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Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#121

Post by pteredactyl »

ageek123 wrote: post #111
andrepd wrote: post #102

It amazes me still how much power in our "democratic" system is help completely outside of the control of the public. How some people, by virtue of owning capital, are vested with such powers that can make or break the lives of millions. Theirs are the decisions that can kill thousands or cause suffering to millions. Democracy is not a boolean. It's a continuum. To me, it means "power held by the people whom it conce…

Huh? If the government wanted to ban facial recognition, they could do it. Our democratic system absolutely has the power to ban it. It hasn't been done, presumably because there isn't a public consensus that it should be banned. If you're arguing for public ownership of companies, that's literally communism -- so not "democratic." But we don't need communism to regulate facial recognition.

Exactly. Does Amazon have an army more powerful than the US? No? Then absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of the will of the people.

Edit: 20 bucks OP (andrepd) has an Amazon Prime account.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#122

Post by mushufasa »

andrepd wrote: post #102

It amazes me still how much power in our "democratic" system is help completely outside of the control of the public. How some people, by virtue of owning capital, are vested with such powers that can make or break the lives of millions. Theirs are the decisions that can kill thousands or cause suffering to millions. Democracy is not a boolean. It's a continuum. To me, it means "power held by the people whom it conce…

Well, yes and no.

Actually, for US public companies, about 60% of value (common stock) is owned by individual citizens, including beneficial ownership through mutual funds. Everyone with a bit of retirement savings. And that proportion is actually increasing, as institutional money chases private asset classes.

The real democratic tragedy is that these retail investors never vote (less than 11% of accounts vote at all). So results like this one are dominated by hedgefunds, who are the most vocal voice in the room. The big mutual fund managers often abstain, in large part because they don't know how their constituents want them to vote.

So there is actually a big democratic opportunity -- the public owns the majority public companies, and has the ability to hold them accountable to public interests. If only people would pay attention. Usually, people throw away their proxy voting cards.

To try and address this problem, I built this website, built around a simple online petition UI (a la change.org) but which verifies your shareownership (via api to service like Plaid). For example, one of our users put up this exact petition on our website. https://www.yourstake.org/ask/amazoncom-inc-facial-recogniti... We've been hacking away on features recently, and haven't yet gotten the word out enough.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#123

Post by somatic »

andrepd wrote: post #110
clairity wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..." this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired. the challenge of course is that it has also led to highly undesirable power structures (corporations, oligopolies, cabals, cartels, etc.) that increasingly eclipses the individual as principal agent. that's a failure (by omission) of capitalism. while governments, communities and other social structures ca…

>> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..." >this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired. I think we need to be careful to define what we mean by "efficient". Do we frame efficient as "churns out the highest revenue / spending ratio" (ironically evaluating capitalism by a metric created by capitalism)? Then yes, that may well be true. But what about the overworked and abused workers? What abo…

Maximum efficiency will occur when no humans are employed and all energy is produced and transmogrified for, and consumed by, retrofeudal neoaristocrats living lives of infinite leisure in their garden cloud paradise fortresses.

Free markets are neither entirely good nor entirely bad. Many things that we would consider to be intrinsic and inextricable parts of the human experience are things which cannot survive the relentless assault of unrestricted Darwinian competition.

A free market is a defect-defect equilibrium, and a defect-defect equilibrium is like fire. It's very powerful, and absolutely necessary; we wouldn't have what we have without fire, and we wouldn't even be human as we are without it, but we must be very careful that it doesn't escape the fireplace and burn the house down.

You ask what would "increase overall quality of life the most?" There are non-economic markets, as well. Mating, for instance. Until very recently it was highly monogamous and strictly regulated. And now it isn't. Winner-take-all.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say that our world is the direct product of decisions, our collective decisions... and the people who make them:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

— Edward Bernays, Propaganda.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#124

Post by andrepd »

pteredactyl wrote: post #121
ageek123 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? If the government wanted to ban facial recognition, they could do it. Our democratic system absolutely has the power to ban it. It hasn't been done, presumably because there isn't a public consensus that it should be banned. If you're arguing for public ownership of companies, that's literally communism -- so not "democratic." But we don't need communism to regulate facial recognition.

Exactly. Does Amazon have an army more powerful than the US? No? Then absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of the will of the people. Edit: 20 bucks OP (andrepd) has an Amazon Prime account.

>Absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of the will of the people.

The issue (or rather, one issue among many) is that that isn't so straightforward. There is an inherent assymetry: a trillion dollar corporation can influence the government at a scale so staggeringly huge and pervasive there isn't even a comparison that can be made with the power and influence of a regular Joe. They can lobby government, bribe politicians, run ads, put on massive campaigns, all of which distort government into their hands.

>Edit: 20 bucks on OP (andrepd) having an Amazon Prime account.

Cute of you, but no. I've bought things from amazon 4 times since 2015 (I just checked).

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#125

Post by dillonmckay »

mushufasa wrote: post #122
andrepd wrote: post #102

It amazes me still how much power in our "democratic" system is help completely outside of the control of the public. How some people, by virtue of owning capital, are vested with such powers that can make or break the lives of millions. Theirs are the decisions that can kill thousands or cause suffering to millions. Democracy is not a boolean. It's a continuum. To me, it means "power held by the people whom it conce…

Well, yes and no. Actually, for US public companies, about 60% of value (common stock) is owned by individual citizens, including beneficial ownership through mutual funds. Everyone with a bit of retirement savings. And that proportion is actually increasing, as institutional money chases private asset classes. The real democratic tragedy is that these retail investors never vote (less than 11% of accounts vote at al…

But as a 401k or Roth mutual fund, the citizen could be in our out of the particular stock at any given moment, without their say.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#126

Post by dillonmckay »

andrepd wrote: post #124
pteredactyl wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Does Amazon have an army more powerful than the US? No? Then absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of the will of the people. Edit: 20 bucks OP (andrepd) has an Amazon Prime account.

>Absolutely the government can regulate corporate America. It's a matter of the will of the people. The issue (or rather, one issue among many) is that that isn't so straightforward. There is an inherent assymetry: a trillion dollar corporation can influence the government at a scale so staggeringly huge and pervasive there isn't even a comparison that can be made with the power and influence of a regular Joe. They c…

That is why cable modems hold special status via FCC rules and thus federal law (in the US).

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#127

Post by clairity »

andrepd wrote: post #110
clairity wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..." this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired. the challenge of course is that it has also led to highly undesirable power structures (corporations, oligopolies, cabals, cartels, etc.) that increasingly eclipses the individual as principal agent. that's a failure (by omission) of capitalism. while governments, communities and other social structures ca…

>> "Amazon is [...] ruthlessly efficient..." >this part is capitalism working as intended and (mostly) as desired. I think we need to be careful to define what we mean by "efficient". Do we frame efficient as "churns out the highest revenue / spending ratio" (ironically evaluating capitalism by a metric created by capitalism)? Then yes, that may well be true. But what about the overworked and abused workers? What abo…

> 'I think we need to be careful to define what we mean by "efficient".'

yes, efficiency has multiple definitions (e.g., productive, allocative, etc.), but i think the problems you raise (overwork, anti-competitiveness) are primarily regulatory. communities (governments) set the rules, and capital has to be allocated within the confines of thsoe rules, like 40-hour work weeks and antitrust laws (akin to out-of-bounds rules in sports). similarly, the costs of pollution should be internalized, as logically, it's a form of stealing (taking enjoyment, health and even lives from others).

> "Isn't this one of the classical critiques of capitalis[m]..."

i suppose marx made a similar argument about the tension between capital and labor, which could be further extended to the consumer-citizen as another economic stakeholder. we invented the fictional personhood of the corporation to resolve a legal conundrum (how to interact legally with businesses, separate from owners) and even gave them special privileges to foster innovation (e.g., the corporate veil). it's only fair to maintain equivalency in negotiations in exchange for those privileges.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#129

Post by SeanBoocock »

exabrial wrote: post #94

Progressives are progressive until it's their own backyard. Great article about that earlier today on HN.

I don't understand this comment. Being critical of the implications of facial recognition technology doesn't map cleanly along the political spectrum, but the most vocal criticism has come from the left. Amazon shareholders largely consist of institutional investors whose interests (and politics) tend to the more conservative.

In what sense are progressives being hypocritical here? As far as I can tell progressive (leaning) employees and other minority shareholders proposed an initiative that was rejected by the majority, more conservative shareholders.

Re: Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition ban

#130

Post by cortesoft »

andrepd wrote: post #102

It amazes me still how much power in our "democratic" system is help completely outside of the control of the public. How some people, by virtue of owning capital, are vested with such powers that can make or break the lives of millions. Theirs are the decisions that can kill thousands or cause suffering to millions. Democracy is not a boolean. It's a continuum. To me, it means "power held by the people whom it conce…

I get what you are saying, but this gets really tricky really fast.

The power you are talking about is the power to use what you own (in this example, that thing is money). If we believe in private ownership of things, we will never be able to eliminate this power completely. Where do we draw the lines? How do we let people have the freedom to choose how to use the things they own without letting them have too much power over others?

I think we can come up with good answers, but I do fear an over simplification of what it means to restrict how you can exercise your ownership of something.

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