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Comment by heavyset_go

3 days ago

Make it illegal. Give rewards for anonymous tips that lead to prosecution like it already exists for IRS tax fraud tips.

16 comments

heavyset_go

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ryandrake  3 days ago

Americans will try anything to stop corporate wrongdoing--except making it illegal.

  • themafia  3 days ago

    American's do not have the power to make things illegal. We have a representative democracy. Why it fails to represent the will of the people has been a good debate for the past 30 years.

    • xboxnolifes  3 days ago

      We frequently won't even suggest it, at least on HN. Its always derided by "how will it be enforced? There are ways to evade it!". Always letting perfect be the enemy of good.

AndrewKemendo  3 days ago

That’s just not possible because it’s unenforceable at best and ignores the myriad ways around it “legally” that still would be workable even if it’s “illegal”

For example it’s illegal to hire foreign undocumented labor but in literally zero of the companies who have been raided recently the only people punished were the working people who are just trying to live

  • heavyset_go  3 days ago

    Allow enforcement by awarding whistleblower bounties via civil courts. Give standing for civil suits to be brought forth a la Texas' bounty laws if regulators won't enforce the law.

    • AndrewKemendo  3 days ago

      All that does is create a new middle layer of auditors who are de facto government stooges in contractor outfits

      They take your money so that you can be compliant with the Kafkaesque language of the law, such that you can continue to do what you wanna do, but now you’re actually protected under the law with a specific proviso through this new middleman.

      And so that’s when you get industry groups lobby in Congress to say we need to do this without the other at the federal level.

      There’s no way you’re gonna be able to actually figure this out because laws don’t work to protect citizens, laws are intended to protect business interests. Like that is unambiguous and undisputed at this point.

      Surveillance consumerism IS the economy

potato3732842  3 days ago

We haven't even tried to solve this any other way.

Pitting people against each other should be a last, last, last, resort.

Low trust is VERY expensive. It's asinine to introduce it to anywhere it doesn't already exist.

  • heavyset_go  3 days ago

    We have in other domains, there's a reason whistleblower protections and rewards exist.

    There needs to be protections and incentives for, for example, low level employees to report their employers when they're privy to them breaking the law.

    I'd argue recording people to the point of virtual stalking, selling data, building dossiers, etc is a violation of basic trust and the foundation of a low trust society.

    • potato3732842  3 days ago

      >I'd argue recording people to the point of virtual stalking, selling data, building dossiers, etc is a violation of basic trust and the foundation of a low trust society.

      I agree. I'm not sure making the employer-employee relationship worse to prevent it actually makes it better though. Every retail company is doing some amount of security stuff that's adjacent to this even if they're being tasteful.

      Can we try "just" making it like normal levels of illegal before we make the employer-employee relationship dynamic worse in any workplace where data that could be used in this way is at all relevant?

      1 reply →

  • gowld  3 days ago

    Criminality is a breach of trust.

    • potato3732842  3 days ago

      >Criminality is a breach of trust.

      I dare you to explain how without using a) an example where in the absence of law trust would not also be breached b) claiming the tipster's trust is breached because they inherit that breach through the N levels of government above them until you get to a level that both the narc and the IRS inherit from c) making some assertion that would create either insanity or hilarity if used to reason about other mundane illegality (e.g bringing some personal weed through a non legal state).

      Also the cash under the table workforce is alive and well wheras the mail order drugs industry goes through great pains to structure itself and engage in opsec such that trust is not needed. That would seem to indicated that tax evasion is not inherently a breach of trust.