Comment by mhuffman
5 days ago
>This is a phenomenal application of how fine-based bounties can be used to rapidly improve compliance with the law.
This type of thing can get out of hand quickly. Without me giving controversial examples, just imagine for yourself the types of things that different states can make a crime, add a fine, then offer to give other citizens part or all of that fine if they turn in others. After that, think of how unscrupulous businesses could use it against competition.
Compliance with the law is a separate issue from the contents of the law. If switching to a fine-based bounty system like this suddenly causes an uproar over a given law, then I submit the proper thing is to look over that law and perhaps tear it down. Any "law" that people put up with because it isn't enforced 9 times out of 10 is little more than a tax upon those too honest to get away with it.
As for businesses using it against one another in competition: Same deal, I think that's an excellent thing. If this idling law causes NYC businesses to shift en masse to faster loading and unloading practices because their competitors are watching them like hawks, I don't think that's a bad thing.
>Compliance with the law is a separate issue from the contents of the law.
Agree. More of my thought is what happens when everyone is incentivized with money to spy on everyone else? How can you misuse this as a government? How can unscrupulous businesses misuse this?
>If switching to a fine-based bounty system like this suddenly causes an uproar over a given law, then I submit the proper thing is to look over that law and perhaps tear it down.
I would submit that there is the danger that people might want to keep a bad law if they continue to make money by snitching. In fact, money is the exact wrong incentive for this sort of thing.
>Any "law" that people put up with because it isn't enforced 9 times out of 10 is little more than a tax upon those too honest to get away with it.
Think a little harder and see if you can imagine why a law that isn't strongly enforced still might exist.
> I would submit that there is the danger that people might want to keep a bad law if they continue to make money by snitching. In fact, money is the exact wrong incentive for this sort of thing.
Think bigger. If the activity were really a money-maker, then it will inevitably be scaled and industrialized. A cottage industry of snitching would spring up. If that industry got sufficiently wealthy and politically powerful, we'd see all kinds of "easy-bounty" laws getting enacted to allow these companies to further sponge up fines from the public.
If speeding fines were shared with whoever reported them, I guarantee 100% that companies would buy real estate every 10 miles along every freeway and put up speeding cameras to automate it.
(EDIT: Looks like you also already predicted the speed trap cottage industry in another comment. Oh, well, I'll leave this one up too)
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>[P]eople might want to keep a bad law if they continue to make money by snitching. In fact, money is the exact wrong incentive for this sort of thing.
I've said elsewhere the optimal mechanism here is for that money to be paid to the snitcher, from the person who is being turned in. This would lead us to assume that for most crimes of a personal nature, we would have about as many people losing money due to the law as making money due to it, and so the effect cancels out.
In situations where many more people make money and only a select few are losing big, well... Somehow I feel like that's usually for the best anyway. See my other comments on eg the runaway success of the False Claims Act. Or just consider the class action lawsuit and whether you think it fills a valuable role in society.
>Think a little harder and see if you can imagine why a law that isn't strongly enforced still might exist.
Thanks for letting me pick the reason, that's very thoughtful of you. Obviously it's because said law being strongly enforced would cause such a public backlash that it would quickly get repealed in its entirety, and thus further erode the monopoly on violence the state holds over its citizenry. Cops then have fewer en passants they can pull when they don't follow procedure, etc etc. I'm glad we're in agreement on this.
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spoken like a person who’s never had to load/unload a truck before
This is a general problem we've had iterations of in Edinburgh lately:
- traffic designers lay out road
- there is nowhere for delivery trucks to park, or extremely limited parking
- this is justified by a lengthy set of arguments about other road users
- deliveries still need to be made
- truck parks in bus lane, cycle lane, or on the pedestrian paving (cracking slabs!)
- everyone is now mad with each other, on the street or in the local newspapers
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Love the app; will use.
Scared of MAGA targeting brown people with this type of social enforcement
Compliance with the law is a separate issue from the contents of the law.
Not really. If perfect, ubiquitious enforcement were possible, our laws would probably look very different.
> just imagine for yourself the types of things that different states can make a crime, add a fine, then offer to give other citizens part or all of that fine if they turn in others
You mean if a red state (like Texas) potentially handing out bounties for snitching on abortions? Texas already passed that law in 2022[1]. We are already way down the slippery slope you alluded.
1. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/11/1107741175/texas-abortion-bou...
Yeah, this is the worrying bit. US constitutional law only seems to restrict the government, so they can delegate it to private actors who can then do unconstitutional things. Something similar happened with the book-objecting laws.
You're actually better off if it's a crime because then you can force the issue to go through a court, be made public record, etc.
A lot of civil penalties carry fines in excess of what you get for a first offense for a violent but not professional criminality type crime. It's absolutely insane. NYC's idling laws are just the tip of the iceberg in this regard. And the fact that these are "civil" penalties means the due process requirements are basically nil and when they do exist (like they do for traffic infractions) they basically only exist so far as they need to to keep the racket going.
Like you'd be hard pressed to wind up with tens of thousands of of fines doing actual criminal stuff, they'd just throw you in jail. But a government official can notice (or be tipped off to) some violation then go look back at their info sources and decide unilaterally when the violation started and fine you for presumed months of violation and you often have no recourse but to sue.
One needn't imagine. Texas's strange attempt to twist civil law such that providing or facilitating an abortion is an injury to anyone who claims it is (and is thus a cause of action where the "injured" person can sue the person providing or facilitating the abortion) has taken this discussion out of the theoretical. Regardless of where you stand on whether abortion should be allowed, the idea that anyone who performs one is liable to the first person to notice that they did is an intentional perversion of civil law.
Or if you need to avoid the a-word because of the particular fruit that falls from that tree when shaken, just look at predatory towing.
I think an important wake-up call is that bounties now exist in an ecosystem where people who would normally be indifferent to wanting/knowing how to collect bounties, could be driven by techniques from the predatory-gambling-app world into becoming gamified enforcers.
We’re already sliding down the slope, to be sure, but this is an acceleration that we should expect with our eyes wide open.
Yes, and? It's a good thing to get crimes reported more often, faster, and with more and higher quality evidence. (That last statement doesn't directly follow from bounties in the short term, but it does once you start considering the competitive pressures crime detectors face in such a market.)
You can run a thought experiment to confirm this. Suppose 1/2 of all crimes committed in your area currently get reported. You are offered the option to move to two new places, identical in every way to your starting point, except New Town A has 3/4 of the crimes committed get reported*. New Town B has only 1/4 of the crimes committed get reported. Do you move? Where to?
The important thing to notice is less that New Town A seems like a pretty good deal, than that New Town B seems like a really bad one. Plenty of people would move to New Town A for the obvious additional security. Some of people would elect to stay, for reasons like New Town A isn't guaranteed to be exactly like where you currently are into the future, and home is home. But almost nobody would move to New Town B. The people who would jump for joy at moving to New Town B may even be criminals themselves trying to escape charges or just hedge their futures.
* For the sake of completeness, you can consider this property preserved across different types of crime. E.g. if 90% of homicides get reported in your current locale, 95% do in New Town A, and only 45% in New Town B do. If 20% of money laundering schemes get reported, 60% do in New Town A, and 10% in New Town B. Etc. The general idea of everything being more or less detectable is more important than the specific numbers.
Yeah, like the ADA for example. We should not have started down that slippery slope. Repeal the ADA!
Reminds me a snitchers during communist regime in our country. There was a lot of those who report to STB (state security, like KGB) all kind of misbehaving of citizens that could threat a state.
I'm curious, when there will be apps to report citizens that threat democracy. Like those who wear red hat. Or sleepong on street. Or make weird talks at home...