Thread

Seattle City Council votes to ban surveillance pricing in sale of groceries

395 points · 229 comments · ortusdux

jsrozner · 1790181848 · focus · HN ↗
The best solution is a constitutional amendment that actually enshrines a right to privacy. Among other things, the retention, aggregation, correlation of any personal data should be illegal (including for commercial purposes). (Storage on behalf of users in encrypted form could be made OK. Could also be refined to support retention of data of the medical, legal, etc kind with the attendant non-admissibility protections.)
This would fix this issue, it would destroy the surveillance models of Google/Facebook, and it would fix the Flock issue, etc. It would also fix the Roe v Wade issue: women would be able to get abortions in the first couple months of pregnancy without the possibility of harassment, since law enforcement would have no capacity to detect pregnancy until then.
Also, tech won't save us had a podcast on the dynamic pricing topic: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-data-is-changing-air-travel-w-amanda-mull/id1507621076?i=1000680112948" rel="nofollow">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-data-is-changing-a...
1. augment_me · 1790183877 · focus · HN ↗
  This is impossible is you consider the financial sector - any kind of unsecured private lending like mortgages become dead in the water, fraud detection goes out the window, money laundering, etc.
  1. jsrozner · 1790184882 · focus · HN ↗
    Good points, but there should be partial solutions. For example, you can present data about the consumer in order to decide on the mortgage, but once the transaction is complete, the data should disappear. You need something akin to "the data can be used only for the particular purpose of the transaction at hand, and the data must be wholly necessary for the transaction at hand."
    We also know that mortgage lenders use irrelevant---well, scratch that---protected data to make decisions (i.e. discriminatory). Race for example is not supposed to be used in lending decisions.
    Fraud detection can probably be solved by other reasonable means. And in any case, if you take the fraud argument to the limit, then you'd end up advocating for constant surveillance to prevent fraud. Equifax, Experian, and Transunion are all horrible companies who do their ostensible job minimally well, while maximizing the exploitation of the data of the people.
    consensus1 · 1790188414 · focus · HN ↗
    This hurts me. I want lenders to have good access to the data that shows I am a high quality borrower. Less access adds risk to the lender which they will respond to by taxing me with a higher interest rate and it benefits scammers and people who don't pay their bills.
    Leynos · 1790194673 · focus · HN ↗
    You can consent to your data being shared with other lenders when you apply for credit under such regimes.
    augment_me · 1790195076 · focus · HN ↗
    And then the lenders say that you are required to supply your data for a discount and we are back to where we are today.
    jsrozner · 1790201820 · focus · HN ↗
    Imagine that you have (on some blockchain) an encrypted history of prior transactions between you and lenders, etc (signed by you, signed by the entity). You can submit through zero knowledge a certificate certifying a certain percentage of on-time payments/ net worth against this self-owned history.
    It would seem that no one gets to monetize your data but you (to avoid overly invasive questions, the govt could, e.g., regulate the kinds of ZKP questions that the mortgage lender is allowed to ask).
    In practice, I'm sure this has some problem, because societies can't function without trust. But in theory, you could imagine something that is more private and harder for other entities to monetize.
  2. izacus · 1790186429 · focus · HN ↗
    And?
  3. flowerbreeze · 1790190551 · focus · HN ↗
    I am not convinced mortgages is a net benefit to the society in any way.
    otterley · 1790202935 · focus · HN ↗
    Very few people can afford to pay for homes in all cash up front. Plus, financing a home is usually a great idea, since they tend to be appreciating assets (as long as the interest rate is lower than the rate of appreciation).
    burlesona · 1790211587 · focus · HN ↗
    There’s a strong historical case to be made that houses only cost what they do because they receive government insured mortgages and preferential tax treatment. The costs rise to consume the available funding.
    sokoloff · 1790214090 · focus · HN ↗
    The reason owner-occupied financing gets that tax benefit is to put owner-occupant buyers on a (more) equal footing with a commercial borrower as commercial interest is deductible as a business expense against income whether it’s startup costs, financing a factory, an airplane, or a rental house.
    theandrewbailey · 1790254102 · focus · HN ↗
    Perhaps interest should not be tax deductible. It's a huge subsidy to the banks and finance industry, which does not need any assistance, and has routinely caused destructive economic recessions.
    otterley · 1790261616 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't follow. How does a tax deduction for paid interest subsidize banks?
    theandrewbailey · 1790282308 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a subsidy by proxy. The government forgoes tax revenue on money that goes to interest payments. People deliberately get loans for the interest deduction.
    If you earned $100,000 in a year but paid $5,000 in mortgage interest, government will not collect taxes on that $5,000, because you gave it to the bank. The bank gets money, but government doesn't: makes little difference if you gave it to the government first (who then handed it on to a bank), or you gave it directly to the bank.
    otterley · 1790367010 · focus · HN ↗
    That doesn't make sense to me. Given an interest rate and a financed amount, I have to pay the same amount of mortgage interest to the bank whether it's tax deductible or not.
    tshaddox · 1790222299 · focus · HN ↗
    If financing a home is such an obviously great deal then why are mortgage lenders okay issuing debt with very long fixed interest rates when they receive nothing from the appreciation of the underlying assets?
    otterley · 1790533807 · focus · HN ↗
    Because they’re backstopped by the federal government (Fannie and Freddie) and thus the income streams are practically risk free, yet still yield a much higher interest rate than T-bills.
  4. kelseyfrog · 1790191411 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not impossible. It just raises risk and thus borrowing rates to compensate. That has a dragging effect on the economy and brings up an important question: Are there rights we're willing to give up for money? For a lot of people, perhaps yourself the answer is yes. For others there's no price on their rights - they're not for sale.

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