're expected to be readily available outside of work hours anyway

Really? I'd never agree to that. It's definitely not universal, certainly not tolerated in France for example I'm sure.

<comment><USER9> Almost everywhere, including as far as I know in France, such limitations tends to disappear for anyone who can control their own working hours to at least a certain extent (whether or not that control is _genuine_ is often a matter of contention) to make up for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I was younger, I had a boss that had security cameras around our small office. When he was at home (which was half the week), he would watch us through the cameras.

These cameras also had two-way audio, so I would be having a conversation with my co-worker and he would butt into the conversation..through the camera.

I only lasted about 3 months before I quit. There is still an active, private, Facebook group with ex-employees of this company. The boss was so horrible..it's almost like people needed a support group.

<comment><USER11> Same but different tyrant-boss but no two way audio.

We didn't have gigabit broadband back then, therefore whenever the boss was on the cameras the internet went slow. Therefore we always knew that if the internet was slow we had to be on best behaviour.

We never told him how we knew when he was watching or let him know that we knew, it was an office wide open secret amongst us though. Funny times.

The off topic highlight was when a young French girl was being interviewed. I happened to be in earshot and I almost fainted. Straight up she was asked about her plans to start a family. They didn't want to hire someone who might cost them maternity pay down the line, hence the opening question that brazenly got straight into the sexism. She took the job.

I too only lasted three months before I quit.

<comment><USER12> you should have hacked the camera drivers, a-la _Speed_ , to show the same footage of people diligently staring at screens with their hands neatly placed on the home row.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the name of security, Big Blue decided to add keycards to go through every single door. It's understandable. They first added the card readers over the span of months, getting people used to them even if they weren't functional. Then they added the turnstile at the entrance. It's a good idea to allow only authenticated people into your building.

What they didn't take into account was the number of people that go in and out of the building every single day. Imagine a 12 story building with at least a hundred people on each floor on the average day. And they had to be funnelled through a single turnstile. Then there is the elevators.

One morning, everything was activated at once. The line backed all the way outside the building and wrapped around. You could spend up to twenty minutes to get into the building. Then once you are in, you have to wait for the elevators. You have to scan your keycard to get to your floor. Now try doing that with 30 people in the elevator and they all want to go to a different floor.

"Can you press 11 for me?"

They couldn't, because their card only works for the third floor.

In less than a week they shut everything down and went back to the designing board. They had to rebuild the reception to add 4 turnstile. The elevators keycard readers were never reactivated again.

I started taking stairs and never looked back.

<comment><USER14> In the buildings I've seen with that kind of security, the elevator lobby on each floor was unsecured, and then you had a door to the secure area.

Of course, during high-traffic hours people just hold the door for each other, defeating the purpose.

<comment><USER15> That's better for security as well. Elevators with keycards have to have overrides for firefighters.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBERTNSuZR8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBERTNSuZR8) is an interesting talk on the subject.

<comment><USER16> Or just declare them firefigter unsafe by making it carry less than 250kg at a time (rescue via elevators an elevator capable of at least four persons at a time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cameras were installed at a previous company where I worked. This was just an office - there was nothing to see anyone doing other than sitting at desks and walking between desks.

The management told the staff they were only going to be on after working hours, to catch thieves. I noticed a week or two later that some young, male, technical members of staff, including the one who did the installation, were in the server room watching staff on the monitors, laughing at people's appearances and talking about the sexual acts they would like to perform with some of those visible on the monitor.

I reported this to management, who said they'd fix it. A week later, the same was happening. Again I reported, again it carried on. Then I saw that (male) management were using the web viewer from their desks to watch the women in the office (selecting particular views) from the comfort of their desks with monitors towards the windows. Which are reflective, so they weren't as private as they perhaps thought.

I told one of the women concerned. She complained to the same management - they told her they were off during work hours (which they weren't) and nothing happened.

I kept spotting them sitting watching the staff from their cosy corners, so I logged into the system (it wasn't hard to find the credentials) and reconfigured it so it wouldn't appear on the network any more.

It took them a few days to factory reset the box and they were off again. I left shortly afterwards - the general attitude towards employees being one of my main reasons.

<comment><USER18> That is absolutely horrible. What country was this? Isn't that illegal?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems like a security issue in addition to a privacy issue.

If these cameras are hacked, now you can watch someone entering their passwords, working on stories pre-release, communicating with sources, etc.

This makes the CCTV system a very juicy target.

<comment><USER20> Security is a trade-off in everything. Someone can hack the laptops too, does that mean laptops should be avoided?

<comment><USER21> Given laptops are interacted with directly, a compromise is more likely to be noticed and prevention more likely to be in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This smells an awful lot like classism to me, and so do a lot of the comments. It's gross that people would be okay with and even supportive of monitoring poor/blue collar work environments but suddenly educated wealthy people are being treated the same as poor people and it's a big problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> All people considering leaking evidence of unlawful behavior by powerful entities like governments should take note: The New York times is much more risky an outlet than it used to be.

If someone wants to find the source of a leak published at the NYT they probably only need to hack or seize the DVRs recording those cameras.

<comment><USER24> The article mentioned that the video is kept locally and not stored anywhere in the cloud, so if you want to hack it you're going to need physical access to the building. And if you have that then NYT has a whole lot of other problems it should be dealing with before worrying about the cameras.

(besides, I very much doubt many people leak to the NYT by walking into the office and announcing their presence. They do it online or send things in by mail in the stories I've read)

<comment><USER25> The point is the government can force the NY Times to hand it over. And they will. First amendment protection for sources applies to the journalists but not so much third party data.

<comment><USER24> I'm still not sure exactly what they'd be handing over that would be of note. Confidential sources surely wouldn't meet with journalists in the office, it would be a crazy risk to have them walk through the front door and keep them in view of the entire newsroom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Specifically to desensitize people. "Look! Cameras are ok. Everyone should stop worrying."

</comment><comment><USER27> The part of this that worries me is that journalists will often have embargoed, confidential (classified?) information open on their monitors from time to time. Obviously this doesn't matter in the part of the newsroom that reviews restaurants, but imagine this at the Guardian or Washington Post during the snowden leaks etc. It's much easier to seize a DVR containing videos of all the secret communications than to get a source some other way... I hope most news outlets that deal with truly sensitive data have something akin to SCIFs, but you never know what pops up in someone's cubicle...

</comment><comment><USER28> People are right to focus on the downsides, but I do want to intrude one consideration: Newsrooms have already been the target of attack. There are people out there with skills and weapons, who view journalists as "the target".

Maybe one day, the security camera footage will be materially useful?

</comment><comment><USER29> If you work from home you decide how many cameras are in your workplace. Just sayin'

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't anything you do on a company issued machine or network monitored as is? I think the question is not whether or not your activity is monitored but whether or not you work for an employer who cares that you occasionally browse Facebook, in which case the problem is your employer and not the fact that you're activity is monitored.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've always assumed that everything associated with a workplace was under surveillance. I'm not sure why anybody would be surprised or upset about security cameras. A bizarrely lukewarm take from the NYT here.

<comment><USER32> I guess the question is: is it for security or for monitoring?

If it's the second, that's ilegal in a lot of countries.

<comment><USER33> The article implies that the cameras were installed against terrorists. Some people are pretty happy to throw their privacy away in this illusory fight against terrorism. Needless to say, the terrorists have already won, we're slowly giving up everything that separates us from them.

<comment><USER34> Unfortunately there is a good reason to believe that organizations like NYT could be targets. This should not be compared to, say, the Patriot Act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So, nothing a spray can with black paint couldn't have fixed, but let's blog about it instead.

<comment><USER36> Destroying office equipment seems like a good way to become unemployed. Not everything has to be absolutes; before burning the building down, you could just ask "hey, what's with the cameras".

<comment><USER35> Normally I'd agree, and there are plenty of work sites where cameras can work in the employees' favour, but for a journalist of a large respectable newspaper?

At the very least they would have had something to write about, because this article is lukewarm at best and feels like a complainy blog post.

Also, getting fired at a news paper for blacking out the cameras in the vicinity of your desk as a protest because a new security chief wants to feel important is probably a blessing in disguise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd much rather have a security camera over my desk than a manager's head hanging over my shoulder. Yes, there's a privacy tradeoff, but for me personally it would be worth it to cut down on workplace drama. No more he- said she-said fights that end in both people being terminated. No more false accusations of sexual harassment or racism, and a lot fewer genuine instances of both. I'm especially in favor of them if the footage is archived and only viewed if there's a specific need to, as opposed to being available live.

<comment><USER38> Do those things happen to you a lot? None of them have ever happened to me. The security should match the risk; I'll keep going without a camera, but perhaps you could simply have your own camera recording yourself all day, if you need this protection.

<comment><USER37> Not to me, but they have to coworkers. We have a lot of seasonal low-wage workers whose lives are...interesting. There was a non-fatal shooting in the parking lot several years back between a woman and her ex-boyfriend.</comment></comment></comment>


The subtleties in outsourcing using RentACoder - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cubeofm.com/the-subtleties-in-outsourcing-using-rentacode <comment><USER2> I've had experience using online sites to source jobs, and I think this advice is right on.

Here are some summary points, generalized away from rent-a-coder:

* don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD)

* be clear but not ominous in your job description, and include visual mocks if at all possible

* don't try and be secretive - no one wants your dumb idea anyways

* make sure someone has a decent reputation on the site you use

* keep track of the progress of the product and keep in touch with the coder, but don't be overbearing

* be somewhat flexible with the deliverable - aim for perfect but accept done

* test the code thoroughly and request fixes in one shot, but don't conflate new features with bug fixes or no one will be happy

The only points I would modify are:

* Job requests can include bullets, but don't be overly fine-grained.

* You can in fact build relationships with outsourcers via rent-a-coder (MTurk, 99Designs, etc), and you should - this will lead to much better long-term work. A good way to get this started is an unexpected bonus.

* Don't ever screw someone on work. This is just karmically bad. They live in Eastern Europe and are poor. You live in America and are rich. I think the best way is to give someone a piece of work (5-10 hours worth), ask them for a bill, and proceed from there. If the work sucks or is over-billed, you pay and move on. Otherwise, you can give them more work.

<comment><USER3> _don't hire Americans to do commodity work (i.e. PHP CRUD)_

This is why Americans are saying they are from overseas to get the jobs. If the price is the same, what does it matter where they are from? Speaking a common primary language and being in the same time zone has value.

When I offshore work, I send an email and have to wait until the next day to get a response. When the worker is in my timezone and I get quick responses, the project success rate improves.

I agree with the other points and have been on both sides of the payer/worker transaction.

<comment><USER4> If the prices are the same, the American probably isn't as skilled/experienced.

<comment><USER5> have you hired anyone from overseas? have you hired an American for overseas wages?

I've done both, and the amount of money a person can charge has a lot less to do with skill and experience than you think. Several people who worked for me for sustenance wages now make more money than I do because other people noticed that they are pretty good.

Selling yourself is a skill, and it has very little overlap with the skills required to be a good Engineer.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like the very definition of gaining experience to me. :)

I'm sure there are exceptions, but on aggregate I'd be shocked if you can find Americans to build something for you as, say, equivalently skilled Romanians. There are millions of reasons you'd elect to pay more for the Americans, but the localized standards of living at a given rate are going to keep Romanians cheaper at the equivalent skill levels.

That said, it sounds like you have more experience with this than I do, so this may be that one time in 2010 I'm simply wrong. ;)

<comment><USER5> As for experience, yeah, these people were more valuable after working for me than before; but at least some of these people had decent paying jobs before, then lost them in the downturn, lost hope, and ended up doing menial jobs.

One was the classic example; this guy happened to be my roommate at one point. He was obviously brilliant, but he practically radiated self-doubt. He had this slouch that took a few inches of his height and make him look a little like he thought you were going to hit him.

But he was obviously brilliant, and had worked as a C/C++ programmer for a while, he even had some open-source code out there. But he lost his job during the .com crash and had been subsisting since on savings, menial jobs and an occasional elance-type gig.

oh man, and his lack of confidence absolutely killed him there. He had this one client who'd call him up for hours every night and kept adding features and changing requirements. He said he made $2/hr on the gig when he said he was quitting. At that point I think he was into me some for rent, so I offered to hire him at $40/hr. I called up his customer and explained that I'd get the work done for $60/hr, but he couldn't talk to my friend, and that he'd be paying for phone, time, too (I was, well, quite a bit younger at the time. 22? 23? and thought $60/hr was a fine wage for yelling at/getting yelled at by some asshole. I was just figuring out the whole 'if you are arrogant and aggressive, people give you what you want' thing.) The job got done, and everyone got paid, and my ego got stroked. (I mean, yeah, the wages were not awesome, but eh, when you are that age, it's certainly a living wage)

Really, once you got down to coding, my friend's apparent self-doubt evaporated like it was just an illusion. "I don't write segmentation faults" he insisted. But he did really badly in interviews. But my point was that he was really good before he worked for me; but that fact was obscured by the year or two of downtime after the .com crash. My friend eventually got noticed by a real recruiter, and got a full-time job shortly thereafter. he currently works for some compiler company or something making rather a lot more money than I do. (more than I was making when I left my full-time job... my current business pays me, ah, mostly in equity.)

obviously, one anecdote does not equal statistical significance; I'm just saying, I've seen people with experience fall behind in the 'interview arms race' and end up underemployed, to the detriment of their potential employers. Because it is so hard to sort the really good people from the mediocre or the useless, there is huge value that can be had correcting the market's mistakes.

<comment><USER4> After reading this, I'm pretty sure we generally agree but I didn't really say much in my first comment. Anything approaching full time work is really going to work differently than Rent-A-Coder style projects. I would expect the costs for my mythical Romanians to approach the costs of an American like your roommate, though their actual hourly rate might be cheaper.

I will try to be more explicit next time I make a throwaway one-line comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Extremely well-written, concise-but-detailed, no-bullshit guide to a process that I have shied away from because it seemed to involve a lot of mysterious complexities.

The author's recommendations provide extremely reasonable advice to follow in any project management endeavor. He emphasizes an assertive but respectful approach, taking the needs of both sides of the project into consideration and outlines a wide range of practical details that you could only know about from having a high degree of first-hand familiarity with this service.

I'm saving this and hope to draw on it soon, now that it doesn't seem quite so daunting. Thanks for posting.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article. Some inaccuracies: \- "Rentacoder does not have skilled developers from western countries. What it has are freelancers from countries like Romania, India, Pakistan and Russia."

Nope. It has developers from all over(I live in Lebanon). Freelance programmers are simply programmers that don't work exclusively for one client. I am guessing you don't mean this in a bad way...

\- "The availability of particular skills is very limited."

I started my freelance career on RAC 4 years ago. 6 months into it, i was taking on bigger projects using some of the technologies you mentioned(I'm a python guy but also do C# and Java...). Roughly 8 months into it, i was working with start ups and people were contacting me directly even though my rates are not the cheapest.

I no longer look for gigs on RAC, but its certainly a viable lively hood if you're picky with the projects you take on. The trick is to always be honest and decent, the way you should behave in real life.

I also found it funny that some Indian companies started outsourcing projects to me.

<comment><USER8> I'm from Latin America, and just recently I started using sites like RentACoder/oDesk/Elance. I've found that it is extremely hard for me to get jobs on these sites, especially since I'm not a webdesigner (I'm a C/C++/Python/Java guy). What tips and strategies do you recommend that increase the likelihood of being selected for a job?

<comment><USER9> A friend of mine needs a small project done (videocompression and storage with a webbased frontend) and has asked me where to get it done. I referred him to rentacoder and elance, but I'd much rather refer him to someone from HN. If you're interested (or if anyone else is for that matter) you can send me a mail and I'll get you in touch with the guy. My mail is max (at) maximise.dk

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is my favorite genre of HN post: news you can use backed by real experience. I don't necessarily agree with all of the advice but a few bits in there are eyeopening for me. (For example, I had never known that the newsletter was a key channel for getting your project seen. That's the sort of non-obvious insight that is worth its weight in gold.)

Thanks Max.

<comment><USER7> Well, not just newsletters. I still subscribe to the RAC RSS feed even though I haven't done any RAC work for quite a while. It was easier to just skim the headlines in my reader and tag the ones i replied to for later reference.

It has nothing to do with the newsletter. But setting too low a price gives the message that you're not serious about the work or are just trying to find someone to take advantage of(and you will if that's what you're looking for).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a super article. It is actually really good reading too for anybody that manages programmers and/or designers, outside the context of rent-a-coder.

Things like scope creep and how to return beta reviews are really spelled out well.

</comment><comment><USER12> Suppose I have a real company, and I want to expense or capitalize this. Does anyone have experience with IRS rules on this? What if the guy is in the U.S.? Do I have to send a 1099 to every coder I rent in this fashion to protect myself and my company?

<comment><USER13> I used oDesk and found that because it is a corporation, I don't need to send them a 1099. And, because all the people work for you through the company, you don't have to do anything special.

<comment><USER12> thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "For C++ and more complex projects, you can pick from the U.S and Europe." – I never thought programming languages where area-dependent.

<comment><USER15> People feel more comfortable giving out simple work in something like PHP to cheaper countries which in some cases can come back to bite you with more complex stuff as a decent size C++ project can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What size project would you typically get done for the $450-$550 mentioned?

I'm intrigued that this might be a way to get some small projects done I've been putting off done (like a simple shopping cart app with a few specific functions, that I just can't get interested in.)

<comment><USER17> For $250 you could get your shopping cart app done. Think of about $200 - $400 for a weeks work (fulltime) by a competent programmer. Then estimate how long it will take him and put that price.

<comment><USER18> Wow, $200 a week for 40 hours. That works out to $5 an hour. Is that a livable wage even in Eastern Europe?

I think I need to find another trade.

<comment><USER7> I highly doubt it is.

$200 a week can definitely get you a shopping cart. But so can $10. And I am not sure how well it will work.

Usually for that kind of money you'd get someone customizing or re-branding an off-the-shelf open source one or some programmer trying his hand out at writing it from scratch. Use of open source components is fine and probably the way to go but its not ethical if you don't tell your client that you're doing so otherwise use a framework.

I'd say something like $500 should get you a shopping cart with the regular functionality. Probably $200 for customizing an existing off-the-shelf one.

Of course these are just my opinions and experience, so they might be completely off target.

<comment><USER15> You get what you pay for, just in terms of what the freelancer perceives to be decent money. Paying someone from a cheaper country $5 an hour will probably give the same kind of hacky late rush job that giving someone local $10 an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great stuff and worth referring back to when you initiate a project.

My experiences as a hiring manager have been from having a dude stiff me for $800 of work, to hiring a full-time developer I found on rentacoder that became a personal friend.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone comment on which site is best? I recognize this might lead to more traffic on your site, but it would help to understand why one would use rentacoder over getafreelancer...

</comment><comment><USER5> wow, this is really interesting to hear; See, I thought that nearly all work on these type sites (my experience has been with e-lance, many years ago) had mechanisms for paying people through the site, but from what I saw, only the first transaction was done that way. After that, the contractor and contractee worked directly, so it's interesting to read that some people found enough value in the structure provided by the site to continue using it after meeting a person.

<comment><USER7> Well, some people just use it for payment later on if they don't want the hassle of wire transfers and such.

For RAC, they used to charge 10% of the transaction value so it could build up. My experience was that most people contacted me off site after our first project but sometimes still used RAC for payment because it was easier for them(I can't use paypal). Although they were nice enough to take on the 10% charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know of RentACoder style sites for signal processing?

<comment><USER7> You can always try and post that on RAC and see if anyone bites, but i think you'd find more people who work on that on dedicated forums or groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> After some experience outsourcing through RAC, I've concluded that paying more for local developers and designers who buy into and understand your product and business model, speak the same language, and share your culture, is often worth it.

Unless your product is extremely straightforward and doesn't need to be flexible in the future, there is a huge hidden cost when your developers aren't on the same page. In my experience, the result is far from "agile."</comment>


More 50%-off Amazon Gift Cards - <AUTHOR> http://local.amazon.com/chicago

<comment><AUTHOR> Should work for other cities (not that city would matter).</comment>


Robot Journalism Is Great for Journalists - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/why-robot-journalism-is-great-for-journalists.html <comment><USER2> "Robot journalism" is good for journalism in the same way that outsourcing is good for programmers and engineers: drudge code entry that needs to be done can be identified and contracted out at a much lower rate, therefore saving the in-house programmers to do innovative, business-expanding work.

However, that reality doesn't always follow, depending on the dynamics of the business and the forward-thinkingness of management. And this is in engineering/technical companies that are making viable amounts of money. Will the managers who run cratering news companies have the same foresight? Not going to hold my breath.

(note: I fully support the automation of writing/observation of digital feeds...I'm just skeptical that the journalism industry will apply it either efficiently or in a way that benefits their human workers)

<comment><USER3> _> > "Journalism is becoming a more highly skilled job," Doctor said. "Simply showing up, in the Woody Allen sense — being able to read a press release or interview a single person, and write up a story that is understandable in 750 words — that's not going to be enough."_

Just wondering where these higher skilled journalists are going to learn their trade? Longer in j-school? So more debt?

The OA was I suspect given routine business reports to write as a cub reporter to get him used to deadlines, structures, systems, house style &c. Same with minor league sports reports in provincial newspapers in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The next attack on journalism might be great curation, not robots. Why ? because no single human has the capability to write the best story in any given case.Add to that the capabilities of unpaid bloggers, industry insiders and the like, you get a serious threat to journalism.

Alas ,there are no great content curation tools AFAIK.But when there will be...

<comment><USER5> Can you expand on this? What would great curation/curation tools look like? I feel like I agree with this insight, but don't know much about the field.

<comment><USER4> Giving you articles that are fun,strongly insightful and 100% right almost every time, on your exact interests is the goal of a great curation.Bonus points for short an to the point writeup when appropriate.

How do you do it ? not sure yet. The best that i can do today to do is constantly weeding out my blogs/twitter subscriptions. But i'm far from that goal.

<comment><USER6> > ... on your exact interests is the goal of a great curation

I am not so sure this is a good idea. It will trap people in bubbles, where they will find only an echo chamber for their existing opinions and never have them challenged. It will insulates them from serendipity and it will prevent them from exploring, acquiring new interests and perspectives and so on.

<comment><USER7> People keep worrying about filter bubbles, which is a rational but misguided fear. Having written some of these systems (Google News), it really does not happen the way people imagine it would.

At the end of the day, the factors that define a good curation framework do not actually create a filter bubble. People love serendipitously discovering new content, and the optimizing for the "best article" does not actually optimize for a singular viewpoint. As a result, any curation system that produces a filter bubble will not actually feel as good of a system to the end user, and will not get as much adoption.

<comment><USER6> Chris, in my view the problem with this reasoning is that you are assuming that people are good at noticing that they are inside a filter bubble.

I have a less optimistic perspective: I suspect people want to feel like they are being exposed to diverse information while not having their beliefs or preferences challenged. This makes sense, considering that our cognitive resources are limited and being exposed to information that contradicts our beliefs is a psychologically painful experience.

So I claim that this is a cultural problem that companies have no incentive to solve. I am not claiming that I have a solution, nor do I endorse regulation or (shudder) government intervention on cultural dynamics.

I suspect that we more and more belong to tribes that are divided across intelectual instead of geographical lines. Surely I have more in common with you than most of my neighbours (just going by the fact that we are both participating in the same niche forum). The problem is that nation states are still geographical and have to arrive at some democratic consensus to avoid tyranny. The avenues by which such consensus can be achieved are getting narrower. Maybe we will transcend nations, maybe we will devolve into tyranny. I am hoping for the former, but become worried when I see people believing that the problem doesn't exist.

I try do as I preach, so I am open to having my opinion challenged :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a totally different note this startup, Automated Insights, is based in Durham NC (where my startup Spreedly is also based). There are all the elements of a great startup scene; a clustering of talent, a decent incubator that does two sessions per year at around $150K per startup, cheap real estate, excellent food and affordable living. The greater area has 3 good schools. There are numerous other startups here but I can't help but give a plug for what's happening as I know many developers here wrestle with work/life balance. Right now it's very good in Durham. Biggest drawback is lack of local seed funding but things like AngelList are making that less of an issue than a few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER9> Robot journalism isn't going to be great for journalists. Publications will quickly gravitate towards the content farm model where every article will be accompanied by 20 - 30 keyword permutations and no overhead for articles that don't pull social media traffic/shares/links. You can already see companies like Mashable pushing the limits of doing this by hand.

I wonder if/how Google will differentiate between automated news vs machine- generated spam?

<comment><USER10> > I wonder if/how Google will differentiate between automated news vs machine- > generated spam?

If history is any guide, I think this line will be more and more difficult to draw.

<comment><USER7> It's easier than you might think. Machines are, if nothing else, good at identifying things other machines have created.

People also often forget that Google doesn't just have to look at the page content to analyze something. Reader behavior, for example, can tell you a lot.

<comment><USER10> I'm not so sure about that. Machine curated news could easily be used as base for spam, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't see how this is useful. It's just converting some short table of statistics into an unnecessarily long paragraph in natural language.

<comment><USER12> Some people see tables of statistics and think, "AUGH! MATH!" Whereas the same information presented in natural language does not generate the same response.

I'm also assuming that the software can provide a little more context than just that sort of opening paragraph. If not, I agree with you that this isn't exactly earth-shattering software (then again, what is these days?).

<comment><USER13> Also a better format for text to speech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Whatever a robot can do, they can do a million times an hour.

Next we'll have robot comments on robot blogs. We already have impersonal birthday wishes on fb -- where you can make an app that automatically wishes happy birthday. And the recipient can install an app to automatically thank everyone. It's as I was half joking in the past -- guys will outsource their robots to have sex with their wives' robots.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if you got a large dataset of these short human written articles, and trained a generative model to produce them character by character. This was done on wikipedia: [https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/fourth.cgi](https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/fourth.cgi)

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes, but what about robot sensationalism? Do we have the technology to make something great for sensationalists?</comment>